Meet four of our Haddins WOD and Primal participants who have faced very specific - not to mention difficult and painful - challenges, and find out how they are overcoming them. We hear from Nick Leech, Amanda Dale, Stacie Overton Johnson and Melinda Healy.
Nick Leech, senior writer, Primal
It was an injury that started with a shock, briefly turned to embarrassment, before ending with a sense of bitter disappointment.
After a month of detoxing, dieting and daily exercise, I’d not only lost 7kg but I was looking forward to working out each day and took pride in my vegetable-filled shopping trolley, rather than the usual pile of pizza boxes and packets of crisps.
Pride, however, proverbially comes before a fall – and my undoing came during sports day at my daughter’s school.
Press-ganged into taking part in a Dad’s race while wearing slippery shoes, I had just launched myself into the 50-yard-dash when I felt a much faster-accelerating pain searing my right calf – and before I even had a chance to feel sufficiently embarrassed, I started to realise that my days of Primal exercising had come to a premature end.
The problem, my physio told me, was that because my legs were so tight from exercising, I’d ruptured my anterior calf muscles and would be out of action for several weeks.
A profound funk ensued, and in a pathetic attempt to try to make myself feel better I found myself making an illicit, doorstep-sized cheese and pickle sandwich in a self-pitying attempt to make myself feel better.
Before I even thought about taking a bite, however, I thought better of it and immediately threw the offending article in the bin.
Thanks to my month of Primal, I’d experienced a change that was more profound than simply losing weight and, for the first time, I could see the value in a sensible diet and exercise. I didn’t want to go back to my old ways.
I’m now back on my feet, I’m sticking to my diet and, leg-willing, I’m determined to get myself ready for the next round of Primal, which starts at the end of this month. I’ll certainly be warming up and down more thoroughly this time. Wish me luck.
Amanda Dale, sub-editor, Primal
Embarking on this fitness challenge has been a leap of faith – mentally and physically.
I used to be very sporty and was a member of a running club, but 22 years ago I was injured in a bad car crash. The driver swerved before the car hit a wall and my left side took the brunt of the impact.
Over the years I learnt to cope with back pain. Doctors and physios advised me to avoid high-impact exercise and to stick to low-impact, such as walking and swimming.
I haven’t run since, so I had a lot of anxiety about starting these workouts, worried about what they might do. But that first week, I felt so good using my long-neglected muscles, I even worked out for an extra sixth day. On the Saturday, however, I couldn’t move my neck without pain – a feeling similar to a trapped nerve, running down my left shoulder and left side.
I felt crushed. I went to an orthopaedic doctor and had an X-ray that showed my neck had seized up. Fortunately, the doctor said it was muscular rather than a joint or disc problem and that I would be OK to resume my workouts in a few days. He prescribed painkillers, muscle relaxants and advised me to wear my left arm in a sling.
Sure enough, towards the end of the week I felt stronger. I resumed the workouts and have been fine since.
I even ran about half of the 5k Daman ActiveLife Electric Run, which was fantastic. The next day, feeling inspired, I bought myself a pair of running shoes.
The Haddins Primal Transformation Programme has been life-changing. I feel liberated from the imprisonment of pain, nervous to step out of my comfort zone.
Now I not only feel physically stronger but mentally, too, and more focused. To my delight, my back pain has diminished – probably due to the core-strength training – and I feel happier, more optimistic and on a natural high from all the endorphins.
Now the challenge is to keep it up. But as I have learnt, our bodies are amazing and I don’t need to be afraid.
Stacie Overton Johnson, food writer, WOD
I plunged into this fitness challenge without giving much thought as to how my body would react. I knew my muscles would hurt, but I did not consider what might happen to my lungs.
When I played sports in high school and university, I had exercise-induced asthma and used an inhaler every day. I haven’t thought about those asthmatic days in 18 years but my breathing issues came roaring back during my first week at Haddins.
My chest tightened up during every workout and any outdoors running at all felt suffocating. The symptoms lasted all day, every day – not just with exercise. The coughing was relentless – I couldn’t even speak without coughing.
Two weeks in, I finally saw a pulmonologist. An X-ray showed constricted airways – I did so poorly on the breathing tests that I was told to stop exercising for two weeks so my lungs could heal, and the doctor sent me away with five medications (it appears this is allergy-related too).
When I heard “stop exercising”, I did all but laugh in my doctor’s face. Stubborn as I am, I wasn’t going to stop – and I didn’t. I’ve continued to go five days a week, coughing my way through the weeks (and have had a handful of asthma attacks along the way).
The good news is the drugs are working and my lungs are recovering from that initial damage. If I’m exercising with this intensity, I’ve accepted that I’m going to need the drugs – which secretly makes me happy. There’s a big, proud part of me smirking that I’m pushing my body hard enough to bring this disease back.
Melinda Healy, assistant editor, Weekend, Primal
When I signed up for the fitness challenge I did it with a disclaimer – I am a very, very beginning beginner. I said it loudly and often.
I did this because I’m ashamed to say I haven’t done anything “active”, apart from the odd walk or very occasional yoga class, for the past decade or so. And I’ve sat at a desk in my job for at least 17 years.
Sadly, going from no exercise to five Primal sessions a week has proved too much for me and my back is letting me know about it.
I knew when I signed up that undertaking a programme like this would be a shock to the system. What I did not expect was the reality check that came with it – if you don’t exercise for years, the road back is a long, difficult one, and the older you get, the harder it is.
Two weeks into the programme my lower back started bothering me, first in my glutes and then the area of my back between the hips – I felt like I had put something out. Not because I had pushed myself too hard but, as the chiropractor says, because my muscles, mainly my hamstrings, hips and glutes, are so tight that the flipping tyres, bear-crawling and multiple burpees on the workout plan has drawn attention to my almost non-existent lack of core strength and I started to compensate.
This, combined with sitting at a desk without regular exercise for too long, and the subsequent shortening of my leg muscles, hasn’t helped.
I’m devastated to have “failed”, but I know my body and it is not going to cope with this level of intensity while my muscles are not allowing me to. Michael Haddin, the owner of Haddins Gym, has been great and we have agreed that for now I’ll go to the new Pilates class twice a week in preparation for a more beginners-targeted programme that starts at the end of the month.
The reality check is that I have to retrain my body to repair itself from the damage I’ve caused it by not being active for too many years.
So, four weeks into an eight-week challenge here I am, at the very, very, very beginning. Again.
