The core

I haven’t done any “dedicated” exercise in months.

By that, I mean exercise for the sake of exercise, as opposed to biking as a form of transportation, walking to get groceries, etc.

And I kind of prefer it that way.

I had a gym membership before the pandemic, which I used a few times when the weather was too hot or cold to do much outside, but I generally find working out to be incredibly dull and I’m not motivated to do it.

My physiotherapist has other ideas though.

Have I mentioned my pelvic floor yet? TMI? I started seeing a pelvic floor physio to deal with some of the usual symptoms of being a middle-aged woman who delivered an 8-pound baby vaginally. Or so I thought. Apparently people can suffer these issues at any age, whether they gave birth or not. And kegels don’t help. Kegels make things worse. For me, at any rate.

I like to think of a hand holding a raw egg. If you don’t hold it firmly enough, it’ll slip through your fingers and you’ll have a mess on the floor. Hold it too tightly, you’ll crush it. Result is the same.

The latter is my problem. So, I’ve been working on relaxation exercises and techniques for my pelvic floor muscles. That’s going well and helping a lot. More recently, we’ve added in core-strengthening exercises (“snugs,” she calls them). It is so difficult to clench one set of muscles while keeping others relaxed! I had no idea. We talked about diastasis recti, and the exercises recommended for that. She asked me to demonstrate, then: “Can you do that without clenching your glutes?” Um, no?

So that’s what I’m working on.

This morning, I decided to get back to my old 20-situps-a-day routine, which I 100% let slide when I was sick. Hard to do while trying to keep other parts relaxed at the same time! I also tried planking, which lasted all of 40 seconds. Ah well. Baby steps...