Sweat, Pain, and The Morning Hobble

I went to the gym a few times about a month after surgery and it was truly agony. I just felt like I had no energy, eventhough I had been given the all-clear by the surgeon and told that the anesthesia fog and surgical fatigue should have been wearing off. I admit that I kind of gave up on the idea of exercising in any structured fashion for a while after that.

That is, until this week. This week I realized that if I want to keep this weight loss going (and not end up a weakling in the process from the musscle loss associated with quick weight loss), I would need to get up off my rear end end get moving. It helps that I'm starting to feel like a normal human being as far as energy and enthusiasm. I went to the gym on Saturday and Sunday with the wife and did 20 minutes each day on both the treadmill (or the dreadmill as a friend of mine likes to call it) and the recumbent stationary bike. That was a pretty good start, but I definitely noticed a difference in my energy level and my muscle strength on the second day so I decided to take a day off to recover. No big deal, right? Just a little tired...been a while since I exercised regularly....I'll bounce back in a day or so and then return to the gym to make my 2 day trend into a Life Long Habit. (Why no, I don't set huge goals for myself, why do you ask?)

Then Monday rolled around and I quickly realized that my normal hop out of bed and shuffle to the coffee pot was going to be more like a Morning Hobble. I. Was. Stiff. And sore. What did I forget guys and gals? Yes! I forgot to stretch. Yowch. Sweet fancy Moses, my legs hurt! Mostly in the adductor muscles (the outside of the hip/top of the thigh) and my knees, but with a fair amount of soreness scattered everywhere else, too. So, taking the day off turned out to be a good plan and I gently stretched a few times throughout the day and felt better able to fathom the idea of returning to the gym yesterday, which I did with a bang. I did 40 minutes of combined treadmill and bike again, but added in a lower body strength training workout. Today I trundled on in there again and did the same cardio, but this time a complete upper body strength training work out. I really busted by  tail today, I tell you. I alternated 10-15 minutes cardio with 2-3 strength training exercises and I was at the gym for about 90 minutes all told. I left there tired all over and very sweaty. Like-please-get-me-to-a-hot-shower-ASAP sweaty. (Yick.)

...and now I'm realizing that even with the stretching I've been doing this evening, that the odds of The Morning Hobble returning tomorrow are very high. Very high. And I'm back at the gym for another leg workout tomorrow. It's ok, though, since I'll be taking Friday and maybe Saturday off. And not just off, I mean couch potato off. I need to exercise my movie watching muscles at least some of the time, right? ;-)