hi lost
I just turned 40 (Mar. 24th) and have at least 70-80 pounds to lose. In 2002, for the first time ever, I started exercising. I was going to the gym 5-6 days a week. I lifted weights, and I did cardio. (First treadmill, then stationary bike.) Then I had a big flare-up of plantar fasciitis which is a very painful foot condition. I took about a year off. Then I started weightlifting and using the stationary bike again. Things were going quite well until I started a couch to 5k program -- which is a program designed to ease you into jogging. Well that was NOT a good idea. Major plantar fasciitis flareup again.
What am I doing now? Well I gained about 30 lbs since I stopped exercising the second time. Now I am working to ease myself back into exercise, and for now, I'm focusing on exercise that will have little impact on my feet -- which would, in general, have little impact on knees.
Here's the plan:
follow no-s
pull out my sledgehammer and renew my shovelglove experience! 14 min. a day on no-S days.
buy set of adjustable dumbbells -- I bought dumbbell handles and plates (haha on the internet. shipping was a lot but I live in a fairly small town and none of the sporting goods stores had dumbbell handles!)
buy a book on Indian clubs -- and I'll probably be buying two rubber mallets from the hardware store to use in lieu of "real" Indian clubs
Until my plates and Indian club book arrives, I am working on getting up to a full 14 min. of shovelglove. Right now I'm doing about 9 min. of shovelglove combined w/ some light stretching and some arm waving. Ha! The arm waving basically consists of my mimicking some indian club movements I gleaned from the internet w/out anything in my hands. So i'm really just flopping my arms around right now.
For the most part, both shovelglove and Indian clubs work out your upper body. They're much more aerobic than you'd think. And with the weightlifting soon to come, I will be able to exercise with minimal impact on my feet.
I do have some planned rewards built in. There are two things I'd really love to get. One is an exercise bike, the other is an adjustable weight(lifting) bench. Due to constraints of space, I believe I can only justify a pedal exerciser not a full exercise bike. (I live in small apartment.) If you do a search on Amazon under pedal exerciser you'll see what I mean. I will buy the almost $90 one. I figure that if pedalling this as a bike injures my foot, I can always use it tabletop as an arm exerciser -- which, indeed, is one of its indicated uses.
Someday I would like to be able to play racquetball again. However, due to the recurrance of the foot problem, I need to lose some weight before I return to anything that is even remotely high impact.
jules