Haven’t been on the site for a bit as life has really returned to normal. I have been out golfing several times and have moved from power walking to jogging. Back on the baseball field playing catch like pre-injury and have been throwing the football around too. Life is good right now!
PT moved from stretching to rebuilding my calf now. My range of motion in my injured foot is now pretty much on par with my good foot. I was pleased to see that happen so quickly. I can even stretch pretty far when doing the runners stretch against the wall,
But the new goal is to just do one single calf raise. I can do double calf raises no problem at all. I can even balance on my bad foot for an extended period of time and not fall over. But I can’t do a single calf raise. It just feels so weird to be trying to try to get off the ground and not be able to do it. Walking on my tip toes is out of the question. Been trying that all weekend but my bad foot just comes right down. I am hoping that by March I am able to get off the ground.
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December 10th, 2012 at 1:58 pm - Edit
I’m at 21 weeks non-op, and I still can’t do a single calf raise yet. I’ve just started walking on my tip toes. I can do that for about 20 short steps and then my bad foot will come down. I’ve also been jogging a little bit, mostly on the treadmill. Being able to jog felt like a victory to me. It seemed like I would never be able to when I first got injured. Hang in there everyone, it gets better.
December 10th, 2012 at 2:07 pm - Edit
I’m apparently stuck forever without a good left-side 1-leg HR and life is good, including competitive volleyball 2x/wk! Who knew? My calf seems much stronger with bent knee than straight — tiptoe-walking is easy bent-kneed (tho very funny looking!).
December 10th, 2012 at 2:08 pm - Edit
Here’s an exercise you can do to progress towards a heel raise:
Do a two leg heel raise, with a fairly wide stance, fingertips against a wall. To do this, you’ll probably have to have most of your weight on the “good” leg. Slowly shift your weight across- from the good leg onto the bad. The wide stance should give you lots of control. See how much weight you can shift over there, before your heel starts to drop - or things just start to feel too scary/bad. Over time, you’ll find that you can shift more and more of your weight… one day, you’ll be able to shift all of it; lifting your good leg off the ground- supporting all your weight, on the injured foot, in an elevated position.
From there, the next step is to work on “negatives”. Get into that elevated heel raise position, and then lower your weight - slow and controlled - through the range of motion. Once you can do that… work on stopping/pausing on the way down. Once at first… several times as you progress. Work towards being able to hold yourself - isometrically - at any point through the stroke.
When you can do all that- you’ll be VERY close to doing a single heel raise.
December 10th, 2012 at 2:19 pm - Edit
Norm - you’ve probably figured this out, but your symptoms perfectly describe a strong soleus, and weak gastroc. In fact, if you can walk tip-toed with bent knees, I’d wager your soleus is VERY strong- stronger than most un-injured folks… most likely it’s (over?)developed to compensate for the weak gastroc.
The weak gastroc - after this long, sounds like somebody who’s “healed long”- especially with all the activity you do. Is this your surgical or non-surgical side (I forget)? Scratching my head, wondering if it’s possible that one strand (soleus) of the Achilles attached at the right length, but the other (gastroc) healed long? Or - is this the leg you think you’re “short” on - if the soleus acually healed “short”, resulting in prematurely transferring all the load onto the soleus before the gastroc gets a chance to really engage. That would (I think) result in a long term weakness (can’t to a calf raise) symptom too.
Either way - unfortunately - I don’t have any good suggestions for a fix. Sounds like it’s not really an issue for you anyways. Just interesting to ponder
December 10th, 2012 at 3:22 pm - Edit
It’s good to hear from you again CrutchesinTX. Sounds like you’ve made great progress and your strength in your recovering leg will come in time. I’m already long-term goal planning with my PT about these very same things.
December 10th, 2012 at 6:07 pm - Edit
Hi kkirk - I hope things are going well with your recovery.
Things are progressing very well on my end. My PT and I are planning to get me back on the pitcher’s mound in March. I really feel like I could get back on the mound today and be okay.
The first strength building PT was great not only for leg, but also for my mental state. It made me push myself and overcome some fears I had in “babying” my leg. Do the step board, doing the leg press sled as normal and then just with the toes on my bad foot. After that I felt like I was strong enough to push my achilles to do more. I stopped walking up the stairs turning my foot to the side. I am now able to walk up the stairs at pretty good pace with the normal motion and come down at a good pace also.
Once the holiday season is over I plan on getting a bike and start riding around town to help strengthen my calf. I am really looking forward to getting back to coaching little league this spring too. Being a spectator for this past fall league was tough. I needed and wanted to be out on the field with the kids.
December 10th, 2012 at 6:14 pm - Edit
So far so good. Just recently started FWB and lots and lots of AROM exercises. It fills good to not be NWB and working towards some goals. No strengths training for a few weeks (I think). I will find out more Wed. At my next followup appointment.
I know the feeling (concerning coaching) to because this season I can’t help very much with my son and daughters basketball team (they’re twins and on the same team). Ill be back in te swing of things with spring soccer. Take care.
December 11th, 2012 at 7:59 pm - Edit
Question for those who farther along in recovery than 4 months. How long before the swelling starts to go away? After getting home from work, I take my dress socks off and I have a big ring around my calf area where the elastic band is on my sock because my leg has swelling above and below it. Also, my outside ankle is where I get most of my swelling when wearing shoes. If I wear sandals or don’t get much swelling at all.
December 14th, 2012 at 2:36 am - Edit
Hello–I fully ruptured my left achilles back in March of 2008 and I haven’t really been on this site since–It’s a great site but sort of hard to navigate so I don’t really know if I’m posting this somewhere where people can actually see it. After my surgery and recovery in cast/boot, etc., I did my prescribed regimen of PT for a couple months and then did my home exercises for another 9 months or so. I was a very busy full-time Grad student at the time and though I did do my exercises, I suppose I could have been more diligent about them. My calf was badly atrophied and I had trouble walking normally. I figured eventually things would go back to normal, but after another year or so, my left leg was still significantly smaller and weaker than my right, so I went to a new physical therapist (this is now like 2 years after the initial injury). He got me on a good program of 1-2 visits a week, which I did religiously for a year, and I was starting to see progress–left calf growing and getting stronger, walking and moving getting easier and closer to normal–but then I lost my health insurance!! So now PT is not really an option, but I need to keep up some sort of program on my own. I don’t know why my leg atrophied as badly as it did or why it has been so stubborn about returning to its original strength. I am relatively young (33) and in good physical shape. I have been doing the exercises I did at PT on my own at the gym, but it is impossible to re-create the whole program. Anyone have any advice or recommendations for good strength building exercises? I’m doing a lot of jumping/plyometrics stuff, hopping onto and off of bosu balls, up and down stairs etc., strength band shuffles, etc., but what I’m really lacking is strengthening exercises, stuff that will get that calf mass back. At the PT office, there was a total gym slide kind of thing, where you could do a calf raise using a percentage of your body weight, but the squat machine at the gym is too heavy for me to press it up. I also happen to work on my feet all night (bartender) and live in mortal fear of overtaxing my legs and re-rupturing or rupturing the other achilles…sorry for the long post but everyone here knows how sucky this injury is, so if anyone has any advice for PT for the uninsured/good strengthening exercises, I’d really appreciate it. Thanks, and best of luck with your respective recoveries!
Patrick