Going With The Flow

Hung out with Rob's daughter while he and Jake ran at JRR - hiked one of the trails for about 20 minutes then played in the freezing water- definitely my most enjoyable visit to that brutal road. Then walked a mile two more times in the afternoon, followed by an introduction back into squats, step ups, and lunges. Most walking/exercise I've done with no discomfort in months.

Walked 0.5 mile in the morning, 0.5 at lunch, then 1.5 in the evening. Today the TFL was definitely trying to take some of the load off the injury area as I was walking...it seems to shift from the TFL to the glute medius to one of the deep glute muscles and down my leg in what feels like pseudo-sciatica. As soon as one of these start acting up, I try to stop as soon as I can to prevent the dysfunction from continuing. These are really what are holding me back...I gotta get everything working right again before I can really do any real exercise. My legs have turned to mush where all the muscles used to be - yuck.

Didn't do a whole lot. 0.5 mile walk in the morning. Then I tried the recumbent bike for the first time and made it 5 minutes before I had pain. Right after, the incision site started bleeding a little on one side and it looks a little more red and swollen than the rest of the incision. Sent pics to my doctor, hopefully it's nothing to be concerned about. In the afternoon, I did dead bugs, calf raises, 5 x 1 min wall sits, and pelvic tilt exercises.  

Just some stretching and a bunch of shorter walks...we got our 16 year old overweight foster dog today. She has a bum leg (lick granuloma) but is surprisingly very mobile - just so excited and happy to be outside and free.  Very rewarding and good for all parties - we are going to get healthy again together! Plus, it's really nice to think about something besides rehab and work for a little while :)

Shorter morning and afternoon walks. My shins are a little sore from all the walking - a good reminder that I have to be super patient once I start running again (which should be soon!). I also made it 8 minutes on the recumbent bike and did some light arm weights, followed by wall sits, dead bugs, lunges, calf raises, and pelvic tilt.

Two 30 minute walks. I went to another physical therapist today - Todd Schwartz at Hand and Ortho. I got really frustrated for having to wait so long to see him, but the therapist impressed me. He did a full evaluation and found a lot of things that I have expected for a long time, the major finding being that the psoas muscle (that I strained last August) is pathetic. The TFL has become the primary mover which rotates the femur and causes the knee to move valgus. Then the gluteus medius has to work harder to protect the knee. All of which I suspected, but he was the first therapist to actually pick up on what was happening instead of immediately telling me to do a bunch of clamshells and I'll be fixed. Another finding he had was that I have poor resistance to rotation of my pelvis and the pelvis rotates with movement, especially the left side - this could have been a big factor in why I got the athletic pubalgia in the first place. I actually feel pretty confident about this therapist's ability to get me back to full health. 

So recap is that I still have a lot of work to do, but I know that I can get everything healing in the right way now that the abdominal tears have been repaired. Just the fact that I can go for 30 minute walk with minimal pain is a huge improvement over pre-surgery. 

Just lots of walks with the dog, probably about 3 miles or so. I did a few psoas stretching and strengthening exercises and it got really tight and crampy - maybe did too much for the first round.