Whee! I’m finally cleared to go back to the gym for the first time in about six months. My back’s okay, my toe has healed up, and my knee is at a point where workouts are encouraged to strengthen it. So I called up my trainer and booked 20 sessions.
I haven’t lost as much ground as I had been afraid I would; Elizabeth, my trainer, told me it’s much easier to regain lost ground than to build up the muscles in the first place.
The coolest thing is the whole chest business. There came a point, about a year into my workouts, when I suddenly felt my chest engaging when I did bench presses. It was very odd; I had thought it was working before, but apparently not. According to E., it takes a while for the body to learn to do that instead of relying on the arms and back. And the cool part was that my body remembered that when I got onto the bench.
I also was able to bench-press the 45-pound bar plus two 10-pound plates first time out. I had last gotten up to the 35-pound plates, so it was pretty great to see I hadn’t deteriorated back to square one. I think it had taken me six months to get to the bar alone.
The only real drawback is that E. is leaving the gym in a few months, having had it with being a trainer. But we’re going to work out some kind of “workout buddy” arrangement to continue, where we train together on the weekends and I’m on my own during the week. I may also take the money I save from not buying training sessions and start going to a yoga studio as well to increase my flexibility. Because one of the things that doomed my knee was tight, very tight, super tight IT bands and calves.
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