• Body and Mind

    It was bound to happen

    I”ve been keeping a decent exercise regime for the past six weeks and feeling pretty good about my fitness. I’m doing exercises I never thought I’d be able to do (even when I was a decent size and younger) and I’m getting fit again. The health benefits are the bonus right now. So I was going through one of my Wii fitness programs and had to do some jumping jacks. I still don’t care for jumping exercises but I’ve been getting through the lot of them when they come up. I had done a few of them when they started becoming rather painful in my right calf…the pain that had been lingering for a week or more obviously was catching up. I had to skip a few of the exercises after that but finished a decent routine. This was on Monday so I opted to rest on Tuesday after three days of workouts. Wednesday I was at the pool and did my water walking and pseudo swimming laps again. I didn’t feel quite as satisfied but I did get some decent exercise.Yesterday I went out for a bike ride, under the assumption I’d be using different muscles. That went well enough…

    So late last night I stepped outside to dump the tea leaves in the tea maker and made a sudden rush to get back inside. And that’s when I felt the pop in my right calf along with some pain. It did ease after a little while but obviously I’ve torn something.  So now I’ve got the dilemma of how to get a good workout without exacerbating the injury.

  • Uncategorized

    Exercise and injury

    I’ve not written much about my exercise in recent months, mostly because I mostly fell off the exercise wagon and my body is showing the effects of the neglect. At the same time, my eating habits have been poor. It’s been like a war between me and carbohydrates. They carbs have been slowly overtaking other foods in my daily intake until I was back to eating patterns I had before I was diagnosed with diabetes. I’m trying to turn it all around and seem to be making a better effort than I’ve done most of the year.

    So I’ve been getting more regular exercise and I’ve tried to mix it up a bit. But I’ve mostly been relying on the Wii Fit Plus program as the core of that program. So with my increased exercise comes the inevitable injury. Actually, I don’t know that it’s an injury but my left ankle/heel started bothering me at least a week ago. It’s at its worst when I first start walking and often gets better with use. Now if I had been sensible, I would have chosen exercises that don’t have much impact on the feet. I’d been working on the cycling activity (which requires you to walk on the Wii Fit board) and the jogging program (which just uses the remote) for a few weeks now and recently have been doing cycling, jogging and hula hoop to get a good aerobic workout. Yesterday I push a bit harder and longer, which partially felt good but then it didn’t so much. I’ve been limping off and on today, but hopefully will be able to handle a bit of exercise tomorrow.

    It’s funny because when we first got the program a year and a half ago, I struggled to do even the shortest jog. I was literally ready to drop by the end of it. And I was reasonably fit when I started doing the jogging exercises. I finally gained a bit of stamina earlier this year…but then I dropped out of doing much exercise for several months. Wii Fit Plus has another similar jogging activity but it changes the path for each jog. I’ve now built up to about a ten minute jog in the program, which is pretty amazing after struggling for so long. Actually, the super hula hoop exercise is another one where I’ve developed much more stamina.

    I didn’t do any exercise today but plan to work on the cardio workout tomorrow which relies less on the feet than the Wii fit one.