Day 91: Totally Sweaty, Total Body Work Out

My exhaustion lasted all day yesterday, a tired in my bones kind of exhaustion that no caffeine or lounging could cure. I just had to be in bed early last night. So at 9:30pm, promptly after my kids were asleep, I got in my pajamas, said good night to my husbeard, and took myself to bed. I may have spent 10 minutes or so browsing Valkyrie Discord, but then I was out like a light. I couldn’t stay awake for another minute.

My body feels a bit on the heavy side today, kind of worn out feeling. But my brain is awake, and I don’t feel so run down that I need more rest. I think this is just leftover tired from my cycle, and I just need to plow through it and get my workouts in. It’s the kind of false tired that can convince you to skip a day, but also the kind of tired that can easily be chased away by an endorphin rush. So I’m not backing down, I’m pushing through. Progress can’t happen if I’m sitting on my butt.

We have another hard workout today, a Total Body, sweat like crazy kind of workout. I might take a mat nap afterwards, depends on how awake those endorphins make me. I like these workouts though, I feel like I make the most progress with these hard sweat sessions, or at least I can feel them in my muscles more, so I enjoy doing them because I can feel the progress. I can feel the dedication, the commitment that it takes for me to do them, I can feel that part physically in my body, and I’m reminded with every move how tough I am, how strong I’ve become already, and how strong I’ll be by the end. It’s my way of combating the instant gratification that our society has glorified and trained us to be caught up in, because there isn’t going to be a time when I ever stop being sore. I just have to learn to love it, and I have started to.

“When do I stop being sore?” She asked Cassian breathlessly. “Never.” She turned her head toward him, about as much movement as she could manage. “Never?” “Well, it gets better,” he amended. page 158, A Court of Silver Flames, by Sarah J Maas

At this point I’ve been working out consistently for four to five months, and the soreness doesn’t go away. It lessens slightly, depending on which workout I’m doing and what the focus is, and how many times I’ve repeated it. There are factors that go into play on the soreness. But I’ve reached this level that demands my dedication, my discipline, to keep going. Because my body pretty much always hurts some type of way, and I’m always pretty tired by the end of the night. That in and of itself, is tiring, because I feel the same way every day, so there’s this small edge of Ground Hogs Day Nightmare to it. A very real part of me just wants to sit on my ass and knit fuzzy things and drink tea all day and not do this. It’s a voice that will get loud af if I don’t stick with it, and while I do want those fuzzy things and hot tea days, even more than that, I want to feel comfortable in my skin. I want to feel strong, and bold, and empowered by my daily activities, and doing these workouts is the one way I can make sure that I don’t get swallowed up in the pit inside my head, telling me that women should be soft anyway, that I might as well get used to my living situation, or let go of the farm because it will never be anything more than a chunk of forgotten land, that I will always be weak, injured, and mean. That sacrificing my body for my kids is honorable in secret, but not anything that really means anything to the rest of the world, because “I should’ve bounced back.” See? Those are the thoughts that run rampant in my head without Valkyrie Squad. Who wants to live there? I don’t, so I hit the mat.

Today’s workout was the kind of hard that really challenges that head space too. Of course, how serendipitous. Because of course on a day when my brain keeps telling me that I should go relax and just stop trying, I’m going to be doing a workout that is so gods damned hard I have to shout at myself to shut the hell up. I absolutely woke up my kids with all my grunting and swearing and telling myself to pick up that stupid weight again and get back to it. Them being awake helped me though, because it added a layer of “Don’t quit while they’re watching. Finish the damn thing, show them that Mom doesn’t ever quit.” So I didn’t.

The three round circuit is challenging as a single, but three rounds was more than enough to have my adrenaline spiking and bordering on hysterical. Somewhere after the second set of round two, I started to feel my eyes prickling, and an urge to cry, like really have it out kind of cry. My breathing got out of wack and I started sobbing in the middle of the lunges with the overhead pass, I caught my breath through the dead swings, but then as soon as we got into plank again, there it was, that need to cry. I wanted to suppress the need, but it kept clawing its way back up my throat. Something in my chest cracked open and there were tears hitting my mat along with the sweat falling off my face. I can’t even explain what I was crying for, or what it was about, I just cried.

Round 3 started up and I caught my breath and wiped my face and got right into those goblet squats. I was fine again, until the crunches. Those crunches had me tearing up all over again, gasping for breath, and collapsing into tears again. Instead of trying to hold it in, I just let it out this time. Clearly there’s something that needed to escape my body, or I wouldn’t keep falling apart. I got up and into the side lunges when it was time to switch moves, and I made it through to the end without any more tears, but my whole body was shaking so hard, my oldest asked me if I was okay. When I was done stretching out at the end, all three of my kids rushed me and dog piled into a big hug on top of me. I cried a little more.

The only way I can reason my way around the sudden outburst of tears is that I had some stored trauma in my core muscles. Our bodies store memory, not just our minds, and our muscles store some of the chemicals that the brain releases when we experience something traumatic. Every time I burst into tears this morning was during a core exercise, and our solar plexus and hips store so much trauma it’s insane. With my renewed focus on core rehab, plus the intensity of Blade… my body says it’s time to let some stuff go. And maybe that’s the real reason I have been so unmotivated lately, because subconsciously my brain was like “are you sure you’re ready for what’s going to come though?” I may not have been prepared for the tears in the middle of a workout, but I’m ready to let that baggage go.

Now that I’ve had a good cry and a good sweat session, I have to layer up and get Yrsa outside for our walk. I think some fresh air is exactly what I need to finish up todays workout anyway. I feel 100 times lighter than I did when I started my workout, and way more optimistic and just overall better. The power of endorphins and traumatic release.

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