Biggest Loser moment

I realize that some of y'all aren't followers of the television show The Biggest Loser, so I need to do a little explaining.  The season that is currently airing is season 11.  Two of the contestants are named Arthur and Hannah.

Arthur is the biggest contestant by BMI that the show has ever had in their 11 seasons.  His starting weight was 507 pounds.  Hannah used to be a volleyball player and was pretty good.  I don't know all of the details, but I believe she got injured years ago, stopped playing volleyball and gained weight.  For those of y'all that do follow the show and want to provide more details of Hannah's story, please feel free to do so.

Over Christmas last year the contestants were sent home for 2 weeks.  They started at the ranch in October of last year, so Christmas was about their 8 week mark.  None of the contestants were finished with their weight loss journey at this point, but they were well on their way.

The cameras followed every contestant but I want to focus on Arthur and Hannah.  Before going to the ranch, Arthur showed us that for him to fit into the driver's seat on a car, he had to move the seat all the way back, then recline the seat all the way.  The cameras showed us how it was done, and I couldn't believe it.  The seat was all the way back and all the way reclined.

I don't know exactly how much weight Arthur had lost at that point, but he was down over 100 pounds. The cameras followed him around for the first time when he went to get into the car.  With losing over 100 pounds, Arthur was able to tilt the seat all the way up so there wasn't any recline.  I don't remember if he needed to move the seat up or not, but I do remember being shocked at the change.  During the episode, Arthur took his family for a ride in the car because he could.  He told us that this was his Biggest Loser moment.

During the same episode, Hannah went with her dad to the volleyball court because she's physically able to play.  The cameras showed her practicing volleyball moves and she was alright at it.  It wasn't perfect, but she was doing it.  It was emotional for her dad because he said they used to do this all the time when she was a little girl.  While she was at the gym, a couple of people asked her to play a game of 2 on 2.  She did it.  Hannah said that was the firs time she had been on a volleyball court since the injury, which was about 12 years ago.  Afterwords she said this is my Biggest Loser moment.

In a later episode of the Biggest Loser, Jillian is working out with Rulon using a body bag.  This is probably around the 12 week mark and Rulon's said he's starting to see the former olympic champion in him come back.  At one point in the episode, Jillian asks Rulon to use the body bag to do a take down move in wrestling.  Rulon is a big guy and he does it.  He holds the bag close to his body, flips over, slams the bag down, and lands on the mat.  Go to youtube and find the video.  After doing this a few times, Jillian said it looked like a great white shark jumping out of the water.

Do you see a theme here?  Rulon and Hannah are about former athletes getting their body back and getting back into the sport they love.  Hannah and Arthur's theme is saying that the story mentioned above was their Biggest Loser moment, which brings me to today.  Now it is my turn for a Biggest Loser moment.

After my time at the BLR, I am about the same weight I was when I graduated from college almost 8 years ago.  I have been saying that I can now fit back into my ice hockey pads and want to start playing again.  The fist step for me is skating.  There is a rink near my house and today I went skating.  Let's get to the pictures and I'll explain afterwords.

The picture above is my Biggest Loser moment!!  It is obviously me on ice skates during the public skating session.  I was on the ice for about one hour before they needed to resurface.  At that point I decided it was time to go because my skates don't fit right and felt like they are started to rub a blister.  To be honest, these skates have never fit perfectly even when I was wearing them in college.  One of the items at the top of my list for next week is to get fitted properly for new ice skates.

I am committed to get back to playing ice hockey again because I absolutely love playing the sport.  I wasn't the greatest player even in my glory days, but I enjoyed it and it was great exercise.  Today I managed to skate for about one hour.  I have not been on skates for almost 8 years since I was in college and my concern was how would I do?  Would it come back to me easily?  Is it like ridding a bike?  The answer is yes, mostly it came back easily and was almost like ridding a bicycle.  I did not fall once during my skating session.  There are a lot of moves in ice skating including moving forward, cross stepping to change direction, stopping, backward skating, backward cross stepping, backward stopping, and transitions between backwards to forwards.  A lot of these moves are both on the right side and the left side.

The public skating session moves around the rink in a counter clockwise direction, kinda like a Nascar race.  It wasn't that crowded, but there were a lot of little kids that were just starting to skate.  Moving forward was easy, stopping on both sides came back real quick and the step over (right over left) is a work in progress.  Backward skating and everything associated with it will be a work in progress.  Today I did very little backward skating because it did not come back naturally.  There is a high risk of falling when skating backwards and I'm going to do it without wearing a helmet.

By the way, in the picture above, notice the green Baylor hockey jersey.  I have not worn this since college because I have not been playing hockey and then in the past few years could not fit into it.  I ordered this jersey as a freshman and should have ordered a bigger size back then because it was tight back then when I put on the pads.

So the plan moving forward is to get fitted for ice skates that fit properly.  Once those are in, I plan to attend some sessions that are called "stick and puck."  These stick and puck sessions are for hockey players and are generally open ice time.  It is a time for players to work on individual skills outside of the team practice, but most of the time it usually turns into a pick up game with whoever is there.

My plan will be to concentrate on the skating while wearing the hockey pads.  I won't play in the pick up game, which will work out nicely because the pick up games are usually on one side of the ice.  Stay tuned for a future picture of part 2 of my Biggest Loser moment.