Elliptical

Hi Jenn! I'm 2 months pp and am have a cystocele. I also think I caused my prolapse by running too early but who knows. I plan on waiting until my son is 3 months old but then will start no-to-low impact exercises (elliptical, spinning and swimming.) My doctor said these were all good exercises to do and wouldn't stress my body too much. He even said I could run but that marathoning wouldn't be a good idea. So I do plan to run again eventually but am going to give my body some more time to heal and work on losing my baby weight before I hop on a treadmill again.

I had a doctor tell me the same thing as yours did, that it's common and will go back to normal in a few months and another tell me the opposite. I'm really hoping that my first doctor and yours are right!! Good luck with the exercise, let us know how it goes.

The best thing to do now is to practice the posture. Make sure you are sitting in the posture, standing in the posture, and walk a lot while practicing pulling the tummy up (not in), having a slight arch in the back (bum sticking out some), shoulders down (not back), chin tucked while concentrating on a "string" being tied to the top of your head pulling you up tall. The more you do these things (sit, stand, walk) concentrating on the posture the more likely it is that the posture will become like breathing. This will mean when you decide to run and do other more strenuous exercise that you will be able to keep the posture and therefore, protect your pelvic organs. I know that walking does not burn calories like running or elliptical, but in the early months pp it is your best friend. Time goes by so quickly that it'll be a year pp before you know it.

I've been struggling with recovering from pregnancy, birth (1/16/08), appendectomy (1/30/08), and abscess (2/13/08) which left me unable to do anything (including carrying my baby) but lie around for 5 weeks. My core strength has really been compromised and I still have "pulling" pain on my right side. I am not sure when I will be able to resume any sort of formal exercise, but I am able to walk and practice the posture. This will strengthen my core and draw my pelvic organs up until I am recovered from the trauma to my body. And I am so glad to be able to carrying my baby again. I was starting to get depressed about all of this happening to me and curbing my ability to care for my 4 children, husband, and house, but then I realized this is temporary and there are people who are paralyzed or terminally ill so I really have nothing to complain about. I have only been delayed, not stopped.
Jane

all this trouble and you are still inspiring me. I am so glad to hear that you are on the road to recovery. What a hard thing to do- 4 kids house and man. and on top of it illness. Well your babymoon can start now.

My babymoon is going on now and I am feeling so much better. If only I didn't have to return to work in April... But I am a teacher, so it will only be for 8 weeks until summer break. And who knows, maybe we'll win the lottery (oh, maybe you have to play) and I won't have to go back. :)
Jane

Hi Jane

Good to hear that you are going 'OK'. Your report sounds pretty good to me after all you have been through in the last few weeks. Allowing your body to heal in its time is so important. It has been very frustrating for you, I know, and you will look back on it in a couple of years and wonder how you did it. The answer to that is because you had to. (((Jane)))

Cheers

Louise

Thank You Louise,
I appreciate your empathy and encouragement. I need it. Time is our friend and not our enemy.
Jane

Hi Mzimm, rbh5, weefaith and PArunner

DH & I received an Elliptical machine from Father Xmas, mainly for postumbilical hernia surgery cardio fitness and tummy muscle waking for DH. I thought I would go along for the ride, or should I say for the stride.

The good news is that DH has discovered, after only a month of using it, that he can move his tummy muscles again after 10 minutes a day. Yippee! He is so proud of himself after having a few years of balloon belly that finally blew out. I haven't really got into it yet, and am looking for some encouragement. You all seem to find it OK, so why shouldn't I? The weather has been very hot, even more so than a normal summer. We have it out on our south facing verandah which is always in shade. So, early in the morning or during the evening are good times to get out there.

How do you stop yourself from getting bored, and keep an eye on your heart rate at the same time? I am thinking a book stand would be useful so I could get through a few novels, but I am just as likely to still be striding away by midday and die of heat exhaustion, cos I will get so wrapped up in the book I will forget to check my heart rate or the time I have been going! If I did it during the day it would be like doing bikram yoga on a bike!

Our machine is a York machine that has about seven programs, so it beeps at the end of the program, but I am a bit of a greyhound, and my heartrate creeps up without my noticing it. I have a weird heartbeat that puts in extra beats every few beats. All quite benign. Been through every test in the book. The machine registers a heartbeat of up to 170bpm no probs at all after a few minutes. According to my calculations, at my age 58, my maximum heart rate should be 158bpm, and my aim should only be to get it up to about 80bpm. I really don't feel terribly puffed at 160bpm. I am sure the machine is having difficulty reading my heart rate. I might need to get a few chest monitor readings done, so I can kind of calibrate the machine. Either that, or I have cardiac hypercyclia (high maximum heart rate). No, that disease does not exist. I just invented it. Maybe discovering a new disease will get me into medical school, so I can make people pay me lots of money for telling them they are sick!

Do any of you know what I am talking about with difficulty monitoring your heart rate and fighting boredom while on the machine? Or any other Elliptical users out there?

I was thinking of rigging it up to my computer and getting some sort of trackball device taped to the handle bars so I could Google as I stride, and power the computer at the same time.

Cheers

Louise

Louise, I do hope I can persuade you not to let yourself be cheated out of a good workout by notional rules about heart rate levels. Today, I took part in a 5k time trial and my AVERAGE heart rate was 153, maximum 164. I felt OK at the time. I feel great several hours later. As a result of being exercised, my heart will now be busy growing a bit stronger and better able to stand up to whatever shocks may be coming its way.

There are various ways of working out your maximum heart rate. The most common is to subtract your age from 226 (for a woman) or 220 (for a man). The other methods give a slightly higher max. If I take my age (67) from 226 I get 159. Clearly, this can not be my true max, as my HR went up to 164 today, and doubtless if there had been a tiger after me it would have gone higher. It is always said that there is a margin of at least 20 beats one way and the other in these calculations. Athletes find out a truer max by simply warming up and then sprinting as fast as they can, twice. The figure they reach on the 2nd go is considered their max. We ordinary people are NOT encouraged to do this, for obvious reasons. Also, I don't think I have the guts to do it.

Lets take your age - 58 - from 226 = 168. Up to 70% (118bpm for you)is considered easy/a warmup. Up to 76% (128bpm) would be steady - suitable for long slow distance. Up to 85% (143bpm) would be aerobic - a good workout. Higher than that and you would be getting into speed/threshhold and it's perhaps a bit soon for that! NB these figures are "up to" not targets.

Unless you have a special problem, and you seem to be saying you haven't, I believe you could let yourself exercise as vigorously as you want. Men sometimes do push themselves to a dangerous degree, especially in competitive situations, but few women will push til their faces turn purple and their eyes are out on stalks. I think our problem is usually that we don't push ourselves enough. If you want to exercise for 20 minutes and find you are too out of breath to continue after 10, clearly you need to slow down. Otherwise, as long as you warm up first, I would relax and "run with the rivers". You will find it much less boring. Oh, and the "fat burning zone" is a myth!

Finally, there are 2 other methods of measuring effort. One is Perceived Exertion, and is said to be pretty accurate. You decide if your current level of effort merits the adjective "very easy" "easy" etc etc right up to "very very hard". No-one not training for the Olympics should train "very very hard", but you are not going to do that without noticing. The 2nd is the Talk Test. If you can sing aloud you are going too slowly. If you can't speak at all you are going too hard.

Good training, and don't forget the warmup!

Hi Alix

You're a personal trainer, or something, aren't you?

Thanks for the tips. No, I wasn't going to do myself get cheated out of a good workout. Just curious about what you experienced elliptical users would say. It is good to have a range of measures you can use. I knew there was something not quite right. I guess it is just the manufacturers watching their a***s. Curiously there did not seem to be any warnings in the instruction book about getting a health check from your doctor before launching into an exercise program. Nor was there any advice about doing an initial fitness test so you know where to start, or as a benchmark for your progress. Maybe they don't really care, as long as they have sold a machine.

BTW, I laugh at references to a 'fat burning zone'. I am not that gullible. Anyway, it is not about fat burning for me. I am a tiny bit overweight, but I regard my fat as my oestrogen bank post-menopause. If I burn it up my body won't have access to it. ;-)

I just want better cardiovascular fitness and whole body strength, and so I don't let my husband get too much of a fitness margin on me! My bellydance is teaching me to use different muscle groups and posture awareness with a little cardio fitness, but my lower body and upper body strength could do with some more oomph, particularly as I get older, and particularly while I am spending so much time sitting at my computer.

We are both having a visit from a personal trainer in a couple of weeks to work out our current fitness levels and find out the ways we can get the best use out of the machine. I'll let everyone know how we go.

Cheers

Louise

Well, Louise, I'm very flattered, but no. Actually, if I had another life coming up I'd like to do research in exercise and fitness science. I haven't got the patience and inter-personal skills to make a trainer, and anyway they have a very hard time, horribly exploited when they work in gyms. But I am absolutely passionate about fitness and exercise for everyone, having run the whole gamut from over-weight, sedentary child and young adult to (comparatively) super-fit, skinny old age pensioner. And believe me, being the latter is a whole lot more fun.

This morning I was weight training at my weekend gym, which I don't like as it is like a vast gin palace, all lights and noise and sparkly chrome and crowds. However, it caters to families, with swimming for tots. Today I watched a tiny child being carried by its mother through the main gym area, and it was staring around spell-bound. I suddenly thought, what a great thing to be brought up in such a way that fitness centres are associated with wonder and pleasure in one's earliest memories. Maybe this way the salvation of the human race lies.

I was so worked up in my last, I forgot to say what a good purchase you and he have made. I have a X-trainer, as has a dear friend, and we both think they are brilliant because they exercise arms and legs at the same time - and I suppose core too. Have fun!

I so enjoyed Alix’s post as well and think we need a lot more discussion on heart! It is no myth that our own estrogen is heart-protective and I have only become aware of my heart in the last couple of years - meaning that I am experiencing mild symptoms that have caught my attention. I thought you were in your thirties, Alix! How very cool to have a role model in you...thanks so much for being here with us.

I strongly dislike exercise machines, personally, and would ideally like to run around in the woods every morning for an hour or so, but back / pelvis problems (not prolapse though) only allow this sort of pounding 3-4 times a week. The other days I, too, am on things like an elliptical. So I hear you on the boredom factor, Louise. Nothing like stepping on the machine and setting it for 20 minutes and the boredom setting in immediately. I got sick of all that wasted time feeling bored so have started using it as a time for a meditation of sorts, setting my goals for the day and putting my intentions in place. I usually start with the logistics of what I have on the books that day but by the time the 20 minutes is up it has evolved into larger life situations and bigger picture things about the world and my small place in it. Still not quite up to par with hiking but it's getting better :)

One thing I have noticed about the weird elliptical air walking type feeling is that I feel like there is a subtle overall engagement of the pelvis and lower back that I don't find in regular walking / running. Has anyone else experienced this? Like if you hold your arm up, muscles etc are engaged but not worked, like if you were lifting weights. My arms and bum and quads are definitely worked while on the machine, but the subtle engagement feels different. Throw in the WW posture and it is even stronger. Seems to me that this would be an added bonus for POP?

I used the Elliptical machine tonight at the gym and I find it very hard to say in posture- it is all about the incline- so fiddle with that for sure- I don't get bored- I listen to music....plus there is no way on earth I could get bored with 20 minutes uninterrupted - no way

LOL!! Alemama, it is a bit strange, but I find it OK. Maybe my machine, not being a commercial gym model, doesn't have an adjustable incline? I didn't know you could get them with adjustable incline. I just went out and tried it in WW posture vs with my butt tucked and couldn't make the butt tucked version comfortable at all, but maybe that is because Tuckbutt is no longer an easy posture to maintain. I wonder if it is to do with the arm length, ie if you have to bend your arms too much or stretch too far forward for the full stroke? Or what part of the pedals you stand on (back or forward)? My heels want to rise slightly off the pedals at the back of the stroke, whatever my posture. I didn't have shoes on. Maybe they are designed for a 2cm shoe heel like a trainer? Maybe our body proportions are different. I have long legs and arms, and I think quite a short torso. That might mean that our centres of gravity could be different?

L

Christine, I was quite overwhelmed by your kind post. I was going to say,I really can't be a role model for anyone, but on reflection maybe, in the following way only. I was never an athlete, didn't exercise as I should have for most of my life and now have all sorts of health problems, more than I can even remember and list at one time, AND YET, a year after the great upheaval of discovering my POPs I am back delighting in exercise. (Not that I really stopped exercising, but the delight wobbled.) The point is, if I can anyone can.

I do believe that the older we get the more important it is to KEEP ON exercising. Lots of research has shown that it is never too late - people in their 90s living in retirement homes have greatly benefited from starting weight training! Conversely, as we age we lose fitness and muscle faster when we stop exercising and take longer to build them back up, so it gets more and more important to keep going.

I have had a lot of encouragement and amusement from the book "Younger Next Year" (read, or at least carried to the beach by, President Obama). Anyone over 50 or even over 40 could do worse than to read it and/or visit the site where there is a lively little community of bloggers.

Christine, you know so much about exercise, I'm sure you will already have tweaked your routine to address your concerns, and I hope those slight symptoms will soon be history.

Louise, there are many many different models of elliptical for both the home and gym market, and they feel quite different in use. I love my machine at home, but I can't abide most I have tried in the gym. I suggest you be a bit careful using your elliptical barefoot. A friend tried using his in his slippers, and ripped the side off!

Louise, I am 167cm and have a short torso and long limbs too...and I find my feet towards the back of the footrests. Otherwise it all feels really scrunched up. You are indeed an inspiration, alix! I don't like machines but I love love love using my body, it makes me feel fantastic and if it makes me lives longer, great. As long as I feel good :)