Oh the pains

One of the things that I am learning about working out so much is the amount of pain or at least muscle soreness I experience nearly daily. After reading about how it is not always effective to take a pain reliever for your muscles, I started looking into alternative methods of relief.  I have found an intense love for my heating pad and have discovered the awesomeness that is massage balls.  The ones I have are pictured below.  So far the spiky one is the only one I've used.  I don't do the hot or cold thing with it yet but I have to deal with a dog that is obsessed with balls so I have to use these things covertly.

I am still having some shin pain even though I bought some new shoes.  This weekend I was going to look at some compression gear but because of some family emergencies I was not able to.  I'm starting to wonder if I need to either: a) start some leg/calf strengthening exercises on top of everything I am doing in kickboxing or b) have my legs examined in case there is a bigger problem going on.  We do this hopping thing to Tina Turner's Proud Mary in my Wednesday night kickboxing class and it is a full 2 minutes of hopping and it just kills the front part of my legs like shooting rockets of fire are coming up from my ankles. The good news on that though is that they get better each time that I do them.

Throughout this exercising journey, I have found a ton of pains.  Leg pains, back pains, knee pains, neck pain, etc. however,  I have also discovered the joy of when something used to hurt so bad and doesn't anymore.  The feeling of utter accomplishment that happens with that is amazing.  I still have a lot of room for improvement (planks are still an enemy of mine most days especially when we do reverse plank) so this journey isn't going to come to an end any time soon.

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