Grindstone, meet Shoulder

So, as I’ve just posted, it looks rather like I’m back in the old exercise saddle.

I have bust through the notorious two week point (don’t know about anyone else, but if I can make it through two weeks of good exercise habit, the pattern is generally set until injury) and so far appear to be injury-free (you know, above my usual baseline of "various bits of me are a bit wrong").

So, what have I been up to?

1. Cycling
2. Large Muscle Physio Exercises
3. Small Muscle Physio Exercises
4. Butch Core Mat Exercises
5. Dancing

1. Cycling

I’ve been doing my best to cycle everywhere I can.  This is by no means every day (sometimes I’ve got massive stuff to carry; sometimes I’m not even leaving the house; today I couldn’t find my cycling helmet until after I’d given up and ordered a taxi), but most days, and I’m generally clocking (when the app bloody works) between 3-7 miles every day that I do cycle.

Advantages include cheapness and smugness alongside muscle strength; non-weight-bearing cardiovascular challenge; and the sensation of my lungs "opening up" again; forces me not to carry too much stuff with me.

Disadvantages include smelling bad (or feeling like I smell bad); dangerously ignorant cars; annoying cyclists; headwind; forces me not to carry too much stuff with me ({pout}).

Improvements to be made include being more systematic about where I put my gear, and getting better into a regime for the mornings in order to get to work more on time.

2. Large Muscle Physio Exercises

I’ve only missed one morning physio session in about 8 months, and that was when I was too ill from The Cough to go into work, so I sat on my arse and watched Netflix.  Other than that, I’ve been doing my usual:

leg-lifts (supine, sideways, on my belly)

crunches (normal, side, and slightly twisted)

kicks and crosses

All of these from the floor, and apparently - according to various friends - quite similar to a lot of Pilates moves. Most of them are designed for either 20/ 10 reps. As advised by physio.

Advantages include simplicity; portability; being part of a good morning habit; excellent for core strength; great for a range of leg muscle strength and stability; really good, demonstrably effective way of ameliorating and preventing pain, damage, injury etc. from long-term standing.

Disadvantages include finding enough room to lay flat, arms and legs full stretch in all directions, on a surface that won’t hurt to exercise on; needing to do it before breakfast otherwise indigestion; them doing pretty much nothing for upper body strength/ stability, which I badly need, considering the frequency with which my shoulders/ neck get injured/ go out of alignment/ both; they’re really only any good for maintenance rather than development.

Improvements to be made include getting them done earlier in the morning; finding something maintenancey to add to them for arms, shoulders, etc.

3. Small Muscle Physio Exercises

Instead of waving whole limbs around, these focus on tiny, tight-to-the-bone muscle groups, ostensibly to improve stability. Instead of lifting against gravity, you’re squeezing or pulling against yourself - these are for arms (and therefore shoulders and wrists), and can be done either sitting down or standing up:

pushing palms/ fists against each other

hooking fingers and pulling hands/ arms against each other

palm-against-back, one hand pushes towards the body, the other pushes away (then swap)

All of these forms are done in front of the torso, above the head, and behind the torso, holding the push/ pull for at least ten seconds before moving onto the next form. As advised by physio.

Advantages include them being for shoulder stability, which I badly need; massively portable (I can - and usually do - do them at my desk at work); hard to see how you can injure yourself only pushing against your own strength.

Disadvantages include that they’re super-boring, so it’s difficult to remember to do them unless I’m already injured and thinking about that kind of thing; it’s difficult to discern any difference even after doing them for a while.

Improvements to be made include setting up a thrice-daily reminder to do them, like I have the once-daily to do physio, twice daily for nasty medication, etc.; do some research into how they function and how to spot the difference between doing and not doing them; add more neck ones (which I’m currently not doing because they’re more fiddly and look "weirder" than the arm ones in work!).

4. Butch Core Mat Exercises

A long time ago I went out with someone who was a Navy officer and who taught me how to do a press-up. In fact, taught me that I could do press-ups. He taught me a routine of three types of press-up ("normal", wide-arm, and wacky ones with hands close together to challenge the triceps), and three types of sit-up ("normal", twisted, and crunch). I vaguely remember that I was supposed to switch up between these and do lunges or squats or some other damned thing that I can’t do these days because knees. He also showed me free weights.

A more recent partner taught me about planks and tricep dips, rest days, and doing crazy things like press-ups or planks with your feet elevated (I don’t think I’ve yet done these). Another showed me Russian twists, deadlifts, and how to improve my full-leg-lifts (i.e. both at the same time) in order to make them more challenging. The internet (and Wii-fit) showed me flying press-ups and some crazy versions of crunches.

This, I suspect, is why I used to have a six-pack - I used to do a bunch of this EVERY DAMNED DAY, along with punchball exercises and free weights every other time.

Instead of doing the usual thing that I do which is flail wildly into DOING ALL THE EXERCISES ’TIL I BREAK then advanced pouting for six weeks, I’m moving slowly back into Butch Exercises by doing increased reps and increased sets of only four forms to start off with, including lying the hell down between sets:

a) "Normal" press-ups. Generally up to 20-25, except for at the end of the event, when the sets are more like 10.

b) Planks. I’m now up to minimum 1 minute, even at the end of the event (although a lot of swearing is currently involved when I come out of the form on the fourth go-round), and up to 1:40 max. I know this isn’t much, considering that the world record is in hours, but it’s my best, dagnabbit...

c) Double leg-lifts. I’ve injured myself with being over-enthusiastic with these, so - even if I’m feeling full of vim and strength, I tend to only go to 16 max, even at the beginning of the event.

d) Wide-arm press-ups. Only for the latter half of the event once I’ve warmed up, and - again because of former injury - I keep the set reps to ≤ 10

Advantages include fast speed of discernible differences; really feeling core tightening; butch satisfaction of "proper" aches the following day; done right the press-ups lead to good shoulder strength and - I think - stability; measurable progress (more reps before exhaustion, longer holds on planks); some cardiovascular challenge; have to do them from the feet.

Disadvantages include how easy it is to get carried away and bugger my shoulders, especially the Especially Borked One (left), leading to aforementioned six week pouting; not entirely convinced I’m doing the forms properly (could I be preventing injury with better form?); if I forget to stretch properly afterwards, I’m screwed; not very aerobic; have to do them from the feet.

Improvements to be made include setting limits on sets/ reps and - instead - adding new forms at lower reps; getting some advice about forms.

5. Dancing

Only just got back into this on Saturday just gone. I have no discipline beyond the beat, and making sure I wear vaguely suitable shoes (canvas trainers with ankle support) rather than The Boots. I stamp, pogo, flail, mosh, gurn, wiggle, grin, pirouette, and do fancy-ish footwork with lots of crossing-over of feet, kicking, and double-kicking.

I’m a bloody maniac.

Advantages include the weird fact that I can keep up sustained fast movement to music far longer (HOURS) than, e.g. running on a treadmill, which makes me want to die in a tiny ball of fail; excellent aerobic and cardiovascular exercise; needs no special equipment (except aforementioned change of footwear); by far the most social of my exercise activities; cheap (for me - I go to an indie club 3 miles from my house that costs £4 to get in, with free parking, and £1/ bottle of water); the way I dance means that it’s a full-body workout (sustained rhythmical flailing is surprisingly hard on the arms).

Disadvantages include the fact that the clubbing-dancing I’m doing leads to very-late-to-bed, and further sleep disturbance; not very portable (needs friends, and I’ve only found one club in Cambridge so far that plays my kind of music); it’s all too easy to forget to stretch out afterwards and e.g. have very tight calves hobbled by All The Pogoing (rather like I’m feeling today...); all the attendant issues of clubbing in dodgy little places (unsprung floor which stands fair to bugger joints with impact; no mop-up for perilously-spilled drinks on the dancefloor) and any vaguely mainstream venue (no, mate - just coz I smiled at you while jumping up-and-down to Song Two does not mean I want special cuddles with you); moshing is seriously bad for your neck, dear heavens; badly-coordinated people with interpersonal space issues leading to bruising, and/ or, in this instance, a blistered toe from a poorly-managed stiletto.

Improvements to be made include getting a regular night to go out on, co-ordinating friends; some research into other clubs that might play my kind of dancing music (indie, indie-rock, trance, techno (or whatever the youth call it these days), almost anything from 90s except hard or cock-rock); look at finding ceilidhs/ folk-dancing groups locally, because nothing gets you properly out of breath like a good twmpath.


And that’s your lot for the moment. :D I plan to be updating on the progress on these (including any injuries - my left shoulder’s been feeling a wee bit gimpy as I’ve been typing this...) over the next few weeks/ months

Meet my friend: Pain

Someone I know has the following advice for exercising, especially when you're getting started and don't know your limits: Stop comes before ow.

It's good advice, as it goes, but imprecise.  Ow comes at different points for different people and, in this case, "Ow" is not the beginning of pain, but a tenuously-defined point after the pain starts and before you're ripping yourself to shreds.

I have a high pain threshold, in general.  This is partly because I'm used to it as a constant (q.v. crappy joints), and partly because, when things are bad and I'm whingeing, I have some historical doozies to call back on to say: it's not as painful as [insert horrific incident], just put it away in the pain cupboard.

This management technique is good for pain when you know it'll end at some point, e.g. simple injury, recovering from surgery, headache when the source is known, migraine (although that's only minimally good when your headspace for putting pain is filled with orgulous, rolling, foggy banks of sickening pain).  However, it's a bit less useful for when the pain is scary because its source (and duration) is unknown. Then it becomes as tiring as someone constantly jumping out at random and shouting "Boo!" - you become hyper-vigilant to the point of paranoia, cringing before it even hits...

One of the things that's wrong with my poor knees is, apparently, some kind of hyperalgaesia.  Something went wrong with my ability to work out what's an ignorable amount of pain in that area and it all feels frightening and alien.  When I haven't done my exercises for a while (or eat the wrong food, or do too much standing without preparation), I go back to the place where I can't sleep for the discomfort, which sucks for two reasons, one of which being that sleep deprivation makes you more sensitive to pain.

One of the two useful things the NHS physio gave me (the other being insoles to correct pronation) was advice to touch my knees (and the areas around them) as much as possible with different kinds of pressures and textures, to basically bring up their sensation threshold.  Resting them and avoiding using them was only making them flabby and over-sensitive, basically.  Imagine that puffy rawness of paler skin out from under a plaster and breathing air for the first time in ages.  Like that.

Which brings us on to the key bit - the NHS physios told me to "do [these gentle exercises] and stop when it hurts."  The private physio told me to "do these more difficult exercises and push through the pain - your body has expectations and you need to shift them."  [This last is a contraction and paraphrase.]

Now, that's not to say that she was keen on me running around and breaking myself.  This is the woman who laughed heartily at me coming in with a busted neck, the pain of which had seemed to come on with a sneeze, but had actually been caused, she worked out, by me trying standing on my head the previous evening.  I am too heavy to stand on my head with the current parlous state of my muscles.  In this case, stop should have come way before ow.

Until very recently, I've been neglecting to stretch out properly after exercising.  I'm not entirely sure why this is.  Sometimes I'm rushing for a bus to get home, but... well... maybe I'm not taking it all seriously enough.  (Also, when the endorphins are rushing around, you think you're fine and don't need to stretch, just change, go home, and eat ALL THE PASTA.)  So I've been hurting like a bastard the following day, and that's been my measure of "congratulations: you did exercise". I used to call this "the smug fire of self-induced pain".

Yeah, not so clever.

Last night I achieved a mini-goal: front (as opposed to side-; I'm building up to that) plank held for 60 seconds.  I squeaked in victory and collapsed on the mat, all glowy.  Last night, after upping my sets to 4 instead of 3, I stretched properly, and today: yes, I feel achey, but to the degree that feels like "good workout last night" not the "holy crap, my left shoulder's so tight I've got pins and needles running down my arm" sensation I've been getting that makes me think I should see my physio.

Turns out Pain's one of those friends - you don't seek him out because he can be very draining company but, if he happens to come with the territory, you should neither avoid nor ignore him - he always speaks the truth, even though he sometimes exaggerates. Pain's part of healing, after all, and I need to break my muscles just enough to build them through healing, and pain's part of that.

Conversely, Injury's a wazzock and should be avoided if at all possible.

I guess what I'm saying is: test your limits constantly by artfully nudging beyond the ones you want to change. And have a map for what the steps are between the landmarks.  Pain is part of this - listen to him and he'll be a good friend in unfamiliar territory. And, for goodness' sake, save painkillers for emergencies!