30 Day Summer Shape Up, Day 13

It should be noted at this point that I do some sort of aerobic/cardiovascular exercise every day, whether I mention it in my post or not.  I try not to blog about just that to avoid redundancy.  What I find interesting about this is that when I started, everyone I knew was telling me, "Be careful, don't overdo it."  Really?  Because at this point I'm feeling better than I have for a while, and now when parts of me hurt, it's muscles I'm dusting off after a long period of inactivity - the "good" kind of hurt.  When I'm feeling it too much, I give those muscles a rest until they're feeling better.

I decided that since I've been able to manage two straight weeks of cardio for the first half of the challenge without hurting myself, what I'd like to focus on for the second half in addition to my daily calorie burning workout is some kind of strength training exercise every day.  Today I decided to focus on the area that has the greatest impact on my overall condition, my abs.  This morning's search yielded this result from WebMD.  What I like the most about doing this particular sort of research is that I'm seeing and reading about a lot of the same things my doctors and my physical therapist have told me about, which makes me believe I'm on the right path.

One thing I noticed from this article is that it's the first place I've seen ab exercises on the net that mention keeping your stomach muscles tight while doing them.  I do this anyway.  And I'm really surprised to only just now be seeing this after the many, many web pages I've visited since the thing I remember the most about post-surgery rehab is my physical therapist drilling the words "engage your core" into my head whenever she showed me an exercise.  What you do with your stomach muscles when you're doing... well, any exercise really, is hugely important if you care about how they're going to look as they develop.  It's kind of the same principle as when my ballet teachers used to constantly tell me to pull my stomach in, even when I wasn't in class.  If you hold your muscles in that manner all the time they train themselves to stay that way.  So when people bear down and push out their bellies on an exertion, their muscles will get stronger, but they will protrude.  I wouldn't want to get stuck with that, would you?

Back to the article, I was relieved to hear I never have to do toe touches, sit ups or double leg lifts again as any of these would exacerbate my condition.  I'm well familiar with the hamstring stretch and knee to chest stretch, since before the surgery I couldn't get out of bed in the morning without doing them.  I modified the wall sit with my fitness ball.  That just works out better for me and I don't believe it makes the exercise any less effective.  Overall, I thought it was a great article, especially if you have a situation similar to mine.