Tag: Workout

Health

Pink Dumbbells

I bit the bullet and joined a regular gym. This will be a supplement to my garage gym when I’m away from home in a secret, undisclosed location. My home garage gym has quite a bit of non-traditional globo-gym equipment. Clubbells, slam balls, medicine balls, rings, kettlebells, etc… For better or worse, I haven’t been following a “normal” lifting program. My swinging heavy clubs and jumping around on plyo boxes has fixed my back pain but hasn’t done much towards traditional strength measurements. So in anticipation of going to the regular gym, I searched the interwebs and found a pretty basic globo-gym lifting program.

It’s what you’d expect – every other day schedule of pulling movements, another day of pushing heavy stuff, one day of legs, repeat. Armed with a list of what to do, I took a deep breath and walked into the gym. Luckily it wasn’t busy, or I probably would have turned right around and left. I’m self-conscious just in general, so a gym environment is one of the worse places to be. It’s hard to hide all the jiggly bits. I have to wander around to find the right machine and figure out how to use it. And worse of all, I usually have some steroid monster watching me having to reduce the weight on a machine down to 10-year-old girl levels.

Anyway, I started in on my new lifting routine. It went pretty well. I didn’t drop anything and felt like it sorta looked like I knew what I was doing. I started thinking, this isn’t bad. Why hadn’t I done this before? I finished the last set of an exercise and pulled out the phone to see what was next. Lateral raises. I knew this would be challenging. I have a messed-up shoulder that hurts 24×7. Not to mention the aforementioned lack of strength.

I really wasn’t sure how much weight I’d be able to use. The gym had huge stacks of dumbbells against one of the walls. They were fancy dumbbells, coated with a rubberized material – each weight size a different color. I started picking up weights and experimenting to see what I’d be able to lift with my jacked-up shoulder. None of them seemed right. After picking through every color I could see, I was down to the final one. A big pile of shiny pink dumbbells.

I picked one up and, son of bitch, it was the exact right weight. Pink. It had to be pink. I glanced around the gym and nobody was paying attention. Deep sigh. I grabbed the pink dumbbells and went over to a mirror to start my sets. As I worked through the reps, I started breathing harder. Grunting a little bit. As I said, my shoulder hurts, so I was having to push a bit to complete each set.

I glanced at myself in the mirror. I had an awkward grimace on my face. Sweat was dripping down my brow. And then the worst scenario for a self conscious gym newbie happened. A couple of younger, fit, gym-bros came to the station next to me and started loading up big time weight plates. There I am, huffing and puffing, horrible form, struggling to lift up my shiny pink dumbbells. Of course.

Not much I could do other than bravely finish my set and then do the walk of shame across the gym to put away my pink weights. Sigh.

Working out gets expensive when you now have to join a second gym where you won’t be recognized. I checked; they don’t have pink weights.

Daily Life, Health

Go Big Or Go Home

Today was a glorious day. It was the first night it didn’t freeze overnight. Sun. Clear blue sky. No wind. Snow has melted off all the roads. Birds are chirping and the chipmunks are going crazy trying to find their fall stashes. It’s hard not to be in a good mood with a spring day like this. So I decided to go for a run. Not a fast walk. I decided I would suck it up and actually run. It was the first time in two years.

It went about as well as expected. I felt like a gazelle for about two minutes. Then I realized my heart rate was maxed out, so I slowed down. I looked back and could still see the house. Well, that’s discouraging. I continued to plod along and ignored everything that hurt. I ran a route that I used to run way back when I thought of myself as a runner. All I remembered was that it was my “quick” route in town when the trails were too muddy. I managed to jog most of the way, but definitely had to walk from time to time. It took me a lot longer than I remembered.

By the time I got back to the house I was pretty tired. Once my heart rate slowed down, I checked the mileage. 4.6 miles. Hmm. That was probably a bit much for first time out of the gate. I guess my memory of mileage was a bit off. I’m going to pay for that tomorrow for sure.

Besides the beautiful spring day, why did I suddenly decide to go for a run? We have a new friend who’s in his early sixties. As we’re getting to know him, I just found out he’s a competitive bodybuilder. He frequently competes with guys twenty-plus years younger than him… and wins. We had a fascinating discussion about diet and workouts. He’s just about to go to a competition, so he’s just started his weight cut. It was hard to hear how easy it was for him to cut down to 8% body fat. He said, yeah I’m a little hungry but I have a formula that just works.

I found our talk really inspirational. If someone his age can do that, I have zero excuse. If he can have the rigor to work his job, workout at night, and dial in his bodyfat exactly where he wants it, I should be able to drop a few pounds and get my ass to the gym.

I found our talk super energizing. I counted calories all day yesterday and today. I went for a morning hike with the dog and then the run. We’re going to keep this momentum. If he can do it, I can do it.

After today’s bit of overdoing it with the run, getting out of bed tomorrow is going to hurt. Going to the gym is going to take some motivational self-talk. But we’re going to get it done. Go big or go home, right?

Health, Motivation

All-Cause Mortality Rates

“Milk is for babies. When you grow up you have to drink beer.”

― Arnold Schwarzenegger

Have I mentioned that I hate the gym? I’ve never liked it. It’s always been something that I half-heartedly do because I know I should. Some years I’m better at it than others, but it’s never been a real habit. I’ve been more diligent the last six months because I started seeing changes in my balance and coordination. But lately I’ve been slacking off due to my reoccurring stomach issues. It’s hard to be motivated to go lift heavy stuff when your stomach is all queasy. But yesterday I watched something that (hopefully) changed my mindset forever.

I stumbled on several podcasts by Dr Peter Attia and Layne Norton. They discuss many topics, but one of them was all-cause mortality and hazard ratios – the likelihood of you dying of something. A study was done of 122,000 people with an average age of 53. The study did a Vo2 max test on the subjects and ranked them into five categories – Low, Below Average, Above Average, High, Elite. The study then correlated mortality rates to the Vo2 rankings. The results shocked me.

Just improving from the Low category to Below Average was a 50% reduction in mortality over a decade. Improve to one more category, Above Average, resulted in a nearly 70% reduction in mortality! Being in the lowest category of Vo2 max carries a higher risk of mortality than coronary artery disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes. Wow.

I’m sure I always kinda knew that having a great cardiovascular system would be a good thing as you got older. But then they followed up with a very similar look at the correlation of lean muscle mass and mortality. Past age 70, the hazard ratio of having very little lean muscle mass is greater than smoking! It turns out falls are the greatest cause of accidental death in the last decades of life. As a nurse, I can attest to this. A fall resulting in a broken hip is a near certain death sentence within 6 months to a year amongst the elderly.

So, in a nutshell being weak, fat, and having low Vo2 max is a near guarantee of an early death.

Seeing this was enough for me. I dragged my queasy-ass stomach to the gym and picked up a bunch of heavy shit for an hour. And I’m going to do it again today. And I’m going to start maximizing my Zone 2 training. One of the things that was said in the podcast is that past age 60-65 you’re realistically not going to gain muscle. The best you can hope for is to maintain what you have. So in the decade before that your goal should be to pack on as much lean muscle mass as possible.

I’ve missed out on much of that window to build muscle and strength due to general sloth and love of nachos. But it’s not too late. Every single percentage gain in lean muscle mass I can make in the next few years is an additional hedge against that hazard ratio. It finally sunk in.

Every single day of doing nothing, sitting, not moving, watching TV, gaining weight – is subtracting a day from the other end.

Think about that. Is skipping being active today because you don’t feel like it, worth dying one day earlier? I calculated out, based upon living to age 85, how many weeks I have left. About 1,600. That’s not very much when you think about it that way. It’s time to maximize those weeks to ensure I have as many as possible.

Let’s roll.

Diet, Health

I Figured It Out

I’m not positive, but I think I figured out why I can’t lose weight. Take a look at my food journal and see if you can spot the problem:

06:25 Wake up and make first cup of coffee. Have inner dialog resolving not to eat until after working out.

07:15 Have second cup of coffee. Decide it’s too cold to workout, may as well eat. Make a small breakfast burrito. NARRATOR: The burrito was not small. Two eggs became three (didn’t want to leave an odd number of eggs in the carton), one portion of sausage became two, a small handful of cheese became three, and all topped with avocado. The burrito was, in fact so large it couldn’t be completely rolled up.

11:20 Workout complete, must eat protein. Two hard boiled eggs, avocado, string cheese, and one or possibly four handfuls of crackers.

12:45 Staring at the pantry. Open the fridge. Back to pantry. Leave with more crackers and string cheese.

2:30 Back in front of pantry. Makes bag of popcorn. Resolves not to drink alcohol tonight, and only eat a small dinner portion.

5:30 Find myself with a cocktail in hand, unclear how that happened. Resolve to drink water with dinner.

6:45 Discovers we forgot to take the chicken out of the freezer, so we’ll have to go out for dinner. Resolves to order only a salad. NARRATOR: The actual order was a burger, fries, and a side of ranch. It’s also possible two beers were consumed.

10:45 Standing in front of the pantry again. Nothing looks appetizing, so one last cocktail before bed.

11:50 Laying in bed. Ok, ok, ok. Tomorrow is a new day. We’re eating CLEAN all day. Promise.

Did you spot the problem? Clearly it was the crackers. No more crackers! I’m throwing them all away tomorrow. Crackers raise my blood sugar and cause inflammation. I’m fairly sure that’s why I’m not dropping weight. NARRATOR: He did not, in fact, throw away the crackers.

Motivation

It’s All About The Effort

I’m sitting here with my legs quivering and on fire. My damaged back is going to bark at me the rest of the day. Why? I went mountain biking early this morning. Now wait, you might say if you’ve been a long-time reader… this guy writes all the time about going for a ride. What’s the deal? The difference is that I rode with my new next-door neighbor. He’s much younger and in good shape. I thought I’d be fine since I do ride from time to time. I was wrong.

It turns out you are a horrible judge of your own level of effort. Since I have the freedom to ride during the week, more often than not I’m riding solo. The other folks I ride with are of equal strength and conditioning. So when I’m cranking along, I think I’m putting out max effort. I’m breathing hard and it feels like I’m pushing it. But if you don’t have any way to actually measure or compare your effort, you never really know.

To keep up on this ride, I was pretty much red-lined the entire way. There was no conversation… I was too busy trying to suck in air. Same thing on the downhill. I thought I was a reasonably fast rider, but I couldn’t keep up with him going down. Here’s the interesting part. While I was working 10x as hard as he was, I generally kept up. So, I have the ability. Why haven’t I been riding at that level all along?

I think that’s what separates truly elite athletes from the rest of us. They have the ability to push themselves to their true limit day in and day out. Most of the rest of us quit way before that. It’s hard, it hurts, and we don’t really know what our actual limit is. I’ve noticed the same thing in my attempts at lifting weights. During our recent vacation, the resort gym didn’t have the same weight kettlebell as I’ve been using. So, I grabbed that bigger kettlebell and managed to do the same workout. At home, I would have been convinced that it was too heavy and hard. Why?

Clearly, I’ve been sandbagging myself and didn’t really know it. The new goal is now to make sure every workout leaves me in a quivering puddle on the floor. I will push weights to actual failure. I will ride at redline as much as possible.

Because what could go wrong? It’s not like I’m an old dude with a bad shoulder and damaged back. It’s not like I’m setting myself up for overuse injuries or anything, right?

Sitting here with my quads on fire, maybe I’ll just get an E-bike instead. Motor assist sounds pretty good right now.

Motivation, Health

It Just Hurts

When I first started out as an RN, I’ll admit I got a bit judgmental sometimes towards certain patients. It was the folks who were fairly obese, in their late 60’s or early 70’s, and lacked the strength to get off the toilet or out of a chair. As two and sometimes three of us struggled to get them standing so they could shuffle back to bed, I’d say to myself “how could anyone let themselves get to that point?” They’d reject the physical therapists who came to work with them, saying they were too tired or hurt too much to do anything today. I’d do my best to encourage them, often admonishing them that if they didn’t start moving things were only going to get worse.

I just couldn’t fathom wanting to spend your remaining years in that condition. Why didn’t they take better care of themselves? One of the more common problems we’d see with this patient population was toenails. Nasty curled and twisted daggers that hadn’t been cut in god knows how long. Often they couldn’t wear socks anymore because you couldn’t pull them on without snagging on the nails. They’d just resort to wearing sandals or slippers all the time. Why? Because they’d become so deconditioned, they couldn’t bend over enough to clip their own toenails. It just seemed so crazy to me. And when they wouldn’t work with therapy and rejected most advice to do something, anything, to help themselves… I’ll admit I developed a certain lack of sympathy.

Fast forward to today. I hurt. Everywhere. I can barely lift my arms over my head. I look like an 80-year-old walking down the stairs. The moaning and groaning when I attempt to get down on the ground is ridiculous. Why am I in this state? Well… my back injury scared me enough that I’m going full speed, hard core, with my workouts. Every day has been at least an hour in the gym. Stretching, mobility work, kettle bells, club bells, lunges, squats, medicine balls… every exercise I can find on YouTube. Plus another hour and a half of hiking hills with the dog.

The end result is that I’m sore. Everywhere. There isn’t a body part that doesn’t hurt right now. Yes, I realize that I’m probably overtraining a bit. But I’m scared. The back strain was a brief window into a potential future if I don’t fix things. And I don’t like the future I saw.

Reality, as they say, came up and bitch slapped me in the face. I was forced to admit to myself the true, current state of all things physical. I’ve never been very physically strong, so I tended to avoid gym work. I was pretty good with endurance stuff, so that’s what I did. I mountain biked, skied, and ran. And I told myself I was in decent shape. Yes, cardiovascular-wise I was. But year after year my muscles were atrophying. Now, years of ignoring strength conditioning have caught up to me. I strained my back badly while sweeping leaves. Yes, really.

Muscle atrophy and weight gain are insidious creatures. They sneak up on you. Every year a little weaker, a little heavier. As it creeps up on you, your motivation to do something about it gets less and less. Sure, you try here and there to diet or start working out again, but it’s hard. The weight doesn’t come off and you end up hungry and frustrated. Your attempts to work out leave you sore and unable to walk. It’s really hard to keep getting after it when you feel like that. Pretty quickly you abandon the diet and give up the workouts. And the atrophy keeps setting in.

And that’s where I had a very real insight into how those patients let themselves go. And I feel bad for not having more empathy for them all those years ago. It would be so easy to do. I hurt, I’m sore, I’m tired. At my age, do I really need to be trying to lift weights? Let’s just stop. A heating pad and some pain pills will make me comfortable. Blink my eyes and I’ll be that old guy struggling to get off the toilet.

No. I’m not going to do that. I refuse to give up. I know that if I just keep pushing, eventually the soreness goes away. Muscles and tendons will become more supple. The aches and pains get better. Mobility and balance improve. I will not let atrophy win.

I’ll just have to wear hats for a while… my arms hurt too much to brush my hair.

Health

It’s So Small

I should probably start keeping a spreadsheet of all the fitness fads I’ve signed on to. You name it, I’ve probably done it. Except the Suzanne Somers Thigh Master. Never had one of those. This time around it’s the most ancient of all mankind’s tools – a club. In my relentless search to find a way to fix my back for good, I’ve decided to start waving a heavy club around at pedestrians in the street. Ok, maybe not exactly that.

I’ve been following a “fitness influencer” for quite a while who advocates for mastering some basic core, functional fitness movements BEFORE trying things like deadlifts and heavy squats. I’d forgotten I followed him until one of his videos popped up on YouTube while searching for back pain exercises. In a nutshell, he advocates a volume cycle of single arm movements with kettlebells and clubs, plus some presses and bodyweight squats as a starting point. Until you have proper hip rotation, foot alignment, and adequate core strength, you’re asking to get hurt trying more complex movements.

He had an interesting observation about ancient physiques vs today. The Greeks and Romans had relatively smaller shoulders, biceps, and chests. They had massive back muscles, forearms, abdominals, glutes and thighs. The exact opposite of what we think of today as the ideal physical form (massive chests and biceps, with tiny waists). I have neither form, so I’m nicely poised to go either direction.

Anyway, so I watched approximately 18 hours of heavy club swinging videos and got all excited. I just know this is the ticket to fix my back and bad shoulder. The club he likes is adjustable from ten pounds to something I wouldn’t even be able to lift. The problem is that it was a couple hundred dollars. Not sure I wanted to commit that much to something I wasn’t sure I’d like doing, I jumped on Amazon to look for an alternative. Sure enough I found some Chinese company selling a whole size range of clubs, starting at $19. Bingo. I ordered the smallest weight one, so I could get the form and movements right.

We were going to be out of town for a number of days, so I arranged for the package to be delivered to a UPS store. I was so excited about my new club I didn’t want any chance of someone stealing it off my porch. Mrs. Troutdog got home before me, so I had her go pick it up so I wouldn’t miss a moment of my new club training routine.

Now keep in mind the videos I’ve been watching featured a muscular guy swinging a giant, heavy three-foot club around like an ancient Viking crushing the skulls of his enemies. Imagine my face when I opened the box and saw my new club. It’s tiny. A foot long and 5 pounds. It looks like a child’s toy. Mrs. Troutdog looked at it with a puzzled face and asked, “what is this?” My aspirations of Viking-like strength dimmed a bit.

I’m not one to give up easily, so I’ve been doing my mini-club routine (near) daily. Here’s what I’ve discovered. I struggle to keep my feet aligned. I have very poor rotational mechanics. My shoulder mobility is very limited. I don’t know how to maintain a good pattern of exhale/inhale when doing movements. And standing fully upright while bracing my core and engaging the glutes leaves me sore for the rest of the day. All with a little 5-pound club.

Now I’m not saying swinging a club around is the end-all-be-all. But it’s working. It’s exposing flaws. So I’m going to keep up with it. Soon, I should be able to graduate to a heavier club. Viking-like abs may not ever be in my future but being able to get out of a chair without assistance, or to carry all the groceries in one pass will be.

I wonder what my next fitness fad will be?

Health

It’s All About The Butt, Baby

I just got back from the gym. Spent a bunch of time with the strength coach trying to figure out how to fix my back issue. After a lot of pain, tests, and movement analysis the verdict is in. My problem is that I don’t have a butt. None. Zero. My legs just end at my hips.

More specifically, a major part of my problem is that I never engage my glutes when moving. Like, at all. Rotation, lifting, bending, walking, running… my back is doing all the work. And because I have a weak core, it was only a matter of time before something gave out. This also explains why I can’t dance.

The good news is that it’s fixable (maybe not the dancing). The bad news is that it’s going to hurt and it’s not going to suddenly get better overnight. Why-oh-why didn’t I figure this out thirty years ago?

Back in the stone age when I was in high school, there should have been an “adulthood 101” class. The value of compound interest. Investing. Changing a tire. What to make for dinner for the next 50 years. The importance of an actual, daily, fitness regime. Instead, we learned the quadratic equation on the off chance we might someday work with gravitational physics. Oh, and dodgeball.

So here we are. An aging adult who now has to learn how to engage a major muscle group and build up some significant strength – or face daily pain and physical limitations for the next twenty years. Yeah, that’s not intimidating at all.

I was watching show last night that described the decline in physical fitness in the US since the ’60s. The difference in where we are today vs back then is shocking. How in the world did we let that happen as a society? It’s really criminal. The scary part? I don’t think it’s reversible. Excluding some sort of apocalyptic survival of the fittest event… you’re not going to convince 300 million people to suddenly get off the couch every day. Back then President JFK actually said, “…there is nothing “more unfortunate than to have soft, chubby, fat-looking children.” Today, any politician that dared to suggest such a thing for our schoolkids would be instantly shouted down and cancelled. It’s discriminatory. We don’t have the funding. It shames kids who aren’t athletic. It’s racist. We can’t hurt their self-esteem. Besides, it’s really hard to have a proper PE class over Zoom.

I’m now faced with a hard decision. I either find a way to push through pain, change my daily routine, and learn a new athletic skill at my age… or I move to the couch, seek out a Norco or Oxy prescription, and accept that my ability to ski, play golf, ride the mountain bike, run, and hike is fading.

I don’t like either choice. I want to go back to the days when I could just do stuff and not worry about injury or pain. I don’t like strength training, never have. I get zero enjoyment from going to the gym. But I don’t like pills and I don’t want to give up my activities. It’s a quandry.

I’m not a quitter. Hopefully, this is the catalyst to make those necessary health changes I’ve been meaning to get around to. Because as a very wise man once said, “I do mind, the Dude minds. This will not stand, ya know, this aggression will not stand, man.”

The Dude abides. Now excuse me, I’m headed to the gym.

Daily Life, Health

Injury Update And Big Boy Pants

It’s been just about a month since I injured my back. Today, I deadlifted at the gym. Not much weight, but a full deadlift. Zero pain. I can’t tell you how happy that made me. I’ve been super lucky through life and have had very few injuries. This was the first time I had to make a conscious effort to figure out pain management, and what to do to fix the problem. I honestly think this could have been one of those things that at my age, had I not been aggressive about PT/rehab, could have drifted into a chronic issue that limited my activities for a very long time.

But it didn’t. Because I put my big boy pants on and refused to give in. I continued to work hard with a good strength and conditioning trainer. I did mobility work on my own. I aggressively used heat and a TENS unit to stimulate the muscles. I think most importantly – I just kept moving. Hiking, walking, riding the motorcycle. With lots of warm-up, I did some mountain biking. Last week I was able to do some (slow) trail running again. I massively upped my protein intake. Continued movement, targeted strength work, and holistic pain management techniques and we’re back in the game. Four weeks of work and I think I’m at least back to where I was pre-injury.

I left the gym today with a pretty good endorphin high. I was just super pumped to be able to do a deadlift pain-free. It gave me all kinds of motivation. I came home and pulled out and dusted off the daily vitamin regime. Drank a crapload of water. What I realized driving home from the gym is that in the grand scheme of things, it didn’t take very long to make a change. Four weeks and I was able to rehab an injury and probably come out the other side stronger than I was before. That wasn’t much time.

If I put my mind to it, what else can I accomplish in the next four weeks? Last night I was listing to a Navy Seal talking about the initial six months of training. He laughed and said all that crap you seen on TV – BUDS, Hell Week, etc… are actually the easiest part of the overall training. He said that really all they’re looking for are people who can shut everything else out and just focus on the immediate task. The next ten feet. The next 5 minutes. People who can’t stop thinking about how much further or longer they have to go, fail. That’s it. It’s that simple.

It’s true. We step on the scale obsessively. The idea of going for a run every day seems impossible. I have so much else to do today, there’s no time to get a workout in. I have so much weight to lose, I don’t see myself every reaching my goal. I can’t run 3 miles without walking, how am I ever going to get back to what I used to be able to do? Too much focus on the macro picture, and you’ll fail.

So, what’s the lesson? I’m going to stop thinking about the weight loss number or running mileage. Instead, I’m just going to try to win every hour. Today I went to the gym early. I organized and took my daily supplements. I ate well. Now what? I’m just going to focus on what’s in front of me each hour. Water instead of soda. Intentional calories instead of snacking. Find 20 minutes this afternoon to do some mobility work. I don’t need a beer (or two) tonight. Water instead. Go to bed early. Rinse, repeat. My only goal for the next month is to keep focus on the task at hand. Hour by hour. We’ll see where that gets us in the next four weeks.

I put on my big boy pants, stepped up and paid the man this last month. Now, let’s pay him again tomorrow.

Daily Life, Health

I Got Hurt. Now What?

Back in the stone age when I played Pop Warner football as a kid, I remember getting my bell rung. Full speed, helmet to helmet, I’d made a pretty spectacular tackle. Or so they told me, as I had zero memory of it. I staggered off the field and sat dazed on the sideline, trying to remember where I was and what I was supposed to be doing. The coach came over and asked if I was ready to go back in. I answered that I didn’t know. He gave a deep sigh and asked, “well son are you hurt or are you injured?” I have no idea what I said, but eventually someone stuck some smelling salts under my nose, and I went back on the field. Today I’m sure I’d have been diagnosed with a minor concussion and sidelined for a few weeks.

I was never quite sure what was the worst part in that saying – being hurt or being injured? I think being injured is the worse one. I imagine injured is broken bones or torn ligaments. Being hurt means it’s time to pull your big boy pants up and get back after it. Suck it up, buttercup.

When you get older, getting hurt rarely involves anything dramatic. Usually, it’s something stupid like stepping awkwardly off the bottom rung of a ladder, walking into an open cabinet, or slipping on some ice. In my case it was something even more mundane. I bent over. That’s it. I bent over to pick something up off the floor and BAM, it was like someone hit me with a baseball bat in the low back. Sigh.

Now in my defense, I had just come home from the gym and a pretty hard back and squat session. But still, a muscle strain bending over – really? Is this what old age looks like? The worst part was that I was scheduled to do a two-day backcountry motorcycle trip in a few days. Determined not to miss out, I consumed a frightening amount of Ibuprofen, applied non-stop heat, and subjected myself to hours of electrical stimulation using a TENS unit set to cattle prod levels. All of that got me on the bike and I survived. Although, sleeping on the ground with just a thin pad and a sleeping bag is not an ideal recovery plan after a full day of motorcycling. Just saying.

So now what? I went to the trainer when I got back, and after a pretty thorough evaluation, he essentially said that the answer was movement. I needed to move, lift, stretch, and move some more if I want to get better. He said that I wasn’t going to hurt anything or make it worse by continuing my activities… it’s really just up to my pain tolerance as to what I can do.

Crap. What I wanted to hear was to sit on the couch for six weeks and let it heal (and eat nachos. I hear eating nachos cures most anything). I have a hard enough time being motivated to work out as it is – trying to be motivated when everything hurts is a tall order. Pulling on a pair of sweatpants in the morning when I’m super stiff and painful is a comedy routine right now. I’m probably going to send myself headfirst into the back of the closet one of these mornings as I try to fling one leg of the pants around an outstretched foot without bending at the waist. I’m sure it’s not a pretty sight.

But I suppose my old Pop Warner coach was right. I’m merely hurt, not injured. Time for some smelling salts and to put on my big boy pants and get back after it. But I will say… this is my first real taste of what old age pain must be like. I can see why older folks are reluctant to move or workout and take large amounts of pain medication. It’s actually scared me a little bit.

I will not let that be my future.