It's Been Fun

It's funny. Nicole and I are just in total denial that today was our last session. Throughout the entire hour Nicole said "No tears," and I tried hard to not bring up the subject of our final minutes in the studio...if the subject was acknoweledged, I was sure to break down in tears. Although today was our last session, Nicole wouldn't allow it to be our "goodbye session." She will come over to mi casa to help make sure I have the right set-up to continue on my own.

And I will. Nicole has gotten me sooo far and has truly made my ultimate goal of walking, something that I know I can realistically strive for...And hopefully, it's not too far off! It's great because I can do things now where I can identify different muscle groups that need to get stronger, and I have the knoweledge to know which exercises I need to do in order to work those muscles. For example, yesterday I attempted to stand-up from a loung-style chair with my back brace and a walker. I discovered that I was putting too much weight through my arms and into my wrists. I need to put more of my weight into my legs, and also work on strengthening my triceps to get a better push-off from my arms. I figure that if I can do some resistance band work, I'll gain some more tricep strenength.

So, today we started out doing arm warm-ups. This time Nicole switched it up a bit, by having me raise my arms above my head and dropping down/raising up one arm at a time to shoulder-level, holding both arms out to the side and raising them up & down, teeter-tottering my arms, bending my arms in at the elbows and doing the chicken-dance, and more! I have to say, my arms got sore as hell, but Nicole has the type of personality where you just wanna keep doing it cuz she's laughing along with you.

Our arm warm-ups were followed by a bazillion arm raises with the wooden pole. At one point she had me do teeter-totter movement with the pole. It was challenging keeping my elbows straight and my arms raised. I would say that it was more of a challenge for me to keep the left elbow straight...my right arm stayed straight the whole time.

With both of my armrests back, I tried a new exercise that targeted my triceps and upper back muscles. I leaned forward so my hands were at my feet, and I pulled my elbows back, imagining my shoulder blades touching together.Iused the wooden pole in my hands to keep my arms and upper back equal on both sides. Eventually, I'm going to use weights rather than a pole.

After a quick water break, Nicole had me practice leaning forward, no armrests, and handing her my waterbottle. I did about 5 with the left hand, then I switched over to the right. My wrist is weaker and my hand can't grip as wide on the right hand, so we switched the waterbottle for smaller, lighter roll of tape.

I also practiced leaning all the way forwards, scooching my left leg out while I  was leaning down, and sitting myself back up. Nicole also had me squeeze a foam block between my knees while I leaned forwards and sat back up.Nicole reallywanted me to get through my head that I could do this exercise all by myself. That I wouldn't fall over because I could use my ab muscles and arm muscles to catch me. Apparently, Nicole says, it's all in my head. I have the muscles now to stop myself from falling off my chair. That's aa really good feeling to have when you've previously lost all faith in your body!

Our final exercise involved the 4 lb weights. The armrests stayed back, allowing for me to place my arms at my sides. I held a weight in each hand, and with my arms straight down at my sides, I tipped/leaned over to one side, then the other. Back and forth until our time was up.

I'm not sure what this mean, as far as my 3-day-per-week-blog goes. I definitely plan to continue working out at home (got my widget, my TRX, my resistance bands, my weights, my weekly "standing date" with my buddy Rob, and I'm currently up to 300 crunches per night) I feel as though I'm on a roll, and I can't stop now! I'm a lil nervous about keeping my progress going without Nicole, but in reality, I'm kinda excited for this next chapter! It's all on me. And I have thisthing  about letting people down, including myself. It's a big fear of mine. So, I got this!