Well, yesterday was a depressing write-off. Hopefully today will be better.

There's a curious little story I've been meaning to tell for a while. It's quite old, (six, seven months) it happened to me when I was gathering data for the proposals of this research project. This little incident taught me a fair bit about discipline, exercise and myself.

How the Wii Fit

Physical activity has always been important to me. Boxing, rock-climbing, mountain biking, skateboarding, snowboarding - I've always picked individualistic physical pastimes, things that offer personal challenges rather than competitive team activities. With this outlook I treated my exercise as fun and a chance to test myself and my physical abilities. I've never had any reason to take it particularly seriously and often ignored (even jeered) the various routines that people attached to their sports - uniforms/specialised equipment, warm-ups/cool-downs, set regimens, diets, etc. My exercise came in form of sporadic physical activity, at any random time I felt like it.

Then, recently, parkour came along. I knew that I'd have to shape up, so I started up some semi-regular training. The first general exercise I did revolved around the layout of my local train station. A two-level garden, each level about a meter and a half in height, gave me a prop for vault practice. I'd climb the two steps with maximal flow, trying to conserve as much momentum and move as fluidly as possible. Then, I'd go back down - precision jumping onto the lip of the first step then down from there - again, with as much fluidity as I could muster.

Because I catch the trains often the exercise was perfect, I'd inadvertently be at my training ground one or twice a day and I'd squeeze in as many reps as time would allow. I started clumsily, then developed technique. There was a definite burn and I'd be puffed after a few reps. This would improve with my fitness. I started with five ups and downs per go, then expended to ten. I was getting better, learning a lot and using nearly all of my muscles - there was no doubt in my mind that this exercise was good.

Two weeks went by. One morning I woke up with a new discomfort. My lower torso, around the kidneys, had a peculiar ache. I'm lucky in that I don't usually have much problems with physical discomfort, aside from an ankle that's been twisted all too many times everything on my body works pretty much as it should. So, the ache stood out and I started to worry when it persisted. After three days I noticed that it would flare up after my wall climbs, and after each exercise session I would wake up the next morning to find the ache had gotten worse. I made a doctor's appointment.

The examination turned out nothing. I was in good shape. They sent me in for blood-work. There was reason for concern, a chance that my kidneys were acting up. I asked about jolting (I was doing a lot of jumping) and the doctor told me it was highly unlikely to have done any harm. The blood-work took two days and I cut down on impact exercises. The ache got worse. Any remotely strenuous movement would aggravate it and I really started to worry. My blood-work came back - it showed nothing wrong. The doctor sent me off to have a series of scans.

Private little radiology centre. My clothes in a cubicle two rooms away. Me on a stretcher in a smock trying to sound unworried while making light conversation with the lady technician. My kidneys up on the ultrasound display. "See that there? That's passing fluids. Shape, size, texture - all normal." I was massively relieved, but at the same time more worried. What the hell was going on? An X-ray revealed an unusual skeletal posture, all perfectly healthy. I was healthy as a horse. I decided to push through the pain, retake up training and hope it would pass.

Training made things even worse. The ache moved up and spread out. My back seized up. I felt like an 80 year old. I stopped training. The ache was constant and any physical activity made my back seize up. I was pissed as hell. I couldn't train and despite a clean bill of health my problem was getting worse. A friend offered to lend me his copy of Wii Fit - with the balance board - he suggested I try it until I get better. Low impact exercise was better than none, he suggested, and he promised that the workout was deceptively effective. I decided to give it a go.

I've always winged about Wii Fit. I'm a nintendo fan (by the way, they're not paying me for this) and I was annoyed that the development team was making programs for housewives while leaving the hardcore gamers hanging. I was pleasantly surprised. The full workout was actually challenging and there were a bunch of exercises that I'd never heard of. I was drawn to the yoga, something I've always been curious about but never tried. That's where the penny dropped.

As you play you unlock new exercises, pretty quickly I unlocked the yoga stretches. The Spinal Twist, Sun Salutation and Triangle poses felt practically orgasmic. I did each one several times. The next morning my back was better, the ache was less intense. I kept up the stretches and over the next three days my condition improved. By day four I was ready to cautiously return to my impact runs. The ache would start up, but then I'd do these stretches and the pain would disappear.

Stretching is now a part of my routine. I learned the hard way that muscle exercise can cause muscles to contract and shrink as they repair and grow. Stretching is absolutely essential with a regular muscle workout. Some routines are necessary. Training requires a certain amount of discipline.