Taking care of myself

Not having any kids means I cannot expect anyone to take care of me in my old age. Of course, kids these days don't necessarily take care of their parents, as a friend pointed out, but, oh well. Meanwhile, I want to stay healthy.

My mother and sister have osteoporosis. They both had someone near them who called an ambulance when they had a fracture. I don't ever want to have a fracture, even if I could get some guarantee that I'd be picked up by an ambulance right away. So I had myself checked a few years ago and learned I had osteopenia. I was told I needed to do some weight bearing exercise in order to strengthen my bones and muscles.

I was doing Zumba back then. Not enough, the doctor said. Better than nothing, I thought.  I later started doing strength training with machines at the gym, along with some yoga now and then (still having problems with inversions). It's been a year now, doing all those three things, and I  feel stronger. Strong enough to try some real weight bearing. And so I joined a class called BodyPump.

Lots of weightlifting there. Good for upper body strength, no? NO. It's my legs and butt that are hurting. Plus sorry, the music sucks. And they play it loud enough that it is difficult to understand whatever it is the instructor is yelling at you. Luckily, when I was doing something really stupid, someone came by and made sure I avoided serious injury.

It am trying to fit this into the "doing nice things for myself" category, but it eludes me. Yoga is calming, Zumba is fun, and even those boring machine exercises allow me to listen to podcasts while I work out. But BodyPump? Pure evil, if you ask me.

Nevertheless, having sore muscles in regions where I did not even know I had a muscle has piqued my curiosity, so of course I'll be back. If my butt stops hurting by next week, that is.