First of all, a BIG thanks for your heartwarming comments on my last post. You’re all amazing and I really appreciate your words of support.
This week has been much better. My foot even started showing signs of improving. Slowly, but still, any step in the right direction is good. From Wednesday I’ve had much less of the cramping pain and swelling, the foot started feeling more normal, although the soreness around the 3rd metatarsal comes and goes. But there are some signs of improvement.
Another very positive thing was that I found a blog post by an ultra runner who has had the exact same injury that I think I have, and she also had to wait a long time to get a diagnosis. Reading her story helped me settle down because she described so much of what I’m experiencing and I realised many of my symtoms that I find quite worrying, can in fact be normal. I’ll have to write a post about my own experience afterwards, perhaps it can help someone else!
Monday – another “interesting” day
So I went to have some blood tests taken (I’m very interested in calcium, vitamin D etc!) and in this place they take your blood pressure as well when you’re there. It turned out mine was high. Now, my blood pressure has been on the lower side all my life! I walked out from there with a 24h blood pressure monitor. Totally NOT what I needed right now! It was an eye-opener for sure. Do I need to do more lifestyle changes? Perhaps I’m more stressed than I think and need to do more to wind down, relax from work, worry less, be more compassionate with myself and so on. But honestly, I think my pressure was up because I had just hobbled in there on crutches. Walking on crutches is quite hard work! I haven’t heard anything since so I assume it was nothing too bad. I’ll check next week when I go to see my doc. If it wasn’t for the effing foot I’d feel great!
Tuesday – gym day
My trainer/PT needs to learn more in detail about my injury before he can help with that. But what he can do is to give me a brilliant lifting program for upper body and functional parts of the legs. We started with lying leg raises, then seated leg lifts over a dumbbell. This is a great exercise for the hip flexors and it worked a lot on the quads too. Anything that works on the legs is very welcome!
I continued with the usual work for chest and triceps, and was very happy with my bench presses. I worried a bit about them because my triceps (they are not happy about the crutches) and the left wrist have been fussy lately but I think this was my best bench press performance in a while. I’m realising that with bench press, it’s a lot about attitude and focus.
I had hoped he would get creative with seated exercises. He had me lie face down on an inclined bench, to do dumbbell rows without having to lean on a foot – very similar to this seal row here. It was a bit tricky to find a good position but once in place, it was a wonderful exercise. After this I did the Cuban press which is a tough one for my problematic rotator cuffs. I can still only do a few of them but I think I managed a bit better today than before. Today’s session was a total massacre of the shoulders, but I sure need it.
Wednesday
A very low profile day as usual. Work and Italian class. But this was the day I felt something was happening with the foot. During the afternoon I realised it felt so… normal. Still sore in the usual place, but otherwise it felt normal, in the sense that it didn’t feel like a swollen blob anymore.
Thursday
I started the day with some hip mobility, donkey kicks and back extensions. All these moves are more important than ever to keep my lower back happy when I can’t be as active as usual.
Well, I threw in some push-ups too. My shoulder and tricep area has been very unhappy and they need some other movement than keeping crutches in place.
Friday – gym day
I had another brilliant lifting session, with flyes, bench press, tricep pullovers with a bar, back extensions, and also side leg lifts with resistance band, and to sit against a wall – it works with the foot if I only put it down with the heel – most weight is against the wall, and some on the right foot. And they made my quads burn nicely. Yes and amen to not losing more muscle mass than I have to! I’d say this works quite a bit on core muscles too.
You remember Kim’s suggestion to do exercises you normally do standing up, but kneeling instead? I didn’t need to ask. Today I did both lateral raises and front raises with the left knee on a bench, while the other foot was on the floor. It worked perfectly!
Saturday
Today I decided to not put the compression sleeve on the foot. It’s given pain relief, but now I want to know how bad it is, to know when it gets better. Every little sign of improvement means the world to me.
And it’s a lot better. The sore area over my 3rd metatarsal is much less sore and mostly I don’t feel anything at all. Sometimes if I’ve been around a lot, I can get some cramping pain but it settles down after a while. Of course I don’t even try to put any weight on it yet. I’ll continue what I’m doing until the MRI and then after knowing the results we can discuss new decisions. For now I’m happy enough knowing that it’s getting better.
Sunday
This is a busy day! Later this evening we’re having friends over for dinner. But since I can’t do much (they’ll have to deal with this anything but perfect home), I’m not so busy after all. As usual I took time to do some strength and mobility training. I find it hard to do proper side planks right now because I need both feet to keep balance, and doing them from the knees is too easy. So now I mainly do hip mobility, some glute work, leg raises, side leg raises from kneeled side plank position (this is some good core work too) and push-ups. I also tried these lying windshield wipers that felt quite good.
Today I decided to try to do some more proper strength work at home on Sundays. We have a set of dumbbells that you can load with more weight when you need to. I finished my session with seated reverse flyes aka bent-over raise, and felt great.
And yes, I know it’s odd to have your gym in the same room as the whisk(e)y shelves (we’re whiskey geeks so yes, we have a room dedicated to it). But our house is tiny and I have to do it somewhere, right?! Likely in a quite near future, this room will be gym only.
This has been a good week when I’ve mostly been positive and able to move on and make the best of the situation. I’m able to kick **** in the gym and will continue doing that. The foot status is up and down but the downs are much better than they used to be. And the weather is better! We have lovely sunshine and around 20C (68F) as we speak. Definitely what we need after months of rain and fog.
This is my contribution to the Weekly Rundown link-up hosted by Kim and Deborah. I hope you’re doing well and that you had a good week. Do you have any ideas of good core exercises that are not kneeled planks (they are too easy) and that can be done without using feet? I’m all ears!
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