Using It - June 25 - July 1

[Shadow]

Greetings :). I can't believe it's the start of another week - my how time flies :eek:! I'm changing my focus (yet again :rolleyes) to go to a more fat burning routine. It's something I've never done before and I will certainly let you know how it goes :lol:. The basic routine is 4 days of TB weights and 1 day of cardio.

What are the rest of you up to :)?

[Mitra]

I came across an old book leftover from some long ago attempt to get fit: it's called Physical Fitness, and is based on some Canadian Air Force exercises. There's a section for men, and one for women, with graded exercises, starting with a few reps of very easy things and progressing gradually to lots of reps of difficult things. I tried some of the lower level stuff, and found it all pretty easy except the cardio bit :rolleyes: so maybe I really do need to work on that :(. Lucky I have my new skipping rope :D.

The book was published in 1958 (I think the women's stuff was a later addition in 1960), and the dietary advice is that if you need to lose weight you should cut down on bread and sugar.

[lowcarbgirl]

I was just online looking at some stair steppers (I really love them) and plan to head out to buy one as soon as my relief gets here. And considering the day I've had so far :crybaby: :eek: :crybaby: can't wait.

Hugs,
Willow

[banshee]

I got in a lower body workout and cardio yesterday. Today I'm going to try and get in upper body and cardio. My knees are bothering me again today, but less than last week, so I think I just need to keep doing what I'm doing and let the joints get used to it. It reminds me a little of the muscle pain from when I first started resistance exercise. My muscles screamed at me the first couple times and then quieted down. I'm hoping that the knees are going to do the same, but I'm keeping a close eye on the pain levels...

I need to get in most of my exercise at the beginning of the week, since I'll be going out of town on Thurs and the only exercise I'll get the rest of the week will most likely be playing with my 1.5 year old nieces and maybe some mall walking with my mom.

[Shadow]

Mitra - It used to be said that the thing we liked the least was the thing we needed to do the most ;). Now, if that's true or not, I don't know :p. Anyway, FWIW, I've worked on cardio for years and it still gets me every time - it is not now, and will never be, my forte :rolleyes:. BTW, are you still doing Slow Burn? It sounds like that fitness book you have is one of the few that has decent dietary advice in it :thumbsup:! What exercises does it have you doing?

Mary - Knees are a different creature than muscles so I hope you are definitely taking care and paying attention to what they're telling you!

[Mitra]

I haven't done SB for a couple of months or more - I sort of dropped it when I was hit by a bug that left me feeling very weak for a few weeks, and haven't picked it up again. Then I started playing at one-legged squats and hurt my knees :rolleyes: (they've recovered now). I've mainly been doing yoga. Now the various bugs have gone, and I have normal energy levels for at least some of the time, I'm thinking of pushing things a bit more again - but wanted to do it very slowly this time, since I seem to keep crashing :mad: .

The Canadian Airforce book has 10 different exercises, plus the cardio bit. The exercises include touching your toes, and circling your arms (flexibility/warmup), "partial sit-ups" (aka ab-crunches), single leg raising, modified press-ups, superman, side leg raises. Actually, I think it has a lot going for it. It's quick, starts easy and progresses gradually, needs no equipment, and includes a bit of flexibility, resistance and cardio. Obviously its one-size-fits-all wouldn't suit absolutely everybody, and there's no arguing that if you spent longer you could be more thorough, but I thought it would give you pretty good value for 12 mins a day (11 for men), and would be a good fall-back option for busy days, or days away from home and equipment.

[Shadow]

I'm thinking of pushing things a bit more again - but wanted to do it very slowly this time, since I seem to keep crashing :mad: .
Wise plan :thumbsup:!

It's quick, starts easy and progresses gradually, needs no equipment, and includes a bit of flexibility, resistance and cardio.
Sounds like a keeper, Mitra :D!

Obviously its one-size-fits-all wouldn't suit absolutely everybody, and there's no arguing that if you spent longer you could be more thorough, but I thought it would give you pretty good value for 12 mins a day (11 for men), and would be a good fall-back option for busy days, or days away from home and equipment.
Absolutely :)!

[lowcarbgirl]

Well I bought the stair stepper yesterday after work and I went at it a lot harder than I had planned. I could only go just over a half hour instead of 45 minutes to an hour like usual. But in that 1/2 hour I burned just under 500 calories according to the display. (Typically you burn 600+ in a moderate workout for 1 hour). Boy I was pooped for the evening, but it was a good pooped.

Hugs,
willow

[Ottawa]

I am getting caught up at work and have decided that I will take my full lunch to do some sort of activity regardless of the workload in the future.

Sunday - Day off
Monday - 45 minutes catching practice with another baseball player, evening crunches
Tuesday - Hand Weights
Wednesday - Baseball after work -
Thursday - 100 Situps, Hand weights
Friday - Day Off
Saturday - Morning Bike ride. Long walk in the afternoon along the river.

[cmcole]

I feel like I haven't been to the gym in a long time. That does not make me feel good, even though I've tried to get some dumbbell and ball exercises done at home.

Tonight we plan to go. We actually planned to go after church yesterday, but our son had made commitments, so we had to drive home. By then, it was an effort to get back in the vehicle and go back to the gym (poor excuse). We did, however, manager to run/briskly walk 8 km with the dogs (1 hour, 7 minutes)

[banshee]

Mary - Knees are a different creature than muscles so I hope you are definitely taking care and paying attention to what they're telling you!
Thanks for the concern, but I think I just realized that the problem isn't in my knees. I've noticed this before, but it always takes me a while to relate the pain in one area to the actual muscle that's causing the problem. For some weird reason, when my glutes are sore/tight, it refers pain to my knees. Over the years I've noticed this when I would get a massage or pound the tight area with the jets in the hot tub. When I do that, I can actually feel the pain radiating down to my knee, and when I get the glute muscles loosened up the pain in my knee goes away. Since my glutes were super sore and tight the other day, and are a little sore today, it makes sense that my knees were also extra sore the other day and only a little sore today.

The only thing I don't get is why sore glutes refers pain down to my knee? :confused: Makes it kind of tough to know when you actually have a knee problem!

Edit: Aha! Just did a Google search on "tight glutes" causing "knee pain", and came up with a whole bunch of articles about the iliotibial band (ITB). Apparently this set of muscle fibers run from the glutes down to the knee and it's fairly common for tightness in these muscles to cause knee pain. You know, I had been wondering if it was my walking that was causing the problem and not the lifting, since I tend to do both on the same day. I've been really upping the intensity/speed of my walks. All of the sites talk about the ITB causing problems for walkers and runners, so it sort of makes sense that would be my problem. So now I have a set of new stretches that are supposed to help loosen up the ITB. I'm going to try them right before walking and see if they help.

[Shadow]

Way to go on researching that, Mary :thumbsup:! It is absolutely amazing how we are connected and how a problem in one thing can so affect another :eek:! Good luck with those stretches - hope they help!

[cmcole]

We did get to the gym today. I did some of my shoulder exercises and some lower body ones. Seems like my list of exercises keeps expanding, but my time or endurance level does not. We really either need to get there more often, or I need to be stronger/have more endurance.

Today, both my legs and shoulder were giving me more grief than I would have liked, but I did about an hour's worth of exercises before we left. I might have tried more, but I would like to sleep this evening, and in pain does not allow for that, so I ended shortly after my hubby said he was finished.

[banshee]

Got in my second day of exercise for the week yesterday - tried another class: "Absolute Body Conditioning". Class description was:
The ultimate group fitness challenge! A unique
fusion of cardio, strength training and athletic drills.

I thought it sounded good since it was a combo class, but it was a LOT more focused on the athletic drills, so I had trouble sticking with it to the end. I managed to stay the course, doing a lot of walking during the jogging/skipping/running stuff, but my asthma kicked up in the evening. So I probably won't do this class again.

I also managed to somehow twinge my back during the class. (Is it possible to hurt a muscle just from stretching? Because that seems to be what caused it - letting the lower back muscles stretch out by lying stomach down on the exercise ball. I know this because after class the teacher recommended doing that stretch some more to help the muscle, which we assumed I had twinged doing the lifts up off the ball, but the stretch after class actually made it act up again.)

So now I'm debating if I should just forget the rest of my plans for today/tomorrow and just rest and stretch my legs, or if it would be ok to do upper body strength training. I've decided to not do my cardio walking the rest of the week and stick to lots of ATB stretches to see if I can get my knee back to normal, but I'd like to keep doing the upper body strength stuff. I'm just not sure how much I'd use my lower back muscles for that sort of thing, so I'm vascillating. I hate to not exercise today/tomorrow when I know I won't be exercising again until next Wednesday, but I also don't want to make a slight "twingey" hurt into something even worse by pushing it. I'm pretty sure the upright row exercises and chest presses are out, since those use arm and back muscles, but not sure if I could do the bicep curls and tricep extensions. The machines are supposed to help really isolate the muscles, but I'm not sure just how much they actually isolate...

OK, now I'm babbling... you can see from the babble just how stuck in a loop my thought processes are right now! :o

[laughingW]

The only thing I don't get is why sore glutes refers pain down to my knee? :confused: Makes it kind of tough to know when you actually have a knee problem!
You might enjoy the current thinking of Body Tensegrity. Instead of seeing symptoms and causes in one isolated body part or another, this view sees the muscles and myofascia as a giant connected rubber band around the bones. You end up fixing things by looking globally, working locally, then checking globally again.

I learned about this via Sonnon's CST.

full article http://tinyurl.com/k5c39

Excerpt:

In high school during a critical game in our football season I had my leg tackled and it snapped in half. It felt excruciatingly painful. Fortunately, not long after the application of the cast the pain dramatically diminished. However, about a week later first my knee and then my hip and lower back started to ache intensely. The pain traveled up the chain as my structure compensated for the immobility imposed by my leg cast. The compensations themselves caused me pain and became very inflamed whenever I moved those sites.

In some instances they were completely opposite the source issue.
My doctors didn't understand this and they became exasperated trying to treat each manifestation. One doctor and psychologist even claimed that it was a psychosomatic array of pain caused by my desire not to return to football that season for fear of disappointing my father. Not that emotional issues don't manifest physically (they certainly do), but I wanted to get back and finish out my season! I had been offered a scholarship to play at WV Wesleyan University. The doctor may have been right for the wrong reasons, but that is the topic for a future installment in this series of articles.

My doctors didn't understand what was happening, nor did I. I felt broken and frustrated. That experience of confused hopelessness laid the foundation for my future development of the Circular Strength Training® System.

CST is both innovative and revolutionary as a unique, proprietary exercise approach because it addresses the source issues of tension in the myofascial matrix: our spidery ubiquity of connective tissue and electric goo which we call "muscle." By chasing issues (through particular exercise selections and sequences) to the source, we release the sites from ongoing compensatory strain while eventually liberating the source tension to allow it to heal through the body's natural healing process. We do this through our daily personal practice of Intu-Flow, but also through the deeper counter-conditioning of Prasara Body-Flow and Clubbell Training. It's how we, in concert with the aid of our health care team, 'get out of our own way' of healing.

The science underpinning CST has been proven in recent years. Because it demonstrates a 100% reproducible success rate it has become the globally recognized leading model for self health practice. Let's discuss this science.

The Rise of Biotensegrity

The Structure of the Circular Strength Training® System is founded upon Buckminster Fuller's and Steven Levin's Biotensegrity model of the underlying structure of organic tissue. The Biotensegrity model explains the nebulous interdependence of the body's structural components. It goes far beyond the conventional model of muscle-tendon-ligament reaction to injury by including the entire structure of the organism as a potential home for referred dysfunction.

"The word 'tensegrity' is an invention: a contraction of 'tensional integrity’. Tensegrity describes a structural-relationship principle in which structural shape is guaranteed by the finitely closed, comprehensively continuous, tensional behaviors of the system and not by the discontinuous and exclusively local compression member behaviors. Tensegrity provides the ability to yield increasingly without ultimately breaking or coming asunder." (Synergetics, Buckminster Fuller, MacMillan, New York, 1975.)

In his incredibly instructionally dense DVD on his Biotensegrity work (http://www.biotensegrity.com/), Dr. Stephen Levin, MD (himself a CST enthusiast, supporter and even contributor to RMAX Magazine) explains that bodily tissues involve interwoven tension icosohedra. These complex triangular trusses balance stability and mobility by creating a myofascial sea of continuous tension pulling inward while the compressive struts of the hard bones push outward.

Biotensegrity serves to provide explanations which remain elusive to observers viewing bodily phenomena through the lens of the Newtonian mechanical model of human structure. An understanding of the biotensegrity model allows great clarification of the ways in which the body's gravitational support system responds to stress, strain, trauma and fear.

Simply stated, when the tissues become overwhelmed by stress (mechanical, physiological, or emotional/biochemical) they lose their resilient ability to adapt and compensate. As a result, the myofascial matrix responds by altering the stored tension and elastic potential of the tissues; it pulls in one place and creates a strain somewhere down the track. Our normal, neutral and responsive bodily structure mutates into a highly-strained, linearly-stiffened, highly-charged form. This latter transformation explains how the slightest poor form, meager stress or emotional arousal can result in instant and even acute injury anywhere along the bound chains of tension.

Unfortunately most people live in this pre-tense state and over time they adapt to it - or worse, they progress upon it - like any other form of conditioning. The unknowing innocent public is bombarded by 'exercise gurus and companies' who advise high-tension breath-holding, which not only reinforces this pre-tense condition, it can make it SNAP anywhere along the tension chain

[laughingW]

The only thing I don't get is why sore glutes refers pain down to my knee? :confused: Makes it kind of tough to know when you actually have a knee problem!
You might enjoy the current thinking of Body Tensegrity. Instead of seeing symptoms and causes in one isolated body part or another, this view sees the muscles and myofascia as a giant connected rubber band around the bones.

I learned about this via Sonnon's CST.

http://www.rmaxinternational.com/home/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=383

full article http://tinyurl.com/k5c39

Excerpt:

In high school during a critical game in our football season I had my leg tackled and it snapped in half. It felt excruciatingly painful. Fortunately, not long after the application of the cast the pain dramatically diminished. However, about a week later first my knee and then my hip and lower back started to ache intensely. The pain traveled up the chain as my structure compensated for the immobility imposed by my leg cast. The compensations themselves caused me pain and became very inflamed whenever I moved those sites.

In some instances they were completely opposite the source issue.
My doctors didn't understand this and they became exasperated trying to treat each manifestation. One doctor and psychologist even claimed that it was a psychosomatic array of pain caused by my desire not to return to football that season for fear of disappointing my father. Not that emotional issues don't manifest physically (they certainly do), but I wanted to get back and finish out my season! I had been offered a scholarship to play at WV Wesleyan University. The doctor may have been right for the wrong reasons, but that is the topic for a future installment in this series of articles.

My doctors didn't understand what was happening, nor did I. I felt broken and frustrated. That experience of confused hopelessness laid the foundation for my future development of the Circular Strength Training® System.

CST is both innovative and revolutionary as a unique, proprietary exercise approach because it addresses the source issues of tension in the myofascial matrix: our spidery ubiquity of connective tissue and electric goo which we call "muscle." By chasing issues (through particular exercise selections and sequences) to the source, we release the sites from ongoing compensatory strain while eventually liberating the source tension to allow it to heal through the body's natural healing process. We do this through our daily personal practice of Intu-Flow, but also through the deeper counter-conditioning of Prasara Body-Flow and Clubbell Training. It's how we, in concert with the aid of our health care team, 'get out of our own way' of healing.

The science underpinning CST has been proven in recent years. Because it demonstrates a 100% reproducible success rate it has become the globally recognized leading model for self health practice. Let's discuss this science.

The Rise of Biotensegrity

The Structure of the Circular Strength Training® System is founded upon Buckminster Fuller's and Steven Levin's Biotensegrity model of the underlying structure of organic tissue. The Biotensegrity model explains the nebulous interdependence of the body's structural components. It goes far beyond the conventional model of muscle-tendon-ligament reaction to injury by including the entire structure of the organism as a potential home for referred dysfunction.

"The word 'tensegrity' is an invention: a contraction of 'tensional integrity’. Tensegrity describes a structural-relationship principle in which structural shape is guaranteed by the finitely closed, comprehensively continuous, tensional behaviors of the system and not by the discontinuous and exclusively local compression member behaviors. Tensegrity provides the ability to yield increasingly without ultimately breaking or coming asunder." (Synergetics, Buckminster Fuller, MacMillan, New York, 1975.)

In his incredibly instructionally dense DVD on his Biotensegrity work (http://www.biotensegrity.com/), Dr. Stephen Levin, MD (himself a CST enthusiast, supporter and even contributor to RMAX Magazine) explains that bodily tissues involve interwoven tension icosohedra. These complex triangular trusses balance stability and mobility by creating a myofascial sea of continuous tension pulling inward while the compressive struts of the hard bones push outward.

Biotensegrity serves to provide explanations which remain elusive to observers viewing bodily phenomena through the lens of the Newtonian mechanical model of human structure. An understanding of the biotensegrity model allows great clarification of the ways in which the body's gravitational support system responds to stress, strain, trauma and fear.

Simply stated, when the tissues become overwhelmed by stress (mechanical, physiological, or emotional/biochemical) they lose their resilient ability to adapt and compensate. As a result, the myofascial matrix responds by altering the stored tension and elastic potential of the tissues; it pulls in one place and creates a strain somewhere down the track. Our normal, neutral and responsive bodily structure mutates into a highly-strained, linearly-stiffened, highly-charged form. This latter transformation explains how the slightest poor form, meager stress or emotional arousal can result in instant and even acute injury anywhere along the bound chains of tension.

Unfortunately most people live in this pre-tense state and over time they adapt to it - or worse, they progress upon it - like any other form of conditioning. The unknowing innocent public is bombarded by 'exercise gurus and companies' who advise high-tension breath-holding, which not only reinforces this pre-tense condition, it can make it SNAP anywhere along the tension chain

[Mitra]

Is it possible to hurt a muscle just from stretching?

Definitely. It's one of the things I have to watch out for with my lower back. I'll get problems if I do lots of forward bends.

http://www.yogajournal.com/poses/posesimages/9.jpg

Sometimes I'll get pain straight away afterwards. Other times my lower back will feel wonderfully free and loose for a day or two - then the problems start. Either way, I just know now that this sort of posture isn't helpful for me, especially if I do it regularly or stay for long enough to let my muscles release into the position.

So the sort of thing I have to do is more like this:
http://www.yogajournal.com/poses/posesimages/57.jpg

Not as much fun, but it's what holds my back together.

[banshee]

I may have the same issue, Mitra. I've noticed that if I'm leaning forward a lot (doing a pedicure on my feet or some such) that my lower back will be really sore for 15-20 minutes afterwards as it relaxes from all the stretching. But it doesn't usually hurt the next day when I do that... Of course yesterday the problem occurred when we were trying to do something like your second picture only on the exercise ball and then rolling forward over the ball to stretch things back out, so it's hard to know which part of the exercise caused the problem. It probably hasn't helped matters that I've been doing a lot of stretching recently to try and get my hamstrings stretched out and I'm using the stretching exercise where you're on the floor and bending over to stretch things - but usually those stretches don't hurt...

I'm beginning to think that all of the giant exercise ball stuff just isn't for me - I'm either rolling off the darn thing, losing control and wobbling all over the floor, or injuring myself trying to do things right! :rolleyes:

[banshee]

laughingW, thanks for the info - I'll have to come back to this when I have time to read and really think about what it's saying. More of the June challenge learning stuff!

[Mitra]

If you're having problems after the exercises, and you're finding the balance difficult, then I'd suggest doing something else for now - something where you can keep control of the movement. If an exercise is very easy, then adding the balance element is a good way to make it more challenging, but if it uses muscles/joints/systems that are weak for some reason, then the instability would make it very hard to start gently and give your body time to get used to the moves. Maybe you could try them on the floor for a few times and see how it goes, then move up to the ball when you're ready.

[Shadow]

Is it possible to hurt a muscle just from stretching?
Yes.

So now I'm debating if I should just forget the rest of my plans for today/tomorrow and just rest and stretch my legs, or if it would be ok to do upper body strength training.
Whichever you feel like :). It's your body, your exercise, your plan - and you can mix and match it however you need to ;).

[banshee]

Well, I ended up taking a rest day yesterday, and I do feel better today. Whether I get in an upper body workout today is going to depend on just how fast I can get packed for my very early flight in the morning. I'm going to have to get to bed early since I'll have to be up at 5am to make the flight. So if I can get everything packed and ready to go at a reasonable hour, I'll do a TotalGym workout before bed. If not, I'll just consider it an extra rest day. :rolleyes: I'm really trying not to get too stressed out about this trip - I haven't flown for years, and I'm not used to packing for a flight. I'm used to being able to throw anything and everything in the car, whether or not I might actually need it. :o

Which reminds me - don't expect any posts from me til after the 4th. My brother doesn't have internet access at home and I won't be bringing my computer with me. It's going to be an internet-free trip, which should be relaxing! ;) If you're in the U.S., have a great holiday weekend. If you're not, have a great normal weekend! :D

[cmcole]

Tuesday and Wednesday we didn't go to the gym because my hubby had ball. Did a short (15 minute) walk with the dogs (it's brisk, but doesn't feel that horrible). Tuesday morning we did do the run around the lake with his class, though.

I did some at home exercises with home gym, dumbbells, resistance tubing and ball (not all at the same time, of course) because I felt like I had to do something, and it was a whole lot better than raiding the fridge.

[LisaS]

Did a short (15 minute) walk with the dogs (it's brisk, but doesn't feel that horrible).

This is why I love dogs - they are always ready to exercise with you :D
http://images.ucomics.com/comics/ob/2006/ob060629.gif

[Mitra]

I've been chugging along with minimal "maintenance" level exercise this week while my nephew and his friend were here, but now they've gone home, and I've just seen my yoga teacher and had a few more asymmetrical postures added in to my practice.

He commented that I have the kind of body that needs quite a high level of activity to stay strong :rolleyes:. I'm afraid he's right, but I have the soul of a couch potato ;). He thinks I need to do 40 mins or so most days for general strength & supplenes, and to keep my back functioning well (well enough that the odd wonky supermarket trolley isn't a problem). I've been doing about half an hour, and the new routine is about that long, with some "optional extras" to add in gradually over the next couple of months until I see him again.

[cmcole]

Yesterday we did 6 km with the doggies. They just keep us going.

Running with them is easier because they give you incentive, but harder because of the leash (and the dog I have is older, so wants to drag behind, frequently). so, it's a two-edged sword in that regard.

However, it's unlikely we'd be doing that much walking or running if we didn't have the dogs. We might, however, be at the gym more frequently (at least now, but would we have gotten involved in fitness if we didn't have the dogs encouraging it in the first place?).

Domino effect

[LisaS]

my dogs are young, 20 months, and the male is exercise-dependent. If he doesn't get at least 1 big walk a day - he loses his appetite (and that's saying something for a part-Lab) and gets very mopey. The female could go either way - but loves to run. She's a little tubby because when the male won't eat - she's more than happy to take up the slack.

So, taking them on a 45 min walk uphill and back every morning keeps them happy (at least for the moment - they could BE Louie in the cartoon) and gets me moving every day, even if nothing else happens that day.

[cmcole]

Our girl dog, the younger, could be the dog in the cartoon, too.