Rebuilding muscle and strength

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diamond

Legendary member
Joined
Sep 18, 2015
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1,548
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DX FIBRO
Diagnosis
01/2008
Country
UK
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anywhere
So we have had an amazing thread on exercise intolerance that's had the most replies ive seen for ages.

So those of you who understand i haven't been able to exercise much for over 2 years and i have limitations based on joint issues....so i cant squat or get on the ground or bend around as in yoga but i can walk some of the time for 5 or 10 minutes.

So if i really pushed myself and built up to 10 minutes 3 or 4 times a day bearing in mind i might have days my joints and muscles rebel do you think its possible to get muscle back in my legs and buttocks and core with just walking.

It s no good me being more ambitious with squats or lunges because im older and while slim and only 126lbs am now very weak as well as fibro/CFS at severe end.

I am so desperate to strengthen myself before things get worse...but truly when i see what healthy people do to shape up and i long to be able to do it im not very optimistic walking is going to achieve much.

I did a little test and held my buttocks up with my hands ( gross sorry) and my legs felt sooo much lighter.

My glutes have gone from good shape to wobbly jelly in 2 years ugh i hate it and doubt walking will do what i want which is the light feeling in my legs so i can move with less pain and more ease.

But i know i daren't use resistant bands as i tried that and every time the tendons and ligaments and muscles tighten and then i'm hardly able to put my legs to the ground for weeks.

Any comments appreciated.
 
Well i tried.. i did a few minutes walking around the house .. .then later went in the garden ...watered some pots and did a tiny bit of snipping...about 15 snips with secateurs....walked around a little and lifted down 2 old very light hanging basket.

By the time id finished im in severe pain top to toe.

lol now laying out with a pile of hwbs feeling defeated because truly it hurts so much, burning throbbing stabbing and seizing up.

Part of my daily fibro is also the locked up chinacat talks about in her recent post but i have it in many places all over my body and flares up super quickly..might ease with rest but comes back every day.

The word ive been using in all my posts is 'seizing' and no one seems to get this daily?

sorry for complaining..... I just want to rejoin the land of the semi living.
 
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I had a similar thing with my neck and shoulders - I had almost no mobility and any attempt to stretch would leave me in pain. I finally found a really good physiotherapist who carefully massaged the area, applied laser (I think) and added tens exercises and gentle stretching to the mix. Not sure if you have funding for that kind of thing (or massage therapy). Otherwise, start even more slowly and incorporate massaging your glutes in the mix - you can google ways to do that. So frustrating, I know. Glute pain is a new addition for me and it is the pits. There is one massage I do that helps a bit - rolling from top inner point, down through centre, down to centre top of thigh. I have yet to find the right tool, though. It's awkward to do. Tennis ball or raquet ball or rolling pin maybe. I actually went to massage therapy today and had a butt massage (they call it a glute massage, which sounds much nicer lol - you know you're desperate when..).
 
Dear Diamond , my shinning star.

I think when you expressing seizing , I often confuse it with seizure ( my bad) . Sometime my brain see word differently just like how I need to close one eye to type these words here at the moment . So I have to reminding my self to read thing twice or more than once just to be safe.
Like Marvis just wrote "and incorporate massaging your glutes in the mix - " My eyes I accidentedly read it a moment earlier as "and inappropriately massaging your glutes in the mix - " :shock:

Yes my body do seizing up a lot more than I wish to. The worst one ever was the time I was having a vertigo attack while tryin to tie up the kitchen trash bag in the kitchen. Needless to say I landed my whole body like big log fallen and crashing my face deep inside the dirty trash bag I was holding ( good thing there were no sharp objects in it) . Talk about gross lol . I felt like a dog after I manage to literally dragged my self in to the bathroom in to the tub/shower blacken bruised picking rotten lettuces and leftover foods or eggs shells out of my hair while sitting down turning on water to rinse and tried to wash my self off all the skunky trash. Took me an hour later to be able to get it all clean. However getting my self out of the tub was a no go cause my back was in so much pains and also stiff up , so I had to wrapped my self with dry towels that was near by, and passed out in side of the tub for a while after. There were nobody in the house to help me out at time ,so a few hours later when i came through luckily with little some energy possibly from the cold rush from being stuck on the wet tub floor for hours. I manage get my self out of it to the dry place. And later in the evening able to finally dressed my self like a human being again.

Anyway back to your lovely first post.

I'm 5.4 ft and with weight fluctuation ( yoyo weight) problem do to my potassium deficiency my weight change all the time. It usually and mostly between 115-136lb . Like today in the afternoon here I'm actually 128 lb , then as the days goes by when I try to do somework around the house or cooking dinner , then suddenly I might blow up with water weight up to 130lb . Unable to pee off even with my healthy bladder , I'll have to take high dosed of potassium , then in just a few hours later I might be able to pee a huge loads off of me and lost it back to 129 then 128. Tomorrow morning I might wake up your weight at 126 or even less if i continuing to pee a whole lots more through out the night. Once a while I woke skinny at 115lb . I usually take a picture of my belly cause later the day It'll probably looks like a marshmallow later, worse a 5 month pregnent women and that hurt very badly all over my body feeling like I'm about to brust if someone poke me with a needles.

My leg are the only same size skinny parts yet build with some muscle tone of my body thanks to RLS every night. I have found the way to use my tremor and spasm restless legs at night as work out rutine. By wearing the ankle weights at night and block the leg traveling path on my bed , every spasm or movement at night will contribute to legs and butt muscels . Plus when I get up in the morning it's easy to drop my legs down the ground and standing. Sometime I manage to walk around the house with them on . Dragging my feet yes but it help exercise and balance easier.
 
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You always make me LOL Tipnatee...i have an image now of you weight training in your sleep and then walking around all day dragging your feet falling into a trash can and coming out with your face covered in egg!

Thanks Marvis ....physio always used to flare my symptoms up but that was exercises.....maybe a very gentle massage would help...it rather scares me as i hurt so much all over but perhaps if i just allowed one place to be worked on and then gauged the results.

I am same as you with my neck shoulders and arms ....it feels like Ive turned to stone so i guess the muscles have shortened and stiffened and restricts range of movements. Even gentle stretching kills but i do it as much as possible.

I was told by a physio i had frozen shoulder but 10 years on it worse not better ....lol i just basically need a new body.

Thanks for replying.
 
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When I started exercising again,I had done nothing at all for 12 years.I was walking around in a med induced zombie state.I hurt from head to toe all the time.I really thought that I would probably fail relatively quickly.All I knew was,that I couldn't continue with the status quo.For weeks I barely did 5 to 10 minutes,mostly just yoga.One day,I felt brave,I then incrementally added small changes,and religiously stuck to the same routine,till my body told me that I could add another small increase.I kept that strategy and one month turned to two,two to three and then one day,I noticed a few positive changes that gave me the will to keep at it.I never put a time limit on any increases,it was going to be decided by my body's response.When I started I was intolerant too,maybe I have a somewhat less severe form,I don't know.But I do wish you luck in your challenging endeavor,you sound ready to give it a shot!
 
Diamond - I think asking a lot of questions is key. I've gone to 3 other physiotherapists who didn't help at all. Ask them if they treat fibromyalgia patients and what their protocol is. If it's just tens, ultrasound and exercise, it's not likely going to help. The clinic I went to advertises as helping with fibromyalgia. If you have any kind of massage done, make sure it's very gentle and resist the temptation to ask them to go deeper. I sometimes want them to work harder on a specific spot, but I usually hold back, because it can really make things worse. It also takes time. I did 10 weeks twice a week to get the improvement I was looking for.
 
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That's encouraging Marvis that you persevered and it took time but eventually you improved..did it hurt more at the time or the day after and to what degree?
Thank you for replying
 
I was really, really careful as was he, so the pain didn't increase much. I was encouraged to do the exercises right away, but I only did as much as I felt was ok, not what they told me to do, and we figured that out together. The pain increased and decreased according to the weather and intensity of my migraines, but overall decreasesd and my flexibility improved.
 
Diamond, I respect and applaud your continued efforts to find a way to exercise and to get into better shape.

You cannot strengthen glutes (your bum) or core by walking. But what you can do to strengthen the glutes is simply to tighten them.

Make your bum muscles as tight as you can, hold tight as long as you can, then release. Do this as many time during the day as you can, no matter if you are walking, standing, lying, sitting. It takes time but it will help.

You can strengthen your core the same way by tightening your abdominal muscles.

Walking is very good exercise, though, especially if you can move as much of the rest of your body as possible while walking. Like swinging arms and so on.

Here is another idea, and this is what I am doing these days. Dance!! Now, here's the thing--before you say "I can't dance!", think of it this way. Dancing is literally any movement that you feel like doing to music.

Find, if you can, some music that you like, and just move to it. If you are sitting, move your arms. If lying down, move your legs in bed, or your arms, or both. If you can stand, move that way. Doesn't matter for how long or what you do, just do whatever you want to do. In time, if you do this every day, you will build strength and you will also quite possibly find joy in doing this.

Just a thought. Hope it helps. If it doesn't, feel free to toss it. :)
 
Ah thats really helpful sunkacola i can do the tightening..that at least gives me some hope and power back..as does the just moving around to music as and when i can....thanks so much...lol so i will be sat here swaying my arms looking a Nelly but maybe a fitter Nelly in the end! :)

All i need is a trunk! Maybe i cud swing that around too! ( Nelly the Elephant UK nursery rhyme)....lol and no Im not elephant size im pretty petit.

I did walk around my house yesterday in laps of 5 minutes and must have reached about 20/30 minutes and a few minutes outside....lol today im overdone and am not very mobile but i will keep persevering.
 
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I applaud all your efforts!Keep believing in yourself,it is one of the few treatments that will pay you back huge dividends if you invest into it.Once you get a few benefits,you will be hooked and want to continue.I expect to exercise till the end,one thing about fibro,you will do anything to feel better and that is an awesome motivator!
 
Dancing is really great idea Sunkacola! :)

Sometime when my belly felt tight to the point where i cant actually bend down any further, feeling lots of acid reflux, and suffocating . I often do the belly dance . It help losing the tightness and make my organs relax a little bit.
 
Hi Sunkacola Nice to meet you!
Dance and music are amazing when you are struggling. I find the music lifts me up enough to motivate me to get up and try to move. I dance quite often, but you always have to be careful of how you move. I used to really get into the music and dance for too long resulting in widespread pain later.... so you do really need to be careful.

Hi Diamond nice to meet you!
It's very defeating when you can't get up and move around or exercise. It takes me forever to build a little muscle and become more flexible and usually I backslide due to an injury or surgery and feel even weaker the next time I start to try to rebuild muscle. You said you tried bands and they make things worse. What about a piece of surgical tubing? It acts like a band but I find it's easier to work with and has a lot of give making it easy to get a gentle stretch.
I also use this to play tug with my crazy little Boxer. Because it has so much give it doesn't put much load on my muscle and there are no sudden jerking movements like say if we were using a rope bone.
I don't know if it will help, but it might be worth a try.
When I first started stretching I did it to feel the burn so to speak and put myself through a world of hurt. Now my stretching is very slow and deliberate, always listening to my body and backing off when the stretch is too intense....it took awhile but I can honestly say that I am wayyyy more flexible than I used to be. When I am in a flare I use heat before my stretch and actually have a space heater blowing right on me to keep my body warm... i figure even if I can only tolerate a few stretches, it's better than nothing. But some days it's so hard to talk yourself into doing it, knowing it could make the pain worse.
Go slow and listen to your body. We can all make suggestions, but only you will truly know what your body can take.
 
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