Loving Strength & Flex, feeling like a new woman

[Ping-pong]

I've done the C25K and now moved over to Bridge to 10K and alongside my running I've been doing the NHS Strength & Flex podcasts on rest days.

I finished week 5 of NHS Strength & Flex on Saturday. I feel like a new woman, stronger everywhere but with 2 particular breakthrough achievements.

As a child a car accident left one knee stiff and hard to bend and one arm smashed to pieces and 4 inches shorter than the other. Luckily my dad refused the recommended amputation saying he felt sure I would rather have it there for appearance even if it wasn’t much use.

Anyway now the weak knee is bending as much as the other one. And I casually mentioned to my son as I headed out the door last week that I was having problems with the Bench Dips because of the different arm lengths. 10 minutes later I was in the park with one of his S shaped push up bars which worked brilliantly just as if I had a 4 inch prosthetic extension on my arm. So I am now applying equal pressure to both arms and the bad arm is stronger than it’s ever been. The bar also helped with the correct posture on all the other exercises including hooking it over the railing for the pullups.

Thoroughly recommend it to anyone who hasn't tried it.

[CBDB Administrator Graduate Gold]

That is so lovely to read. I also finished the Str & Fl and have continued using NHS workouts and find them really good. Perfect for my fitness levels, and I have found I can do certain movements that I couldn’t do before, such as bench dips.

So let’s keep going with these exercises! Well done!

[Ping-pong in reply to CBDB]

From wondering how on earth I would ever do a bench dip with arms of differing lengths, I reached the situation the other day where a much younger and sportier woman was using "my" bench for bench dips when I arrived at the park. She had gone by the time I got to them in my routine and I was ridiculously put out that I couldn't show off that I could do them too!! Glad you are getting such good results too.

[linda9389]

Wow, that must be so rewarding! What an inspiration 😊

[Ping-pong in reply to linda9389]

Thanks! As I just said to someone in the comment above I now want to show off that I can do them, rather than waiting until I was alone in the park before risking looking stupid!