Today we're back to slightly smaller milestones. The 'slightly' is crucial, though, because (as I've endeavoured to illustrate previously) appearances can be deceiving.
I wrote, a couple of posts back, about how I have been able to stand (and jump) with no shoes. The cause of my excitement around this will be obvious, due to the intrinsic connection between our feet and standing. The link between our feet and sitting may not be as easily identifiable, so my joy at being able to sit barefoot might seem odd. I'd like to explain why it isn't.
For the last little while, I have only been able to sit up properly on my own when wearing shoes. The reason for this is fairly simple. As a result of weakness in my abdominal muscles, my sole method (pardon the forthcoming pun) of maintaining a good sitting position was to push through my feet to get myself upright. In order for this to be possible, I needed a strong sense of contact with my footplates, which I could only get through the help of the tread on my shoes. (This was also the logic behind the extra support for my right foot, which has morphed from Shakespeare's Complete Works, through a French-English dictionary, to foam - of which I now only need two very thin pieces. The sciatica at its worst pulled my foot away from its rest, and we needed to compensate.)
Well, over the past week or so, I have discovered that I can not only get upright independently without shoes on, but without footplates there too. This means one thing - my abs are coming back to life! I can't sustain it for that long yet but, as I said of my bent-legged sojourn in the hoist yesterday, it's a start.
Now to work on that six-pack...!
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