Exercise

My relationship with my body continues to evolve, rationally and irrationally, as a result of my conscious actions and randomly. I’ve been much fatter, quite a bit slimmer, less fit, and more fit. I’ve been debilitated by a series of physical ailments I am not going to catalogue here and now.  I am intellectually convinced that there is no underlying physical condition in my body causing these ailments that needs to be fixed by medical intervention. I’ve intellectually and emotionally found the value in both strength and aerobic exercise. I am convinced exercise is the magic bullet that is both preventative and curative. I know that mental work - meditation, visualization, emotional discovery, self-talk - is the key to minimizing, heading off, and curing physical ailments that continually derail my exercise efforts. I’ve hated and liked what I’ve seen in the mirror.

It feels to me like I should be feeling better than I do right now. It feels to me like I should not be self-sabotaging my self-improvement efforts the way I do. I’ve actively been participating in an on-line live coaching group geared towards the mental work needed to leave chronic pain behind. It feels like I have all the tools, and all I need to do is pick them up and use them.

This is all preface to the post I meant to write when I sat down: what I am currently doing for exercise. Not that much, but today makes a streak of one day of really going for it! Yay me! Go team! And, I got out there and even had a couple of short runs last week - and am trying to gear myself up for another today. (As is typical for me, I don’t write about something during its slide down, but wait until there is some reason to note things are getting better.)

Our immediate neighborhood has no sidewalks and little traffic, so we all walk in the street and are able to keep distance without too much of an awkward dance. On Friday through Sunday, the two-lane curvy parkway along the near-by creek has 1- and 2- mile stretches of road closed to car traffic. Walking is nearly a religion to me and the highlight of my old dog’s day. So I’m getting out there and getting in some miles. Most days. There are still days I crawl into my hole and scarcely leave the yard, but so far in April I’ve only had one day with less than 5,000 steps, my benchmark of the absolute bare minimum to avoid fossilization. (There are studies that suggest daily steps of less than 4,000 is an excellent predictor of old folks’ decline into mortality. My recollection is there is nearly a straight-line relationship between steps and longevity between 4,000 and 7,000 daily average steps, and a less clear relationship beyond that.)

Last week, our on-line group assignment was “play” (among other things). We talked about what is and isn’t play. I struggled with this - I am not short of enjoyable things, and self-care and self-indulgence. But play? Here is how I’m currently thinking about this: Sitting at the piano to play a well-known piece, and then improvise and riff on it for a while, is play. But it requires a level of mastery to be able to do that, and much of the time spent achieving that mastery may be enjoyable, but it isn’t play. I used to love playing catch, and that was play. But it was only fun after I worked with a friend to coach me on how to throw and catch, so it wasn’t just a bunch of my chasing after balls I missed.

I never enjoyed running until I hit a certain level of aerobic fitness so I could actually run for a while. But then, I grew to love it, not just for how I felt afterwards and knowing how good it was for me, but I actually liked it while I was doing it. (Sometimes.) Now, I am willing to set my Garmin watch to regulate very short intervals so that I alternate between running and walking in a way that is sustainable for a while. A big point of the joy from running is using the rhythm of music I love to carry me along. So last Saturday, I strapped on the Garmin, the headphones, the heart-rate strap, and went down to the closed parkway. I ran a mile down it, and walked back. I did the same thing on Sunday. It was fabulous! I had made running playlists from my own music, so by definition everything I heard was something I liked.

I set out to run on a different stretch of closed parkway yesterday, but ended up listening to a book and walking a solid four miles instead. Not so bad. I’m going to go out a bit later (it dawned rainy but is supposed to clear) but am likely to be walking. Tomorrow, Sunday, is targeted for another run. If I sustain running, it will require “training”, not just “play”, but it will build that aerobic base that will enable more and longer play.

I have been working in the garden for a couple of hours nearly every day, and I kind-of thought it substituted for a more formal strength workout. I know that is not actually true. I’m still paying my trainer, who faithfully sends me a new workout once a week. But I haven’t actually been down to my workout room and done any training for THIRTY DAYS. (I love fact-checking - I initially wrote “three weeks” but then checked. Memory is always unreliable.)

Today’s workout was a solid hour of warmups, upper body and core workouts, and a nice stretching session afterwards. This may possibly be the most rigorous workout I’ve done on my own - I faithfully followed my trainer’s notes on weight and reps. Working in my garden is tiring, but it’s clear that I avoid certain moves and positions during the course of my day. The comprehensive prescribed workout gets me using body parts I normally try to protect or avoid. I definitely felt the erosion of mobility since I stopped training, even more than strength. There’s nothing like being hit in the face with experience to correct my thinking. Training will help me garden better, and everything else, too. Again, music was a big part of the enjoyment of the experience. Today’s stream was the Grateful Dead. I find myself flashing back to the seventies, my college years, more than later periods.

So I’m writing all this here to document this in my own mind, and for accountability. This blog was originally set up for accountability purposes, as I did a good, sustained, weightloss and fitness effort.

I’ve got nothin’ but time, and I would like to keep this up.

I’m curious - for those others who are also confined - are you able to find the motivation to keep moving? Even if it’s only in place? Are people going to emerge from quarantine all buff and fit? Or is that an instagram myth?