Bright-Eyed and Bushy-Tailed
I played sports in school growing up. It wasn’t a very competitive league, but/and I got a lot of playtime and enjoyed it very much.
After high school, since I didn’t play organized sports, I started jogging.
My dad was an avid jogger and I figured if I started jogging like him when I was in my late teens, I would create healthy habits that would help me be fit through my adult years—as he modeled to me—a fit, active man in his early 60s who didn’t look a day over 50.
I ended up pulling a calf muscle a few years into my jogging regimen.
I didn’t listen to my body well that final year. After my dad passed away, I overlooked warm up, cool down, and stretching—not too mention, I ran harder since he couldn’t anymore.
There went my jogging routine. There went my endorphin high. I had jogged before every organic chemistry exam I took, and I have no doubts the clear-headedness and suppression/negation of anxiety with endorphins helped me on those exams. I wanted to bring that type of thriving through exercise to others!
I was on such a high. On a mountain top, literally, on top of the hill of my college campus. (OK, I had this epiphany mid-hill on Brandeis’ campus, but you get the point.)
Exercise is not linear, as I learned.
I got injured from jogging at the age of 21.
It took several years before I could see a jogger on the sidewalk and not feel jealous of their experience.
My equation of starting to run at the age of 18 to set myself up for success at 60 did not work.
One greatly has to modify their workout routine when injured.
A later knee injury taught me that again. As did a later back injury (see previous post).
When I had this jogging injury, I remember having my second epiphany—women’s hips are shaped differently than males: the femurs attach into the hip sockets at a diagonal instead of straight, which puts our knees at greater risk for a running injury, thus making jogging less compatible for females versus males. Maybe modeling my exercise regimen off my father’s wasn’t the best idea.
I know lots of successful female runners, so it’s obviously more nuanced than that.
But at the time of that women’s-wider-pelvis-for-childbearing-affects-running epiphany, I felt relief. It was like, okay, it was an honest mistake. I just didn’t take my anatomy into consideration. Maybe it wasn’t all my fault. Maybe I didn’t have to be so hard on myself for shortchanging the warm-up, cool-down, and stretching (not to mention strengthening) aspects of jogging.
I simply had to find an exercise that fit me better. Enter nature walks. Ah, thank G-d for nature walks! It was also recommended to me at the time to try cross-training—jog some days, do elliptical or stationary bike on others—but nothing quite gave me the catharsis of a good jog, so that was hard to implement.
With the later injuries, my knee injury was related to overly adventurous yoga poses. And I honestly think my back injury was yoga-related too. Though not occurring during/directly from yoga, I think the frequent backbends I had been doing the years prior didn’t help. I think I had some strength/flexibility imbalances in my hips/back already before the incident that caused the back injury.
(Note: It would be better for me to have said, “the knee injury I had” versus “my knee injury”—much like telling a kid they did a bad thing versus saying they are bad—one doesn’t want to take ownership over the negative thing, and overidentify with it—it’s neither accurate nor beneficial to the healing process!)
Here is the point:
We can have the best of intentions with exercise and if we do it with willfulness, force, and determination and leave mindfulness and a flexible/compassionate mindset aside, then the most tenacious, passionate fitness buff can become an injured one struggling with chronic pain.
It’s a hard balance.
Staying fit without injury/re-injury.
Just this past week, I was trying to get back into the Pilates mat routine I trained to teach in 2006. I did so much at once after not having done it for a while, and guess what?…
I am having a flare-up in my back/hips as we speak! “Cross my fingers” that this flare-up doesn’t involve sciatic pain down my leg, as several previous ones have.
Injury sucks.
I’m trying to be patient and work on not diving into the rabbit hole of negative self-talk, victim mentality, and doomsday mindset of “I’m never gonna get better.”
I’ve gotten better before. I can do it again.
I just need to go more slowly next time and not bite off more than I can chew.
My injuries tend to happen when I have a top-down approach. I want/need a certain outcome and I work for it!
As opposed to a bottom-up approach where I gradually do the exercises and see how I feel.
It was an honest mistake.
I thought I was careful and took it easy. In fact, I only experienced the pain the following day—which has usually been the case.
I know better for next time to do fewer of the exercises and ease in to incorporate them back into my exercise routine.
Have you had an experience of diving too strongly into something?
What have you learned about how to approach exercise (or anything for that matter) with greater ease and mindfulness and less willfulness and force?
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