Perfecting the Bicycle Kick

Well, the following incident is something that I hold close to my heart, perhaps the only instance where my super laziness has been engulfed and consumed by a rare fire of perseverance. It happened just a few years back, and being a guy just into my teens, a rush of blood was all it took to pump an overdose of adrenaline into a brainless kid like me. A young teen aged guy is attracted to anything that catches the fancy of people around him, I was no different. I racked my brains to think of something that I could do which would atleast force heads to look my way. That was hard to come by as a guy in 10^th, I wasn’t a heart throb like Edward Cullen, and physique wise I looked more like a pregnant Shakira than compared to muscular guys like Bruce Lee or Cristiano Ronaldo. So tough situation, you see? But I was desperate.

Ronaldo: The Perfect Body

So one fine night, I was watching TV (no prizes for guessing what I was watching- Saturday night football). Simultaneously doing the only bit of exercise I ever did back then (when my hand used to stretch for the bowl of popcorn). I saw a Aston Villa player, (Gabriel Agbonlahor I think), perform a perfect bicycle kick. And THERE my mind instantly clicked. 

To people not used to football terminology, a bicycle kick is a special maneuver (also called an overhead kick) where the player does a half somersault and kicks the ball when it is in mid air (usually at a level near the player’s head). It requires a fair amount of flexibility, and an even commendable amount of guts, both which were fairly unknown to me. I was as flexible as an iron rod and except my intestines, nothing inside me came even close to be termed "guts".

I did play football, undoubtedly. But the fact was that I was a goalkeeper, who literally moved as much in one game as my grandmother does in one day. So I wasn't really fit… Oh come on! I can’t even lie when I’m typing! Ok I was fit, replace the “i” with the “a” and bingo, "fat" is the word (Amazing what difference one letter makes). So yeah, all this was daunting for a move generally performed by active players. But I was still determined to give it a good try.

Next morning, I set my alarm for 5:30. Naturally…  I woke up at 7. I grabbed the football lying under the table, put my football shoes and went out to the dining room to fill a bottle of water. BIG mistake. Dad was casually sipping a cup of tea and saw me up at 7 A.M with a FOOTBALL on a SUNDAY MORNING. Instantly he looked at me as if he saw the King of Spain building sand castles on the roadside.

“And WHERE sir are YOU off to?” he inquired.

“Football practice, dad.” (I wanted to rush out, real bad)

“Oh that’s good you got your lazy bum off the bed for a change. Off you go then.”

Whew. Disaster averted. If he’d known I was going to try to do an acrobatic kick, he would have laughed like he inhaled a crate of laughing gas. Both of us knew it took me a few minutes to move my flabby thighs from point A to B, leave alone take a jump of at least 2 feet off the ground (pre-requisite and required for a bicycle kick).  But what the hell? I had nothing to lose.

I reached the football ground, and I was relieved to see no one there. I didn’t want to make a fool of myself in front of hundreds, I’d rather die alone in a mishap and have my body found later. Grabbing the ball in my hand, it was time to start. Problem 1 had arrived. Where to start??

I decided to let fate lead the way, and decided to practice only the jump and the landing first. Keeping the ball aside, I took a deep breath and jumped. Mid-air my worse fears were realized, nothing about my jump was correct. I was barely half a foot off the ground, and the extra fat was NOT gonna make my landing soft. It was slow motion, super slow… and with a crack I landed on my back, the grass anything but comforting. My head had hit the ground like a coconut smashed on the ground by people during religious Hindu ceremonies. I could read the headlines in tomorrow’s papers “Fat teen kid’s bicycle landing creates 2 feet crater in football ground”, “People in Assam experience bomb scare as fat kid shows stupidity” and “6.5 Richter scale earthquakes all over India, source unknown and dangerous”. Damn that hurt.

Second and third tries were no better, try number 5 (first with the ball) took the cake. I threw the ball 2 feet up, and decided to go straight away for the kick. The timing was horrendous, I jumped 2 seconds before the ball reached the head level.  I landed flat on my back, and in pain… my back had almost cracked this time around. I looked up at the sky and noticed 3 things that chilled my spine.

1)      Ball was still in the air.

2)      It was 2 feet from me, right above my crotch.

3)      My legs were spread out in separate directions.

What happened next, I leave to the imagination. If there was ever a moment where I realized I was a fool, I can’t remember any better than this. How I walked back home, I don’t remember, but I did make it alive. 3 days it was before I could muster courage to start again, all the cuts and grass burns were little reminders of my childish foolishness. The next 2 weeks went in practicing hard, and you know what? Slowly, I saw myself getting better, my jumps getting higher, my timing growing immaculate. The injuries kept happening, I almost dislocated a shoulder, battered my elbows to a point where they would bleed a lot, but their extent of damage slowly reduced as I came to know what exactly I was doing wrong.

And then just one day, 2 and a half weeks of bum-cracking later- Voila!(Yup that's me, performing the bicycle kick).

Bicycle kick: All about having a  "ball"

I guess somethings really are worth waiting for. I’m not someone who works super hard with passion, but this was perhaps one of my fondest memories of trying ever so hard to achieve something I really wanted. It took time, and tested every bit of my childish immaturity and impatience, but in the end, everything comes together I guess. That is the power of human dedication, once the mind locks on to something, it goes to any lengths to get it. This is just something I personally went through, I can confidently tell you, I came out a stronger person.