When I started skating in April, after a few months break, I've felt out of shape on both muscle conditioning and stamina. But I skated casually and short sessions, so it was not much of an issue.
In the past years, when I wanted to progress, I skated 5 to even 9 sessions per week, and I was struggling badly with muscle pain. I've read and applied all about nutrition, protein intake, hydration, warming up, dressing up warmly, getting the muscles tired with a certain number of repetitions, proper rest days, epson salt soaking, rolling, massaging, stretching... nothing really made a difference. I would rather not go back to that. I treasure the no (much) pain skating! I'm also starting to think that the pain was a big factor against motivation and enjoyment.
At the beginning of the summer, I expected the rinks schedules to be unpredictable and I didn't think I will skate regularly. I thought it would not be worth it to go through muscle pain, only to lose the muscle because I'll probably not skate the next week. So I've held back on the skating exercises that are more tiring and I've left the rink early if I felt tired. I ended up skating pretty regularly, and I am surprised that I did got stronger without going through much pain and it didn't take that long either! I tried in the past unsuccessfully to plan a slow comeback by taking it easy. I emphasis, unsuccessfully! I think somehow I haven't succeeded in taking it easy, but I couldn't pin point why.
I'm paying now a lot of attention on how my body feels after skating. And these days I'm skating "easy", not working my muscles, so I shouldn't get tired and hurting. What I've realized is that I've hurt significantly more after I skated at the rink I don't like. That rink is not particularly crowded but the skater skate more randomly. That makes me go more cautiously, slower, on shallower edges, so I use less knee bend/ rise, I'm stiffening my muscles to feel in control. I guess that is one thing that makes me tired, skating with stiff knees, tensing the muscles. I do that also when I'm tired from skating longer sessions, and that is why when I skated shorter sessions I didn't get pain.
My eyes caught up an article about muscles conditioning for people with hypermobility syndrome. I do have that and I've researched in the past without finding much. This article says that for us the muscles work harder and so the recovery takes longer (and so we feel more pain too). We should exercise with less intensity than regular people, if we work the muscles too hard we will need way more recovery time, we will have too much pain, so we will not be able to work out again as early as regular people. So working out as hard as regular people is counterproductive to us. A better solution is too work out at lower intensity more often. Oh my!!!! that is exactly what I feel works for me.
I am relieved that I seemed to make significant progress on my skating challenges: the boots, the rinks schedule and distance, understanding my muscle conditioning .
It remains to be seen how I can balance the skating schedule with my life schedule and the "taking it easy" approach so I can build my muscles slowly with hopefully some skating progress.
