Thursday, March 3, 2016

Baby steps and stability ball

It's been a while since I've written about anything.  I've been reflecting on some things.  Last January I was sick and then found my Melanoma, which led to the punch biopsy, painful recovery on that, and then a month of activity followed by toe surgery which would set me back a few months.  This winter (Nov) had a car collision with a pizza delivery driver who ran a stop sign.  This collision created back and wrist pain.

I had a bit of a pity party for myself in January and February. We had some gorgeous snow that came and I thought, it would be fun to be more in now pain to go out and snowshoe. I didn't. Walking in snow is like walking in sand.  It is a really good workout. One where you don't realize it until you hurt that doing it works muscles you didn't know were connected in such a manner.  Instead, I got back on the treadmill and did walking.  A 5k in 63 minutes seems so slow to me, but it's better than where I was in December and it's better than if I don't do it at all.
Any step forward today is a step more than you have made thinking about it.  (Repeat, repeat, repeat).  

This week at physical therapy, I got to use the gym equipment.  No, nothing like a good leg press which I would love to do again. (My quads and hams would love it). Instead, I got to use a hand crank for helping with wrist action, some weights for seated forward fold and seated back bend, treadmill for 5 minutes flat and then for 5 minutes at slight incline. Interestingly, while I start my t'mill at 2.5 and work up to 3.1mph, the gym one seems fast at 2.5mph.  I suppose there could be difference in calibration for different machines, but it seems a big difference.  My thought as I was doing this was "I did my fifth marathon in October, after coming back from foot surgery in April. When am I going to be able to run again? Experience that runner's high/good feeling?"  Mentioned this to the PT person and she said, 'you're starting from scratch again, it'll take a while.' ARGH.

Today, my second time doing the gym at PT, she had me add in a stability ball.   My face went to a "uh, what? no!" The last time I used a stability ball was several years ago and it was not pretty as the ball rolled one way and I went the other.  I was thinking, "I'm being supervised, it'll be fine".   Laid on the ball with the back on the ball, feet on the ground and walked out to a supported bridge pose in yoga.  Legs felt okay doing it, running shoes slipped on the carpeted floor, and the low back did NOT like the pose. I did ten of them---without falling off the ball! Success :-)   Next up was using the stability ball on a bench, laying on the bench, feet on the ball and doing a bridge pose in that manner. Low back didn't like that either, but it felt good in the rest of the body.