tips for setting motivational goals with bodyweight exercises?

[ratcreature]

I suffered from some nasty lower back/sciatic nerve pain during the last months. Both my primary care physician as well as the orthopedic specialist thought that there isn't anything particular wrong with my back (like a disc injury or such), but that it was the unspecific kind of back pain due to weak muscles, bad posture, being too sedentary etc. and that it ought to improve with exercise.

So I had about a dozen physical therapy sessions, also took a class for back pain exercises, and thankfully my pain got indeed better, albeit with ups and downs. But of course I should keep doing the exercises to remain pain free, yet the ultimate goal of "I want the pain to not come back" alone isn't great to sustain motivation for me. It's too general and doesn't really offer any accomplishments to work toward and such.

Because the exercises I learned are basically a mix of bodyweight strength exercises, balance exercises and stretches, I figure that I should be able to use the strength exercises to measure progress somehow for motivation. I enjoy tracking things, but I'm not sure how to go about it with exercising.

I mean, I have noticed some progress with exercises becoming easier, so I can manage more repetitions, and sometimes when there were different versions I can now even do the more difficult exercise than just the easiest kind (though overall my fitness level is still pretty bad, like for example I can't manage any push-ups, not even the easier kind where you are on your knees rather than toes, but am still at the level where you push against a wall). But I'd like to properly track things and have a couple of realistic, concrete goals so I see improvements.

I tried looking at the bodyweight strength training books in my library to get an idea for how this is usually done, but I have to admit that the books I found were all rather off-putting. Like the ones aimed at women all seemed to be a horrible assemblage of body image and weight loss issues, and the ones aimed more towards men had a slightly different set of body image and weight loss issues that were almost as awful and often mixed that with some kind of, I guess, weird power fantasies? I'm sure there must be decent strength training books out there, but my skimming led me to think that it is one those genres you best not venture into without recs. So I mostly backed away from consulting those.

Basically I'm looking for advice with which kind of exercises or exercise progressions (like with the different kinds of push-ups getting more difficult) are good to see your progress and motivate yourself, when you don't track increased weight like with lifting stuff.

Comments

[foxfirefey]

This article looks like it explains it okay--I use it to help my upper back and roll along the outsides of my thighs (my muscles get tight and my knees end up twinging from it on the outside). I also have a Back Buddy to help release my shoulders which get HORRIFICALLY tense, probably from boobs + computing.

[thalia]

Ooh, thanks for the foam roller link--I just bought one over the weekend and have been trying to figure out what to do with it. That's the best explanation I've seen.

[foxfirefey]

I cringe linking to this because the surrounding site is so RAH-BLAH but I bumped into it recently and it has a pretty good run down of targeting different muscle groups with the foam roller:

http://www.t-nation.com/readArticle.do?id=475832

[ratcreature]

Hmm, I'm not sure I have these trigger points. My physical therapist also massaged various areas in some sessions, and while she did say that some muscles were tight, I never experienced any of this unknotting or pain/release feeling with the massage.

[foxfirefey]

Hrm, well, if your physical therapist's massages didn't relieve anything, maybe a foam roller wouldn't. But if tightness keeps being an issue, a foam roller is a tricky thing to get the hang of but pretty beneficial.

[ratcreature]

Well, I think the massages helped with mobility when it was quite bad (at times bending forward/downward didn't just hurt, I just couldn't do such movement), so they might have relieved tightness, and they had a firm pressure that kind of hurt as pressure, but I don't recognize any sensation I'd describe as "unknotting", like that sequence where it hurts worst in a specific spot and then relaxes is not something I recognize.

Some of the back pain books I've read described this technique as well with a small ball or as self massage for pain relief (not with a foam roller though, hence my confusiom) and described which areas to try for these "triggers", and I tried that for alleviating the pain -- my sciatic pain at its worst was the worst pain I ever felt, worse than an abscessed tooth, was constant regardless of sitting/standing/lying and oral pain meds didn't do anything, so that were some really unpleasant weeks and I was game to try all sorts of stuff from temperature to pressing on various body parts to positioning my back and legs or whatever to make any sort of difference -- but I never found any spots that produced this kind of effect.

[foxfirefey]

I think there are definitely ways to use a tennis ball instead for the same purposes; I just think people find the foam roller easier to manage. For instance, my physical therapist tried to get me to do some things with some tennis balls on my shoulder muscles around the spine and I just could NOT get it to work right and got the Back Buddy instead.

Foam rollers aren't really pleasant to use either, but afterwards things don't feel so tight for me.