How Long?

Just a quick update to say I resumed playing football last night on a half sized pitch, so lots of running involved.

Was slightly nervous to start with as you would be, but after 10 minutes of moving about, running, turning and shooting everything seemed good and fine.  Even managed to score a couple of goals on my return

Hope everyone is doing well.  As with others my visiting to the site seems to get less and less which is a shame, but also means life is moving on from this piece of cr@p injury

Just a quick post to say that my snowboarding holiday went without a hitch.

Achilles feels superb and I managed to hit all the major types of runs as well as doing park stuff (yay for learning 360s off kickers)

Hope everyone is recovering well.  Roll on Thursday when I should make my long awaited return to playng football (soccer to my US cousins).

Again, a couple of days early from it “officially” being 25 weeks but whats to bother about days this far in!

Well, as the title says thats me done.  I’ve now been cleared by physio to resume any and all activities.  My achilles is now at 100% as far as he’s concerned and the only thing left for me to do is building up the remaining calf muscle.  Granted I cannot do a single leg heel raise to the same ability as my good side, but this is all down to the calf muscle, not the achilles.

I have one final physio appointment at the end of January which is timed for my return from my snowboarding holiday.
Fingers crossed after 5 days of that my calf should be near as it can be to normal so I’m hoping I can knock off perfect heel raises then.  If I don’t though I’m  not bothered as I can hop, skip, run and jump.  I can play badminton again without worrying too much.  I can snowboard again.  When I get back from the holiday I can then finally resume playing football/soccer.

I’ll still keep checking the site to try and keep up with people and impart any wisdom I’ve gained (not that any of us listen that much at the start!).
For now though everyone take care, keep working at it whilst being careful and good recoveries to all!

Barry

PS. I’ve added a a new timeline page at the top which has a quick summary of every week so far, what I did and how I progressed.

Post is technically 2 days early for week 23 but who cares at this stage.

As always my rehab exercising is as before and that’s mainly tearing up and down stairs which you could really now class as one footed jumps as I slow it down when taking off so I really give the calf a good work out.

So what goals did I achieve.  Well the first was thanks to the awful weather we’re having here.   I was leaving work when it started to rain hard.  Without a second thought I ran the 100m or so to my car at full sprint.  After realising what I had done it felt really good to do that and also not to have worried.

Second goal was completed today and that was a return to snowboarding (done on the local indoor slope).  Did a few slow runs to test the water and warm up and then after picked the speed up and also managed a few ollies and 180s

All in all a good few weeks.  Next week is the last but one physio as well as a return to playing badminton (not full force, but also not plodding about).

So week 20.  Whats changed since week 18 … not much … hence the moving of a weekly entry to a bi-weekly entry.

As in previous weeks I’ve not really done much focused PT but instead done "improved" lots of little and often exercises.
Last entry I was walking up steps 2 at a time, pushing through the bad leg to give it a good workout.  This has now changed to running up and the stairs 2 at a time and springing off the toes.
I also now do some skipping whenever I can, starting with both feet then moving to the bad foot.  It sounds better than it is because the rope I have is just a tiny bit short so I’m forever whacking myself with it.  Still, its nice to know I can do a sort of hop on the one bad leg.

Heel raises are still okay with my bad leg just a bit behind the good leg which I think is down to that last 5% of muscle strength I’m missing but is the hardest to get back.
I can knock out doubles and singles without any problem so I’m not really focusing on them anymore.

What I want to do now is get explosion back.  I’d love to be like others and go the gym but truthfully, the places bore me to tears.  Sport is what I do so I think I’m going to go back to doing some now, most likely snowboarding and occasionally badminton.

Went to physio again today and recounted my holiday activities from last weeks entry. He laughed and asked if I always just impulsively ran. Maybe he thinks I’m going to do a Forrest Gump or something!  I brought him up to date on this weeks activities as well which was not much except putting the bad leg up 2 stairs pushing up using the toes.  Ive also done some jogging up and down stairs.

With this in mind he had me warm up and go through some usual and new exercises. Warm up was the usual 5 mins bike, 5 mins fast walk on an incline.  On the latter he usually watches to check the calf out which he says is coming on really well, it’s just missing a bit of bulk now.

Then it was on to the trampette where I jogged on the spot. He watched this as well and was happy that I wasn’t whimping out on the bad leg and the movement etc was even between legs.

Then moved to doing step stuff which was the usual slow up and down but then added to it was jogging up and down. This also went well and means I can start pushing them.

I then did some walking round on tip toes. Good news is that the heels are now high and level and stay there. Bad news is its still bloody hard work. He then made me do it with straight legs which didn’t work out as well as that’s really hard so another one to do whilst walking around in work.

I then knocked off about 10 single leg heels raises whilst holding the wall. Obviously nowhere near as good as double heel raises, but it’s a really good indicator for how well you’re progressing as they are very very hard to do.

Finally I was going to do skipping but someone had nicked the rope so instead I jumped forwards and backward over a line and side to side.  He watched and I was slightly favouring my good leg doing them but that will change in time.

So, new little and often ones to do now are:

• Tip toe walking but with legs straight
• Jogging up and down steps
• Forward/backward and side to side small jumps

After that session was over I suggested I was ready to get back on a snowboard. Nothing major, just easy turns at the slope. After I explained the mechanics of linked turns (across the slope on your toes, back across on your heel) he agreed that it was ok and should be good physio, I just had to promise to be thoroughly warmed up.  Woohoo!

No more physio now for 3 weeks as its pretty full up and I suppose I’ve got enough to be getting myself sorted with until the next round which should hopefully start me on things like intensive plyo etc

Went away to Spain for a week last Saturday, the day after my physio.  The expectation was that I was going to do some jogging and swimming whilst away.
Unfortunately the pool was close to freezing due to the cold nights and relaxing got in the way of jogging.  I did though manage to do some surprising things …

Early in the holiday we went to the beach.  My friend got out a football and off I merrily went jogging away in the sand kicking a ball about.  It took a fair few minutes for me to actually realise what I was doing and that I wasn’t bothered by it at all.  At the place where we stayed there was also a table tennis table.  As my friend and I were both keen players in our youth this is where most of the day time was spent.  What I didn’t count on was the increasing amount of bouncing off the toes I was doing, as well as jogging up and down a steep slope to retrieve wayward table tennis balls!!!

What I find strange now is that I’ve spent a week doing none of my usual exercises, but have instead done things my physio will likely kill me over this coming Friday.
What is even stranger is that my calf feels far better than it did a week ago which was proven when I went in the living room earlier this evening and showed my wife how I could do unassisted one legged heel raises … 7 in total … and that was after about 4 or 5 a couple of minutes before that.

Be interesting to hear what the physio says on Friday but I think it feels about right to start doing some plyo type exercising to really get that calf going as I can tell you, some of the things I did whilst playing table tennis (for example going sideways from good foot onto bad foots toes and then springing back), show me that everything is going pretty damn good!

… I could be the guy I just met at physio.  He was at 16 weeks, one week out of the cast due to him falling and re-rupturing at 4 weeks.  He was at best, how I was at 6-7 weeks.  That must suck!

Anyway … last entry for a couple of weeks (maybe) as I’m off on hols tomorrow, woohoo!

Physio was today.  Usual warm up of the bike/incline walking and then he had my walking around on tip toes.  Said there was a massive improvment in the calf.  Yay!
Learnt a coupee of new one for walking around on your tip toes as well.  One way is to stay in a squat whilst doing it (works upper and lower calf), the other is to do it straight legged (works just the lower part).

Then did 2 exercises with the massive ball behind your back against the wall.
First was in a squat trying to do heel raises.Second was in a squad, keeping heels up and using your knees to move up and down.
The second one was superb, could really feel it working the upper and lower calf.  First one was OK, but didn’t get the same feeling of achievement I did with the second one.
Then moved on to bounching around the trampette which was OK but more fun than useful I thought.

Towards the end I pushed the idea of plyometric type stuff for when I return which he seems up for, so will be introducing small jumps on tip toes on to a step and off a step as well as some other things as we work on the next phase of recovery which is explosion.

So thats me done for a week with work.  Time for a well deserved break!
Everyone take care now

This week was quite boring until a friend asked if I fancied standing in the middle of a badminton court and just knocking the shuttle cock about to get him running.
I should have listened to myself, knowing that I would do more than I should but instead I went, mainly because I didn’t want some weird psychological block stopping me from playing again when I can.  Well, that was a bit daft.  Don’t worry, nothing serious happened, I just ignored my physios advice that working the achilles/calf too hard does not gain quicker results.

So what happened … well, I played the game and was leisurely walking around.  If a shot was too far away I just left it.  Then I started moving a bit quicker to shots and by the end, I pretty much quickly jogged for a few steps.  In fairness that feeling was great as I knew I could do more than I thought.  What happened for the next few days though was my calf and ultimately the achilles were well worn out with exercise.  Again, not to worry, I’m not talking pops or limping or anything but there was just something about doing some of the things I did that told me I had overdone it.

Anyway, that panic (if you can even call it that) is over.  Again extra exercising this week has been non-existing but again every day I’m up and down stairs on my tip toes, or walking around on them, or freaking people out doing heal raises whilst talking to them and occasionally doing a few weak-ish one legged calf raises.  I also managed (apart from the badminton) a couple of jogs.  Nothing long, just maybe 50 metres or so, but it felt fine so in a weeks time when I go to sunnier climates for a holiday, apart from  swimming I think I’ll be doing a small daily jog.

As mentioned last week I think, there was no physio this week.  Next appointment is this Friday with holiday the next day so hopefully I’ll update the blog then otherwise it will be whilst sat around a pool having a well deserved break!

Another week of being lazier than I should but still getting progress.  Again this is down to doing lots of little things but not doing extra effort on things like the cycle and wobble board.

So, this week my slow and steady exercise, apart from standing on toes moving from side to side and generally making people think I’m a weirdo, is to walk up and down the stairs in work on my tip toes.  Thats 50 stairs I count and I go up and down probably 10 times a day so although I don’t do the cycling and stuff, that really does give my calf a great work out.

On to this weeks physio now.  This consisted of:

• 10 minutes warm up on the cycle … stiff resistence mainly on the toes
• 10 minutes incline walk.  Measurements were (I think) 16% gradient at 5km/hour.
• 10 minutes wobble boad.  Standing on one foot, ball of foot at the middle of the board and trying to make it lean one way, then the other.  Burns!
• 10 minutes trampette.  Just stood on one foot and gently bobbing up and down.  Thought this would be useless and pointless and I was completely wrong.  F*&% me it burnt as well
• Double heel raises hanging off a step

Physio was happy with progress so far.  Calf muscles are really starting to work, just need to keep doing more and more little and often.  No physio next week though as he’s not in and then week after that I will go and then fly on hols for a week.  I’m hoping he clears me for jogging then as I’ll be in sunnier climates.  Chances are if he doesn’t I’ll still do it as he does err on the side of caution when it comes to anything involving "explosion" just yet and I already jogged 2 weeks ago, albeit not intentionally!

So for the rest of this week now I’m going to continue up and down the stairs on my toes, trying to get the heel up as high as possible.  Managed today as well a little one legged heel raise but I don’t want to push that one.  Think what I’ll do is copy someone else who goes up on 2 and down on 1 as a good extra exercise for when I’m chatting to people and freaking them out