Is it just me?

[stephbg]

Have you seen this latest incarnation of the Abdominator? It's called the Ab Circle Pro and requires one to get down on one's knees, spread 'em, then wriggle one's bottom back and forth. It doesn't look foolish at all (results may vary). I believe it serves the design purpose of money elimination and is easy to store.



Every time I see this ad (which is a lot, because they sponsor The Zoo on GEM) I'm distracted by the sympathetic screaming coming from my kneecaps. Am I alone? I have never been able to kneel on a hard surface without excruciating pain, but it took me a long time to discover that this was not normal. Being raised a Catholic I was given plenty of opportunities to kneel, but eventually I was excused from actual kneeling and took up awkward scrunching in the pew when required by the script. I was also under the impression for some time that kneeling+suffering=saintly behaviour, and everyone else seemed able to kneel on wooden or concrete floors without fuss. Fuss was not encouraged.

I couldn't sit cross-legged until well into adulthood either, so school assemblies and floor-based activities caused many problems as a child. "She'll grow out of it" they said.

So, can you kneel? Does the Ab Circle Pro look like a good idea, relatively speaking? Or does it promise naught but torture?

Comments

[gemfyre.livejournal.com]

I can kneel, but on a hard surface it's certainly not comfortable. And my legs quickly fall asleep.

[possbert.livejournal.com]

I have pretty bad arthritis in both knees (I've been warned that reconstruction is down the track) so the thought of kneeling on one of those torture devices is almost enough to make me run from the room screaming.

[kaelajael.livejournal.com]

I've got terrible knees - my kneecaps are actually out of alignment and rub on the top of the tibia, so kneeling isn't the easiest of tasks, certainly not for any length of time. And I had problems sitting cross legged at school, too.

[shrydar.livejournal.com]

My problems with kneeling had always stemmed from my feet rather than my knees. Tuck my toes under and my toes got tired from being bent up, or point my toes back, and I had too much pressure on the part of my foot just above the toes. The latter was particularly a problem at yoga, where you're meant to be doing that in bare feet.

But when I was reading up on ballet boots, I found someone talking about doing exercises to stretch the upper side of her ankles so she could point her toes directly down/away from her knees (same applies to ballet pointe shoes). The woman in question was resorting to using bands of elastic to press her feet and calves against a specially shaped block of wood—I didn't go that far, but once I knew you *could* stretch your ankles it didn't take that many weeks practice kneeling on carpet pressing down on my ankles to reach the point where I could kneel toes-pointing-back with my ankles touching the ground, weight distributed all the way from knee to toe. Much more comfortable!