Exercises...

[fajrdrako]

Yesterday I did my second round of morning exercises, basically forty minutes to an hour of weights and crunches and so on. Miraculaously, I am not stiff today. How did that happen? After my first session, on Saturday, I was saying "ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch" every time I went up or down stairs, thanks to those lunges.

I couldn't remember how many crunches I was supposed to do so I e-mailed my trainer. (I love calling Lynne that.) Her reply: "as many as you can". This made me revise the number downward. (No, no, not really. Ulp.)

Comments

[wijsgeer.livejournal.com]

I never managed sylphlike like and strong even tough I managed working out regularly for several months. But I did feel significantly healthier.

(My problem is getting depressed, and loosing lot of fitness and routine and having to regain it, an annoying cycle)

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've gone far enough with it that I felt healthier. And that's significance. I couldn't and didn't keep up with exercises when I was depressed, despite a pep talk from one of my doctors that when I was depressed was exactly when I most needed to do yoga. Yeah, right - might as well tell me to fly like Clark Kent. I just couldn't.

It isn't exactly depression that makes me stop now but it's a sort of changing mind-set which I'm not sure how to control.

I'm trying again to cultivate good habits. I've done it before. Flossing my teeth every night, for example. Then I lapse. If only I can get all my good habits herded together at the same time - flossing teeth, washing dishes, doing exercises - and still have enough time left to do anything else? Read, write, study languages?

Life is a juggling act.

[wijsgeer.livejournal.com]

6 weeks of being good, 6 weeks of being bad, or no, of being nothing just work. Nooo, I don't think that is the right ppattern, if you have to slack of with the excersizes, you can at least say, but I am flossing regularly and study languages. Alternating them might be better.

I think keeping up the excersize stuff is perhaps easier to keep up if you have classes to go to, at a specific time of the week doing a specific class with the same group of people so there is social pressure. I think I might start pilates next year. (at my gym) depends a bit on the price and the timing.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Classes are good but ... I sometimes get discouraged in classes. I started Pilates - well, just experimentally - with a DVD I borrowed from Lynne. It seemed painfully difficult. I'm thinking of trying it again.

I'm trying to think of things I can do that don't cost money, or which don't involve actually going somewhere.

[wijsgeer.livejournal.com]

I like it better when I need to go somewhere, even though that makes the treshhold higher. But I get more done when I get there. At home I start excercizing and I keep checking my emails, or I start doing the dishes etc.

For at home, did you ever try a workout with an excercize ball (also named Swiss ball)? You can do a wide range of excercizes with it, from easy streching and loosening up, grounding excercizes, to very very hard ballancing ones (wich I most definitely can't) Maybe your personal trainer can help you, but there are also excercizes on line. I bought a ball vor about 10 euro.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Going somewhere isn't so bad in the summer but in the winter I never seem to have time to go anywhere - it's hard enough to just find time to do the exercises in the first place.

Of couse e-mail, washing dishes, etc., is always a danger - but once I get started I usually manage to handle that all right. It's getting started in the first place that is the problem.

I have used an exercise ball a little bit, but I don't actually own one. Lynne recommends highly that I should get one so I might check out the price. If I do get it, I'm not sure where I'll be able to put it - there isn't a lot of space in my apartment. But I'm sure it would be good for me.

[wijsgeer.livejournal.com]

My ball lives under my bed, but I have a 'hoogslaper' (highsleeper) a sort of bunkbed, but with only the top bed. I also live in a small appartment, 32 m2 (344.4 ft2). Maybe there is a possibllity to hang it on the wall somewhere, in a big bag?

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Yes, I might be able to hang it on my wall - over my bed, maybe! My bed is low and large (queen-size), so there's lots of air-space over it. That might work. I could hang a net.

[sparklebutch.livejournal.com]

In theory if I manage to work out I'll feel less depressed. That never quite worked before.

[wijsgeer.livejournal.com]

my sister is chronically depressed, since her teens, (she has also been treated since her teens). Many of these year (she is now 29) she did worked out regularly. Presently she goes to the gym twice a week and she walks at least an hour a day, 3 times a weeks she cycles an hour to her work. Nevertheless, she keeps being depressed.
I think she is marvelous, but it does limit my believe in sports as miracle cure. There are no miracle cures only partial ones.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I think if a person is 'feeling down', exercise helps make a person feel better. If I'm feeling neither up nor down, exercise can put me in a really good mood. If I am depressed, it doesn't make any difference at all, or it makes me feel worse by being an extra burden or challenge.

Exercise changes the blood chemistry, which is a good thing - short-term. Long term, it prevents disease, also a good thing. Enough to make me believe it's worth the terrible effort and sacrifice of time.

It makes a person feel better physically though, and gives more of a fighting chance - because being unfit makes a person tend to illness and illness tends to cause depression, or depression can cause illness in a horrible catch-22.

So I believe exercise is worth doing. I just don't believe it's easy.

[sparklebutch.livejournal.com]

Wasn't looking for a miracle cure, just something to make it easier to carry myself on my feet.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I find that exercise helps me - as long as I manage to do it with regular frequency. Current ambition: three times per week.