- We're starting a new project,
well, I'm starting a new project,
I'm just bringing you along, because I need accountability.
I am in a place now,
where I want to get my fitness back on track,
after having open surgery twice this year
and so I thought, how am I gonna
make myself actually do the exercise,
actually start improving my physical fitness
and get to like where I was last year?
And I thought, you have to make a YouTube series about it.
So that's what we're doing, I'm calling it,
From Surgery to 5K,
kind of like from couch to 5K, but we're going from surgery.
The reason why I want to do 5K
is because my standard fitness level
before all of these shenanigans
was that I could just very easily run 5K,
I wasn't like the most fit, fit person ever,
but I was like active enough
and I occasionally ran and I swam,
but like doing a 5K run was fine,
not fine, like I would be tired afterwards obviously,
but I would be able to do it
and there is this thing in the UK called Parkrun,
you may or you may not have heard of it,
basically, lots of different parks throughout the UK
host a 5K run, that is completely free,
you can just show up every Saturday morning at 9 a.m.
and I have done a whole bunch of these,
when I lived in Birmingham at uni
and in my old, old flat,
so not the last one, but the one before,
there was a Parkrun in my local park
and it was great fun, Saturday morning, do a 5K.
You can register online and print out a barcode,
so then when you finish, they scan your barcode and stuff
and then online, you can see
all of your different times from previous weeks,
you can see how many times you've gone.
My new flat is also around the corner
from a park that does Parkrun,
so that to me is like the goal,
I want to do a Parkrun,
I don't care about getting my personal best,
not just yet, I think that's asking for too much,
I just want to complete it,
I would like to do it in under 30 minutes,
just because I don't want it to mess up my averages
or maybe I just don't scan my barcode that time,
the first time I do it.
No, it's fine, it's fine, it's all part of the journey.
I don't have a date in mind
of when I want to be doing the 5K,
so I have no idea how long this series will last
or how many videos that there'll be,
I just want to take you along the journey
of me training and how that feels
and getting my body feeling stronger again
and the specific things that I have to think about or do,
because I have a post abdominal surgery body,
I also have a stoma, which changes things as well,
when it comes to exercise,
but mostly I'm doing this for me,
because I need accountability
and if I know that people are watching,
I'm gonna do it.
I am the starter of projects
and definitely not the finisher,
so your job is to hold me accountable to this.
So first of all, where am I at now?
What exercises have I done now?
What are my limitations?
What are we starting from here?
So a few months ago on my blog,
I wrote a piece called, Am I Disabled?
And I talked about my post surgery body
and how it was making me not able to do a bunch of things
or just be feeling physically weaker than usual
and I talked about before my last surgery,
which was, I was five months into recovery
and I still didn't feel confident like running or jumping
or anything that involved just like a lot of movement
in my stomach area, where they cut me open
and this woman called Sarah commented on this blog,
she was like, "You can 100% do all of these things.
"Your body is capable of doing these things,
"you just don't trust it anymore,"
and I was like, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding,
like light bulbs going off,
because that resonated with me so much,
like I don't trust my body.
Any time a small child running around
or animals, like big dogs or something
would like be jumping up, I would just tense,
you know, I'm like holding my stomach,
just like, don't you dare touch me,
don't, don't, don't, don't,
'cause I'm so terrified of pain and like being hurt.
The idea of jumping,
any time I saw someone jumping or falling down,
even if it was just like all in jest
and they were absolutely fine, just like, ha, ha, ha,
like flailing their body around in complete freedom,
I'd be like, ooh, ow, ow, ow,
like imagining that happening to me.
So I started doing these exercises a couple of times a day
and immediately, like within a week I felt so much stronger,
literally it was just about connecting my brain
back to my core and just being like,
hey, you know, we're friends, we're buddies,
we know what's going on
and just being able to control it more.
But that was a couple of months ago,
I wasn't living in London,
we've now moved back to London
and everything's been poof
and instead of doing these exercises
two to three times a day,
I've been doing them once every two or three days at best.
So what happened was, these exercises are so basic,
like the most basic core exercises possible,
you would look at me doing them
and think, "She is not working hard at all,"
but it's all about just like tensing the core
and like connecting to the core,
which is the bit of me, that is a bit broken.
Those exercises were becoming easier for me,
as I was doing them and I was, like,
alright, I'm gonna do the next stage up,
I'm gonna pick some of the more harder ones,
still piss easy for anyone, who has just like basic fitness
and so I started doing these exercises
and I was immediately in pain, I was out of breath,
I was exhausted, I felt sick,
I was like, wow, this is a bad idea
and I literally had to just immediately stop
and I just lay in bed like clutching my abdomen.
I don't know how to explain it,
but if I've had a very active day
or been very busy, then by the evening,
it feels like my guts want to spill out
and all I want to do is just clutch onto it,
and like tighten everything and push it back in,
so that was what happened to me
after I tried the more difficult exercises
and I just remember lying in bed just like out of breath
and just in pain, I was like, okay, no,
we need to start from the beginning again
and work our way up gradually and work up my strength.
So that is what we're gonna do first
and then hopefully we will move up into the running,
I've not worn my like active wear
or my running shoes for,
you know, since last year, so this will be fun.
For now, you're just going to see me
doing all these like floor exercises in my normal clothes,
because I have to do them two or three times a day
and I ain't changing
and also I don't really work up a sweat doing them.
So the other thing that is specific
to my situation with a stoma
is that I have this like support belt, garment thing.
So my stoma is basically a weakness in my core,
because obviously there is a hole in my abdomen basically
and it means I'm more likely to get a hernia
and this is like a hernia support belt,
this mechanically does the thing of me like, huh,
holding it in and feeling like I'm more supported.
Hold on, huh!
I would do it under clothes,
but I'm just gonna show you over clothes,
so basically it's like a oven glove,
wrap your hand in and then, so my stoma is on this side
and then you like wrap that round super tight
and then it's like, huh!
It's basically like a waist trainer,
except it's not for making yourself skinnier,
it's for making yourself stronger.
I've heard differing opinions, like some people have said,
"Wear this every time you exercise,"
others have said, "Don't bother,
"because you then come to rely on this
"and you don't actually strengthen your core,"
so you need to actually like make your core strong,
so it can, you know, do the work itself.
So we'll see, I can tend to like feel when I'm too strained,
so when I'm doing just the floor exercises,
I don't need this, I feel fine,
but maybe like the first time I go out for a run,
I'll wear it and see how I feel,
I don't know, we'll see.
For anyone who has a stoma
and does lots of exercise and is quite fit,
please let me know how you feel about these
and if you use them or not.
Right, I have chatted for long enough,
so we're gonna do some of the exercises now
and now I am a fitness vlogger, it's happened.
(mellow upbeat music)
Oh my God,
seems like I can't talk
and concentrate on doing exercises at the same time,
so right now, I'm actually doing stuff,
but you can't see it at all,
I'm literally just engaging my core,
like tightening, tightening, tightening.
What I'm gonna do now is basically
what I need to do this whole week two or three times a day
and then we'll see how I feel at the end of this week
and then maybe we'll up the ante.
Okay,
I can tell,
that I haven't done these in ages,
this one's difficult.
(mellow upbeat music)
Why do things that look so simple
feel so difficult?
This is good, accountability is good, I need it,
I wanna run that 5K.
Oh, my God, I'm actually really exhausted.
Obviously that workout isn't very long at all,
but I need to do it two or three times a day
and it needs to be like just super accessible.
Luckily I work from home,
so I can just come into the living room
and just do my exercises whenever.
Oh my God, that's actually wiped me out,
just five minutes.
(sighing)
I'm just gonna, is this the thumbnail?
Thank you for watching and holding me accountable,
do follow me on Twitter @hannahwitton
and Tweet me every day, being like,
"Are you doing your exercises?
"Have you done your exercises yet?"
That would be really helpful, would it?
I don't know, do it anyway.
Don't forget to subscribe, so you don't miss
whenever the next episode of this is coming out.
Please give this video a thumbs up, if you enjoyed it,
if you believe in me,
let me know your thoughts in the comments
and until next time,
I'm gonna lie down for a bit now, so bye!
(mellow upbeat music)