Drums again... and a killer headache

I knew my muscles were going to hurt yesterday. I could feel it after getting my butt kicked in Yoga Tune Up in the morning. I thought for sure I would wake up in the night because my arm had gone numb. I even had my husband rub in some of the Blue Ice gel into my back (definitely the shoulders) and the calf on one leg where I could feel the muscles aching already. Nope, I was good. Instead, I woke up in the night around 4 am with a killer headache. Like, I-want-to-throw-up killer headache. I stumbled downstairs to grab some Tylenol, crawled my way back upstairs and debated crawling into the shower. Sometimes if I turn on the faster shower head and sit on the floor with it pelting down on my head it can help with headaches. I don't like doing it often because it's a colossal waste of water, but there are just some days where crawling back into bed until it goes away is not an option. I decided against the shower and lay on the floor instead. The kitten decided I needed a friend to cuddle, so he got up on my lap and snuggled in - this cat is afraid of everything, including humans unless they are sitting down. Surprisingly, he was not the one afraid of the thunderstorm earlier in the evening - it was his brother. There was an intense thunderstorm just after dinner. Water pelted down, the wind was blowing so hard you could see the rain moving sideways in near-waves across the dark sky. There was lightning flashes that lit up the sky and were so intensely bright. It was phenomenal to watch. And of course there was the accompanying thunderous booms coming one after the other. He chilled out on a blanket, looking placidly around, while his brother tried to press himself into the floor and hide under things. He was doing mini kitty yoga poses.


At some point I moved back into the bed and passed back out. I woke up with the headache still there at 8 am, and still wanting to throw up every time I moved. My class for the day - this combo aerobics & light weights which I thought would be awesome for toning my muscles and improving my cardio - was slated to start in a little over an hour. I wallowed in bed, torn between wanting to go to the class and not break my streak, and knowing it would not be a good idea with my head in its current state. Part of me also kind of wanted to give up and just let it go for the day.

I am the type of person who goes to both extremes - when I want something, I will push myself further than maybe I should. But I am also the person who easily gives up when I only half-heartedly want it in the first place. (i.e. what happens when I typically decide I "want" to start running again to get in shape. I don't actually enjoy running, I realize it's good for my overall health and probably something I should do, and I typically feel good afterwards, so I kind of want to, but not wholly.) I was torn. I wanted to crawl back into bed, I wanted to go to the gym, and I knew I had a tonne of work to do. I'm almost finished my upgrading course for teaching, it finishes on Friday and we leave for our trip on Thursday, so I wanted to have it done before I left. I haven't even started this week's unit... Procrastinators R Us - this blog half stems from me procrastinating. Some of my best written work comes from when I have something else I'm supposed to be doing - like writing papers for classes all through my 7 years of University, or marking students' work. I also get more cleaning around the house done when I have something else I'm supposed to be doing.

It was my husband who tipped the scales. He took one look at my face and knew, told me I should go back to bed and sleep it off. Sold. But first, to assuage my conscience; I looked at the schedule to see if there were any other classes I might want to do later in the day. My goodness, what was I worried about? There's a 10:30 class I like, and a 12 pm one I want to try, and another round of that Drums class that kicked my butt so thoroughly at 7 pm. Definitely sold.
It took me another 2 hours of rest and a second shower for the morning to finally kick my headache enough to function. Falling even further behind on my course....

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I also had a massage therapy session scheduled in for this afternoon (more time spent not working). And dinner plans with my parents that evening (even more time spent not working). I am really good at procrastinating.
I haven't been to massage therapy in probably over a year, ever since my go-to therapist took a job with the government and gave up her private practice. *tear*

I'd been to a few massage therapists before I found the therapist who retired and it seems to me they were either all too weak (i.e. couldn't get the strength to dig into my muscles enough), or they insisted on doing their "I want to try this" crap that didn't work on what I wanted. Like I had one who insisted on doing acupuncture and cupping to work the fascial tissue. I need deep muscle work to unlock all the tight muscles. I am not overly strong, but my back feels like a brick wall in many places because of the tightness of the muscles, my shoulders too. Luckily, I also have a very high pain tolerance, so I need someone who can really dig in. Like with the personal trainer the other day who was lightly working my shoulder muscles. He quite possibly thought he was working his hardest (or what he thought was hard enough for a woman) but I barely felt it for the most part.
So, needless to say, I had been very hesitant to go looking for a new massage therapist. At $100 to find out it's more of a relaxation massage I'm not super into "trying it out" with a few different people. (yes, I have insurance so it's not that bad). Someone else who liked brutally rough massages had recommended this girl, so I decided to give it a try. Bonus points because she doesn't like to talk the entire time.

At first, she started lightly rubbing down my back with oil and all I could think was "oh crap, I've signed up for another relaxation massage". And then she started digging in with her elbow along my spine.

Sweet Jesus it hurt.

But that's good. You know how you can sort of tell when the pain is doing damage and when it's doing good? This hurt like hell, but it was doing good. She even took a look at what I can only describe as a "bruise" on my spine. It's not really a bruise, but it's a tender spot that feels like a bruise. You know when you push on one and it feels extra sensitive and the skin feels somewhat softer/weaker? That's what this felt like. It really bothered me in the mornings, and made it harder to get out of bed or harder to sit up from lying on my back (just great for all my yoga classes). One movement would send fire radiating up across my back, while another similar one would have no reaction. Like lying on a rounded roller didn't hurt at all, but arching my back was agony. It almost felt like I'd slipped a disc and needed to get it back in place, but I couldn't fit exactly where it was to try and work it back in. (I would've booked in with a chiro if I'd found a spot). My husband didn't notice anything anytime I asked him to take a look, but he was able to notice it felt like a bruise last night when I asked him again. Between my spine and my constantly sore shoulders, plus the numbing in my hands and feet at various intervals (don't forget the headaches!), I was starting to worry these were early stages of fibromyalgia and worried about a coming life-time of pain. I'm only 34. My spine has been bothering me for the past month and a half. About the time we got the foam mattress topper. You know, the spongy ones that are about 6 inches thick and are supposed to relieve pressure when you sleep on them. I think they're meant for side-sleepers though, to help keep your hips & shoulders aligned, but I'm a back-sleeper. My physio couldn't find any real injury and said the spine problem was just from poor posture while sitting. I don't have great posture; I do sit a lot; but I haven't done anything to modify how I sit in the last two months. Not fully buying it. I tried taking the mattress topper off for a week and a bit. For the first day or two I noticed a slight improvement, but then it went right back to the same pain, so I put it back on the bed (after I caught the kittens trying to shred/eat it). I have deeper and more refreshing sleeps with it on the bed anyway.

So she took a look at my spine as well. The muscles were incredibly tight along my spine (as I learned the hard way at the mercy of her elbow). She worked on them, and pushed on the bones a bit to try and move the joints a bit (to loosen them). The muscles were so tight it was most likely holding the joints in an uncomfortable position, which was causing the pain. It might take a day or two, but we worked them a whole lot, and hopefully they should be able to release their grip a bit so my joints can relax back into normalcy. See, I need to build up muscles in the right spots and keep doing things like Tune Up classes so stuff like this stops happening to me on a regular basis. I am constantly in some kind of muscular or joint pain in one area or another. I can't remember a day where something didn't hurt, often several things at once. The massage was an hour of intense pain, but felt really good. I walked out of the room feeling like I was going to lose my balance and my eyes were crossing. And it's on the second floor of the building. Crap. More stairs.



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I went to the Drums class again. Different instructor this time around. It's amazing what a difference an instructor can make to how a class can be run. I'm no expert at anything to do with fitness, but I did not enjoy this class nearly as much as the last one. It was still good, and I still got a decent workout in, but it wasn't great. I didn't leave there feeling ready to come back next week. The choreography was too complicated - I spent half the time trying to figure out what I was supposed to be doing and didn't get the same level of workout. Looking at my Fitbit, I stayed the entire class, but only got 44 minutes worth of workout, and burned 351 calories. Saturday's class I left 15 minutes early, got 41 minutes and burned 372 calories. The moves didn't wholly go with the beat of the song, so there was less room for "going with the beat" and catching up, she used outdated music so it was hard to know when it would switch to chorus or verse or whatever which made it harder to keep up with movement changes, she didn't have a very loud voice so unless you were staring right at her you didn't know what was going to happen next. For someone as wonderfully coordinated as me, I can't be looking at my own feet to figure out what I'm doing, and the tiny instructor at the front of the room at the same time. The songs on the second half of the class were a little more repetitive and so a little easier to predict what was coming next. I definitely got more out of the second half than the first half. She had said "it's ok to get frustrated, it takes 2-3 classes to get used to how it works" but I felt like I had it down pretty good for the first class and this one was a little more complicated, but unnecessarily so. I almost got smoked in the face at least twice, and the lady beside me kept bashing into my drumsticks. I moved my ball further away from her (on the pretense that I needed to get closer to the woman on the other side who actually was too far away) and I swear when I left to refill my water bottle she moved my station back closer to her. Maybe I was just in a bad mood, but it wasn't nearly as good as the first Drums class. Still good, and I'd do Drums again.

My legs feel like they are still recovering from yesterday's Tune Up class. My thighs have that dull achy feeling when they got a good workout the day before. I'm sure that'll be magnified after today's workout. We did lots of squats again and lots of bouncing around. I was rockin' it for the second half.

Did I mention that I learned this past week that I've been doing squats wrong my whole life? (not that I've been doing them all that much ever). My perception of them was that you were supposed to keep your knees over your heels and sink down towards your heels - in this posture you can never really get down below the level of your knees. It's also much harder to do. I learned you are actually supposed to widen your stance and let your knees fall to the sides so that your butt can go down low enough to nearly be on level with your heels. It's more of a crouch. The hard part that works your muscles is not in getting down (such as it is in the version I was doing) it's in getting yourself back up. Squats are not supposed to be massively challenging because you're fighting against the natural inclination of your body, they are supposed to be challenging in the way they work your leg muscles (quads? is that it?). So cool. I also learned that when you can learn to hold a plank for two minutes, there is no point in continuing to learn to hold it for longer. You need to find another way to work your abdominal muscles. You should continue to maintain being able to hold it for 2 minutes, but learning how to hold for 10 minutes or some other length of time is pointless. Also really cool. I've never been a big fan of planks because again, arms can't really support body weight, but I wouldn't mind eventually being able to hold that 2-minute plank. Distant goals...