We haven’t been skating—we are out of shape; and we couldn’t skate a full lap of the rink if we don’t get our wind back and build up muscle. Sitting in a chair is bad. Sitting in the same chair in the same position for hours and hours every day is worse. Letting your muscle go so you hurt when you move is bad. Letting your bones lose calcium because you’re not stressing them enough to make them lay down more calcium and losing little blood vessels because they’re not being used— is bad.
And you hurt. The more you sit—the worse you hurt. The shorter of wind you get; and the more circulation is diminishing, because the little capillaries that used to feed the muscle are just going away.
The converse is also true. If we could walk around the block (it’s a snowy white out there) we’d work out the kinks, lay down calcium, build muscle, and get our circulation back. But it’s snowy white out there.
So…we joined our skating coach (ret.) at the local Y, which is a state of the art center, and laid down the fees, and we’re going to do it. We’re starting on baby stuff. The babiest— is the recumbent bike that lets you just mostly recline and push about the weight of a bag of frozen peas with each foot. Over and over and over. These machines actually have a telly mounted above the controls, if you have to have commercials dinning at you. But I prefer watching the calories tick down. You feed in your age and weight and just pedal, concentrating on making your knee go straight over your toe (knocking knees in or out is seriously bad juju). The other machine we’re going to use is a stepper, where you stand on two platforms and it works like climbing a hill. You get to pick the gradient. I pick the chicken slope.
Bodies are funny, in that they LOVE to hold onto food (fat) and really are quite willing to break down muscle before they break down fat. The better part is that as you rebuild muscle and capillaries, the fat cells have to give up what they’re storing. And eventually, some time before the heat death of the universe, the fat cells, like any cells, run out of lifespan and DIE.
Muscle tissue weighs 18% more than fat; so at a certain point you’re going to gain weight before you have enough muscle to start sipping the fat out of those fat cells…but the good news is that your body has a ‘memory’ for certain chemical states, and the fact that we were not too long ago in better shape should translate to ‘build muscle fast: she means it!’
Funny thing: Jane and I have dieted mostly through the holidays, with a couple of binges, and binge or diet, weight has gotten only a little worse, but has never diminished AT ALL, when I’ve dieted since October. Could get up 4 pounds, or down 4, but never down 5.
Went to the gym and worked out for 15 minutes. Next morning I weigh, and I’m down a pound—one pound lower than that 3-month-long unbreakable barrier. The better news is—I didn’t tire myself so badly that I then had to sleep all afternoon: I was able to get back to work.
The bad news is the parking situation at the Y; it’s a popular place. But we’ll learn the good times. Unlike others, WE can adjust when we get there.
And by golly, that one mild session has helped the constant aches. I’m looking forward to getting rid of them. I’m looking forward to not tiring out so easily or so early, and to having my jeans fit, thank you.
Wish us luck. We’re taking our vitamins and our minerals and we’re going to break a sweat every day we go to the gym. Reform is in the offing.
I recently read some writer’s blog (I forget whose) that described the treadmill desk he (she?) writes at. Might something like that be at all interesting to you?
This isn’t the blog I remember reading, but it’ll do for describing the idea: http://www.eleanor-brown.com/blog/2011/1/18/the-amazing-treadmill-desk.html
Looks a bit pricey but you should be able to legitimately claim such a thing as a business expense.
Some people do great on the walkstations. Others simply are unable to walk and think, especially when doing complex tasks.
Top speed for the Pitney Bowes walkstations is 4 mph. Several people noted that as they became increasingly fit that they wished the walkstations could go faster.
People burnt off so many calories and thus felt so hot that we needed fans at each walkstation. Many PB employees also changed to shorts while walking.
http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2012/jan/15/proactive-employers-encourage-workers-to-get-out/
Walking and chewing gum simultaneously is not in my skillz. If adrenaline is flowing, naturally I can think AND move, but if the job is primarily thinking, it’s like my brain drains off all the energy from the rest of me. Fortunately typing doesn’t require much energy.
Alas, when I write, the body freezes, sort of like in deep dream state. If I were writing, I’d forget to move.
I did onceuponatime think of designing a chair with a horse’s walking motion, but somehow I never get around to these projects.
Then what you need are electrodes stimulating the muscles you aren’t using. Perhaps built into a body suit of sorts.
Come to think of it, I remember reading a really good SF story where asteroid miners wore something like that while in null-G to maintain muscle tone. ☺
Uhmmm, Heavy Time maybe? I just read it, and they did wear some sort of full body suit, but I don’t remember mention of electrodes… but it was to maintain muscle tone, as I recall.
That book title should be underlined, but I don’t see any tag for that.
Yes, Cherryh’s own Heavy Time is the book I had in mind, hence the ‘☺’. And you’re right: the specifics of how the stim-suits work were not mentioned that I can recall. But electrical stimulation is available in 21ˢᵗ-century tech, so I suggested that.
The tag for underlining should be
<u>text</u>, but as a quick test shows, this installation of WordPress has that disabled. At any rate, underlining is a typewrite technique; the typesetting convention (which is suitable for the Web) is to<i>italicize</i>book titles.(Getting the HTML tags to display is a different trick; look up “HTML entities” for details.)
Son of a Gun! I did not see that ☺ . Which unicode character is that? I’m used to the big blatant multicolour things that show up when you put a colon followed by an upper-case D – like 😀 – maybe I should be getting new glasses…
I suppose one could try sitting on an exercise ball… Small movements constantly made in order to maintain balance are not particularly disturbing, and they do help to maintain muscle tone.
I’d be interested to hear how you do with the stair climber. I’ve bad knees. I’ve found that standing on stairs with weight on the back leg seems to want to pull the other knee joint apart painfully when it tries to pull me up. It seems that if I lean into it, put more weight on the front leg, like I’m “running” up the stairs however slowly rather than walking, it works better. But I’m not a kinesiologist.
remember, this is the first full week of the New Year, and there are lots of resolutions being seriously contemplated right now by people who don’t have their hearts in it. It’s the same thing at my Y.
I went to kendo practice and suited up today for the first time in about 4 months. I lasted longer than I thought I would, but getting myself into better shape would be even better. So, I’m probably going to go back to the elliptical machine, because I can do it without serious impact on my knees. The steps just kill me, and I can’t run, so cross-country skiing is the ticket. I did the elliptical before we went to the National Championships in July 2008 out in Las Vegas (and yes, I got to meet hrhSpence). My stamina was way up, and my weight was way down. When my sensei remarked on it, I knew it was something I really needed to maintain. Alas, the knees have been my downfall.
The two machines we’ve chosen are pretty well zero impact. I have two football knees I have to coddle and keep straight, and here are the secrets I’ve gained from figure skating.
1. knees and hips: knee extension should go straight between big toe and second toe of foot. Generally women will have (paradoxically) to find it badly knocking in during the push and even having to forcibly knock it outward to prevent that—not sure how men fare on this item. This protects the ligaments AND prevents joint wear, and it’s one of the trickiest to maintain, because most women not involved in balance sports are really, really bad about knocking in—take a look at the ‘girl’ run technique, and you’ve got a classic example of bad posture.
2. hips: keep from extreme sway on lower back: tuck the area of the tailbone enough to be sure it’s toward vertical, not pitched under or thrust outward.
3. shoulder blades: pull both severely down and to center. This gets your head out of ‘turtle’ position, ie, keeps you from jutting your chin forward, and relieves the typical upper back center strain women are always complaining about.
4. head: pull your shoulders down as 3) states and keep your head balanced easily and comfortably, never jutting chin-forward nor ducking your chin.
The more you can maintain that while exercising on these machines the better you’ll hold out; and don’t set the resistence high; go for a lot of reps, not heavy strain. Heavy strain pulls your joints out of line and set you up for back and joint pain. Light reps increase the muscle strength in ‘good’ balance over the whole frame, and make your joints stronger and pain-free.
That’s not saying it’s gospel for everybody, but it’s certainly helped me. It means a lot of monitoring how you’re moving, but it begins to matter. I started skating with bad knees, a lot of joint pain, was using a cane on uneven ground, and had no stamina; and I’m better right now, though out of shape, than I was ten years ago.
I have heard recently that the best exercise is moderate – the kind that doesn’t make you so tired you need a nap and need lots of snacks. Sounds like you are heading in the right direction. Good to use all the different muscle groups. I need to get back into the groove too. I am thinking about walking at lunch time rather than surfing the net. Might be better for me in a lot of ways 🙂
The stair climber as I’m using it is about like trying to climb a stack of pillows. Very gentle, no stress. My knees don’t hurt unless I’ve abused them, but they can rip a partial ligament tear with very little warning, so I’m very, very careful about angle of stress, and particularly about that having-knees-in-line stuff.
It sounds wonderful that you’re getting to exercise and get back in shape! I haven’t got access to a gym where I am (well, not one that’s in my price range, ie free) but we DO have several walking parks. One of them is right beside where my husband is going for daily hyperbaric oxygen therapy. So I’m walking there, every other day.
We had the opportunity to go to Disney World in December – and while there, I was amazed to find that I actually dropped weight. I was not watching what I ate per se – though I did avoid caffeine and most sweets; I think I only ate a bite or two of desserts at any of the meals we had. But! In order to get breakfast, we had to walk about half a mile – the resort was quite spacious in terms of layout, with nice rambling paths a la Southern plantation. Very picturesque! Which also made the morning hike for food more enjoyable. Doing that walk – every day, multiple times a day, because we had to pass the resort restaurant to get to the transportation area to the parks – boosted my energy something fierce. The first four days, I had to take my “big” painkillers – prescription strength Aleve, basically – twice a day. My back did not like me! But after that…I won’t say the pain magically disappeared, but it dramatically reduced.
I dropped enough weight to be able to wear my husband’s T-shirts – two sizes smaller than I was when I got there. And when I visited the doctor at the beginning of this month, they had to check my blood pressure twice – they didn’t believe the first reading, which was far lower than it had been – the bottom digit actually under 100 for the first time since I’ve started treating high blood pressure.
Best thing about all of it: I didn’t make a resolution to exercise and lose weight. And I think I’ll probably stick with this better because I won’t be beating myself up over missing a day.
Hope you guys have a lot of success with your exercising too! And thanks for the comments about doing it right: I’ve never understood before why some of the exercises I’d do (back in the day) would bonk my knees against machinery.