When last we left off I had plateaued with my body pump routine. For years I had incrementally increased my weight, and expected to do so indefinitely as time went on. The good instructors would correct my form, and I’d listen. And I think that encouraged them to come to me more often, which was great for me in the end!

The cycle of injury, recovery and re-build is neither healthy nor good for your body. People who are continually getting injured should re-think the level of intensity at which they are doing the exercises and their form while doing them. The hardest thing to be is honest about whether the exercises are being done properly and with the correct form, and if not, then to adjust. Minimizing the injury recurrences means less time out of the gym, and more importantly, less scar tissue created. Scar tissue leads to less mobility, flexibility, range of motion, and also, more pain. More and more movements are affected, meaning you will have less and less available to you in the way of exercises that don’t hurt.

For me, around the age of 42, things started getting strained and pinched a little more easily and often than before. So I learned a literally painful lesson, that I don’t have to keep going up and up and up, in order to be strong and healthy.

I recently asked my instructor to advise me on my weight selection after she told me frankly that I was lifting too much for my height and weight. Armed with this new regimen, and the advice of another instructor who said, “Using too much weight can impact upon your joints more so than your muscles,” I’m embarking on experimenting with how this new weight selection impacts upon my body and my psyche. As you saw in the last post, there’s actually not too much difference between what was suggested and what I had previously been lifting, and further, what I am trying now. However, the mental aspect for me has already shifted with this knowledge, and who knows, I may end up not hating body pump so much anymore!

Thanks Barbara and Beth. I’ll let you know in a couple months what happens!

In my upcoming series of posts, I’m going to tackle a topic that I’ve been hearing a lot about: immunotherapy for cancer treatment. But please bear with me in the next month as it may take some time for me to sort all this out.

The first thing we have to understand is a few basics about our immune system, so that will be topic 1. Topic 2 will then define various immunotherapies and within the framework of understanding our immune system, we will see (at least superficially) how/why these approaches have been targeted. Then in topics 3, 4, and 5 we will describe each of the therapies, quite possibly using analogies to best illustrate the differences.
The image shown here defines the three types of immunotherapies I’ll initially cover, and for what types of cancer they have been effective against.
Lastly with topic 6, we will go into what it takes to get a vaccine/drug through the regulations in order for it to actually become a vaccine/drug that we all can use. Although I’m going to simplify it as much as I can (for I don’t quite understand it myself), I think this topic is extremely important and perhaps even the most relevant point for all of us to understand.

While gearing up for these posts on immunotherapy, I thought I’d pick some more editorial-type topics in the mean time, where I’ve been using my own body for (VERY) informal scientific research.

For those of you who know me, you also know that I came late into the “work-out” game. It all started when after booking a trip to Cozumel, I realized I was going to have to appear in public in some type of swim suit. So, I borrowed some aerobics video tapes from a girlfriend, and started doing 30-minute cardio work-outs in the privacy of my 450-sq. foot apartment. I would come home around 6-6:30 from work, put on some shorts and a t-shirt, move the furniture out of the way, and pop the video in.

Since then, I have graduated to a gym membership and work out regularly....I’ve come a long way! There are many great attributes to classes, the hardest part being pushing through the embarrassment of not knowing what I was doing for the first few MONTHS. I felt accountable for my attendance when seeing the same people week in and week out. I also made new friends to boot.

The problem with classes is that you could potentially be doing things incorrectly that can then lead to injury. After all, it’s one lonely instructor against a good number of us who are at varying levels of competency.

A great example is body pump. For months before trying the class, I had only been using the machines to do weight training. But often, my short legs wouldn’t quite fit properly, and when all was said and done, I was only using the 4 machines I could fit into. In between rep. sessions, I’d walk over to the classroom and watch the body pumpers go.

So one day I got up the nerve to go in.

I tried to follow along, and used pretty light weights in the beginning. At first, you may feel like you’re wasting time because you’re not sweating, but this is probably the most critical time as you learn proper form and get used to the names of the moves etc. so that you don’t injure yourself. I started getting the hang of it after 6-8 classes.

Then, every 1.5-2 months I increased my weight amounts, just by the tiniest bit each time. It involved a lot of switching in between, which got stressful, but I also knew I didn’t want to increase the weight at too great an interval.

But every once in a while, I’d pull or tweak something. This would lead to weeks of doing light weights while recovering. I even got elbow tendinitis once, which took me out for half the class for months. Then that was followed by weeks to months of building back up. This was frustrating. I finally stopped increasing altogether. I was in a rut. So, what happened next? Next post!