Rebuilding Humpty Dumpty

What an awful nursery rhyme isn't it?  

This time of year, everyone is rebuilding.   It's New Year's resolution time, time to rebuild your stamina, rebuild your base for training, rebuild your confidence, etc.  This year, I've had to start all over and LITERALLY rebuild my body.  The process has been very interesting. I hope my EDS peeps can take something from this too!

The human body continues to amaze me in its ability to compensate.  It will find a way to "work"; if one part doesn't want to cooperate, another part will fill in! 

The front of my neck is extremely weak, making any exercises that require my head to be held up (like sit ups, crunches, etc) impossible without throwing my neck out of place (the cause of my migraines).  So I spend lots of time doing these isolating exercises on the front of my neck.  Lifting my head and holding (rather than poking my chin). 

My upper back is rather weak as well, so I am doing very, very specific isolating exercises and weight training on these muscles.  Bent over the ball, I's, T's, and Y's, very specific - concentration on form as to get the exact muscle contraction.  I've learned that if I don't specifically concentrate, my body can use different muscles that are stronger.   Since my upper back is weak, my body always pushes toward the triceps and biceps and I "roll" towards them so I have to be very deliberate!

Next, the CORE (don't we all have this problem). Since I can't do any normal sit-up/crunch, I have to do alternative exercises such as Pilates 100 with my head on the floor, or the dreaded PLANK.  Plank and Side Plank are very hard to keep a form for my body since I have lots of weak spots.  My strong muscles want to take over so I 'lean' to those spots, its pretty interesting now that I know this!  One of these days I will be able to stay straight.

Lastly, the Hips and Rear!  My hips have always been a problem.  Last summer, I was going to Physical Therapy because they thought I had bursitis, then tendinitis.  (It is very typical to have pains mis-diagnosed with Ehlers Danlos).  Turns out, just have to work the muscles to strengthen!  I hate!  I mean HATE working this one!  But, I know it needs to be done or it will get worse! The left side in particular needs some foam rolling daily before I can lay on it to begin the exercise and its very painful!    I have Clam shells, and Windshield Wipers to do with the hips and by the time I'm done I can certainly feel it. 

The above is basically my physical therapy!   I have a few other joints I need to keep moving such as my rotator cuff, but that in itself can take up to an hour!  Tack on some needed runing, biking, and swimming and I'm going to be at the gym for multiple hours a day here very shortly!  I can't even imagine what's going to happen once I get into my real schedule for the Half-Ironman that I have on the schedule this year!  That should start Feb 1. 

All the Kings Horses and All the Kings Men.. well.. I'm here to prove you wrong!