April 2020

This week has all been about walking and stretching. The verve I gained last week for plenty of walking seems to have carried over to this, and I’ve done several 12/14 k walks.  Definitely feeling happy about that.  The scales are feeling happier too.  Not quite as happy as they should be by now, by there’s definitely a smile appearing on that digital counter.

On top of the walks – this week has been all about stretching. I don’t necessarily mean Yoga, but just a good stretch of all the extremities in all the possible directions.  There’s nothing like a good stretch, pulling those arms behind as far as they’ll go, bending over, as far as possible spreading your fingers flat on the ground – even though you can feel the pain in the back of your legs.  In a really weird way – it’s a nice kind of pain – that stretching pain. 

I had an awesome stretching session today – put my hands palm-to-palm behind my back and tried to pull them as high up as they would go.  To be honest, I didn’t even know I was capable of doing that until I tried.  Another thing I didn’t realise is that my broken arm has finally healed.   I cracked the bone in my upper arm couple of years ago, and in typical fashion kept putting pressure on it, so it took forever to heal.  It took months before I was able to even twist my arm completely, and even then whenever I pulled my left arm behind me – the pain in the upper part was, well painful.  I think – again – lockdown has been a contributing factor to the healing.  No going out carrying heavy laptop bags, plenty of rest apart from the HIIT session.  The HIIT sessions themselves helped to build the muscle and strengthen my arms – so all this must have helped.

Anyway – palms together, or legs crossed and bend over to the floor, heel to head pull, and few others, and it all felt quite relaxing. 

It did make me realise that it’s good to have a mega stretching session every now and then, in fact I think we/I don’t stretch enough – just sitting on the sofa all day long, staring at the laptop screen. Whilst a good stretch session, no matter how many hours you do it for, isn’t exactly going to help in loosing lots of weight – I think there are other benefits to it.  There must be some correlation with relaxed muscles, more flexibility, moving those extremities out of their comfort zone.  And I do admit – I’ve picked up a few of the stretching tips from TikTok.  I did say – I found some useful things on there, and I was becoming a touch addicted.  Oooops

Right done for today. Massive walk awaits tomorrow.  Lots to do.  Should be my record breaking day for step count tomorrow.  Fingers crossed. All that exercise without trying.  Yeah. That’s my kind of exercise.