Posture Thursday, Pain, Rest and Recovery

Pain

I mentioned on Tuesday that I’ve been in a little pain recently; not bad pain, just the stiffness and soreness of muscle recovery. Turns out that trying to keep up to my 6 year old when doing a HIIT class for the first time in 3 weeks was maybe not that great an idea.

Yes, I really said, “Trying to keep up to my 6 year when doing a HIIT class.”

My wife and I had set up the living room for our Zoom workout, when the little goober asked if he could do yoga with mommy. Far be it for me to say no to launching him on a lifetime of health and fitness, so I grabbed an old yoga mat and rolled it out for him.

Now, for those of you who don’t believe the little guy would want to do this, I present you kid 3 and mommy, doing bridges:

Little Boys and Mommys Exercising Together
Try to Keep Up Mommy

What does all this have to do with Posture?

Rest and Recovery.

I’ve spent 2 full days recovering from this workout. The HIIT training does a lot of

  • core work,
  • butt work and
  • leg work

but the pain has been 90% hamstrings, 10% glutes and nothing else. My core, neck and back have been completely fine.

Tuesday, just getting into and out of a chair hurt, and taking the boys for a walk was a serious chore. Then kid 3 wanted to do another yoga with mommy, but, no, rest and recovery were the orders of the day. Wednesday was better than Tuesday, and today I’m mostly fine.

The key thing was, and I cannot stress this enough, that it was just leg and butt muscles. My core and my entire spine have been absolutely fine, as in completely pain free.

Relearning how to exercise, move, sit and stand have liberated me from so many of the aches and pains of middle age (by overcoming pain, regaining mobility and learning to stand up right). If the cost of that is the occasional humiliation at the hands of my little guy, and a couple of days of discomfort in the recovery, I’ll pay that price with a smile.

And a gasp. Seriously, the last two days my legs have HURT. As have my wife’s legs. Although the kid has been just fine, the little creep.