Category: exercise

Tale of a Sports Bra: An Overshare

Let me tell you a little story, a true story.

I decided to go to the gym today.  I’ve been on a little hiatus from the gym after a rough time with the same ol’ bone spurs in my lower back and hip.  I’ve had to break up with crossfit for a little while…sorry, crossfit, it’s not you; it’s me…while I test out some easier workouts.  Today was my first effort at a “normal” gym, as opposed to a “crossfit box.”

I pulled on my spandex pants.  Yay for spandex pants!  Look at how great my butt is in spandex pants! I realized today somehow every single pair of gym pants I own is cropped; how did that happen? Cropped pants were not a good choice for today, but I was not going to be stopped by overly short spandex.

Sports bra time.  I really prefer the sports bras that zip up the front and put everything on lockdown, but I don’t have one that doesn’t sneak itself unzipped mid-workout right now, so I had to go with the backup bra.

I dislike sports bras that pull over my head.  It’s not the pulling them on that gets problematic; it’s the trying to pull a soaking wet bra off post workout that gets a little tricky.  They stick and become unwieldy…and then boom, you’ve smacked yourself in the face with the sweaty thing.  Bleh.

The backup bra is kind of a hybrid deal…pulls on over my head, but does have hooks in the back so it’s not a total Houdini act to remove it after going to the gym.  Not my favorite, but it will have to do, because no excuses: it’s gym day.

Pull it on over my head, and I go to hook the back…and it won’t hook.  I try several times and then the panic kicks in:
Oh hell, have I gained 800 pounds since I stopped crossfit?

I must’ve gained 800 pounds.

I start bargaining with myself and the sports bra as I try to fasten it:
If I can get this thing on, I will do double the workout I’d planned for today.

If I can get this bleeping bra hooked, I will consume only water, air, and celery for the next 2 weeks.

If I can just get dressed and go to the gym, I will never leave the gym since they are open 24 hours…I’ll just stay there until this bra fits better.

The wrestling continued for a few more minutes, so then I dragged the scale out to see what the damage was.  I closed my eyes while the digital scale calculated the big reveal…and then the number popped up.  It’s the same it was, same as it has been…I’m still a delicate flower.  WHAT THE HELL?

If I can’t put on a sports bra, I can’t be trusted at a gym.

If I can’t put on a sports bra, how can I drive a car?

I took a break from the sports bra and put on my socks and shoes, pleased that I could still operate the laces. Pants and shoes: more than halfway there.  Let’s try this one more time.

GAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! It will not fasten.  I can’t do this.  Throw the cursed thing on the bathroom floor and glare at it…and I realize…I had it inside out.

Ahem.

Problem solved.

Please ignore all my pleas and sworn oaths related to celery; I was under duress.

The Courage to Start (Again)

treadmill [twitter style=”horizontal” source=”katiemotivates” float=”left”] [fbshare type=”button”]

I started back on the treadmill recently with one of those couch to 5K apps.  After the severity of my last ankle injury, I’ve been hesitant to start over…because that’s what it was: starting over from zero.  I’ve started from zero about a zillion times where exercise is concerned because I’ve broken, sprained, strained, pulled, bruised and re-broken just about everything possible as an adult.  It’s hard to find the courage to start over again, because going into it, you know it’s going to be hard, it’s going to hurt, and there may be more than a few failures along the way to success.

Whether you’re talking about exercise, forgiveness, school, career or anything else, starting over is hard, but all you have to do is start.  Start where you are with what you have.  In my case, I was starting out of shape (well, round IS a shape, and lumpy is kind of a shape) and in the only pair of sneakers that had shoelaces remaining in them after the puppy went on a shoe-eating spree.   I won’t lie: day one sucked…SUCKED.  Every injury of the last twenty years from head to toe was announcing its presence, and my lungs were on fire.

Let’s be real: my work is sedentary, so there was never going to be some magical fit day that I could lace up my sneakers and be a gym ninja on my first try.  This was going to take work, and better to start now than on some vague day in the future.  Yep, I’ve finished countless 5Ks and 8Ks and even a triathlon, but nothing since the last big injury, and I was starting to feel restless.

We all need some inspiration and some encouragement to get us going in the right direction.  I found my inspiration in an unlikely place, a friend from elementary school who has gone from over a decade of sedentary life to being annoyingly fit in the last year or so.  Like, you run into them and the first thing you think after sucking in your own gut is “Dammit, when did this fit crap happen?”  We’re the same age, so screw it; I will not be bested by my elementary school classmates.  He inspired me (thank you), and thus I named my new gym endeavor “Oh For Fuck’s Sake: If My Homeboy Can Do This Shit So Can I.”  So far, so good.

I have a long damn way to go before I get back to what I consider reasonably fit and strong.  I’d like to get back to crossfit in 2015, but I’ve got to pace myself carefully to get back to that level.  Rushing into it would be a recipe for failure, injury, and 20 gallons of Ben and Jerry’s.  Know yourself, your pace, and don’t compare your journey to anyone else’s.

Start where you are: that’s all you can do.  Whatever it is that you need to face: a broken heart, addiction, exercise, job hunting, learning a new language, grief, giving up gluten, writing a book…whatever it is, large or small, all you can do is start where you are today.

There’s no magical way to fast forward through the hard parts.  There are no legitimate shortcuts.  If there were legit shortcuts, we’d all be super sexy multilingual salad-eating marathon-running supermodels happily married to gorgeous significant others while working soul-satisfying jobs, sleeping 9 hours a night, and teaching our dogs to use the toilet, put the seat down and flush.  There are no shortcuts to health, to healing, to happiness…no shortcuts to anything worth having.

There are no valid excuses.  People with no legs finish marathons.  The broken-hearted love again.  There is life to savor after grief.  To get there from here, you have to make the choice to start, no matter how simply.  Find your sneakers.  Delete your ex-boyfriend’s phone number from your phone.  Plant a tree.  Start. Start, and then perhaps you’ll be someone else’s inspiration, no matter how unintentional, but start. miracle

Today’s Ouch

I’ve posted about my ankle and physical therapy before, but the quick version to get up to speed: I sprained it in May, went back to normal activity after the doctor recommended rest period, only it never really healed, kept swelling and bruising, and I kept limping along.  I finally sought help and ended up in physical therapy.

I’ve been going to physical therapy for a month.  Today was my re-evaluation to assess progress and whether more treatment was suggested.  I limped into the evaluation, hurting.  The physical therapist was not the same one I’ve been seeing, but she was surprised I was dragging in like that.  She did some measuring of my ankle and how it moved, and then she “mmmhmmm”ed and did a bunch of crazy stuff to my ankle before telling me I had a bone stuck in my ankle joint that shouldn’t be stuck!

I learned today that the talus bone is a little bone floating around between the leg and the foot at the ankle.  It’s part of the hinging, flexing mojo of the ankle.  When I sprained the hell out of my ankle, I jammed that talus bone into the wrong place in my ankle with the impact and it stuck there in that wrong place all this time, causing pain and limiting my range of motion for over 6 months.

The kindly physical therapist said she could manually “unstick” the bone, but that it would be uncomfortable and hurt and to yell if I needed to take a break.  It took about half a second of “unsticking” before I was yelling.  This is the kind of discomfort that requires a bottle of whiskey and a leather strap to bite down on…but when she was done, wonder of wonders, I could move my ankle better than I had in ages.  The whole shebang is pretty sore and swollen after the great bone unsticking event, but there’s finally hope that it will really mend now.

tractor tire at 6 AM

Thank the universe for helpful trainers who modify the workouts so I can still work hard while my ankle heals up.  No jumping for a little while, no side to side movements while my ankle recovers from that nasty sprain.

This morning, I was harnessed in and dragging a tractor tire behind me while you slept in your cozy bed…and I liked it.  Digging in and moving forward, it was a good metaphor for life; even with our hurts, we can still dig and move forward with determination.

And of course, I rowed.  And tossed a medicine ball against a wall, and slammed weighted bags to the floor.  And rowed.  And prone crawled through someone else’s sweat and added some of my own to the mix.  And rowed some more.

This morning, I am grateful for digging in and moving forward.