Tag: avoidance

Nat’s avoiding stretching for all the wrong reasons
Sat with Nat · stretching · yoga

Nat’s avoiding stretching for all the wrong reasons

natalieh (she/her)Leave a comment
Look how happy this person is while they touch their toes!

Comparison as the thief of joy

I know it’s not helpful to compare 52 year old me to younger versions. I do it anyway. I know. I know. I KNOW!

I used to effortlessly touch my toes and wonder what, exactly, was this supposed to be stretching?

I’d sit in Butterfly pose with my feet together, tucked in towards my groin with my thighs flat on the floor. It looked neat but I didn’t feel stretching.

I’m totally jealous of the peaceful look while her elbows are on the floor!

Avoiding being mediocre

Before warming up I gently start a forward bend and my hands make it midway down my shin. Huh. It is uncomfortable. I feel all the muscles and tendons from the base of my skull to the bottoms of my feet resisting.

The tissues protest, sending jolts of discomfort. They eventually let go in fits and starts. It doesn’t feel better when they do, just different. I now understand why touching your toes is a stretch and it’s an effort.

Aversion to discomfort

I’m in a seated forward bend and I’m certain from the outside I don’t look like I’m forward at all.

My hamstrings and calves are rock hard, resisting. I breathe. I get my yoga strap and loop it around my feet. The gentle pressure does help me inch downward. I remember laying my forearms on the floor next to my calves. It seems unlikely I’ll do that.

Abstaining from stretching

Together this has made stretching and yoga something I no longer do regularly. I keep setting little challenges for myself to include stretching in my daily routines and promptly abandoning those plans.

I do feel better afterwards. I really do.

Negative feedback loop

I find stretching uncomfortable, so I do it less. This makes stretching harder, I no longer enjoy it. You get the point.

Tie it to something I always do

Walking Michel and Lucy is something I do at least twice a day. So I’m going to add a small stretch after the walk and see if I can regain some range of motion as well as my joy of being bendy.

I miss my competent, joyful stretching!

advice · fitness · flexibility · injury · stretching

Christine Learns The Same Lesson…Again.

Christine Hennebury6 Comments

I was at my chiropractor last week about a problem I’m having with my heels.

I already had a working theory that my sore heels were a result of overly tight calves (I was half right) so I had been doing all kinds of different calf stretches to try and find some relief.

One of the most useful sets of stretches I found was in this short yoga video.

Her exercises helped my calves…and my heels, at least temporarily, but there was one problem.

I really hate that ‘front fold with your fingers tucked under your toes’ stretch.

I mean, I HATE IT.

I know, I know! Why don’t I tell you how I really feel.

Let’s see if this helps clarify things:

Image description: A GIF of Sophia Petrillo, an elderly character from the show Golden Girls, raises ​and lowers her hand as she vehemently says ‘I hate that!’
Image description: A GIF of Sophia Petrillo, an elderly character from the show Golden Girls, raises and lowers her hand as she vehemently says ‘I hate that!’

I forced myself to do it though because the rest of the video was so helpful (I was wary of the bouncing but I didn’t hate it) but I found myself dreading it and putting it off, and even the promised relief for my heels didn’t help.

So, anyway, I’m mentioning all of this to Ken, my chiropractor (and my cousin!) and he, clever soul that he is, sensibly said ‘You won’t stick with a stretch you hate, do something else instead.’

Glerg.

Of course!

How many times do I have to learn this lesson?

How often will I have to be reminded that the best exercise is the one I’ll do?

Why can’t I remember that hating an exercise can be a good reason not to do it?

Now, I get that sometimes there are exercises that must be done in order to heal specific things and how much you hate it may not be a factor in that case.

But, for me, it keeps happening for exercises that can easily be switched out for something else.

I need to start letting ‘I hate it!’ be a signal to find an equivalent exercises that I like instead of a signal to dig in my heels and (try to) force myself to keep doing something that feels awful.

(Besides, digging in my heels is definitely not going to help right now. 😉 )

Do you have exercise lessons that you have to learn again and again?

Please tell me that I’m not the only one!