Structural Change

Structural change is uncomfortable. These past few weeks have presented the opportunity to address deep tensions and blocks within my body. Putting focused energy towards my shoulder with range of motion exercises, isometric training, icing, and rest helps me open up to dynamic flexibility that I wasn't even aware was missing from my shoulder!

I'm not going to lie, I'm in pain a lot. I'm literally resetting my posture, shoulder resting position, and building arm strength. When I wake up, I am stiff. To counter the stiffness, I start every day by stretching my back and arms in child's pose. This is before I get out of bed. I stretch. Then by the time I'm making coffee and oatmeal, I'm doing some gentle motions to wake up the rest of my muscles: arm circles, hip rounds, forward bend, etc. Movement gets blood flowing and warms up my muscles, thus reducing pain and stiffness.

As a student athlete, I did NONE of this daily morning maintenance. I always warmed my arm up for softball, that was something I could always tell made a difference. But the rest of my body rarely received the type of attention commensurate with the amount of activity I was demanding from it.

In eighth grade, I was recruited to the Mt Vernon High School varsity softball team. I dreamed of succeeding Don Mattingly as the next Yankees first base-person and when the softball coach asked me to consider being the catcher, I was more than conflicted. But alas for about 5 years, I used my left arm as a shield and protector from the constant barrage of softballs being thrown at me throughout my high school athletic career.

Imagine my surprise twenty years later I discover a baseball sized knot of fused whatever in my arm directly around the muscles I used to shield my face as a teenage catcher. This tells me a couple things:

1. I can feel it!!! yay for feeling it at all because it's been there this long waiting to be witnessed.
2. Now that I can feel it, I have to ice it. I love my shoulder icing brace (see picture)!
3. I need to reduce the inflammation in and around it.
4. I have to keep re-training my shoulder's range of motion even though it hurts after and sometimes during.
5. The more I breathe into the tension, the more I can create space to listen.
6. I'm moving towards a structural change in my body.
7. This is a slow process.

This is my process and for as long as I wasn't paying attention, I'm having to rehabilitate and compensate for that lost time. When the pain is intense, shoulder pain can be very uncomfortable, I am often able to ground into the knowledge that nothing goes on forever. My shoulder pain will end at some point and it typically does. Because deep change is occurring, I'm uncovering more and more pain to be with and heal.
 

Emotional Conditioning Through Strength Training

Stress continues to be a persistent and omnipresent part of life. The way I deal with stress is to avoid it – avoid thinking about what is weighing on me, avoid writing an essay about stress, etc. In no way am I advocating avoiding stress because that is impossible, especially since our bodies will eventually always show the receipts. At one point in my early 20s, my stomach was severely impacted by my efforts to avoid stress. Debilitated by pain, like glass shards in my stomach, it was hard to deny that something was affecting me but my first impulse was to avoid connecting my pain to my stress levels.

Every individual has patterns for deliberate or unconscious responses to stress. How I respond to stress and hold it in my body is ultimately up to me. Unpacking the effects of stress on my body seems scary, but it’s even scarier to know that avoiding stress can make me very ill. There are systemic and bodily dangers to overexposure to stressors, clearly; however, as I’m learning, benefits can be derived from deliberate contact to stress. Exercising with heavy weight in slow, measured movements is called Super Slow High Intensity Training and is a type of strength training that exposes your body to stress in a safe and controlled setting.

My basketball coach (and probably yours too) used to say “Leave it all on the court.” That’s what a good work out can feel like. But it can also be so much more than a stress release. Strength training is a means of engaging with the complexity of stress in our daily lives – not only do you get a mental break while working out but the intentional time can be used to observe what your body does when it’s feeling threatened. Bodies react to stress as a stimuli regardless of the source. Thus strength training can function as a form of emotional conditioning to understand how your body responds to stress in the moment such as a clenched jaw, raised shoulders, or tight fists.

The ultimate goal of the Super Slow Method is to control motion and momentum under the stress of weight loads. The training is high intensity because you’re lifting the most weight that you can safely control. Throughout the exercises your muscles fatigue, then the ranges of motion decrease, and eventually your muscles can no longer perform at all. This is called failure and it’s exactly what you want your body to do in response to this type of stress. Failure is your body’s way of letting you know that it’s done all that it can for now!

Challenging your body in this way prompts a cascade of muscular, hormonal, and biological responses. Throughout this ‘high stress’ situation, the body is forced into a fight or flight scenario where reaction patterns begin to show – i.e. the shoulders raise, the jaw clenches, etc. Increasing your body awareness and tuning into yourself while working out has the potential to increase your understanding of how you react to stress while outside the gym walls and away from that controlled environment.

Deliberate exposure to stress in the form of strength training helps me develop a relationship with my stress levels. It has by no means ‘cured’ my first impulse to avoid stress (especially since its taken me over three months to write this essay!). However, Super Slow High Intensity Training is conditioning me to be more aware of where I am holding stress and how my body reacts when I’m in a stressful situation. Stress is - and will always be - a part of my life. After five years of consistent training though, I’m finding that my capacity to be aware of my stress levels is changing in positive ways and I no longer have soul crushing stomach aches!

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New Year - 8 minute workout

With traveling to see family, my endless diet of sugar plum fairy treats, and general disruption of a daily routine, my body feels achy especially in my neck and upper back. On top of that, the end-of-year celebrations are finally giving way to the most festive season here in New Orleans, Mardi Gras season. I want to both relieve my soreness and build my stamina for the onslaught of parties, parades and general carnivalling to come!

This is an 8 minute low-intensity interval set for neck and arm muscles. When I’m feeling tightness or discomfort, my body responds really well to movement. The low weight in isolated movements help to get blood flowing through my muscles and throughout the duration of the set unwinds my built up tension.  Before doing this set, I felt discomfort in my upper back and neck; after the set I’m sitting up taller and no longer feel achy. It’s a quick tune-up set that can be done in front of your computer, at the gym, or in your living room.

8 min arm & neck workout:

Items needed – 2 dumbells (I used 3lb); stop watch or timer; seat/bench (optional)

Please note that most of these exercises can be done in the seated position. Also, the maximum benefit from these exercises will be felt when the motions are done in a strong and upright posture which means sitting or standing with a proud chest, shoulders low and rolled back, and belly button pulled to your spine.

2 minutes – lateral arm raises (flies): arms bent holding dumbells with elbows at ribs and forearms parallel to ground, lift elbows to shoulder height and forearms remain parallel to ground

1 minute – shoulder shrugs: arms at your side holding dumbells, lift shoulders to your ears and release down, continue

30 sec – neck rolls: turn head in circles left and right, 30 seconds per side

2 minutes – 30 sec arm intervals:

1.     bicep curls (30 sec)- arms bent with elbow at ribs, alternate arms lifting weight up to shoulder

2.     punch twist (30 sec) – holding weights at shoulders, alternate arms punching weight parallel to ground

3.     diagonal punch (30 sec )– weights at shoulders, alternate arms punching weight upward at diagonal (45 deg to ground)

4.     overhead punch (30 sec) – weights at shoulders, alternate arms punch upward to sky

1 minute – shoulder rolls: making big backward circles with your shoulders, exaggerate the motion to get as much of your shoulder moving as possible

**take precautions for your low back with this exercise and avoid if you have chronic low back pain**

30 sec – arm raise with spine twist in a squat: in a low squat (as low as possible while keeping hips low and not hunching over toes), raise elbow to ribs then straighten arm above shoulder while slightly twisting open to sky; 30 sec/side

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Shoulder Pain Eventually Ended, Thankfully

When I began my journey in strength training, my right shoulder was in a steady state of pain.  The pain would vary according to what was going on that week, if I carried a backpack for consecutive days, if I sat too much at a computer, or if I slept on my right side for too long. At one point a constant in my life, I no longer have shoulder pain and I know it is because I changed my approach to strength training as well as developed a strong core to improve my posture.

It was a curious pain. It felt like a needle was pulling my bicep apart. Occasionally it felt like someone was standing on my collarbone. I rarely went a day without being aware of my shoulder pain. It was directly the result of three falls - two flights of stairs, one trip and fall. 

So, when approached with the idea of strength training I was more than wary about my range of motion and capacity for lifting. I gave it a try though because I was assured the workout only allowed for safe, controlled movements. I trained weekly and was ever cautious about exceeding my pain threshold. My lingering shoulder pain became less prevalent.

I was doing more than working out. I was reframing my understanding of body mechanics.  Learning the technique and technical background of high intensity interval training while applying it to my own body helped me develop a shared language with my clients about how each exercise directly benefits their body. High intensity interval training works muscles to their furthest extent in safe bursts. The intent is to reach failure in the range of motion for whichever particular muscle group is being worked. By elongating and expending your muscles to their furthest capacity, your muscles heal with an increased ability to sustain further growth. Thus resulting in strength gain in the recovery process.

Maintaining ranges of motion in all of our muscle groups becomes increasingly important as we age. Muscles atrophy over time and high intensity interval training is a dynamic method of preventing the effects of an aging musculature system. Initially as I began my training sessions, I safely worked the muscles supporting my shoulder – deltoids, trapezius, lats, pecs, etc – by restricting the movements on particular exercises while still challenging the muscle groups while also focusing strengthening my core and back muscles. Simultaneous outcomes became evident: my shoulder was healing and my posture was improving.

As I expand my understanding of anatomy, physiology and biology, I’m developing workouts that reinforce safe body mechanics for day-to-day, routine movements. Entering my fifth year of working as a strength trainer, I continually challenge myself to find more effective ways to communicate the importance of core strength and the benefits of overall strength training. Sharing my own journey to wellness is usually a great place to start.

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My Journey to Personal Training

Over the course of my professional career, I've cultivated a litany of technical and management skills that apply to public infrastructure projects, public policy, and non-profit administration. I've worked in the private, non-profit, and public sectors while nurturing a vision of compassionate leadership and community building.  On paper, my experiences and track record seem to be leading toward administrative positions.

Something always feels out of place though. I'm too overwhelmed with the workload. Or, I'm not feeling heard. Or, the patriarchal structure inhibits my femininity. Or, phenomenology is not regarded as valid research. Or, or, or...I can always find something wrong.

At a time of great transition - i.e. enrolled in a PhD program that dissolved due to lack of state funding - and part-time work in a salvage store, I challenged myself to remember when I was content with how I spent my time. That landed me in a flurry of high school memories about being a student-athlete. Being an athlete was something so integral to my life that, in 12th grade, I testified at a local School Board hearing that cutting funds from the Athletic Department would be to the detriment of youth development across our city.

In remembering the satisfaction of playing hard, I was also struck with how quickly that part of my life ended when I went to college. I didn't recognize the void until I let myself shine some light in there. My ego was bruised for not being chosen to play Division 1 sports, which was my only baseline for consideration at the time. My own high standards prevented me from continuing on the 'athlete's journey.' These were my choices, and fifteen years later I understood the effect of my choices. I didn't fully mourn the loss of that part of my identity after high school.

Recognizing that my experience as an athlete helps qualify me as a fitness coach, all I did was muse, "I could be a trainer." As if my words cast a spell, a regular customer at the salvage store told me that her husband is a trainer, coincidentally, and his gym is looking for more trainers. They trained me in High Intensity Interval Training and the gym has specialized MedX equipment – a training regimen for efficient and effective strength training.

Personal training allows me to embrace my athletic self while encouraging others to start and finish something really hard – a workout session. I like to affirm with my clients, “May this be the hardest thing you have to do today.” It’ll likely not be the hardest thing they’ll have to deal with generally, but in the time they are with me, they will be celebrated for doing something that’s not easy. My training philosophy centers on normalizing where people are at currently while encouraging growth and strength gain in ways that make sense for their bodies.

As I increase my baseline knowledge about anatomy, physiology, biology, and body awareness, I continue to tap into a deeper understanding of how to engage with people on their body journey. In this role, I’m able to unapologetically embody my ethos: “There is no less than” and that everyone’s journey is valid. My positivity and ability to reflect the best in others can extend unfettered in this setting. Being a personal trainer allows me to extend the path that I once poured a lot of energy into while setting a new course where I feel perfectly in place.

Throwback Journaling

December 19, 2012

I wrote this two days before the end of dates recorded on the Mayan calendar. Times were turbulent and I wrote it out...

Two days before the end of the world, don't ya know. My heart feels sick, like it does so often...filled with sadness, grief, fear, failure, uncertainty, shadowed, and torn. The pit in my stomach forces its way to my throat closing it tight constricting my life. My mom says she's proud of me for searching and seeking but maybe the search is a guise for depression. Why should  I be depressed I ask myself - I'm safe, I have family that loves me, I've known no oppression nor war. I'm upset that I don't have a father, I'm still grieving that space that's never been filled. My search will never end because that void can't be filled, its a part of me. The emptiness I know is who I am. I've been trying to refill that emptiness with love but there's only so much surrogate love in the world. Aren't there other people in this world raised by single parent that aren't inhibited by their knowledge of being abandoned? Aren't there other people who've been raised by both parents that feel lost? I'm not special in this respect, it is my experience though and it feels like my experience is making it difficult for me to be a functional adult. I don't want responsibility...makes sense to me, why should I be responsible if the man that was responsible for me didn't take responsibility. I don't want a relationship...makes sense to me, why should I if the people who I'm supposed to look for an example in my mom and dad didn't want a relationship. I know want kids...etc, etc, etc. Its hard feeling unwanted, even if the whole world says it wants you. That one person made it clear that you're unwanted, and that's the one that sticks. I was angry for  a while and that's what motivated me. I'm not angry anymore. It got replaced with sadness. Sadness doesn't motivate unfortunately.

I've grown a lot since this...and I feel that hole I was referring to is still steadily being filled with love and it is nourishing me in the ways I hoped.

Laura Mae Socks - Where You Go

I had the pleasure to work with Ms. Laura Mae Socks launching her Kickstarter fundraiser to press physical copies of her debut album, "Where You Go." Laura Mae is like Patsy Cline, Patti Smith & Lucinda Williams wrapped up into a smart blend of witty and melancholic songs. She inspires me everyday to use my voice!



Check her out at www.lauramaesocks.com & support her if you're able!