ouch!

Day 1 and my body is sore, sore, sore!

The beginning went well. The clinic has expanded, and the basement now holds a good sized waiting room with two changing rooms, a washroom and the physiotherapists' kitchen and venting (no doubt) space. All the women I knew have left and been replaced, and one fellow also, with only two familiar guys remaining.  Paperwork, payment, then measurements.

New stuff there too. A brand new machine for measuring my back's topography as well as various other measurements that I sort of understand, but not really. Coronal imbalance? Surface rotation? Frontal projection?  Pelvic Obliquity? Blue dots, green and purple squiggles, yellow lines. The numbers did not seem to connect with the numbers taken with the previous system, so I was unable to compare then to now. I got basic explanations, but I've forgotten them already. I think I might have to have a conversation with Mr. Google when I get home.

But the main thing is that things did not really get worse, even after a year and a half of mixed adherence to my exercise program! There was only one measurement of minor concern, my hip was shifted more to the right than it should be. Pretty good considering. I was also praised for my general physical condition, especially for my core strength (thank you pilates!), although my lung functions were noticeably less than stellar.  I was fighting a bit of a cough, so I was not terribly surprised.  Every time I blew hard into the tube, I would get so much air out and then fall into a coughing fit. 

But all things considered, it was good news.

I was sent up to join the class for awhile, which was in its 2nd of 4 weeks, and was almost entirely made up of teens.  There were 4 adults in a class of 12, including me. It seems that this is not uncommon in December, with holidays approaching and so less time taken off school for the little darlings.  We talked about an exercise they had just learned, the weird one with all the props, and thankfully one I hadn't had on my menu plan. I was reminded all over again about how to set up and then got into it, following along at everyone else's speed.

Then it got hard.  I was given a list of specific exercises and stretches, and pushed along to work through them as the others were still learning most of them.  Every once in a while, I was given an extra element to add, to make it more challenging.  I did extra sets.  And the hours ticked along. 

After lunch I had my one on one time with the head guy, who is very good, but not at all lenient to a woman of a certain age such as me.  In between exercises he would do some deep tissue massage. 

If you hit on the word "massage" and thought I was having a lovely time there relaxing, you hit on the wrong word. "deep" is more what is was like and "tissue" was what I needed to wipe the tears of pain away.  I kid you not!  I have a pretty high pain threshold too, but my goodness, some of those muscles were just screaming with anger.  Obviously they were way more tight than I thought they were, and sometimes it was so much I would bark out a laugh and shift out of the way to get some relief from the ridiculousness of it. 

The one week boot camp is an hour longer each day than the usual course, so I had 8 solid hours a day, with an hour for lunch in between.  By the end of the day I was sore and it felt like all the bones had been removed from my body.  I trudged off to my friend's house, who was kindly letting me stay, and we polished off a bottle of rioja while describing our daylight hours. That helped, but a deep, hot bath, a firm bed and two ibuprophen would help even more.