Happy Sweating on Sunday! I hope everyone is having a relaxing weekend. We have been busy. Yesterday, we volunteered at an adoption event for the dog rescue we volunteer at. Today, our new refrigerator came. Plus, I have been working on the garden and getting the pool cleaned. So, I have had tons of fresh air. My Fitbit died! It was old, but for Mother’s Day I got a new Smart Watch. It is not a Fitbit and I will do a review on it after I have had it for a bit. It is larger, so I am not sure I am loving that feature. As we come into May it is time to start getting ready for Hurricane Season. It is my least favorite time of the year. There are a couple of important announcements to take note of. 1- Wednesday in my weekly newsletter I will be proving a coupon code just for Mom’s to get an awesome deal on one month of coaching. Be sure to sign up for my newsletter below to get one for you, or your mom. 2- May is High Blood Pressure Awareness Month here on this blog. So, I will be doing posts on this topic. But, if you are a member of my mailing list you can get yourself a free 60 minute coaching session related to High Blood Pressure. You don’t have to have High Blood Pressure to qualify, maybe you would like to prevent getting it. Be sure and join my mailing list and then contact me once you have to claim your free coaching session. I do limit how many I give away, so don’t delay.
Now, on to the calf muscles. I chose this set of muscles because I always get cramping in the side of my right shin area when I walk fast, or run. This is because my Soleus muscle is weak. It also may explain why I have painful feet and episodes of Plantar Fasciitis. The calf muscles are actually a set of three muscles. The Gastrocnemius muscle is the one you generally see on the back of the leg. It is made up of two thick muscles. The Soleus is thin and long, and lies under the Gastrocnemius. The Soleus runs from the Achilles Tendon and fans out as it goes up and attaches at the knee area. Since this is the exact area that cramps this is where I decided to start. After some research I decided the move of the week, for this first week, would be seated calf raises. If you do standing calf raises you probably are targeting more of the Gastrocnemius than the Soleus. I did this exercise this morning before running on the treadmill. While I did still cramp a little it was only in the last 3 minutes of my run, a big improvement from cramping very quickly. I call it a cramp it is more of a tightening, which to me is the same thing. At any rate it hurts and it slows me down. I tried to take a pictures of my calf muscles for a before image, but it is super hard to take a selfie of this part of the body. I will have someone else assist me and share it in my weekly newsletter. Taking pics is a great way to evaluate your progress, but there are other ways and some are better.
Will you join me in the May Health Challenge and build your calf muscles? Just in time for short season too! If you do join in, please share what is working for you, why you decided to join, and how you are progressing in the comments. I would so love to hear from my readers. Don’t be shy!
Below are two short videos. One explains the Soleus muscle and what it’s function is. The second will show you how to do the Seated Calf Raise. If you would like to learn more about my new coaching plan, click here.
Living Life With CKD 