A major element in the continued success of managing my weight and eating habits is my exercise program, which, as I've mentioned before, is self written. I am as ridiculous about getting to the gym and performing my scheduled exercise program as I am about the eating program itself. As always, I break my program into 13 week segments. Over the past several years I have pre-habbed (prepared for surgery) and rehabbed from three shoulder surgeries and a bilateral knee replacement surgery. I have worked through various ailments such as stiff necks, sore backs, wrist pain, forearm tendonitis, pinched nerves in the thumb, hamstring pulls and other problems with my feet and ankles. Each and every time, I have been able to make adjustments at the gym to my grip, gait or the level of weight I use, to find a way to keep going until I have worked out the aches and pains and the problem disappears. I find that I feel better and the ailment improves more quickly if I stick with my program and continue to use the affected joints or muscles.
About five or six weeks ago, I suddenly developed a problem that, at first, I thought was a hip problem. I have never had a problem with my hip before. I tried working through it for a couple of weeks and when it didn't get any better but, in fact, got worse, I made an appointment to see my doctor and he scheduled an x-ray and an exam on my hip. I told the Orthopedic doctor that it seemed to move from the hip to the lower back to the glute muscle and sometimes to two areas at the same time. He said the good news was, the x-ray showed that I did not have a problem with the hip but that it was also the bad news because now I need an MRI to see if it is a pinched nerve, a disc problem or something else.
However, I am still going to the gym. My workouts are less intense due to the restrictions I must impose on myself to minimize the resulting pain caused by the workout. I feel pain for most of the day after my morning workout, which is something I've never experienced before. I try to adjust my schedule and not go to the gym on Friday if I am playing golf that day(again, a new adjustment to my schedule) because the combination of exercising and golf causes me severe back pain.
As always, I am fearful of any changes in my routine. The only changes I have made so far have not been made by choice, but out of the necessity of dealing with my medical problems. The current routine works, and I don't want to take any chances by changing to a different routine if I can help it. What would you do? Please share.