Having broken the ice...

[commodorified]

Hi, I'm Marna.

I have fibromyalgia, RSI-related soft tissue injuries, scoliosis, and a great fondness for Lifting Heavy Things. Which is a good thing, because if I don't want the fibro plus the scoliosis plus the family history of severe osteoporosis to beat me into a little weeping pile of mush whose spouses have to carry her around in a bukit I'm going to be strength-building all my days on this earth.

My current project is this: I have good days, bad days, awful days, great days. They're not really predictable. I get very frustrated when I have to knock off the lifting for a week or more and it causes me to lose form and balance and then when I start up my form is crap and I feel unsafe and unstable so I have to drop the weight down and and and ... so, I got sick of that whole dance and decided there had to be a better way.

(I do not scorn the Machines, I in fact suspect that people like me are who they are a Godsend for, but I travel enough not to want to be gym-dependant.)

So now I am trying to come up with a strength-training program that I can modify like crazy and can do with lots of weight, some weight, or no weight/bodyweight, so that I can do it most days in one form or another, adjusting speed, reps, etc, and still have it be of some benefit, plus I get to keep the aforementioned form through my flares.

At home I have two kettlebells, 10 lb and 15 lb, and some 5 lb and 2.5 lb dumbells. On the road I can generally scrounge around and find things to work with.

So far I have come up with:

Turkish Get Ups: good exercise even with a soup can. I find completely empty hands lets my form slip.
Gladiator Presses: same.
Planks.
Squats.

It is actually possible that those four are a fairly complete workout, but... suggestions are solicited. :-)

Other exercise: I walk pretty fanatically and am blessed so far with a lower body that will let me do that.

I use an elliptical in winter with a focus on building endurance and enough focus on cardio to help my lungs recover from smoking, which I recently quit after 25 (!!!) years.

Oh, and my partners' partners have 25 lb of toddler. He's very good for my lower back. :-)

Comments

[weirdquark]

Have you come across Stumptous before? It's a great resource, female focused, but good for pretty much anyone. I don't think there's anything about working around health problems like fibromyalgia, but there are articles about basic workout ideas, making sure you have good form, and all that sort of thing.

Someone else here recently mentioned Nerd Fitness and I got my roommate to start the Angry Birds workout plan, which has almost entirely bodyweight exercises that work your whole body: squats, push-ups, pull-ups, planks. (I say almost entirely bodyweight because before you can do pull-ups you start with bent over rows, which require lifting a weight.) It has a progression that makes each exercise harder, so you can level as you get better at each thing.

But from poking around various places, I have picked up that what you want to do is work your upper body and your lower body, you want push exercises and pull exercises, and compound exercises that work lots of muscle groups are generally better than isolation exercises. (Though if you need to strengthen a particular body part, then isolation exercises can be helpful too.)

The exercises you mention look good to me -- they work a lot of muscles at once, which is always a good thing. I think the main thing you're lacking is an upper body pull exercise, so throwing in some rows would take care of that.

I've been looking through New Rules of Lifting for Abs lately, which has a lot of plank variations and suggests that you should make doing the plank harder instead of working on doing plank for a long time. So you can scale up your planks without increasing the amount of time you spend working out.

One thing you could try is ladder training -- start with one rep of what ever exercise you're doing, rest a few seconds, then do two, rest, etc., go until you can't do the next number of reps in the ladder. That's one set. Then have a longer rest and do another set or two the same way. Depending on how bad your bad days are, you might be able to still do the ladder and just not go up as far.

[sophiap]

Hi, Marna! I'm another lifter who has to deal with fibromyalgia. I've found that the strength training has been very good for it overall, and that a burst of excercise at the start of a flareup can actually help mitigate the flareup (if the flareup has time to sink its teeth into me, forget it).

Gubernatrix has a few articles on body-weight exercise, and I've been meaning to check out this blog after reading a very interesting piece by the author regarding squat form. I have some balance/form issues, and it looks like there's some good reading here--sorry I haven't had a chance to really review it yet.

ExRx.net has a pretty extensive library of exercises, including bodyweight variations that seem to hit every muscle group.

[resolute]

What weirdquark said, yes, both for Stumptuous and NerdFitness. (NF is reasonable strongly primal-paleo flavored, but they are tolerant.)

For a pulling exercise:

get a pull-up bar and install it in a doorway inside your house
get a children's rope cargo net:
http://www.amazon.com/Swing-Slide-NE4481-1-Cargo-Climbing/dp/B000HA9H1Q
and install it in the kid's playroom or room, then use it for assisted inverse body weight rows:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYUxXMGVuuU (video demonstration via nerd fitness)
do inverse rows off a sturdy table, as the video shows
do inverse body weight rows in a doorway (this always makes my wrists hurt, the grip is incredibly awkward.)

Those are all the things I do for pulling exercises when I'm not at a gym!

Turkish get-ups are the awesomest

[rydra_wong]

What they said re: pulling exercises.

For an overhead push movement -- you could just do an overhead press, of course, but personally I'd be inclined to press one weight and then do a windmill:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6651sjanpxI

Just because it's more interesting and has a nice stretching component (without the weight, it's pretty much trikonasana/triangle pose). And I have the attention span of a gnat.

Or you could squat with two kettlebells/dumbbells and press them when you're in the bottom position of the squat, which is called a Sott press and is evil.

For a horizontal push -- your most portable option would probably be a push-up (at whatever level works for you):

http://www.stumptuous.com/mistressing-the-pushup

If you like planks, one nice variation with some stability work in it is: push-up --> side-plank --> push-up --> side-plank on the other side --> repeat as long as arms and desire permit.

[panda]

I don't have anything to add, but congrats on quitting smoking!