by I’ve found that my day always improves when I go to PT.
Today was my only regular day this week; I’m down to twice a week now, and my second visit on Friday will be a re-evaluation day. I’m excited to see how everything stacks up against my very first visit.
It feels as though I’ve been going forever, but I only started on May 3–not quite a month ago.
Today felt really good. I came armed with my pedometer (James was finally home long enough to help me calibrate it) and some results. On Tuesday, I’d walked just shy of 10,000 steps (3.4 miles for me) on a day where I didn’t work out. We started PT today with 10 minutes on the universal gym, me doing pushups with my legs combined with curls, presses, and pec fly with hand weights. That was followed by 2 x 2 minute sets of heel lifts, and then two sets of eccentric, one-legged heel raises until I hit “7” on a scale of 1 to 10 (17 and 15, respectively). My usual favorite comes next: the treadmill with some gravity-reduction help. Today, the harness took off 30 pounds, and I walked 2 minutes forward at 3.4, 1 minute side-to-side at 1.2, 1 minute side-to-side at 1.2 on the other side, and then 2 minutes backwards at 2.0, for a total of four sets.
Afterwards, I did some jack knife drills with a little bit of gravity help. Then, I got to do something new and COMPLETELY fun. The gel-filled half-circles (kind of like mini Bosu balls) were placed on the floor about half a width apart, and I walked from one to the next, balancing. At first, I could barely do it; I fell off about three times in just the first trip…and there were only six pads. By the end, I could finish without falling off. And I totally enjoyed doing it.
I’ve been trying to take a break about every 20 minutes as Christine suggested last week, and I do believe it’s helping me. I’ve walked alot lately (we walked from the French Place house on the weekend down to see the CapTex Tri at the far bike turnaround) and am feeling better.
Originally, my orthopedist had told me that I could add in short run breaks to my walking if I were up to a couple of comfortable miles a day by June 1. I’m not there yet, but I’m not going to let this get me down. It’s important to me to recover the right way and come out the best I can possibly be. So no running quite yet, though I’m sure it’s coming sooner than I think.
