Q&A: Robitaille's retirement pain
Question: You guys, as players, go through so much physically. Three years after retirement, do you still feel it?
ROBITAILLE: ``My lower back was getting worse and worse every year when I was playing. I remember asking Kelly Hrudey, `What's the biggest thing after you retire?' And he told me, `It took me a year.' And I said, `What do you mean, a year?' He said, `It took me a year to figure out that you can get out of bed and nothing hurts.' And I was like, `Really?' And he was like, `Yeah, it's the greatest feeling.'
``I had never thought of it that way. My last couple years with the Kings, I would really show up really early and work on all kinds of stretching until I felt pretty good. When I retired, the first few months I really didn't do much. Funny enough, I was in worse shape then. A lot of times you would take Motrin or Advil or whatever it took -- that was legal, by the way -- to help you feel good. When I retired, I just stopped everything. The first three or four months after I retired were the most painful for me. My lower back was in real bad shape. So I had a minor surgery done to my lower back, where they burned all the nerves around there and got rid of the pain. Then I started a program to straighten it out. I can honestly tell you that it took me six months, and after six months I remember jumping out of bed and nothing hurt. I thought, `This is awesome!'
``To this day, knock on wood, I get out of bed fine. I'm really careful what I do when I'm working out. I try to not do anything stupid, but it's the greatest feeling. I remember there were some mornings when it was hard for me to turn on the water faucet. I would tilt forward just a little bit, and it would kill my lower back. It's a great feeling now that nothing hurts.''
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J.P. Hoornstra writes about NHL and IHL hockey for the Los Angeles Newspaper Group. He welcomes any and all dialogue on the finer points of hockey.
E-mail J.P. at jp.hoornstra@inlandnewspapers.com.
Jill Painter joined the Daily News in 2000 and during the last eight years she's covered the Dodgers, Cal State Northridge, UCLA, Kings, golf and everything in between. Even though she's from Colorado, she still freezes in the Staples Center press box but always manages to thaw her fingers in time to make deadline. E-mail Jill at jill.painter@dailynews
.com.
Vincent Bonsignore is a sports columnist for the Los Angeles Daily News. E-mail Vinny at vincent.bonsignore
@dailynews.com.
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In Luc's second or third year or maybe both, my buddies and I would try and guess how many crosschecks in the back Luc would take. Sometimes it was 2 or 3, mostly there were 5 or 6, and in one game the count hit nine. They had to be hard enough to move him with contact between the helmet and the base of the numbers. There was one shift I will never forget were Luc was crosschecked to the ice 4 times. After the second one, we all wondered how he can possibly get up from that. The ref was looking right at him on the third one. We were hoping he would just stay down. He got up and once again on the same shift and he did not miss his next shift.
He was like those old toy people that were made of hollow plastic with strings running through their parts. When you pushed the bottom of the base they collapse at every joint, but releasing the base allow them to stand at attention again.
I won't speak for the rest of you young whippersnappers out there, but here is the only thing I can directly sympathize with Luc, and understand the feeling: "This is awesome!"
Back pain is the most debilitating thing. Once it sets in, mornings are hard, sitting is hard, getting out of a chair is hard...
The thing about being a civilian and getting old is the problem about getting fat. As we age, our metabolisms--no matter where it was set when we were young--slow down. The only way to not get fat is:
a) Don't eat;
b) Burn more calories every day than you did when you were thin.
I became borderline morbidly obese by the time I reached 49, and could barely rise out of a chair. It took 3 years of moderate exercise (walking >2 miles/day) to lose the weight, realign the atrophied muscles in my thighs, hips and back... just so I could stand up out of a chair again without pain.
The one thing I can't imagine is the pain these special athletes have from incessant trauma and inevitable degeneration of the back and joints.
Way to go, Luc!