[movement] quick note

[kaberett]

I was in London last week and over the weekend for a hot date with the mass spec; on Monday, I managed to sneak in a trip to the gym, for the first time since... early December. (I'd hoped to manage a mid-December trip too, but then I broke my foot and was supposed to be Avoiding Weight-Bearing Exercise, grump grump.)

So that was... eleven weeks of not-gym, and in a fit of recklessness instead of doing the sensible thing and backing off a lot I... went in and did exactly what I did twelve weeks ago. Or thereabouts.

And I... appear to have got away with it, for the most part?

I'd clearly lost some strength and familiarity -- I couldn't read while I was doing the resistance work because it was now close enough to my limits that I needed to be paying attention throughout every movement in order to minimise the risks of fucking my knee up, e.g., and I was also moving faster through the reps in order to get them in rather than being able to sustain doing them slowly -- but I still... did all the things? My bad knee was still noticeably warm to the touch yesterday, but it wasn't actually hurting and it's now calmed all the way down (i.e. took less than a week to do so, i.e. is within acceptable parameters).

So hurrah for that, and now I just have to try to resist the temptation to Just Push Myself A Bit Harder more generally...

Comments

[alexwlchan]

“I... went in and did exactly what I did twelve weeks ago”

I think I’ve understood, but just put my mind at rest: you have not broken your foot again, right? (Which was my initial reading of that sentence.)

[kaberett]

I HAVE NOT BROKEN MY FOOT AGAIN (as far as I know) (and I'm now lying down in bed so... unlikely... to do so again at least until after I've slept)

[alexwlchan]

I look forward to reading tomorrow’s entry explaining how you broke your foot while asleep, but sleep walking to get up and go make pasta or something. /s

[kaberett]

>:(

(I didn't!)

[alatefeline]

I’m glad you are okay. 💜

[kaberett]

<3

[ewt]

Hurrah!

I am not at all surprised by this, for reasons I am happy to explain if you like (basically, musician stuff), but it is still heartening.

[kaberett]

I am aware that a lot of the initial gains are in "learning how to use the muscles like that at all" rather than in strength per se -- is that the thing? (i.e. please go on!)

But also I'm aware of how fucked up this particular knee is and what my usual deconditioning looks like on it, so "only" getting to the point where doing-the-same-stuff puts me right-on-the-edge-of-acceptable over the course of three months is genuinely kind of impressive to me even if I did do a lot of balance work fairly consistently in the middle :-p

(PS I... am a parody of myself and eBay has two pairs of Felco 2s "for parts/spares" for under fifteen quid; obviously I've put in a bid because I reckon I can restore them both with, at most, an additional spend of £13 for one replacement blade -- so... how are you sorted for secateurs? :-p)

[ewt]

I have 1x Fiskars bypass secateurs in Leytonstone, which is two less than needed if all three of us try to garden at once, but usually it's only two of us at once. I should probably clean/sharpen/etc them at some point but am not sure how.

I have 2 pairs in Enfield courtesy of TK Maxx: one bypass, the other the other type I can't words the name of right now. I think this is probably sufficient for there. One brand is Draper and the other had some kind of hescher from Kew Gardens on.

So I think that means I would be up for buying up to one pair of secateurs off you if they are going. (I like to err on the side of too many tools, especially when they are smol and relatively inexpensive).

[kaberett]

I would be delighted to help with cleaning-and-sharpening! Back for realsies on Wednesday; could perfectly well do them when you're drying at some point thereafter? :-) (bearing in mind that you're about to vanish for a bit...)

[ewt]

I think what this looks like is I bring one set of new secateurs to Leytonstone and bring the Fiskars ones to Enfield, like some kind of corn/fox/duck puzzle ensuring that No Household Is Without Secateurs. (I am already feeling vindicated, here, about having three pairs.)

[kaberett]

:D

(I did not end up winning the Felco-that-need-renovation but I am fine with that. I might well continue keeping an eye out, though...)

[ewt]

Yes, "learning how to do those movements" is a big part of it, and basically why, once you have trained the movements, you can lose a fair amount of strength and still basically be able to do the movements after a long break.

I think this is especially true if you have been doing enough maintenance work (maybe balance stuff is this for you) and enough adapting of daily life to your needs (wheelchair use definitely counts; for me, splinting as soon as I get tired is relevant here, and something I would like to get better at, I have a tendency to run out of wrists or elbows while away from home and I don't want to carry splints I'm not using because carrying too much is one of the failure modes for me) to prevent doing actively harmful movements instead (the kind of thing that will work at the time, because of a series of load-bearing errors, but leads to agony/inflammation/etc later in the week). Um, you can probably tell here that I have zero formal physiology education. If we say that deconditioning is muscle weakness in muscles that control safe movement, and malconditioning is when the muscles that do harmful movements are stronger than the ones that control safe movements, then I think my general point is that deconditioning plus malconditioning is going to be worse than deconditioning alone; but after a point, deconditioning will very often lead to malconditioning. Only it might actually be specific muscle fibres, or muscle strength in certain positions, or what have you.

But once you have trained movements that are safe and good, and increase strength on those movements enough to make them easier than harmful ones... yeah. Removing the "doing movements that are subtly or overtly harmful" factor means it's possible to lose a lot more strength before ending up in trouble.

What many people think of as deconditioning isn't only muscle weakness, it's also repeated re-injury through not having enough strength or training to do everyday things without injury; but because the things are "everyday things" that don't routinely cause soft tissue injury in mesomobile or other typical-bodied people, the best most medics will do is go "hmm, that does look/feel inflamed" and prescribe anti-inflammatories or painkillers so the patient can continue re-injuring themselves. (Which isn't to say that painkillers and anti-inflammatory drugs aren't a useful and beneficial treatment modality, it's just... if pain is the only thing that gets treated, there will be diminishing returns.) And of course this all gets more complicated for people with pre-existing Fatigue Stuff.

The impressive bit, to me, is knowing where your edges are well enough to go "OK, I can still do this but probably have to concentrate and not go quite as slowly".

[kaberett]

<3

I'm used to backsliding pretty rapidly when I'm not practising the thing regularly (it's... I was at one point at "3x45s one-legged balance each side, eyes closed", and I'm now managing 15s at most with my eyes shut so, yes, being able to judge this thing Sufficiently Accurately is Interesting.

But yes this all makes sense!

[oracne]

Hooray for exercise!

[kaberett]

yup!