Meeting the Trainer

After yesterday's class my arm started to go numb in the evening. I was a little worried I had stretched something the wrong way and was really looking forward to going today to get it fixed/out. I have even booked in a massage therapist next week to try and work on it too. All night my arm just felt heavy and sore, and a little bit numb - especially down in the fingertips. This is not something new, but every time it comes on I basically lose the evening because the arm just feels too leaden to use. Of course it's my right arm and I'm right-handed. It happens every once in a while and I have no idea why, but I knew it was the way I stretched yesterday that did it to me last night. It ached all night long, and I woke up with it still feeling achy and weak this morning. I had to take Tylenol and Advil just to be able to sleep. I have this super-duper back massager that I was working up and down my arm in the middle of the night to try and loosen the feeling. It feels like there's a big lump stuck somewhere in my arm that is preventing the blood from flowing where it needs to, so the fingers below it go numb and the rest of the arm feels weak and really, really sore. It totally sucks.

I got an email at some point yesterday letting me know that I was booked in with a personal trainer at 9 am this morning. Maybe he could help me with my weakened arm. So off I went all set to have this be a tour of the machines to help get me started.



Within the first couple of minutes he let me know that they do free orientation sessions and he had me signed up for one tomorrow. Well that takes care of what I wanted, now what do I do for an hour-long personal training session?

It's ok, he already had a game-plan in mind.

We started out looking at the way I move, in particular my hips and shoulders to see if there are any gross imbalances. Surprisingly, I am pretty balanced from one side to the other. I used to drive with one leg propped up on the door while the other stretched out to the pedal and it did some damage in my hip, but I've since corrected that.

Then we moved onto this fancy scale thing that reads your body mass, height, fat content, and whatever else. Apparently you can use it whenever you like - for $35 a pop. I got it free today because it's my first time, I guess.

I learned that I have 39.1% body fat. I don't know what I was expecting. I'm not sure if I'm pleased because I never really put in any solid thought about what percentage of body fat I had. I know now from this thing that 18-28% is the typical range. So I'm only slightly overweight by that measure. I like the BMI reading better, it only has me overweight by 1.9% - except that it's not a very accurate reading because it doesn't take into account muscle mass very well.

So I had been touting that I was going to lose 80 lbs, and then actually did the math and realized it was probably closer to 65 lbs. I weigh just over 200, the idealized image in my head of my post-pregnancy weight was 135 lbs. I'd hit it again briefly after my youngest was born in the months when I was still really active - running, waitressing, swimming. But for the most part I'd sat at 150 until I started having seizures and stopped being a waitress. So even then, the more realistic amount is going to be 50 lbs. Which is good, because according to this thing I only have 77.9 lbs of body fat mass. I guess I can't lose 80 if there's only 78 to start with.
I also have 88 lbs of water in my body. That's cool. That's also probably why my weight can easily fluctuate 10 lbs in a single day. For many people that's a scary big swing, but I'm 6 feet tall and have a lot of muscle mass + skeletal mass. And apparently a lot of water.

So, I have 50 pounds to lose. I don't have a fixed end date, it's more of an ethereal "I want to get in shape" type goal. I've never put a lot of stock into the numbers on a scale. How can I when my colleagues are all "oh my gosh, I'm so heavy, I weigh 100 lbs" and the last time I weighed 100 lbs I was probably 10. It comes with being tall. If I put stock in numbers, I'd be constantly depressed. What's more important is to love you body - in whatever size, shape, capabilities it comes in. My main goal is getting healthier so I can use my body to do the things I want to. The numbers goal is to help me with a perspective.

But if I do hit 135 lbs anyway... well I might get a full leg tattoo. Shhh.. don't tell my husband. He doesn't know yet.



Something like this, except up my full leg and winding around it.

Anyway...

I mentioned my sore shoulders and my numb/weak arms.
So after looking at the scale he had me do some exercises to see about the movements in my shoulders since I said this was somewhere I wanted to focus on. He noted that my shoulders seemed tight. Every physio, every chiropractor, every massage therapist has remarked on how tight my neck and shoulders are. It's probably a big factor in why I get so many headaches (read: migraines).

I feel like we were speaking two different languages for much of the session. He kept saying "do you feel that?" and in my head I'm going "no, not really" for each of the exercises or stretches. It was cute because he was so timid. I had guessed right when I thought they signed up the newbie-trainers for the free sessions. At any point where he wanted to try and manually correct my posture or the placement of my muscles he would be like "is it ok if I touch you back?"
Dude, I used to be a stripper. I really, really don't care if you touch my back. He just seemed so nervous. I thought that after I said yes the first time that would be the end of it, but no, he asked permission every time he wanted to put a hand on me. It was cute at first, then it was like Ok chill, I don't bite... hard. Then he kept saying he was going to dig his forearm into my shoulder to really try and work at the muscles and find the knots, and he kept trying to build me up to it like "I'm really sorry, it's going to feel awful", or "it's really going to hurt" but then trying to assure me it would be good, but really uncomfortable.
I don't think he's ever met anyone with a high pain tolerance.

I was all ready for this highly aggressive, he's going to get right in there and work out the knots and it's going to be painful but wonderful kind of deal. His trying to caution me was really getting me worked up that someone was actually going to know how to work the muscles in my shoulder.

It didn't hurt.
And it didn't get out anything.

Again with the timid. He started off super timid at first, and then dug in a little more when he started to find where a knot was. But there was still a looong way he could've gone before that started to register on the pain scale for me. Too bad. I was looking forward to having someone really work at them. My physio lately has started to get aggressive enough, but for the most part everyone is too afraid of hurting me (or just plain not strong enough) to get enough pressure into the right spots. My shoulder is constantly tight. Both of them really, but it's the right side where the arm goes numb periodically - like it did last night.

So we spoke two different languages for most of the session. I got a couple of useful insights from it, a few exercises to work on, and a general idea of where to go next, but no miracle solutions to anything and no solid game-plan of what I should do to reach my goals. (It was a free one-hour session, what did I expect? - Obviously that's from the sessions you actually pay for).

At least my arm felt a little better.