You must do the things you think you cannot do.
~
Eleanor Roosevelt

Friday, February 04, 2011

Field Trip to Physical Therapy

Ella and Shane have the galloping crud so they're quarantined until further notice. I hate to leave Jake with all 3 little ones if I can help it so I took Hank with me to PT yesterday. To keep him entertained I let him take pictures using Jake's camera (with Jake's permission of course).

It's always interesting to see what captures the eye of an 8 year old and I ended up deleting a lot of pictures of butts. He wasn't supposed to take pictures of other people...that bothersome HIPPA and confidentiality... so I would have deleted them anyway, but it cracked me up.

Waiting our turn

We did some different things which was fun. I side stepped with a thera-band on my ankles for what felt like forever... I hoped thought my glutes were going to fall off. And then I got to march in place on the mini tramp.


Doing my part to embarrass my kids daily

Then he let me hop on the treadmill. Walk for 1 minute, jog (12 m/m) for 1 minute and then walk again for another minute. While jogging I had to support my weight on the arm rails. I somehow missed the memo that I wasn't supposed to be running at home. whoopsie!


Not that I'm logging killer mileage at high speeds because I'm not - 4.75 miles last week and 2.75 this week. And I didn't even run all of that. I walked .25 and jogged .5 (12 m/m). It didn't hurt a lot while I ran and only ached afterwards (no sharp pain) so I'm going with the 'no blood, no foul' rule here. Though I won't run again until I get the green light.

Stretching my very UNstretchy hamstrings

Did lots and lots and lots of stretches. You'd think I could touch my toes by now but no.


Then he had me balance on my right foot, tap back onto my left and then quickly back on to my right foot. The idea was for me to land on my whole right foot at once and not just on the ball - which is where I landed almost every time. Then he had me do the same thing except I tapped onto my left foot sideways instead of backwards. For whatever reason it was easier to land on my whole foot this way. And it further confirmed that my balance stinks. I think the other patients must have enjoyed watching the weird lady with the funny little skirt wobbling like a Weeble while the 8 y/o laughed hysterically taking pictures (all of which were really blurry otherwise I would have shared them. promise)

Fun with a thera-band

We did some leaning starts - I don't know what else to call them. Stand with a neutral pelvis and lean your entire body (still straight) forward until you have to run to keep from falling. I pretty much stunk at this and would lean and then stomp my foot out to catch me instead of just falling into a run. Since that move is a basic of Chi running I guess I should practice it.

Something about the way I did this made him wonder aloud if my core is as squishy as it looks. So he had me sit on the very edge of the table, hold onto the edge and lean back a little. Then I slowly brought my knees up and down. After about a 1,000 of these (ok, maybe not that many) he decided my core was actually pretty strong.

So I did some more stretches; he printed more homework exercises for me and we were on our way.  I actually worked up a sweat which felt really good. One step closer to being stronger and ready to really run!

2 comments:

Teamarcia said...

How hilarious you came back with a bunch of butt pics!!
So the theraband ankle stretch is done lying down? I'll def have to try. Thanks for sharing!

*~*~* Tracy said...

I tried not to laugh too much when I saw them but yea it was very funny!

I was sitting up for the ankle stretch. Though looking at the picture it does give the impression that I'm lying down. Hank must have been at a weird angle when he took the picture...maybe he was really aiming for someone's butt??

In the next few days I'm posting pictures of the pictures he has given me with explanations. I think lower legs is scheduled to post on Monday.

LinkWithin

Related Posts with Thumbnails