Proof of Progress

Rehabilitation progress that is. Today I was back at the CrossFit gym and managed:

37.5kg shoulder press
60kg back squat (I did cheat a little on this one by not doing a full, deep squat, but squatted down until I touched the top of an 18" box)
100kg deadlift

I managed all this without any aches or pains from my knee and so feel even more confident that I am now well on the road to recovery. I had set myself a target of running 1 mile before I finish my course at Shrivenham on 14 October but I now reckon I will do this within the next 2 weeks. I just need to make sure the progress of steady and don't try to do too much too soon.

Almost forgot, I took my youngest son to see The Mighty Seagulls on Saturday at the superb Amex Stadium as they beat Peterborough to go top of The Championship. Happy days!

Getting Better

I've had a good week. I've done loads of press-ups, sit-ups and squats and yesterday I managed 10 minutes of very gentle jogging. I had no pain at the time of jogging and although there was some stiffness this morning I don't seem to have suffered as a result.

Shrivenham is keeping me busy, lots of reading at the moment. It seems they also want me to write an S A. Or something like that!

Rehabilitation Time

I'm off to Shrivenham tomorrow for 8 weeks and hopefully I will be able to work some quality rehabilitation into my daily routine. Stretch and flex, walking, maybe even gentle jogging, cycling and some strength work; a mix of everything really. Hopefully by the end of the course I will be well on the road to recovery.

Good luck to all those fellow bloggers racing over the next couple of weekends.

Progress

After last week's setback I've had a good weekend. I went to CrossFit on Saturday and Sunday and used the time to do lots of stretching and also managed the WODs, but scaled back accordingly, and made sure that I did the exercises with good form and only going as far as was comfortable when squatting. Today I am walking again which is about what I was doing this time last week, so it may only be a one week setback not the 6 or 7 weeks that I had feared.

A bit of a rest day today, just walking. Tomorrow I will try the bike again for an easy 30 minutes.

Portsmouth 0 Brighton & Hove Albion 1

After a few beers last night I decided I would try and get tickets for today's Championship local derby game between Portsmouth and Brighton. Well I managed to get 2 tickets (the other being for our second son) but being a Brighton supporter I would have to curb my enthusiasm as our seats were not in the visitors end but in one of the Portsmouth stands! Brighton won and we survived, and we both thoroughly enjoyed the afternoon. On this form Brighton should be comfortably in the top half of the table at the end of the season, and maybe even contenders for a play off place. Portsmouth, however, are definitely relegation contenders unless they sort themselves out.

Almost forgot, the knee is slightly better today and it is less stiff with more flexibility. Fingers crossed for a similar improvement again tomorrow.

Sporting Greatness

I'm not a huge cricket fan, but I enjoy watching sport, any sport, being played out at the highest level. And it seems that the England cricket team is just that at the moment. And today they declared at 710-7 with Alistair Cook (see above) scoring a quite reasonable 294. I can't recall a test side scoring more than 700 before in my lifetime but stand prepared to be corrected.

After the week we've had in England maybe we should take stock and enjoy something positive, even if it is just cricket!

Excellent News, Good News, Cr@p News!

I'm going to ignore what's going on in the rest of the country as there is more than enough written about it elsewhere.

The Excellent News. Our eldest lad scored sufficiently well in his UK Clinical Aptitude Test to be eligible to study Medicine at all his preferred universities. All he needs now is 3 As at A-level in Maths, Chemistry and Biology; how hard can that be?

The Good News. Last night I was back at the CrossFit gym and completed the WOD, which was:
5 rounds for time of:
25 kettlebell swings
25 sit-ups
25 dorsal raises
25 knees to chest
My only scaling was a reduction on the kettlebell to 50% of what I was lifting before to ensure I didn't strain the knee. A hard session that I really enjoyed, with no after effects whatsoever.

The Cr@p News. This morning I was doing a few odd jobs in and around the car, when I knelt down to lift something off the floor of the car. I experienced a huge shooting pain in my knee, that I can only liken to a red hot poker being stuck into the joint (although I can't be sure as I have never actually experienced this!). The knee was immediately extremely sore and stiff, and moving it was very painful. I headed straight to my favourite chair, with a strong coffee, painkillers and the ice pack, and watched a couple of episodes of Top Gear whilst applying RICE principles and hoping it was something that only required the 'Magic Sponge' treatment. I'm writing this some 4 hours later and the icing appears to have prevented any significant swelling but the knee is still very sore and stiff. I'm really, really miffed. I was (IMHO) making good progress, I was walking over an hour a day, flexibility was almost back to pre-injury levels (ie not great as I've had 2 major ops on this knee), and I was slowly becoming more active and even contemplating trying to jog sometime in the very near future. Now, though, I seem to be back where I was 8 weeks ago just after the injury occurred.

Hope my fellow bloggers are having a better day than me. All the best.

Another Good Day

Another positive day today started off with an hour of walking. I followed this by heading off to the CrossFit gym for today's WOD. Today it was 21-15-9 of overhead squats, press ups and running (150m, 100m, 50m); obviously I'm not able to do this at the moment so I scaled it accordingly. I did the overhead squats with just a plastic tube (ie no weight whatsoever), doing the squats slowly and going only so far as was comfortable. Interestingly, I have a good range of movement to the bottom end of the squat but cannot straighten my leg fully at the top. Press-ups were no problem, and I walked the run. All in all, I was very happy just to be participating again.

Getting Back in the Game ...

Yesterday I managed to complete one of the sessions I was doing regularly last year, the 30-minute gym bike test completed at Level 12 on the Hills programme. Last year I peaked at 21.75km in the 30 minutes, yesterday it was 16.5km, so some way to go to match my peak, but the fact that I was able to complete it was good enough for me. This will now be my benchmark test on my journey back to fitness.

Getting Better

Today I have:

Walked for 40 minutes
Gym Bike (Level 10 Hills) for 30 minutes
CrossFit session for 60 minutes; this included some press-ups, pull-ups, gentle squats (kept knee bend greater 90 degrees), handstand (against a wall), sit ups. I also did some fast walking and tried jogging with very small steps.

We are getting there very, very slowly.