Change Hurts

Like many people hovering around the halfway point of their life, I have been redoubling and expanding my efforts to be healthy.  It's not because I wasn't already putting forth effort, it's because I want to do a better job of it.

In the last few years my wife and I have been kicking our respective butts to stay in shape.  We've been using a strong combination of running, weight training, and improved nutrition in order to do so.  And, with the exception of the occasional misstep, we've really seen some good improvement.

However, it hasn't been without flaws.

When one starts making progress in their workout routine, you need to start changing things up so that you don't plateau.  As you do this, you start finding the things that work as you tweak your routine.

This is all good, except that as you start to make gains, you can get caught up in the gains and miss the problems that are creeping up on you.

For example...

By the mid point of this last year, I had really been putting on some muscle.  My abs could more or less be counted visibly, my man-boobs had become primarily man-like and less boob-like.  My shoulders, arms, and legs were all taking a more pleasing shape.

However, what I had forgotten to take care of was maintaining proper flexibility.  I had been doing lots of stretching, but as my workouts were getting longer, I would catch myself not doing my stretching and yoga.  What resulted was that, as I put on more muscle, my body started to tighten up.  I didn't even notice until I was already there.  

I realized it one day when I noticed how much harder it was to keep good posture.  I had worked hard to regain my posture after I'd had some surgery a number of years back.  But suddenly it had seemed that standing straight was really hard.  

This was because my abs had become so tight it was causing me to curl forward.  It's a common problem in weight trainers.  Their shoulders start to curve inward and they start to have that muscular hunch in their back.  It's a flexibility issue.  All the front muscles are strong and tight and begin to bend you forward like a macaroni noodle.

This is really not good.

Well, after a string of injuries in the second half of the year, I determined to re-evaluate my workout and go in a better direction.

This year, I've been biasing my workout toward Yoga.  I am still doing strength training, but the Yoga has strength building as part of the moves even as it is increasing flexibility.  I'm also doing a lot of combo moves that work multiple parts of the body all at once.

Crawl push-ups.  Straight arm planks.  Straight arm side planks.  (those last two suck, by the way.)  Jump squats.  (those suck even worse.  I did 125 of them today.  I may never walk again.)  But I'm also doing things like modified warrior's pose with a twist for butt, side, and groin flexibility and hamstring and quad strength.  Sun salutation for hamstring, back, and butt flexibility.  Cobra pose for abdominal flexibility and spinal release plus arm strengthening.

This is just a few of the things I'm doing besides running and such.

And I'm seeing the difference almost immediately.

So, I must be feeling great then, right?

Not exactly.

Here is the problem.  It's not actually a problem, but it feels like it in the short term.  The problem is, my body was so out of whack, that it had done all manner of weird things to compensate.  But as I stretch, especially with cobra pose, the increased space in my spine as my core muscles relax and lengthen back to optimal size begins to do it's work.  And by "do it's work" I mean, my whole spine starts to loosen up.  And when this happens, things start popping and shifting and realigning.

I'll feel something move, then I'll feel three other places move in close succession.  And then, later in the day, I start hurting in weird places.  Not because I've damaged anything, but because I have freed things that have been locked together.  I have created an environment where my body can change it's position and move back to a better form.  And it hurts!  There is a lot of internal resistance happening.  I loosen up one spot, and I realize that two others are now out of position because their position was dependent upon the one thing I just fixed.  So, they now have to shift.  But every time something shifts I find another spot that needs to move.

And so the dominos of change fall.

You find that each problem was masking another problem and the whole process becomes painful.  Good, but painful.

Over time the pain disappears as the problems fix themselves and soon you find that all is, more or less, right in your world.

This is the great truth about change.  It hurts.  We want to hold on to what IS very tightly, even if it is harming us.  This is because we have found a balance, even if it is a precarious one.

Change undoes that shaky balance.  It forces us to let go of the things we held to so fiercely for so long. It forces us to experience something new and that transition process can be very painful.  But eventually, a strange thing happens.  One day we realize that we don't hurt anymore and we start realizing that our life has improved dramatically and we ask ourself a very probing question.

Why didn't we do it all sooner?

Interlude 7: Bent Out of Shape

Guess what?

I've done it again.

That's right.  Given the freedom and opportunity, I have managed to extend the time frame of personal injury one can inflict upon ones self in a relatively short period of time.

I am so proud.

Remember a couple posts back, my story about the back injury?  Well, this isn't about that. While I was nursing that back to health(get it?  Back?  My back, back to health?  Ha!  Haha!  See how I'm funny?  Shut up.), I was mixing up my work-out routine to take some strain off of my back.

A couple weeks ago I decided to use one of the seated hamstring curl machines.  In a nutshell, you sit down, strap a bar across the top of your thighs near the knees, and then starting with legs straight and a different bar under your ankles, you pull your feet down and do "curls" with the back of your thighs.

In case you weren't sure what those were.

Now, I don't know how many of you work out with any regularity, but a couple things you start to get picky about when you work out with free weights or machines, but especially machines, are range of motion and not slamming the weights back on the stack (especially due to lack of range of motion.)

As I was adjusting the machine, at first the weights were slamming back to stop before I was getting my legs close enough to straight.  This was hampering my range of motion in the exercise and was, in general, just plain annoying.

Fortunately, the machine had several wonderful adjustment points for the both the knee support bar and the ankle pull bar.

And, as it turns out, you are allowed to adjust yourself straight to stupidity and injury.

Because I wasn't attempting to pull a lot of weight, I adjusted the bars so that I would basically have tension all the way back to stop.  But, apparently, it was a little to close to stop, and in fact, a tad past stop.

Which, I knew.

And yet...

... at the last return of my last set, I forgot myself and let the weights go back to stop, and my left knee made an ever so slight, slightly wet, pop.

At first, I wasn't even sure anything had happened.  But over the next few hours... and days... I realized the truth.  I might have ever so slightly hyper-extended my left knee.

(grumble)

But wait, it gets better.  (No, not my knee.)

After about a week of me being careful with a knee that just felt... off, I was feeling pretty good.  So what did I do?  I jumped on an elliptical machine and hammered out a mile and half just to see if my knee was ok to run.

Surprise surprise, it was not.

My knee went from pretty good, to not very great, very quickly.

And now it's been another week or so.

Did I bother to go see a doctor you might ask.  No.

Am I going to see a doctor?  Yes.

Funny story...

Have you ever had a problem with your health and put it off for a while, then finally made an appointment only to have the problem go away before you got in to see the doctor?

I made an appointment to see a doctor a couple days ago.  I can't get in till the beginning of the week.  Then, last night, I woke up in the middle of the night, and while groggy, absent mindedly stretched my legs straight.  I haven't been able to straighten the left knee without discomfort at straight lock.  Well, the left knee popped.

Today as I was going about my day, I noticed my knee was feeling decidedly better.  It's entirely possible the "pop" last night was a good thing.

It's not perfect, but it's much improved.

Don't worry, I'll still be seeing the doctor.

Sooo...

Isn't that just all manner of dumb?  You might be thinking about how I seem to do lots of idiotic things.

It seems you may be correct.

We were talking about "spiritual gifts" at church this past weekend, and I made the statement that I'm becoming increasingly convinced that my "spiritual gift" is "stupidity."

*sigh*

One day, maybe, I will learn that, no matter how smart or clever one may be(I may be making incorrect assumptions about that), I am not immune to doing dumb things.  And that, no matter how smart or clever one may be, they need to be ever vigilant against doing said dumb things.

Take care of yourselves.  Take the time to be patient and dedicated to the task of, not just maintenance of ones self, but improvement across the board.

Measure twice and cut once, as they say.

Till next time...

Interlude 2: More Interluderer!

Sup, and stuff?

By now you probably noticed that last week there was no post.  None.  Not even a small note mentioning the significant lack of post.  Not even a seflie with a frown.

I apologize.  The last couple of weeks saw the hecticness (can we say that's a word now?) of my life blast to epic levels of not sane.  It's an excuse, yes.  Were I a better man, I would have simply apologized and said "there is no excuse for my lameness."  

Fortunately, I'm not a better man.  So, there it is.

Even now, you are getting an interlude post.  Well, another interlude post.  I'm sure you figured that out when you read the title.  When I sat down, I had just been thinking about how there is going to be a third "Taken" movie.  Which had me thinking about how you title something like that when the movies are all about the same person/people who keep getting "taken"?

"Taken 3 - More Takenerer."  (hence my title)

"Taken 3 - Taken again, some more, one more time, for a hat trick!"

But it's Liam Neeson and he's great, so, what are you going to do?

Next week should present no problem in getting a post out on time.  (he said setting himself up for no excuses.)  The week after, however, my beautiful lady mate and I will be in Cozumel.  I make no promises about that weeks post.

In preparation for Cozumel (and the rest of a long healthy life), we have been hitting the gym hard with renewed vigor.  We hadn't stopped working out, but now we are extra motivated.  I won't lie.  It's about vanity at this point.  Yes, we are primarily doing it for health and not being dead.  But we realized that neither of us had been in a swim suit, in public, for awhile.  It was deemed important that we be bikini ready.  Well, I won't be wearing a bikini... that you will ever, ever know about.  But I digress.

As such, we've been in the gym a lot.  Like today, for example.  My wife did cardio while I was teaching class, after which I joined her and did some laps around the track.  We followed this up with pull-ups (multiple grip), dips (there is really only one grip), weighted side crunches, downward diagonal twisty rope pulls on a weighted pulley thingies(I have no idea what they are called), and dead lifts.

It was a light day.

We've been doing this stuff for quite a while now, which was why I was so surprised when, as I stood up from the couch earlier, my butt muscles attempted to murder me.

Apparently they were unhappy about the dead lifts.  I stood up and almost fell right over.  Everything is fine, it was just a temporary soreness from sitting after a workout.  No damage.  Everything is fine.

But wow.  You forget how important each part of your body is until one of those parts wants to not cooperate.  When everything is running smooth, you sort of take it for granted.  Then, suddenly, on piece of the machine says "NO!!  I refuse!" and quickly you are aware of it's importance.

Our lives are very much like this.  Usually it only takes one small thing to become disheveled, and suddenly we are on the road to serious unhappiness.

And there are many parts.  And those parts have parts.

Did you know that there are dozens and dozens of enzymes that help your blood clot properly?  Did you know without any single one of them working properly you could bleed to death?  Such a tiny little thing.  Just one little thing, and really bad stuff happens.

It's "easy" to see the parts of our physical life.  Eat good, exercise well, sleep well, stay balanced.  Not as easy as it sounds, but pretty straight forward.

Our mental life.  Keep stress in check, have a positive attitude, practice patience, and hundreds of other things to keep us from delving into insanity.

Our spiritual life (even if you don't believe in God, spiritual practice has proven over and again it's health benefits).  Prayer/meditation.  Finding peace inside.  And also dozens of other components of a healthy spiritual life.

And if just one sliver of any one piece of any one part in any one of these categories goes off kilter, you immediately know it.  Taking care of all of these aspects of life is part (not all) of finding joy and completeness.  

Don't let your life become about those things which drive you mad and harm you.  Let your life be about the things that build you up and elevate you.  The awful stuff will always be there, but your life doesn't have to be dedicated to it.

Choose a better path.

Huh.  What do you know.  I started off with rambling and excuse making and a semi legit post manifested.  I better quit while I'm ahead.

Thanks for showing up.  Thanks for reading.

Have a great night.