“Why would anyone,” I said to my eldest daughter, “Ever… get out… of a pool?”
I was floating on my back in the lap pool, submerged in water for the first time in over 20 years. I joined this gym knowing there was a pool, but I had back-burnered it in favor of the “real” workout area, weights, cardio, etc. Until, that is, my old body just couldn’t hack even the gentle pace I was setting for myself and the pain kicked me out of my workout routine for a week. It was then that I decided if I was going to be able to do anything regularly, it would have to be non-weight-bearing. It would have to be in the water. So I went online, guessed the best I could on sizing for a swim shirt and some swim shorts, and waited for them to arrive while letting my body rest.
They finally came yesterday. I prevailed upon Laurent to go with me as I was a little nervous about the whole process, from just using the locker room to navigating the wet pool deck in bare feet. So grateful for her help! I was also happy to see that, just in case I needed it, they had a chair lift if I felt unsure about getting in or out on my own two feet. But I managed to get down the stairs, very carefully, with the railing, and then – oh weightless glory!
One thing for which I was ill prepared was my body’s hilarious degree of buoyancy. Even when I was trying to stay upright my feet would keep floating to the top. I couldn’t stop laughing anymore than I could stop floating. It was truly ridiculous. But oh, it was so incredibly freeing to be able to move, stretch, to work muscles that are normally too busy preventing pain to actually be strengthened. We went from one end to the other freestyling, I even tried out the floaty-dumbbells – that was fun! We were in the water, working the whole time, for a solid hour.
And you know how when you are pulling yourself up out of the water, you feel like you weigh a million pounds? Well as soon as I was up and out, I suddenly felt — you guessed it — that “floaty feeling” again – almost like I was still in the water! No back pain, no heel pain, it was miraculous.
I am SO excited to see how my back strength is doing a month from now! (Also, I need more swimming gear…)
Thanks be to God.
