Saturday, June 27, 2009

Workout Before Your Treatments

7:00am: Today was probably one of the best mornings of the week. I think stepping it up on cardio definitely helped clear out the lungs and keep them open. It's still harder to get up and rolling out of bed, but once I'm up and start moving, I feel much better. I'm sure I've recommended this before to all you CFers, but I'll say it again: Try to get up and moving around BEFORE your morning treatment. I always cough way more during my morning walk than I do if I do my treatments first thing in the morning. I realize it's different strokes for different folks and that it won't work for everybody, but I suggest that you at least give it a shot!

My foot actually felt decent today too. I heard back from a friend of mine that works at an orthotics place and she said the doctor is on board to look at my foot. I think I will be going in at some point next week. Hopefully it can get figured out and I can get back to running, I really miss it. Today was a good day though in terms of my foot and I was able to fly through this mornings walk. I at least hope my foot can stay at the level it is now. I haven't really limped from the pain for at least a couple of days now.

Total Distance: 2.0 miles Time: 36'17"

4:00pm: I had to rush through my chest/back workout today to be back in time to get ready for game night. I didn't miss any lifts, but I did rest less time in between them. When I was done with my workout I was drenched with sweat. What really got me today was the push-ups. Generally I do 3 sets of 10 with my feet on a ball and my hands at various widths apart. Today I did the same thing except for I did 3 sets of 15, 12, 10 and I put one foot on the ball and balanced myself. Does that make sense? Probably not, but just trust me, it wasn't easy. Although it was much better than a sharp stick in the eye so I'm not complaining. Overall, it was a great workout and I was able to increase the weight on most of my lifts. I really hope I can finish strong these next couple of weeks and be in as good of shape as possible before heading into the Hole.

Total Distance for Day: 2.0 miles

3 people had something to say...:

Denise said...

Doing push ups off a ball is great for your core. Nice work!

Unknown said...

I disagree about exercising BEFORE doing treatments. Think how much easier it would be to breathe if you just did albuterol before? You would be breathing so much more air into your lungs. Same goes for pulmozyme and HTS. Think how much more you could benefit cardiovascularly from exercising if the mucus wasn't so thick that you were trying to cough up.

I've been an endurance athlete for almost 20 years (with CF) and there is a HUGE difference in my performance ability (I've correlated it to heartrate, pace, how many times I have to use an inhaler during the workout, etc.). I've also always had my CF doctors at different clinics recommend doing them before exercise.

It's extremely annoying to have to wake up earlier to get in an hour's worth of treatments before practice/workout/race, but the only reason I'd suggest not doing treatments beforehand would be if you are likely to skip exercising altogether if you don't do it right when you roll out of bed.

Not trying to knock your method because you've made great progress with it. I would just stop short of recommending it so adammantly to other CFers.

Unknown said...

Amanda- As you'll see in my post I recommend that CFers at least give it a try. I'm not adamant about ONLY doing it this way. I've had CF friends of mine always do their treatments before working out because it's what the doctors recommended. When they tried their treatments after working out they had the same results as me, more mucus production and more open lungs. Like I said, it's different strokes for different folks, and you just have to figure out what works for you.

Thanks for the comment!

Ronnie