Things were conspiring against my treadmill efforts today. I managed to tweak my left knee somehow, and every 7th or 8th time I stepped down on it, I got this un-nifty shooting pain under the kneecap. Within a few seconds of attempting to jog, my left plantar area also began complaining sharply, and of course my right hip is still out of whack. I’m 37, just in case you were wondering if I’m 80. I can see why you might be confused.
But ALL WAS NOT LOST. I was on the treadmill for about ten minutes before I decided that the pains I was getting were strong enough to try something else, so I moved onto the floor and began doing some light aerobics, which for some reason didn’t hurt. I’d love to know why dancing around the room didn’t hurt, but the treadmill did – I’m sure it’s some kind of alignment issue. When running, I’m facing forward and moving everything along one axis, while the light dancing I was doing was, well, I won’t embarrass myself here, but let’s just say that more than one axis was involved. I got about 20 minutes of exercise in that way, which felt good.
They say exercise makes your brain work more better. HAHA. I’m not sure how true that is, but I did have a flash of inspiration while moving along my many axis: wall charts. I recently bought a large white pad of paper that has post-it glue on one side, allowing you to effortlessly adhere it to the wall. This is great when your six-year-old is an artist, but it also works great when you suddenly realize that having a list of exercises on the wall would be really inspiring:
On the left is a list of muscle groups, and on the right is a list of those groups, with corresponding exercises underneath them. I haven’t finished that list yet, but the idea was to be able to go into my workout/library/ukelele/massage room (I am hugely fortunate to have a large room that I basically get to do whatever I want in), and be able to do few minutes of warm ups, and then pull from the list an exercise for each muscle group. There are 8 groups, so I’ll likely try to do 4 a day, and do workout nearly every day. Keep in mind I’m very out of shape, so I’ll be taking it really easy; “workout” won’t be an hour of hard-core weight lifting or anything.
I’ll let you know how useful this becomes. I’m going to go crack open a few more fitness books and write down more exercises on the wall.
