Thursday, May 3, 2012

On Balance

Earlier last week I went back to the PT clinic. And by "went", I mean "walked".  In hindsight, this wasn't one of my brighter ideas, but it was a beautiful day, I was feeling good and I had such a frustrating experience parking the last time I was there. Plus the Bear needed the car to get to work.  I googled mapped it and saw that it was only 2 km from our house.  2 km?!  That's nothing for me these days; however, what I hadn't count on was getting to the clinic tired and then having to do the exercises. Worse, I hadn't even considered the walk home.


When I arrived, sweaty and slightly breathless (the clinic is up a very steep hill in Givatayim), the PT Angel very calmly said "Today we will work on balance".  Great, I thought, piece of cake, maybe it's not so bad that I walked all the way here after all. In principle, I do have a good sense of balance. As a girl, I spent an inordinate amount of time on the balance beam. 

She put me on one of those large medicine balls that have been sliced in half and affixed to a base and told me to stand with one foot in front of the other. And then switch feet.  Believe me, this is harder than it sounds.  Way, way harder.  Also I had assumed that maintaining one's balance came from the core muscles, specifically the abdomen, so I was really surprised to feel it in my groin and inner thigh muscles.  Exactly the ones that need strengthening.  Huh!  Who knew?


So it's clear that she's pretty clever, that PT Angel.  Afterwards she gave me several exercises  using a little stool, lifting my foot, tapping the stool and then putting my foot back on the floor.  Nothing strenuous or painful, so it was again surprising that after a couple of reps of this simple exercise, my inner thigh muscles started to shake with exertion. 

After 45 minutes of this, it was time to start my trek home.  I walked a kilometer in the other direction and hopped on the 61 bus for 2 stops.  I had to take care of a couple of errands, then walked on to my regular Kupat Holim clinic to arrange some more appointments, stopping off for coffee at my favorite local cafe.  You know, my usual routine.


By the time I'd got home 3 hours later, I'd walked a whopping (well for me anyway) 4.5 km.  A new record.  But I was wiped and had to lay down for the rest of the day.  Notice a pattern here? Those of you who follow me religiously know that I wrote about this recently here.  When I feel good, I think I can handle anything, then overdo it and pay the price the following day. 



I think my PT Angel is right, I need to work on my balance... 



Such a lovely garden that I pass on my way home from PT.
I always stopped to smell the flowers.
    

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