Flexing My Mom Muscles

Last year, I became a mom after 40, and I’ve discovered that there is a large potential for injury from starting to mommy later in life.

There are many opportunities to strain, pull, and get out of alignment with holding, carrying and putting our little dears in car seats.

After realizing the full potential for bodily damage (mine not his), I decided to try and proactively PREVENT getting injured. So I asked at my gym for the right type of personal trainer to help me with these goals. She’s been wonderful. Although I asked Sarah for exercises to help me “get strong” in my arms and stay ahead of my son’s increasing weight, she redirected me and gave me strengthening exercises that multitask by strengthening my arms, core muscles (back and stomach), and gluts at the same time.

I’ve always known that I’m a bit of a weakling, but was still slightly bummed to learn that I needed to start with 3 pound weights. I got over it quickly, because my aim was to get stronger, so what did it really matter where I was starting?

I asked my trainer  to only teach me 2-3 exercises because I have limited capacity for remembering these things and didn’t want to feel burdened by having to spend too much time strength training at any one session, given I’d want to do it about 2-3 times per week.

I’m happy to say, I learned how to it and stayed quite regular.  But I want to be clear, I followed the advice that I’ve been giving women for years: If you don’t have time for or want to do the whole schabang on any day (e.g., all the exercises, reps, etc), then just grab what you can and want, guilt free. There’s no need to do it “perfectly” every time because it’s only one day out of the rest of our lives.

I’ve gotten stronger, straighter, and more sturdy. Most of all, I’ve felt proud of myself for continuing to this regularly enough that it made a difference in how I feel when I carry my son and lift grocery bags. And, I have also enjoyed witnessing the development of muscle in my arms and stomach, even though this wasn’t my motivation.

As I write this post, I am recently returned home from living in Spain for 5 months. Despite my great intentions and aims, I STILL got injured! Was the cause of my back and neck pain my new halter dress pulling on my vertebrae and/or carrying our son plus heavy bags throughout airports? I’ll never know. But here I am, back in physical therapy and doing the stretching exercises that are boring and take up to much time every day.

While my added core and upper body strength didn’t prevent my almost-43 year old body from getting injured, I continue to believe that returning to my strength training is still in my best interest. In fact, who knows, maybe I’d be worse off now if I hadn’t been as strong as I was before the injuries?

 I hope other 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 and 90+ women read this and learn that it’s never too late to build strength and stability, and you don’t have to do a lot to see results. And while we can’t prevent all ills from befalling us, we can decide that how we feel on a daily basis and our own self-care rank very high on the ‘most important’ list.

Next week, look for my special strategies for making strength training a consistent part of your life.

For more about what’s sabotaging your desire to exercise, check out my blog www.essentialsteps.net/blog