Stuck

[quasigeostrophy]

Sometimes, I think school is going to kill me.  Not directly, of course, but ever since I’ve been back I think my health and fitness have deteriorated.  I keep trying to find things I can both handle and enjoy with both my current mental bandwidth and physical endurance, and that won’t interfere with my ability to complete my research demands.

Two favorite physical activities I enjoyed well before returning to school are bicycling and contra dance.  The closest regular contra dances are held in downtown Indianapolis on Tuesday evenings from 8 to 10pm.  I’ve not gone to one since school because they wind me up and after the drive home I wouldn’t get to bed until much later than I’m used to doing.  I miss it a lot, though.  As for bicycling, last spring I went for a 10-mile ride around the neighborhood one afternoon and had such a killer headache and allergy flare-up that I’ve been afraid to go back out.  My allergies always seem worse when I am in worse shape, and the converse has usually been true as well.  Of course, getting in well enough shape so that those symptoms will improve is where I seem to be stuck.  I’ve tried cutting back on some of my allergy meds to see if they weren’t actually making things worse.  I’m not sure yet.  And I still think my C-PAP, while eliminating the mild apnea I may have had, is significantly aggravating sinuses that are already inflamed by allergies and also doesn’t let me sleep as soundly as I would like or need.

I tried fencing for a short time.  I don’t have the endurance.  Warm-ups, drills, and a few three-minute bouts one night a week were completely wiping me out the next day.  And when I’m physically wiped out, my mind doesn’t want to function very well either.  I’ve not completely given it up – I want to go back to learning fencing as well, when I have more endurance.  But I can’t afford to be as wiped out afterward as I was getting.

Toni and I recently joined a local Snap Fitness franchise.  I thought I could go there three times a week and do a program of exercises that would help.  And then research demands kicked up, and have taken so much attention that I haven’t made it there in a few weeks already.

I think it isn’t so much that my body can’t handle any exercise, but that such exercise is apparently sapping resources my mind needs at the moment.  On good days, I can’t work on school/research from when I get up in the morning until I go to bed at night.  I could have in my 20s, but those days are long past.  If I start school/research work around 8 or 9am, by 5pm my brain is mush.  When I get some physical exercise, my mind won’t be productive for some time afterward.  And in the last several months, when I thought I was getting back in the swing of things at school after the mess that was last fall, I’ve discovered an old mistake in some analysis code and in fixing it have been making stupid little mistakes as I go along, delaying the process.

I’m trying not to whine about all this.  To sum up:  I want to be able to go out on my bike.  I keep saying I’d like to do a century ride again like the one I did in 2002, but I’m not a bit closer than I was when starting back to school in ’06.  I miss contra dance, but it’s too far away.  I want to learn to fence, but have no endurance.  I post this not to whine, but to share with others and see what kinds of suggestions I can get.  I need help.  I’m well aware that I have a tendency to run head-on into obstacles before seeing a way around them.

Originally published at Abnormality Locality. You can comment here or there.

Comments

[asetwoman.livejournal.com]

Here is a suggestion, which may or may not work for you. Slow down and work up gradually. If fencing is too much for you right now, skip it until you've built up some more endurance. If 10 miles on the bike is too much for you right now, do (many) fewer miles, maybe on a stationary bike at the gym at first to avoid the pollen. It is okay to start with something very short on the stationary bike too, like 5 minutes, then work up to 10 minutes, then 15, then 20, etc.

I could be wrong but I am getting the impression you are pushing yourself too hard on the first time out and getting discouraged because it's too much. It's very easy for people like us - by that I mean, smart, driven people - to fall into the "all or nothing" trap. But it's counter-productive because you can't be expected to do it all, so then the tendency is for you (or me) to end up doing nothing. We can't be expected to do what we could do in our 20s, in so many senses - physically or mentally.

I don't know for sure if this is what's going on with you, obviously. Only you know that. It's just the impression I got.

[asetwoman.livejournal.com]

Also wanted to add: when you were trying the fencing, did you do something else at another time during the week? You said it was once a week, which isn't often enough to build up endurance. Not that I'm suggesting fencing again necessarily, but it's a good rule of thumb to get in something 3x a week if you can. If you can't, 2x is better.

[quasigeostrophy.livejournal.com]

I was only going to the Monday nights, which were in part organized instruction. Wednesdays were open fencing, less organized, and I was still too tired and/or sore by then.

[quasigeostrophy.livejournal.com]

I've definitely gotten less patient with age. :-) Another friend suggested yoga, which I think I may try, but I need to find some easy poses/moves to start.

[djinnthespazz.livejournal.com]

Could you put the bike up on one of those trainer devices, and do some pedaling with a book or some other study material in front of you? Maybe getting a minimum of a workout (10-15 minutes a day) will boost your abilities rather than sap them?

[djinnthespazz.livejournal.com]

Also - fencing is incredibly hard on the body. It stresses joints and muscles something fierce.

[quasigeostrophy.livejournal.com]

I noticed. :-)

[quasigeostrophy.livejournal.com]

We have a recumbent stationary bike. It's better for my back, but because of me carrying most of my weight on my gut, it's less comfortable for that and my knees, so I do better on an upright stationary right now. 10-15 minutes on the recumbent stationary was very tiring because of the position of my gut/knees, and studying/reading while riding was hard because I was probably pushing myself harder than I should have. I need to remember that I am in worse shape than when I started training for the century ride 9 years ago, so I need to start farther back/even easier.

[anmorata.livejournal.com]

Hmm. There's supposed to be some correlation between physical activity and brain function, in that an increase in exercise is supposed to *help* brain stuffs. :/ Definitely start out smaller and work up to it. I do understand, though, because school is terrible for my eating habits, physical regime (mostly lack thereof), and so on.

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

I think the recumbent bike is a great idea if you're just easing back in - remember, some is better than none.

And yes, fencing takes a lot out of you even if you've been doing it awhile, and has a long learning curve anyway. If you're just trying to get back into exercise it might not be the best way to go.

[quasigeostrophy.livejournal.com]

The problem with the recumbent is that right now it's uncomfortable because my gut is in the way of my knees. I think I need to use an upright stationary or get an indoor trainer for my road bike.

[phialastring.livejournal.com]

You asked for advice, so here's my four-or-five cents. You know I'm the impatient overachiever type, and I did survive grad school, so they might be worth that much. :) Not that I have any insights you don't already know, but sometimes it's useful to hear them repeated.

Start very slow. There is absolutely nothing wrong with five minutes of exercise three times a week, especially if the alternative is none. A few minutes on the bike, or a few minutes doing the stretches/warmup you learned at fencing, since you want to work up to more of both of them.

Overdoing it and incapacitating yourself is far worse all around than doing a tiny bit and going slow, frustrating though the latter is.

Using your brain hard is work too, and you need a good solid physical foundation to support it. And regular exercise reduces stress, once it becomes routine enough to not cause stress itself.

So I think you have good goals, and working toward them will only help with your graduate program as well, but don't push too hard. As my favorite yoga dvd instructor says, "Don't overwork. Don't underwork."

I'm a huge yoga fan, for all sorts of reasons. Taking a class with a good instructor is the very best way to learn adaptations for your particular physical issues, but failing that the yoga dvds available everywhere (Target, BN, etc) are pretty good. I like Rodney Yee, instructor for a lot of the Gaiam stuff. There are several beginning dvds in that series. Again, don't overdo it, and don't force your body into positions it isn't ready for. But even a few minutes of yoga a day is a great anodyne for a largely-sedentary lifestyle.

Another possible option: switch to a standing desk part of the time. This is one I'm looking into myself. I don't want to completely rearrange my office, but I want to set up my workspace so that certain tasks can be done standing or sitting.