kiwiclaire’s AchillesBlog

Even though from reading this site I knew that from 11 weeks would be a depressing slog with progress so slow that you hardly felt you were making any, it still hasn’t made it much easier.

Everyday life got back to normal - work, shopping, housework, socialising etc. however sport did not and I have had to make a real effort to keep working on the achilles. The best thing by far has been the pool; I made a commitment to go twice a week (I usually go once) and as well as my usual swimming I worked on single leg raises in the pool - first with water at chest height (10% body weight) gradually working towards it at hip height. I did the same progression for walking forwards and backwards, going slowly and really working my calf to push me up or let me down.

When I did a landbased single leg raise at 17 weeks I felt I’d turned a corner as I can now do more landbased stuff and it psychologically made me feel safer to try other things - i.e. get on the horse off a bank at the side of a track rather than a mounting block.
I am walking further each time, still with the geeky walking poles but who cares?! I feel the end is in sight and the non surgical rehab I have followed has really suited me. I don’t know if it has been much faster as for as long as I can remember I’ve told people to expect it to take 6 months for achilles rupture, and for me I am anticipating it will be around then that I do my bi-weekly 10k hilly walking loop without the poles and feel confident to get on my horse from the ground.

A day early of my 12 week goal I got back on my horse. I had my boot on, rammed right into the stirrup and got on from a mounting block; getting off I slid down very carefully. It went ok but made me appreciaate we don’t just sit there like a sack of potatoes (non riders think skiing - legs like shock absorbers - not just weight on the bum!) - I could feel the movement in the tendon and sadly the weakness! Only went out for half an hour and no ill effects afterwards so I guess it is a start and like everything will have to build up slowly, but need to seriously get going on the strength training. Won’t bore everyone with more detail as I don’t think there are any other horsey bloggers out there - never found any in my searches - probably because it is not usually an injury associated with horse riding. Will do a page later for others that might come along later.

Hello to all the experienced Bloggers, I need a bit of help please!

I started off doing posts, but then wanted the different subjects to be easy to find so turned all the posts into pages; I now realise that people can’t comment on a page.  Should I have continued with posts but then put them into categories, maybe I need to swap them back again - what’s the advice. 

Otherwise I’ve managed ok without too many sense of humour failures, although loading photos was a mission, the WordPress instructions being useless - I finally did it following ryanb’s advice (thanks Ryan).

I’ve always thought I was pretty computer savvy, but I’ve felt like a beginner again using WordPress, but then it’s good to learn something new, and another good thing that’s happened being immobilised is I’ve had the time to really get to learn all the features on my Android tablet which has been fun.

Hello All,
This is the first time I have blogged so I’m just getting to grips with the jargon that goes with it. I had done some “posts” but realise that I wanted them as “pages” so hopefully you will be able to look on the left and see which of my pages you are interested in reading. However, I think I’m gradually getting some skills as I have managed to load some photos with ryanb’s instructions - it was quite a mission so I feel pretty good that I got it! I’ve also managed to change the theme too. Watch this space for more changes!
Claire