Stiff fingers and headaches

As I was saying in my previous post, I'm used to pain. I just have to adjust to different types of pain.

When I started training, I knew my biggest challenge would be my fingers and wrists. That might sound weird, but hey, I have big joints problems. Knees, elbows, ankles, I can deal with. As long as I can reinforce the muscles around my joints it is not a big deal. My knees are doing great, because my leg muscles are supporting them, so that the pressure doesn't go directly to the joint. The wrists are not so bad, because the exercises I'm doing don't require too much movement from these joints. But how do I reinforce muscles in my hands? HeHe

For strength training, I have to be careful. I still have to find a way to incorporate weights in a way that won't hurt my wrists and fingers. I was thinking of buying wrists/ankles weight straps to perform the same exercises as with weights, or the wrist wraps with hooks in the palm to help hold the weights... I believe this would be the best way to avoid pain. The fingers would be spared as well: the painful part of weight lifting for me is not muscle pain, but finger pain from holding the weights. Or when I try push ups, I can't go over 20. My wrists usually hurt too bad for me to continue for more than that, but my arms are just fine! Very annoying, cause I know I could do much better, it's just my joints aren't cooperating.

Also, when I swim for more than 2000M, my fingers get stiff. I know it's because of the way I'm forcing my fingers to stay together, but I can't do otherwise, or else I'll loose a lot of speed. I'm hoping it will get better with time. Is it a normal thing? I'm not sure this would be due to arthritis...

Another thing...I am getting a couple of bad headaches lately. I don't think it's anything serious, but I'll have to be careful and monitor how long they last, and if they occur only after hard workouts...Yesterday my head was pounding so hard, I cancelled my 2500M straight swim. Just the idea of having goggles around my head sounded horribly painful! Oh well, this is an extra rest day for me. Today is my actual scheduled rest day.

Even though all this stuff doesn't sound very promising, I'm doing great, and I really enjoy it! I actually can't wait to jump on my bike tomorrow. I suppose I just have to be extra careful about what my body tells me. And I am more attentive than I used to be, so I think I'm going in the right direction! Oh, and I try to get more sleep as well. This helps tremendously! As stated on a Trifuel post, sleep is NOT overrated!!