Workout Update

Saturday, February 20/16

My musical recommendation is Call Me in the Afternoon by Half Moon Run

So I noticed that I haven't posted in almost a week and thought I'd do some catching up with things that have been going on in my life, probably spread over a couple of posts so as to keep the size down a bit.

About a year and half ago I was starting to deal with some serious high blood pressure issues, think along the lines of my doctor taking a reading and telling me she thinks I might need to stop working for a bit while we work on getting it down.

Through some medication, change in my diet, and now the introduction of regular exercise we've been able to get it down to levels that don't put me at risk of a stroke, least that was my thought until about 2 weeks ago when I started having some issues feeling light headed when doing my workouts, so much so that I stopped working out except for my sessions with Connor pending my scheduled doctors appointment for this past Wednesday.

I was pretty nervous, no really more like scared to death but since that is a really poor analogy given it's real possibility lets just stick with nervous, about the appointment as I've been using a home monitor to take readings and they were coming in so high that I wasn't sure that to even mention them lest she put me in a hospital to deal with them. I bought the monitor last summer when I was up in the valley seeing C but hadn't put it to much use until about 3 weeks ago.

I checked in for my appointment and was shown back to the examining room to await the doctor, this was a bit surprising as in past visits they've always taken my blood pressure and I mentioned it in passing to the nurse and she replied that the doctor wanted to do it herself.

I wasn't in the room more than a minute when there came a knock on the door and she entered to begin the exam. Right off the bat she asked if I'd been staying current with my meds, were there any side effects she needed to know about,  and did I have the readings from my self monitoring. I told her I'd been doing well with the meds, didn't feel any ill effects, and did have my recent readings and that they were high. She went over them and then took my blood pressure reading herself, much to my surprise it came in at 136/90, she took another and it came back with the same reading, and then she took one more reading after a moment and it came back at 138/82. We went over how I've been doing the readings and it looks like I've been doing them wrong and freaking myself out for no reason with the high readings I was coming back with. We discussed the light headed feelings I'd been getting when working out and think it might be related to moving to quickly from low to high positions and that slowing things down may alleviate them as I continue to drop weight.

So things are looking good and I decided to celebrate by hitting the gym Thursday after work.

Amazing how much one's body can hurt when you resume working out after two weeks but trust me it can hurt a lot, my own body let me know just how much so on Friday morning when I tried to get up and realized my legs felt like rubber. Not to be discouraged by any of this I made a point of hitting the gym again last night and got a really good workout in, maybe too much as I was feeling it still this morning when I had to get up to go and watch my son's 2nd round playoff game, which they lost in a shoot out 3-2 but man did that boy play one hell of a game. Defence isn't his natural position but he has the ability to shut down the other teams best striker and totally disrupt their game, which he did once again this morning.

I had a noon session with Connor and we reviewed the results of my doctors visit before we started off on our routine. We did a combination of routines in the fitness room before heading out to the floor and doing some arm row presses, leg press, and abdominal stretches. I'd say we got in a good 45 minute workout and the best part was I didn't experience any light headiness and he commented that I was barely breaking a sweat where in the beginning I was used to be dying after the 2nd set. As the session came to a close he told me to do another cycle of the stuff we'd just done before doing my cool down cardio on the treadmill.  All in all I was working out from noon to almost 1:30pm and have to say it felt great.

Of course now it's 9:22pm and I'm feeling the aches and pains a bit more and have had to take a Motrin to help with them.  Of course that doesn't mean I won't be back at the gym tomorrow right back at it as I've got more work to do till golf season starts :)

I missed working out and am really glad to be able to resume them without worrying about any negative effects. I totally get now what C meant when she'd come home from her own sessions and wished I'd started sooner.  But as the saying goes....better late than never

So in one area of my life I'm back on track and now I just need to do the same in other areas, stop being scared to take a chance, I mean what is the worst that can happen...........

My name is Marcus and this blog is my attempt to document co-parenting with my ex, working in high tech, trying to a perfect 8 iron from 135 yards, starting to dating, and maybe meeting the one along the way.