Today was just a bad workout day. I slept in and had to talk myself into going to the gym. Okay, I did go. But I was tired and weak, and in pain.
I think Fall is hell on a lot of people with chronic pain issues. My knee was really hurting yesterday. I thought I wasn’t going to be able to do my clean and presses without hurting it, so I was surprised to find that it seemed to make my knee feel better. Weird, but I’ll take that.
However, I seem to have overchallenged my left shoulder. Ouch, ouch, ouch. Hadda remove some plates and do the sets for fewer reps. I hate doing that, but Rule One1 and all. Injuring yourself so you’re sidelined from an excess of macho isn’t actually cool. Just means you broke Rule One.
This is where doing what you can is important. Sure, sure, unless you’re paralyzed you can do something. And yes, you should be doing something. But no-one but you can judge what that something is. I remember when I had my ACL repair, I fretted a lot until I could get back in the pool. My PT told me that while it was great I wanted to get back to swimming and I was lucky it would be soon, what I really needed was to focus on activating the muscles in the leg that’d been sliced open with a knife so that they’d work again. While it didn’t feel as cool as the workouts I was doing, it was indeed exercise, necessary exercise and it was what I could do.
For the record, I find stuff I know is gonna heal a lot easier to cope with. I knew I was going to get off the crutches. The arthritis stays, dammit.
Sometimes doing what you can feels discouraging, especially when “can” changes from day to day. You might feel like you’re making crap for progress. You might question whether or not you’re slacking or looking for excuses. You know, screw that. Unless you’re training for an athletic competition or something, sometimes showing up and going through the motions really is a good thing.
Here’s a great post about doing what you can and working movement into your day from Living at ~400 Lbs. She changed her commute to get herself walking more.
1Don’t be a fucking idiot.