Little things mean a lot

Day to day, in my home exercise routine, I don’t always notice the small improvements I’m making. But the benefits really showed up on our recent holiday.

Last week we returned from a wonderful spring holiday. Everything was in our favour – the weather, the location, the accommodation, the food. We spent a week walking bits of the North Wales coastal path and clambering over ancient castles. We visited the house where my great grandfather was born and raised, and met third cousins I didn’t know I had. We ate lots of lovely fish and delicious ice cream. I came home two pounds lighter, and I ran the parkrun at least three minutes faster than I was expecting.

Before this week of pure joy, I had my usual anxious time preparing, packing, and wondering if I would still be fit enough to do all this. Whatever my trusty and versatile Garmin tells me about distance, time, heart rate or sleep, there’s still a part of me that thinks that I’m stagnating, or that my Parkinson’s symptoms are worsening.  

Oh me of little faith!

They are not. Day to day, in my home exercise routine, I don’t always notice the small improvements I’m making.  The benefits really show up on holiday when more of the day is given over to exercise. These benefits include long confident strides, no falls, plenty of healthy wobbles corrected and committed to muscle memory.  I’d feared that after living in Cumbria for 25 years that running and walking in (mostly flat) Suffolk wouldn’t prepare me for the coastal path, but with a regular diet of deep squats and lunges I had the leverage to tackle steep, rocky steps.  (‘Up’ at least, the ‘downs’ were a bit trickier!)

Striding out

How did this happen? Credit must go (as it so often does) to the team at Neuro Heroes who put me through my paces twice a week with live, online feedback. Their powerful, intense exercises have, without a doubt, slowed down the progress in my Parkinson’s symptoms. But I need someone to keep the pressure up. Left to my own devices with a YouTube video I don’t last more than 15 minutes and I’m sure to skip the balance section. With Neuro Heroes I’m on my feet for a full hour, really giving it some welly. And I stick around for the balance. Testing my balance to its very limits has helped me develop a long and confident stride – I’m not shuffling along any more, unless it’s very early morning before I’ve had any meds.

It may seem obvious to the point at which Sybil Fawlty would lift the Mastermind trophy, but I hadn’t really thought about it before. The longer I can balance on Leg One, the more time I give Leg Two to swing through safely, without bumping my ankles or knees together; and Leg Two can travel further before planting its foot on the ground.

Accentuate the positive

So instead of doing balance exercises for ‘falls prevention’ (stopping something bad from happening) I can now think in terms of ‘stride improvement’ (encouraging a good outcome). I do love turning negatives around, it’s what keeps my glass fuller than half.

It’s taken me a long time to realise this, and it’s not a change that has come overnight. Which is why it’s taken a holiday to show me that all the routine daily exercise I do adds up to a huge achievement. There will be many more coastal paths, many more ancient castles.  

Play > Little things mean a lot > Bettye Swann