Morning,

You know how you always want to give it your all during working out, and sometimes your body says, whimper whimper? How do YOU choose to react?

Amazing, common sense has finally seeped into my system. I wrote about it:

Evening hot baths, morning coffee, listening to your body wrt fitness and more

At my age of 43, I'm finding that being smart is half the battle. :-)

Enjoy,

Barbara

I personally say suck it up and go father... I refuse to let my age stop me...

Morning,

For the most part, I'd certainly agree. I find it most amusing that at karate, I'm the last one standing in boot camp - the other students range in ages from 6 to 18, and they're totally wiped by the experience. Like my kids say, Mom Rocks! :-)

This morning, though, wow, I woke up aching in every part of my lower body. Since then, however, I've gradually come alive and will begin my workout after the kids go to school.

Speaking of not letting age stop oneself, I recently discovered workout DVDs like Cardio GoGo and Vegas Strip Cardio etc. My gosh, those are fun. I never took advantage of such, ahem, dance moves while in college - I'm having a blast with them now.

Enjoy,

Barbara

I like to say, if you don't speak the same language as your body.... what's the point of listening to it?

Certainly if you have a pain, you shouldn't worsen it by pushing through it.

But most signals your body sends are much, much more subtle than pain and that's the 'words' most don't understand.

The only thing I had to modify is my left shoulder. It hurts and I don't know why, I think it is arthritis. Anyway I can't do certain excersises like push ups or squat thrusts because my arm cannot support my body. I do not baby it though, I still lift the weights, just not as high or hard as my right arm.

I listen, but I don't whimper when it comes to pushing myself. If I get tired after 30 min of cardio, oh well. My heart seems fine, I can talk, I'm not winded so I go on.

A really common cause of shoulder pain is rotator cuff problems. The rotator cuff stabilizes the shoulder and is often implicated in shoulder problems, even when doing relatively light exercises. You can strengthen the RC by lying on your side with the affected shoulder up. Put that arm straight along your body so your arm is laying down the top of your body and your hand is down by your waist. Hold a light (1-5 lbs) weight in your hand. Bend your arm 90 degrees so it's extending out in front of you. Rotate it down so your hand is pointing more toward the ground, and then (keeping your upper arm firmly by your side) rotate your upper arm to lift the weight so that your lower arm is pointed at about a 45 degree angle up. Total rotation, from start to finish should be about 90 degrees. I hope this makes any sense. This will strengthen your rotator cuff, ad in a few months, your shoulder problems should vanish (if they're caused by a RC injury)

I hope this helps

BFL

YTWLs are extremely effective for correcting imbalances in the rotator cuff muscles.

Thanks BFL, I'll incorporate that excersise into my workout. I have been working on my shoulders more lately because I'm trying to make it better. I've been doing a lot of light (3 lb) lifting.

Steve - What are YTWLs ?

Afternoon all,

I'm pleased to say that after giving myself permission to take it easy and do my marketing work in the morning, I was alive enough to do my P90x Kenpo workout at 10:00am or so.

It's astonishing how your body can recover and you can really go above and beyond what you had originally thought possible. My ankles felt much better, my pivots actually, well, pivoted, and my overall reaction to my workout was, wow, super time.

Given the fact when I woke up, I felt like i was run over by a semi, this is good news for this 43 year old mom indeed.

Data points,

Barbara

YTWL Shoulder exercises

Guess I'd better go blow up my stability ball.
Thanks.

It would be worth it.

Some shoulder flexibility work would serve you well too, more than likely.