True Believer

I’m happy to report that yesterday at the gym, I asked my friend Andrew to turn a birthday cartwheel with me, and he did, and I did, and there we were, the fifty-something set turning cartwheels. It freaked the owners out a little, but when they heard it was a birthday ritual, they arranged a serenade.

I have never lost faith in my ability to turn a cartwheel, but I’m old enough to know that someday I may not be able to, or there may be surprise (and possibly immediate) repercussions, and that I really should have a friend in the vicinity just in case, even though I KNOW I can do one. When it comes to my cartwheel, I am a true believer.

Not so with a more recent endeavor: the plank (not to be confused with planking). When I was having so many back issues in January, I discovered the 5-minute plank challenge on the Internet: You are given daily goals for 30 days, starting with 20 seconds, until, on day 30, you hold a plank for 5 minutes. I am not sure I believe this is possible.

(Not my image—swiped from Internet)

I think if I were to hold a plank for as long as I can, I’d fail at 60 seconds or so. But I’ve never tested this.

I talked with my chiropractor. She believes that I need to work on my core strength, and this challenge looked OK. And so I began.

This was nearing the end of my horrendous 3-week cold, during which I had to sleep propped up if I had any hopes of being able to breathe. I noticed an odd pain between my shoulder blades that I figured was related to this propping up. I mentioned it to the chiropractor during the plank-talk visit, but we were so busy working on lower-back stuff, and my explanation for its existence was so reasonable, that we didn’t spend time on it.

I followed the schedule for 8 days. The pain got worse, and odd. I called the chiropractor, who told me to stop immediately. Holding a plank probably wasn’t causing it, but it might be keeping me from getting better.

I was better the next day, although several things had happened at once: (1) I was sleeping flat again; (2) I had set up a standing desk; (3) I began to take Aleve; (4) my massage therapist had given me rose quartz to open my heart chakra; and (5) I had stopped the plank program. So—confounding factors.

Still, I decided to wait a little before starting again, just to be sure. Yesterday was Day 1. Here is the schedule:

Last time I stopped the day before the full minute. This time I’ll make it that far and more. However, I am not yet a true believer when it comes to the 5-minute plank. The incremental addition of seconds makes it look reasonable. But, still. You try it.