About 10 years ago I was building a practice in Edgewood. It was my first time really paying attention to the demographics of who I was treating and what trends I might be seeing in referrals. I recall one of the twenty-something Rehab Aides remarking, "so pretty much I should assume that when I'm 52 I'll have a shoulder problem"?
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Here is Beth (I'd love to go on and on about Beth's age, her ranking as a competitive US squash player and her rocking workout program...but she doesn't love me doing that) - so again, here she is offering some ideas about adding jumping rope to your home program. If you don't have a rope it is important to the workout to involve your arms with some resistance. The rolled towels she substitutes work well and swing the rope forward as well as backward to emphasize the shoulder blade muscles critical in (everything) jumping. The rope should be fit for your leg length, please reach out in the comments section if you want those details. Start with short intervals as Beth directs and expand as you would any high intensity interval until you have more tolerance in your quadriceps and calves.
Some background on Beth and The EngineHouse 16 follows.  I’m a little fascinated by the design of the microscopic coronavirus and have looked at tons of images of it. One of the more beautiful images is on a preceding post courtesy of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. Admiring the virus, however is a bit like the fascinating yet psychopathic character Villanelle on the BBC show Killing Eve. The crown of proteins that are so cool to look at turn out to be exactly the destructive pieces that destroy critical cells in the deepest portion of the lung and cause a cascade that can kill.
Hopefully this will be part of an ongoing series focusing on home exercises often done incorrectly. I've solicited help from my EngineHouse16 partner,
Beth Fedorowich, the owner of Fitness Essentials personal training. In this video we are going to focus on alternating arm and leg raises and the plank and common plank progressions.  A couple of mornings ago my partner remarked during breakfast “that was the most restful night of non-sleep I’ve had in a while”. Neither of us have been sleeping well for awhile, compounded by the anxieties and fears related to coronavirus. I asked her how that happened and she said
“I just kind of gave in to it I guess”. And it turns out that seemingly effortless act is the key to better quality rest during these strange new days. The persistence of sleeplessness had caused me to try to be funny about it with some friends parodying my end of the day routine starting with the dramatic announcement of “I’m going up” at the end of the evening through the routine of preparing for bed and the part about lying down for the first of many times with pillows just right and my book, beginning the charade of “trying to fall asleep”. In the coronavirus era of being told to ‘get lots of sleep now’ and ‘keep to your usual sleep wake times’ it was pretty funny and it seems everyone is having trouble sleeping right now. Yikes. There are many reasons of course. And during sleeplessness it’s hard not to revisit previous conversations, actions and behaviors, anticipate subsequent events and ruminate on “what ifs” and generally try to fill in the gaps between those thoughts with proactive “to do and to care for” items and people. This is definitely not good. Even in my sleeplessness I feel unworthy because I am not getting up and being productive as we are being urged to be. None of this helps sleep so we all continue in this cycle of wakefulness. But then while mindlessly scrolling through social media I came across a shared post on my niece Julia’s page. It was from a trauma psychologist acquaintance who lives in Beirut, Lebanon, Dr. Alaa Hijazi. Dr. Hijazi was talking about taking care of ourselves during this worldwide time of sheltering, reduced human contact and presumed productivity. “I thought I was spared the horrid "motivational" phrase going around now "If you don't come out of this with a new skill, you never lacked time, you lacked discipline" until I saw it on my local yoga studio page. As a trauma psychologist, I am utterly… horrified, enraged, and bewildered about how people can believe and spread this phrase in good conscience. We are going through a collective trauma, that is bringing up profound grief, loss, panic over livelihoods, panic over loss of lives of loved ones. People's nervous systems are barely coping with the sense of threat and vigilance for safety, or alternating with feeling numb and frozen and shutting down in response to it all. People are trying to survive poverty, fear, retriggering of trauma, retriggering of other mental health difficulties. Yet, someone has the nerve to accuse someone of lack of discipline for not learning a new skill, and by a yoga teacher! This cultural obsession with [capitalistic] "productivity" and always spending time in a "productive" "fruitful" way is absolutely maddening. What we need is more self compassion, more gentle acceptance of all the difficult emotions coming up for us now, more focus on gentle ways to soothe ourselves and our pain and the pain of loved ones around us, not a whipping by some random fucker making us feel worse about ourselves in the name of "motivation". |
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