Five months on, almost there…
Hello all,
The calf feels really good these days. It has been a month or two since I’ve done anything to treat swelling, although there still is a little at times. Single-leg calf raises are very nearly normal, but I still can’t hop on my injured leg as well as I can on the other one. Almost there. I’m working the other calf pretty hard, too, so maybe I’m aiming at a moving target. I still do the obligatory stretches, eccentric exercises, and calf raises, but now most of my PT is just walking around the house and yard way up on my toes whenever I think of it. I’m also doing some two-leg bouncing on my toes, with a 50/50 weight split, but barely going into the air, just beginning to do more “explosive” stuff.
When I started this rather rapid rehab, I was mostly interested in just getting on my feet again, which was allowed by sufficient flexibility. As time has gone by, though, I’ve realized that the calf strength work I started two days postop, which was sort of an afterthought then, has really paid off. My muscle atrophy was pretty minimal, so the strength was able to come back pretty quickly. It saddens me to think that I was doing single leg calf raises when many haven’t even been allowed to start any calf strength work, looking at a badly withered calf muscle and a long road back. Could people in a cast do isometric calf strengthening, just pushing the toes against the bottom of the cast? It seems plausible enough. Is anyone doing that?
Looking back, and thinking how this might apply to others who want to push things faster, maybe wearing a boot for protection wouldn’t be so bad, (although I never had one to try), given that risk of just one misstep and you’re reruptured, as chukeer recently and sadly discovered. Even so, walking in shoes could still be done early, but with ideal circumstances, (open and flat space with good visibility, maybe something like trekking poles in each hand just in case, no recent drinking, etc.), and while not concentrating on anything else. So the early walking would still be there, just under safer circumstances, while the boot would be protecting the tendon while our minds are on other things. That might be a good compromise between aggressiveness and safety.
The strength work is more easily controlled, and, if anything, I wonder if that could have gone faster that I did it. No complaints, though; this has gone better than I thought it would at the beginning.
Best wishes,
Doug
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Hi Doug, Thanks for your post–I need to stay focused on getting back full strength in my bad leg. I can still only do a few single leg calf raises and not as high as when doing them on my good leg so still a lot of work to do. It’s hard to stay focused when life is mostly back to normal. Just curious, does your AT still feel sore and stiff in the mornings when you wake up? It seems like that will never go away but maybe with time and more work it will. I am biking 50-60 miles a week which helps build leg strength but makes the AT sore at the end of the day. Thanks for sharing your recovery ideas-it’s good for motivation.
Hi Bode,
It is harder to stay motivated as things get closer to normal, isn’t it? That’s why I like walking around up on my toes now; it’s built right into the day.
It has been over a month since one of my alternate “hard days” made my leg sore or even noticeably tired the next morning. There’s still a little stiffness immediately upon getting up each morning, but a minute or two of walking and that’s gone, too.
This weekend, for the first time, I not only got out of the saddle on the bike, I did some all-out, gasping-for-air uphill sprints. (Watching the Tour on the TV got me going, I guess, the way those guys can accelerate.) No problem! It sure feels great to be able to max out again, at least on the bike. I originally thought I would give up basketball after this injury, but now the temptation is growing.
Best wishes,
Doug