Hump Day on the horizon at camp
Hump Day is a term that is synonymous with Wednesday because it is in the middle of a typical work week. At that point, the worker has crested the hump and is on the down slope until the weekend.
But for any CFL player, Hump Day refers to the morning of Day 4 of training camp, which also happens to be a Wednesday.
Day 1 of camp is easy — almost fun — for players. It’s what we train for all off-season. At last, the players get to show off all their hard work and sacrifice out on the football field with 85 of their closest friends.
The back-to-back practices fly by on the backdrop of a beautiful spring day, the in-house food is exotic and diverse, and most players make it through evening film study without falling asleep once.
On Day 1, sleep is reserved for well after the 11 p.m. bed check, on the horribly tiny dorm mattresses — which is less the bed’s fault and more attributable to the gargantuan size of some players. However, the body gives quickly into exhaustion and sleep comes quickly.
When the alarm goes off, you can’t believe what is going on. Surely, something must be wrong. It can’t possibly already be time to wake up! What happened? Where am I? Whose body did I wake up in?
Miserable doesn’t quite describe the feeling. Somehow during the night, everything became swollen, strained or sprained, and you’re dehydrated because during the previous day’s gruelling four-hour workout under the hot sun you forgot to drink enough Gatorade.
Imagine waking up with the worst stiff neck, bad back, innerthigh chafe and hangover you’ve ever had and you’re almost there. The worst part of it all is that you know you have to do it all over again — unless you’re injured, and surely something must be injured and not merely hurt.
Inevitably, you discover that you can move your limbs as you swing your legs over the side of your plush mattress — dreaming of the moment when you can return to this luxurious comfort.
It is doubtful whether your legs will hold your weight, but you give it a go anyway and hoist yourself up as you would when your legs go numb from sitting too long on the toilet. The first dozen steps are shaky but, as blood starts flowing and the Advil begins kicking in, you accept your capacity to make it down to the trainer to tell him you’re injured and can’t practise today.
Along the way, you pass the cafeteria and go in for some powdered eggs, bacon, sausage, hash browns, fruit cup, cereal, orange juice and all the coffee you can drink. After some reflection, you think that maybe you could practise after all — on a limited basis, of course.
As you enter the training room, reality sets in. Injured players need to go for treatment, which means staying after practice — during prime nap time — and showing up 90 minutes earlier in the morning, Miraculously, you start feeling better and dress for practice.
The morning of Day 3 inconceivably feels worse than Day 2. There isn’t a player who hasn’t contemplated his career choice while aching motionless in bed on Day 3, but somehow we manage to persevere with the promise of Hump Day on the horizon.
On Wednesday, players wake up stiff, sore and miserable, but for the first time in what feels like an eternity for their overworked minds and bodies, the players feel less stiff, less sore and less miserable than they did the previous morning — a sign their bodies are acclimating to the abuse and have crested the hump of the trainingcamp grind and are healing themselves faster than they can break themselves down.
After the steep climb to physically get out of bed to compete on Monday and Tuesday, the rest of the season is downhill.