Tag Archives: exercise

Getting It Wrong

In the here & now,

ouch

Did you know it was possible to raise a 26kg kettle bell to chest height using only the momentum generated by your bum muscles? No, neither did I. Even with an arse the size of mine it didn’t occur to me that that might be a possibility.

One of the exercises in my morning class requires me to propel my body upwards from a squat position whilst holding a kettle bell which somehow needs to end up at chest height, before dropping back into a squat, and repeat. Call me old fashioned but I had assumed that my arms might need to be involved in the equation somehow. It seems I’d misunderstood the brief, and worse than that, given God of Pain the impression that I was doing it right so he upped the ante in this morning’s session with a heavier weight based on the fact that my arse was doing such an awesome job.

It became apparent very quickly that I had in fact not got the hang of it at all, as the burning sensation in my arm took hold…shit the bed it really hurt. My arm went from grumbling a bit to shrieking like a banshee as I tried to pull 26kg up my body, after my arse (having completely missed the point of the exercise) handed responsibility for the kettle bell over to my arms somewhere around my midriff.

I kept going for a bit because saying I quit doesn’t come easily to me, you know? Fortunately, common sense won out over being a hero although not until I was hurting off the scale. Once we established that I’d been trying to lift the weight with my arms not my arse it became clear why it’d all gone to pot, and to my frustration I had to wimp out of most of the other kettle bell exercises. I mean seriously, I wanted to weep like a proper big girl’s blouse.

Even the chopped banana on the end of my spoon felt too heavy when I came home and ate breakfast afterwards you know? So I’m dosed up with anti-inflammatories, and my hatred of kettle bells is now a thing.

I don’t know why I was so upset. Well actually that’s not strictly true, I can probably hazard a guess…I don’t like getting things wrong, and in that drama queen moment I felt like I’d ruined everything by doing it wrong and getting injured.

It reminded me of those dark dark days in the past where if I made a bad food choice and went off the rails a bit with my eating I chucked the towel in, with the Asshole’s voice ringing in my ears…what’s the point, you’ve blown it now, give it up and eat some pie. As I jogged on the spot towards the end of the session instead of throwing kettle bells around, with my arm throbbing like a bastard he gave it his very best shot…I told you you couldn’t do it. This exercise malarkey was always going to be too much for a fat old woman. You should stop coming here and just concentrate on dieting instead…

Thankfully me and the God of Pain have a plan…I’ll work with much lower weights and perfect my technique over the next couple of weeks until the hurting settles down. No drama, no quitting.

Fancy me getting a sports injury…there’s a bunch of words I never thought I’d utter. It’s all part of the adventure, right?

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Will I Ever?

In the here & now, , ,

zebedee

It’s funny isn’t it, I always imagined that if ever I established a regular exercise schedule and raised my base level of fitness a bit, from there on in I’d skip through life feeling energised whilst I glowed with vitality. As I watch the scene play out in my head, of the fit and healthy me going about my daily business, I don’t even look like a version of me I can recognise.

I’m usually wearing a dazzling white shirt, matched only in it’s brilliance by my dazzling white smile, and I’m tanned and wrinkle-free with hair that behaves itself. Oh yes, and I’m usually gliding along with fluid easy strides, collecting admiring glances as I go, at the way I’m dripping with good health. Hmmm.

Cue the sound of needle scratching across vinyl, right?

The reality is, pushing my body to reclaim a level of fitness which should have been mine all along means that most of the time, something hurts. At the moment, there is nothing graceful or fluid about my movements at all. Before I’ve even taken a step I wince in anticipation – for any of you who’ve ever suffered from Plantar Fasciitis you’ll empathise with that feeling of a constantly bruised heel which means the first few steps hurt – I have it quite badly in my left foot which gives me a bit of a lopsided gait every time I set off walking.

Once I’ve got the first few steps out of the way and my foot stops hurting quite so much, my legs kick in with a reminder of all the squatting and star-jumping and jogging on the spot which has become a regular part of their new normal, and especially after I’ve been sitting down for a while it takes me a couple of minutes to properly shake off all the stiffness and persuade them that moving is a good idea.

And right now, I’ve picked up a bit of a sore shoulder which is giving me hell. It started off as a small protest from the muscle in my upper right arm which was objecting to the new regime…lets face it, the only time it’d been required to lift a fat arm above my head in the last few years was when I went to grab a bag of cheese balls off the top shelf in Tesco. It’s hardly surprising that the kettle bells came as a shock, and now my shoulder has got in on the action too and gone into lockdown.

It amuses me no end to think that colleagues in the office who obviously know about my plans to complete a 90km trek up a mountain must look at me and think how the actual fuck is she going to pull that off when the trek from her desk to the printer appears to hurt so much?? 

When I’m out walking, once I’ve got the first couple of hundred yards under my belt, everything settles down and nothing hurts, not even my knee these days but I can’t help wondering will I ever get to the point where I can just get out of a chair and start moving without shuffling like a fully-paid-up wrinkly? I’m only fifty years old, although I guess in terms of the way I’ve abused this body over the years it’s probably older on the inside, you know?

I’m still clinging onto the fantasy in my head…I mean, I’m never going to tan, and as the fat in my face is slowly disappearing, what’s left behind has already started its slow descent south. I’m probably going to end up looking like a Shar Pei puppy, and as for having hair that behaves itself, well don’t even get me started.

But you know what, I’ll happily offer up all that in exchange for being able to walk with a spring in my step…that bit I’m hanging on to. In the short term, all this exercise malarkey is going to get me over that mountain. But longer term, I just want to walk like Zebedee 🙂

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And Now I Can

In the here & now, ,

keep-going

Just before I drifted off to sleep last night I spent a few minutes reflecting on the progress I’ve made over the last few months. Days like yesterday really bring it home to me how every cheese ball I resist and every bead of sweat I generate are totally worth it.

We had an off-site meeting for work, and they’d set the room out with a bunch of chairs arranged in rows facing forward…let’s just say the chairs weren’t made with comfort in mind. We held it in the upstairs room of a trendy bar in the city centre, and I don’t imagine the chairs were selected with a fat middle-aged demographic in mind, you know?

Not only were they hard, they were fairly small and arranged quite close together. Now, I was uncomfortable, but then so was everybody else. It wasn’t because I’m fat, it was because they were really shit chairs. You know what though, I couldn’t help thinking that even six months ago I wouldn’t have been just uncomfortable, I would have been in my own private version of hell.

I couldn’t have walked the half-mile or so from the car park to the venue without feeling like I wanted to die. Especially with my boss, who stands six feet five inches in his socks and has legs a mile long…even yesterday I was practically trotting along beside him as we headed in for the meeting, three of my short fat steps matching one of his leggy strides. I think I’d have feigned a broken leg six months ago just to end the torture.

The room was upstairs, so even if I’d made it to the venue, the stairs would have just about finished me off. And the toilets were downstairs in the basement, so if I’d felt the call of nature I can pretty much guarantee I’d have chosen to sit there all day with a bladder like a space hopper rather than attempting two flights down and two flights back up again.

Are you with me so far? I feel like I’m painting a picture of the old me, sweating like a stuck pig, spilling over a small hard chair after a long walk and a steep flight of stairs, out of breath with hair that would have gotten more wild and curly with every step. Miserable, and trying to hold in all my fat so it didn’t bother the person sat beside me.

And when it came to my turn to present my slides, I would have been so pre-occupied with what a hot mess I looked, there’s no way I would’ve been able to relax and get into any kind of stride with my presentation. Despite the shit chair, I’d have been desperate to get back to it. There were no tables to lean on so I could distribute my weight a bit, and within five minutes of sitting down I’d have had pins and needles in my legs and an aching arse, but even that would have been better than standing up there feeling like crap.

Worst of all, I would have felt completely trapped, knowing that this torture was only going to end after another half mile walk back to the car at daddy-long-legs speed.

Yesterday, I enjoyed the day. After a morning in the office, it was good to stretch my legs with a walk through York. Although the chairs really were shit (have I mentioned that?) I wasn’t any more uncomfortable than anyone else. I went downstairs for a wee twice without really thinking about the stairs, and when I was up at the front doing my presentation, what I looked like didn’t even occur to me as I walked the group through my slides.

The walk back to the car park at the end of the day was another opportunity to get a bit of air in my lungs after being cooped up all afternoon, and we even chatted about how the afternoon had gone, I mean get me, walking fast and speaking at the same time…who even knew that was possible.

Six months ago, I wouldn’t have made it, but now I can. I’m nowhere near Skinny Town yet, but every day I take a tiny step nearer to normal, and if I ever needed any encouragement to keep going, well that’s it…I’m really getting there 🙂

 

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Dog Spit And Other Disasters

In the here & now, , , ,

late

Have you ever had one of those days where your hands disobey every instruction handed down the chain of command from your head? In the hotel we were using yesterday for interviews, I swear I was sending all the right instructions down my arm, like for example move hand over fruit bowl and pluck a grape from the bunch, only to find that it grabbed a muffin instead from the complimentary plate right next to the fruit bowl.

The even bigger buggeration factor was that the Asshole immediately hit the override switch which could have prevented said muffin passing my lips. Well you’ve touched it now…nobody else can eat it. You can’t put it back on the plate so unless you want to walk around with it in your hand all day you’d better eat it, and quickly.

Today didn’t get off to a much better start, to be honest. Things I learned today would include the fact that it doesn’t matter how diligently you set your phone’s very loud and extremely annoying alarm, if you forget to put it on charge and it runs out of juice in the wee small hours, it’s not going to go off.

I’d left my bedroom window open overnight and I woke to the sound of the dustbin lorry outside my house. I sort of laid there for a minute before the penny dropped that my wake-up call had come courtesy of something other than my loud and extremely annoying alarm, so I felt rather smug for a moment, as I realised I could probably go back to sleep for a bit, until it went off. Out of interest I reached for my phone to establish just exactly how much longer I could sleep, to be greeted with a blank screen.

Oh dear. As the clock on the wall slowly came into focus, it confirmed that I had in fact overslept. It was ten past six, and I had an appointment in the Kingdom of Pain at six thirty…in the next town. Shit.

Now, I have a lot of respect for the God of Pain, and also fear. Mainly fear. It’s the stare, you know? No fucking chance was I walking in late.

It’s the first time I’ve got out of bed in a long time without doing the ooh ahh morning shuffle, mainly because I didn’t have time to notice anything hurting as I flung myself across the room like an exorcet missile. Charlie-dog opened one eyelid from his vantage point on the bed, confused.

Running around the bedroom first thing in the morning, usually with my underwear in his mouth, or a stray slipper is kind of in his job description, not mine and the role reversal momentarily baffled him. He was clearly up for a game though, with warp speed he joined in, helpfully licking my face, glasses and all as I bent down to tie my trainers, which just added to the confusion.

I just about made it, screeching into the car park like Starsky and Hutch, all the time cussing the dog – I was looking at the world with blurry vision due to dog-spit on my glasses which I hadn’t had time to clean. As I took them off to give them a quick wipe on my teeshirt everything suddenly became much clearer and I realised that actually, I must have gone to bed last night with one of my contact lenses still in, which is why nothing was in focus with my specs on. Oh, and I had my pants on backwards.

Honestly, sometimes it’s really hard to be me 🙂

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Yesterday, I Earned My Tired

In the here & now, , ,

image

I couldn’t help reflecting last night, right around the time I fell into bed, totally wiped out from a very busy day, that yesterday I had earned the right to feel tired. And somehow, it felt like a good kind of tired, you know? I’d worked hard for that feeling.

Not too long ago, Sundays were all about being lazy. Chilling out, I used to call it. Which is kind of fat-girl speak for doing sweet sod all. In my fat-bubble, I’d lay in bed until late morning, cuddled up to Charlie-dog and reading the paper on-line, or maybe burning a couple of hours mooching my favourite handbag websites

First stop when I finally hauled my ass out of bed would be breakfast, closely followed by lunch because look, the little hand was nudging twelve so you know, it was lunchtime. God forbid I might miss a meal. My mum usually spends the day with me on Sundays, and after I’d collected her we’d usually go do a bit of food shopping before hitting the sofa for an afternoon of TV and chatter. All washed down with tea and hobnobs of course.

Then I’d cook something, and maybe have a quick snooze before taking mum home and returning to my big fat leather armchair for the rest of the evening. More often than not, as I hit the recline button I’d have the brass neck to declare how knackered I was, and how another Sunday had gone far too quickly.

I can’t pinpoint the exact moment things changed, in fact if I think about it I’m not sure there was ever any kind of Big Bang…it’s been more of a gradual thing, but let’s take yesterday as an example. I was out of the house by eight in the morning, with Charlie in tow…we covered about four and a half miles before I dropped him off at home and then drove down to the Kingdom of Pain.

I did two one-hour classes back-to-back…circuit training followed by boxing. Yeah, I’d raise an eyebrow too if I was reading this. What was I thinking?  Well maybe it’s easier to share what I wasn’t thinking, you know? I wasn’t looking for excuses not to do it.

I’d booked the double class because work commitments on Friday meant I couldn’t work out, so I wanted to make up the session I missed. And I knew I was going to be busy with mum in the afternoon, which means Charlie would’ve missed out on his walk so I got up early to make sure we could fit it in. I didn’t try and negotiate any short-cuts with myself, because I enjoyed it.

The same can’t be said for the double helping of torture mind you…I didn’t enjoy that much. At all, in fact. But I didn’t try and negotiate my way out of it either. Mainly because God of Pain would’ve nailed me to the wall if I’d even thought about it, but also because even though I knew it’d be tough, I knew I could do it because you know what, I’m starting to think I might be tough…far tougher than I ever thought I was.

Fact is, I no longer harbour the belief that I can’t do it, because what I’ve come to realise is that no matter how much it’s going to hurt in the moment, I’ll come out of the other side with a sense of accomplishment. Those sore muscles and tired limbs are a kind of badge of honour, which serve to let me know that I’m one degree stronger than I was before, right?

When the actual fuck did that happen? That’s a monumental shift in attitude which has kind of sneaked up and said BOO…I hardly recognise myself.

I’ll take it though ?

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