Finally finding exhaustion

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I want to be exhausted. I want to push myself beyond what I thought was imaginable and then push more. I want that feeling of satisfaction that comes with knowing that I have absolutely nothing left in the tank. And, until recently, I hadn’t found this feeling for years.

I’ve mentioned fatigue quite a bit throughout my posts and it’s always something I struggle to describe clearly. The conversations are often like this:

Them: “How long do you do that exercise before you get tired?”

Me: “It’s hard to say. There are so many factors that go into how I’m doing on a particular day that it’s not always easy to know why my body reacts in certain ways. Some days, I’ll be really tight and it will be hard to move because of that. Other days I just might not connect to the muscles that I want.”

Them: “So you’re just tired from the beginning? Or from something you did the day before?”

Me: “Um… kinda… but not really. It’s not tired, it’s just that I may not have the ability to get the neurological connection to make the movement.”

Them: “You mean like you’re sore?  Your muscles just don’t respond?”

Me: “Yeah sorta like the responding. It’s not soreness. I haven’t felt sore at all in years. At least not in my legs. I’m always sore in my shoulders, neck and arms, like, all the time. But with my legs it’s just… I don’t know… it’s hard to describe.”

And that’s usually where I give up.

In my last post, I talked about neurological fatigue, that unique sensation that best describes that sensation of not being able to connect to a movement or to specific muscles in my lower body. Recently, on my most recent trip to visit Alejandra and applying the lessons of her one-0f-a-kind Neurokinetic Pilates method, I finally found exhaustion. And not the esoteric neurological kind that I have a hard time describing. Just good ol’ fashioned “I want to collapse and lay down and not move” exhaustion. And it felt amazing.

I’ve written extensively about how Alejandra is always able to find and make new connections within my body, and this time was no exception. On the first day I see her, she always asks me what my objective is for the time I’m with her. This time, I repeated the same exact thing I told her last year: that I want to get the connection for hip flexion, that is, to pick up one foot and take a step already…

Unlike last year when she told me that she didn’t think I was ready for that yet and I needed to work on a bunch of other movements in order to get myself strong enough to even be able to attempt hip flexion, this trip was a different story. Alejandra agreed that it was the right time that I try to start tackling this immense challenge for me: going against gravity to lift a foot off the ground step it in front of the other. Sounds simple, but not for me.

Alejandra did what she always does, she took the exercises I was doing (which I shared with videos in my last post), and pushed me much further beyond my comfort zone. The result was that for the first time in years, I was actually 100% physically and mentally tired and exhausted after each day of working with her. She was able to find the limits of both my physical fatigue as well as my neurological fatigue, crush them both and push me much further into an entirely new realm of exhaustion.

My videos are below. The significant thing to understand is that until I saw her, I was doing similar exercises always facing forwards on the CoreAlign machine, with the comfort and security of the ladder in front of me and with both arms bracing me. With her, we turned everything sideways, so that there was literally nothing in front of my knees and I could only hold on with one arm. To say that it pushed my boundaries is a massive understatement and now I have the satisfaction of knowing that in just a couple of weeks, she was able to dramatically push my limits and get me to work in that sweet spot of struggle, abject fear that I may collapse, and the ensuing accomplishment.

And I can finally remember, and relive, the feeling of exhaustion.

 

 

Staying upright and reviving the Running Man

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With a new year comes new accomplishments and new objectives in my journey of recovery. The last few months of 2016 brought with them the ability for me to work harder and longer in a standing position, relying greatly on the Core Align, the piece of Pilates equipment with sliding carts under my feet and a wooden ladder in front of me that has become the most fundamental tool for my rehab.

Only a few months ago, standing and exercising at the Core Align would end with exhaustion after no more than thirty minutes. More than physical or muscle fatigue (which people always ask me about) the thing that would get me the most would be what I refer to as neurological fatigue.

It’s difficult to describe exactly what this feels like but suffice it to say that getting my body into positions that challenge my flexibility, balance, and endurance and then trying to connect to a new movement and push myself as much as possible results in my entire neurological system feeling tired. I’ve been flooding my lower body with so many signals from my brain and telling it to move using the limited pathways of my damaged spinal cord that after a while, the signals just don’t get through as efficiently or successfully as before. It’s as if you have two lanes of fast moving traffic (the signal from my brain) with cars, buses and trucks flying down the roadway and after some time, the two lanes turn into one and the one lane turns into a narrow street which only a car can pass. By the end of it, the traffic can still get through and provide the message to the other side, but it’s much slower.

Much of the work I’m doing now is finding new exercises and movements that tread the line of being so challenging that they seem nearly impossible, and then doing so many repetitions and working through them so hard that I reach neurological fatigue, and then pushing just a bit more. Through this process, the line of exhaustion keeps getting pushed further, my strength improves and I’m able to maintain the connections I’ve made in a standing position more effectively and for a longer duration.

The videos below – aside from showing my first foray into wearing spandex, a necessary item during these chilly winter mornings – indicate just how far I’ve come in the second half of 2016. In each video, I’m working on one specific aspect of the walking and gait cycle that will each contribute to being able to take steps. The shaking in my legs that sometimes occurs (which I’ve written about previously) is a clear indication of reaching that point of neurological fatigue. So without any further ado, let’s get into it:

Video 1

Working on holding my front knee bent and strong while pulling forward with the back leg also bent. It wasn’t that long ago that I was unable to hold my weight in one leg bent for any amount of time; now it’s longer and stronger and more effortless.

 

Video 2

“The Running Man” Anyone who grew up in the early 90s remembers MC Hammer, his baggy pants and the ubiquitous and memorable dance move that he made famous. Now I’m doing my own version of the Running Man by alternating lunges back and forth on both legs, trying to become faster at sending those neurological signals from my brain and telling my body to switch left and right while maintaining good alignment and body position.

 

 

Video 3

Holding a lunge, then rotating open and finding space and flexibility in my ribcage and thoracic spine. Again, only a few weeks before, I couldn’t conceive of staying in a lunge and doing any other kind of movement. It just would have been too much for my neurological system to handle; now it’s become more manageable.

 

Hopefully this gives a little taste of where I’m at and where I’m moving towards in this new year. More updates to come very soon.