Do you workout ?

[SvennoJ]

I'm slowly trying to workout a bit again. I had to stop since November due to a back injury which I'm still recovering from. It's only been a week since I can get a full night sleep again without the pain waking me up.

The damage is quite a lot. Instead of easily reaching my toes I can now hardly reach my knees, putting on socks is a struggle. I lost almost 5 kg, likely mostly muscle mass since I completely stopped weight lifting. The only thing I still do is 40 pull ups every other day. I used to workout with 60 pound dumbbells. Today I tried push up, side plank exercise, barely made it to 50 instead of 130 reps. Still not bad.

My exercise nowadays consists of long walks, good for my back. I went on a 2 hour walk today through the forest in a snow storm. The weather isn't helping my recovery with temperatures down to -20c. Jogging is still painful, 100 meters a couple times, and just walk.

I have an inversion table at home to help stretch my back, and while hanging upside down I do a couple ab crunches. I don't dare do those yet while laying on the ground, too much pressure on my back. It's hard to get going again. I probably got the injury from weight lifting in the first place, or at least it made it a lot worse by trying to continue to exercise at first. Listen to your body, no pain no gain is bullshit.

Anyway, I'm happy I can function again without pain meds, can sleep again, can sit again for a bit without too much discomfort, driving is getting easier. I could hardly move at Christmas with the maximum dosage of all the pain meds I could take, so best the focus on all the things I can do again instead of all that I still can't and lost. At least walking through the snow is very relaxing, just have to be careful not to slip. I'm glad I live close to a nice forested area around a river, beautiful, only a 20 minute walk from home. No problem getting those 10K steps a day in.