Exercise: pleased with myself

[redbird]

I've been pleased with my exercise patterns lately, because there have been more weeks when I've done more than what I think of as the minimum.



My loosely defined "minimum" is to do the half dozen exercises that are partly ongoing shoulder PT maintenance, twice a week. The realistic maximum is to do more kinds of exercise, and do at least some of them three times in a week. This is partly psychology: if I aim to do them three times a week, I will do them at least twice in most weeks. When I set a goal of twice a week, I'm less likely to meet it. (This leaves one day a week as a rest day, with minimal physical exertion, and my last physical therapist said not to do any specific exercise except walking, other cardio, and crunches two days in a row. One reason I'm tracking my exercise is so I don't accidentally do the same exercise two or three days in a row.)

Part of what I'm pleased by is that I'm fitting in exercises that aren't for my shoulder muscles moderately often. the other part is that, after quite a while of either holding steady or reducing the resistance slightly, I've been increasing the resistance on several exercises. Most of the comparisons here are between either different elastic resistance bands, or number of repetitions, not measured weights. I bought a set of bands in five different colors three or four years ago, when we were living in Washington, and have been using the three lowest/easiest bands ever since. Yesterday I got out a heavier band for the first time, and used it for the standing "rowing" exercise I'd been doing with the yellow band since I got these. (In order from least to most resistance, the bands are blue, red, yellow, black, and orange.)

What I did yesterday and today, with notes:

• lateral raises, 2 pounds in each hand, 3 sets of 11
• crunches, 2 sets of 20
• row, black elastic, 3 sets of 10 each
• calf raises, 3 sets of 15 (I did these while waiting for the bus)
• external rotations, red elastic, 3 sets of 12 each (I had been using the blue elastic for these for a year or more, and increased this a couple of months ago)
• shrugs, yellow elastic, 3 sets of 12 (I do this standing on the elastic, meaning the length of elastic I'm pulling on, and therefore resistance, varies from set to set)
• serratus pushups, 3 sets of 12 (this is a modified standing pushup, using my body weight as resistance; I worked back up from 10 to 11 at a time recently, and am now at 12)
• internal rotations, red elastic, 3 sets of 12 each (I'd like to try the yellow elastic with this soon, but don't want to be increasing too may things at once)
• lat pulldowns, yellow elastic, 3 sets of 12 (I recently went from the red to the yellow elastic on this)

Other exercises I've done recently:

• hamstring bridges, 4 sets of 9 (when I did these on Sunday, I wound up doing the third set and part of the fourth with Kaja lying on my chest)
• biceps curls, 8 pounds, 3 sets of 10 with each arm (for boring reasons I have only one eight-pound weight, so have to alternate hands instead of doing them at the same time. Also, this is our heaviest weight, so I'd have to go shopping to increase the amount of weight I'm using here.)

I'm doing my leg stretches (prescribed by a podiatrist, along with orthotics) almost every day, and some hand strengthening exercises with a piece of green putty moderately often. I'm not doing the shoulder stretches as diligently as I'd like. Some people find weight lifting and resistance training tedious; I like the weight/resistance stuff, but find stretching boring.

I haven't been doing a lot of walking, because I'm dealing with hip pain that seems semi-random but makes walking much less fun. (I'm monitoring this for now, at my doctor's suggestion; she said she'll probably prescribe PT when I see her next, in January.)

I'd like to be doing more balance practice, but I do most of that standing up, and when the hip is bad I don't want to be standing on the foam roller, or using subway rides as balance practice.

When I was 13, I was riding the subway without holding on for the fun of it. These days, it's mostly for medical reasons, though on the good days I also enjoy it. When my adoptive nephew was 13, I carefully held onto a pole when we were on the subway together, because his parents didn't want me setting what they thought was a bad example. It made no difference: now that he's grown, he also rides without holding on; this may come naturally to people who start riding the subway regularly in their teens, or earlier, though Sasha got to school by bus rather than subway.

Comments

[randomness]

Good to hear about your exercise progress!

I generally hang onto something while riding transit simply because I don't want to crash into someone if something goes wrong, but when the train is empty it's fun to stand in a space and surf.

The other thing I used to do more often than I do now is to do a pull-up on an overhead bar. I do this less often now because I'm afraid of calling attention to myself, but it's still fun when I think I can get away with it.

[redbird]

For kindness to strangers, as well as my own safety, I tend to surf with one hand in reach of a pole, and hold on when it seems prudent. (I had to stop doing pull-ups years ago, to avoid reinjuring the shoulder.)

What I happily did in my teens and wouldn't now even if there were no locked doors to prevent it is ride between cars on the elevated subway line. That really would have felt like setting a bad example for Sasha, had he been there (whereas holding onto a pole was a matter of respecting other people's parenting decisions, even if they weren't the ones I'd make). It was fun, though.

[randomness]

The does sound like fun! I never thought of doing that, probably because the times I've passed between cars it's almost entirely been underground, at least on the subway. On Metro-North, obviously, I've done so above ground, but that's a different experience.

[redbird]

I think I started doing that to get to the next car for a reason, or because the train was just so crowded, but I quickly noticed the pleasure of the view and the breeze. Obviously this depends on the hardware they're using for the trains; it worked well with the ones in this icon, and really doesn't on any hardware Amtrak has used in ages. (I should take a look at the red line cars the next time I'm going between Kendall and Charles/MGH, where I tend to choose a seat, or place to stand, partly for the view.)