My Journey With Health And Fitness – Realizing My Limitations

Over the past week I have really kicked things up a notch. Last week I did a fair amount of walking, at least 16km each day. My goal was to do the same this week but all of a sudden on Tuesday by time I was done walking for the day I was just short of 30k steps and 20km. I decided to do a few minutes on the treadmill and lo and behold I had hit those numbers. I felt pretty good about that so yesterday I thought hey, why not do it again. The end result was 31k+ and 21km. Now I am determined that for the next 3 days I keep that up and I am confident that I can do it.

This week I will be taking an early morning class at the gym 6 days (the Sunday class doesn’t challenge me enough). Each class I go to I try and push myself just a little more. Even things that are out of my comfort zone I am trying to make myself do. On Tuesday at the Power Strong class there was a lot of exercises that involved kneeling and I decided I was going to push through the pain in my bad knee and get it done. I did that and later realized it was a very poor decision.

Tuesday was also my Caregiver Support group that I facilitate. The weather was awesome so I walked there which took about an hour (I had already done another 1 hour walk). After the session I walked back home and that is where the problems began, my knee was killing me. This isn’t about overworking it, it was about kneeling for some time on a knee that is not only full of arthritis but also scar tissue which is rock hard. Imagine kneeling for any length of time on rocks, that is what it feels like to me only the rocks are actually in my knee.

I was talking to my husband about this and he told me how proud he is of how hard I am working but reminded me that I have limitations no matter how healthy and fit I am. I had to agree with him. So, yesterday I spoke with the instructor I deal with most of the time and advised I just can’t do anything that involves kneeling. She told me that was good to know and that she would work on some modifications for me so that I can still get in the same workout. I mentioned it to today’s instructor who said she would do the same for me. Neither one questioned me about this, they just committed to find a work around for me.

Ultimately it reminded me that I have limitations and that is ok. This is not an excuse in any way, rather it is just my reality. I still intend to work as hard only some exercises I am just going to have to do differently.