Exercise Journal Week 2

This week was an interesting one. I've added a little bit of shoulder/back movement in with the help of some resistance bands I've been having pain in two places in my back, the first is in a usual place, my lower back, I usually slump there and have fairly weak lumbar muscles. That makes a certain amount of sense as I've been walking around a lot more and not sitting or laying in a supported position. The one that surprised me the most is the mid-back pain on the left side below the point of my shoulder blade. Again, I know my posture sucks but this is an interesting new pain. It feels like the build up of pressure that I get with my joints that is relieved when something goes click. I'll talk with my physio/massage therapist about it the next time I see her, she might note something I'm going wrong in the movements or have something better I can do instead.

Aside from the pains, my energy has continued to grow, I was able to go out with a friend and sit in a too-high chair for a few hours and get home at midnight without too much hassle. The next day I was more tired than I have been since I started the exercises but not absolute dead as I might have felt previously. Frankly, prior to last week, I don't think I could have been out that long and safely driven home.

On Sunday I got up earlier than my body was telling me I should and had to skip the morning exercises because I couldn't get out of bed the 30 minutes earlier it would have required. I was exhausted that day, a combination of getting up early, skipping the exercises and maybe still a little bit of a recovery tiredness from the event two days before. I had to have a nap and rearrange a buddy-system writing appointment I had. Typing this on Monday, however, I'm feeling fine. Not as hyper as I have been in week 2 but still much more energetic and grounded than I have been.

Getting to sleep has been an issue. I've always had trouble with sleep (getting to sleep, keep waking up in the night, can't get back to sleep again, waking up early) so that shouldn't be too surprising but with the fatigue I was feeling before, getting over 12 hours sleep was normal for me and I was collapsing into bed, exhausted, at the end of the day. I don't really know what to do about it except maybe try to wear myself out. We have a walking machine so perhaps I should try that. Part of the issue is that my brain is awake and firing all kinds of ideas at me. I've been reading a lot of interesting research papers and articles at the moment so I might need to move that activity earlier in the day so I can reduce the mental stimulation closer to bed time.

The goal of all of this is to get me back into a state where I can wake up naturally and completely at 6am and be ready for bed at 10-11pm. This was closer to the manner in which I slept when I was at my peak gym activity and it allowed me to prepare things before work and still have some time after for harder exercise, chores or just some good old fashioned doom scrolling. I'm not in work at the moment due to my unpredictable and fatigue-riddled health so it would be nice to get to a place where I could feasibly work again, or at least not feel like I never see the sunlight (UK winters are rough for that).

At the moment I'm stretching the big muscles in my legs and bum and trying some core activation physio exercises I was given a long time ago. The stretch in my quads has had the most surprising impact. When I started week 1, I needed to use a foam roller under my bum to kneel on my shins and get that stretch. On Tuesday of week 2, I could do it without the foam roller and with my bum touching my heels. It's still a sensitive stretch but the progress is really heartening. Towards the middle of the week, the actual limit on that stretch was discomfort in my calves which, admittedly I had been neglecting somewhat. So with a bit more attention to freeing up my calves before doing it, I'm slowly getting down to be able to sit on my shins. I hope this means I'll soon be able to progress to a more traditional stretch, standing on one leg and holding the ankle. I've actually never been able to do that before.

I do want to take a moment to appreciate my cats hanging out with me in stretching in the mornings. It reminds me of the pictures of Muslim people praying and their cats either joining in on the prayer mat or chilling on their own mini mat. I wonder if I should source mini yoga mats for the cats to join in. Mostly they just watch me from a comfortable, elevated surface and try to swat at the little knitting bean in the Focus Friend app I use to time myself. I wonder how long it will take them to try to mimic me or if there needs to be more than one human doing activities for them to join in.