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I’m a writer. That means, for most of us, that we’re moody, or odd, or prone to emotional ups and downs. Most artists are a much milder form of manic depressive. Up when we’re up, and very down when we’re not. I accepted that this was part of the creative process and my life, and then a series of unfortunate events happened that led me to discover that this roller coaster way of life wasn’t necessary to the creative process.

The biggest of those unfortunate events was a badly twisted ankle. I twisted it several times in a two week period. Not even exciting stories to go with it, but in the end I damaged my Achilles tendon and it seems to be permanent. My orthopedist was talking surgery, but wait I’d heard this talk before from a different ortho specialist years ago. I injured my arm more than ten years ago by signing too many books, too fast. I’m a writer not an athlete so it never occurred to me that was possible. They wanted to operate, but couldn’t guarantee that it would help anything. I decided I’d try less invasive methods first. Good massage therapy, chiropractic, and acupuncture, combined with light weight lifting kept me out of the operating room and gave me back full range of motion in my arm. At one point I couldn’t lift my arm about mid-chest, or turn it more than a few degrees without intense pain. It still aches like any injury, but I have full use, and that was the goal.

Then, as I said, in just the last few years I injured my ankle. Some of you saw me on tour with a cane and obviously in pain. I thought we were headed for surgery, but I went back to chiropractic and acupuncture, and did my physical therapy religiously. Massage was too painful. That helped, but when I asked my ortho doc what I could do to stay out of the operating room she said, “Well, if you do your physical therapy and put some muscle around the injury site maybe you can avoid surgery.” In fact, I was informed that one of the reasons I’d injured myself so badly, from so little, was the lack of muscle around the joint to protect it. Well, damn. Her only caution was this, “If it hurts, especially a sharp pain stop, and no running or jogging. If you injure yourself again it’s going to be surgery.” She did add that I can run to save my life, you know careening cars, bulls, diabolical masterminds and his henchmen, that kind of thing. Good to know.

So I hit the weight room in a way that I hadn’t done since college. Back then it was just to get better in judo so I didn’t get my ass kicked, now, it was about protecting my body from injuries. It was about avoiding being cut open and having them shorten my tendon, which would permanently lose me flexibility. One of the best reasons I’d ever had to hit the gym.

My most recent visit to my doctor was a good one. She was happy with the exercise I’d done and is no longer talking surgery. In fact, she was very surprised, because she hadn’t believed I’d hit the gym hard enough to make a difference, most people don’t even with this much on the line. Maybe they’re just not as nervous about surgery as I am. Fear is a wonderful motivator.

I look better, feel better, and have gone from a size 14 jeans to a size 8, which is great. Less weight is very good for my joints. Oh, and I totally changed my eating habits. It took both exercise and better nutrition to get in shape. But, cutting all fat out made me sick, so fat is not the enemy, neither is carbs. No fad diets, no cutting everything out, just sensible eating, smaller portions, and very few carbs at dinner. We’re also trying for organic and unprocessed in most things. Our nutritionist is a vegetarian and tried for us to do the same, but again, my body needs protein. So we increased the protein, the fats, and we’re still losing weight and still staying healthy. Every body is different, that’s why most fad diets don’t work for everyone. You have to find out what works for your body.

But the most surprising change from all that exercise is that my mood is more even and less of that artistic roller coaster. When I’m feeling anxious, I get on the treadmill. When I’m stressed out of my mind and beginning to feel I’ll never make the deadline for the next book, I lift weights. Right now, my exercise partner and very good friend, Carri, and I have a new trainer that is helping us to do circuit training that combines weights, squats, even jumping, with cardio. (I never thought I’d be able to safely do jumping as exercise again.) We complete the circuit as many times as possible in an hour. We got through it three times yesterday. That was a good workout. Weirdly the only thing my ankle can’t do is exercises that do side to side motion with emphasis on the ankle joint for the movement. Even there, I can do most, but not all. Trainer modified the exercises or found other things for us to do. Carri has her own injuries that she’s recovering from and trying to stay out of the operating room on, as well. In fact, her ortho told her the same thing mine did. Put some muscle around it and maybe no surgery.

Yesterday the stress was very high. I felt crushed under the weight of it. We actually arrived early so we could do thirty minutes on the treadmills before the upper body workout. We would not have tried the treadmill extra on a leg day. That is too much. I actually told our trainer, “I need to work until I see exhaustion miasma in front of my eyes. Anything less isn’t going to do it.”

He took me at my word, and he worked us. Carri was okay with it, she thinks like I do about exercise. Never did get to the exhaustion miasma, but I did start feeling better. On the treadmill I got up to a speed of 3.9 and realized if I got much higher I was going to have to run, which I’ve been told not yet, maybe not ever. I needed something more, so I lowered the speed and upped the incline. I actually got up to an incline of 10 twice, I also did an incline of 4, 5, 6, 7, and then skipped to 10. No pattern by the way just feeling my body and deciding how it felt. I realized that my warm up speed of 3.3 was once the highest I could do on a treadmill. For the high incline I dropped the speed to 2.8 or 3.0 caution is better, and trust me at a high incline you still feel it at the lower speed. But the incline was my replacement for needing to run, and kept me from being stupid and doing it.

Then we had a consultation with their martial arts/boxing person. Since he teaches a technique that incorporates many different martial arts and boxing it is technically mixed martial arts, MMA, but that term now means only one thing to most people. I am not learning how to do MMA FIGHTING. I am learning mixed martial arts and boxing, with the caveat that my ankle may not allow me to do much of the lower body work. Since Carri’s knee is her issue we’re both okay with doing mostly upper body work and going slow on anything involving the legs.

I hadn’t hit a heavy bag in over twenty years. Judo wasn’t big on that since there is no legal punching in the sport, so even back then I didn’t do it much. We put on gloves and he told me to hit it. I was tentative. “Hit it harder.” Still tentative. “Hit it as hard as you can.” I finally stopped over thinking it and just hit it. He ended with, “Don’t hit it as hard as you can, maybe half of that.” He understands that me injuring my hands or wrist with only weeks until tour for Bullet would be bad, so we’re all being cautious. I did the back hand hits without gloves the first time through and I have bag rash to show for it. (That means I’ve scrapped/bruised my skin.) It doesn’t hurt, and it shows I was hitting hard enough. Cool.

He’s given us drills to do on the bag. I can do them every other day, or as needed for stress relief. We have the first officially class with him next week. So three days a week with the circuit trainer, one day a week with the MMA stuff, and treadmill on our own with a goal of at least three days a week for that. You can do treadmill on same day as an upper body workout, or separated by hours on any day. I’m doing an hour at a time at home for the treadmill, with a goal of trying for an hour and a half. Time constraints have kept me from hitting that extra time on the walking. But put it all together and it may just be enough to keep me healthy, happy, and productive.