Physical Training

So, I went in for my first real physical therapy appointment aka I "hit the gym with my personal trainer". You may remember we were focusing on my upper back muscles. It was all about contracting those shoulder blades. I assumed an upper body work out would be a cake walk. Have I mentioned that I'm wrong a lot? Hard is light years away from what this was.

I started off on the hand bike (which is exactly what it sounds like). He set it for 10min at a resistance level of 2. In my head I was scoffing at his lack of faith. I actually contemplated asking him to bump the resistance level up a bit. I mean come on, a two?!? I'm Miss Upper Body, arms are kind of my thing. I kept quiet though. I was to pedal forward five minutes and backwards five. I was to focus on "pulling rather than pushing." No problem, I imagined a stubborn child pulling against me toward a parking lot. My PT wonders off at that point to do who-knows-what and I notice the horrible music playing for the first time. No distraction or motivation from that crap. The first five minutes got rough around minute three. I thought reversing my direction would be easier. Not sure why I thought that, uphill/downhill? Wrong a lot. I was fatigued when the timer went off and that was only the warm up!

Then we go over to a mat and he proceeds to teach me the exercises above. They don't look like much, but let me just say, "Holy Crap!" I was down right ashamed. My PT had two things to say about that: First, the more developed you are in the front, the harder it is to build the muscles in the back. Second, the PT had a professional body builder (with extremely developed pecs and such) who was unable to lift his arms at all during the first exercise. He claims the man was so embarrassed he never returned. I don't know if the body builder thing was true, but it made me feel a little better. It's amazing how entangled your sense of self can get with your physical attributes.

It wasn't all discouraging he did remark that there was definite improvement from my evaluation to this appointment. He said it with a sense of genuine surprise. His surprise, surprised me. I explained that he told me to squeeze my shoulder blades together as many times as I could each day until I came back, so I did. Cutting coupons, squeeze my shoulder blades. Folding laundry, squeeze my shoulder blades. Sitting at a red light, squeeze my shoulder blades. At any point when it occurs to me I squeeze my shoulder blades. I also reported a slight decrease in pain. Again he seemed stunned and said he was glad. I guess most people don't go home and follow instructions. Gold star, me.

I was completely...I don't know what I was. I was angry, frustrated, annoyed, a little bit relieved and really freaking tired. I felt like it was a total waste of time and money if all we're going to do are a handful of exercise I can do at home by myself (unlike my lower body PT stuff). I felt weak and frustrated by how difficult it all was. I was certainly relieved that I knew the cause of the problem and how do something about it. I guess sexy back muscles and perky boobs are a plus too.