The Injury
I’ll summarize, and then you can read the details that I felt lead up to the injury. On April 5th, I had a complete rupture of my right achilles tendon. I was at the CrossFit gym, and we were doing a “fun” warmup that got too competitive, and when I hopped up from my last burpee and sprinted to try to beat the other team, it felt like someone kicked me in the back of the heel and I heard a loud pop. I’ve heard this injury described so many times, I knew what it was. We immediately got it wrapped, on ice, and elevated. Pain and swelling wasn’t bad, and I could wiggle my toes, so I was hoping for just a partial rupture or maybe, hopefully, something even more benign than that.
I set up an appointment for 2 hours later with a friend that is an orthopedic surgeon that specializes in lower leg surgeries. It took him all of about 5 seconds to diagnose it as a full rupture with the Thompson test, and by just feeling along the back of my leg where my achilles should have been.
Note: If you didn’t feel along the back of your leg, you missed out. You can feel your healthy leg, and the strong, fibrous band of your achilles. On your injured leg, your fingers just went in, with no resistance. Kind of gross, but a pretty obvious test for rupture.
Surgery was scheduled for 2 days later, Friday, April 7th. I was put in a boot, and could get around well enough, and didn’t have hardly any pain. I used the next 2 days to stockpile groceries and supplies at my house, because I knew I would be stranded on a couch for a while.
So, what do I think contributed to this injury. The obvious one is doing burpees and sprinting with no warm-up. But other things that I think contributed are my general lack of fitness, and overworking my posterior chain. Because of work, my gym attendance has been sporadic to non-existent the past 2-3 years. I put on about 45 pounds, lost strength and conditioning. I’m just generally not in very good shape right now. I was kind of in my first month of getting back into a steady schedule and eating healthier.
I’ve always enjoyed lifting, and especially legs. So the Sunday before the injury, I went out in my garage and hit a ton of deadlifts. 150 reps total. That was enough to really cause everything in the posterior chain to be tight and sore. Then, I went to the gym on Monday, and they had more deadlifts scheduled in their workout. Great! I love deadlifts! I took Tuesday off, and then went to the 6:15AM class on Wednesday. So, the whole body was cold and tight from too much lifting of the same muscle groups, and not enough warmup.
We decided to warm up with a game. I highly discourage this now. It just ended up getting competitive and not being a proper warm up.
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Hard to say when you’ll get the OK for night time freedom since it varies by doctor.
Sorry to hear your renewed weight loss/better health regime was derailed like this. Best of luck with your recovery.
Ughh, sounds similar to what happened to me except that I had warmed up really well. My tendon was already stretched and preloaded when I came down to that “pop” followed by “who in the Hell landed on the back of my leg?”. Like you I had minimal to no pain. Try to stay positive and go and do upper body workouts to keep a semblance of sanity. You are going to come up on a time where you have no energy at all from lugging around the cast/boot, so the gym is a helpful distraction.
Thanks! I’ve been hitting the gym a few times per week and working upper body. I’ll add a post about it to blog, but I saw the doctor again yesterday, at surgery + 17 days and he said I could do the stationary bike as well, as long as I didn’t flex the foot past neutral.
I wore my boot on the recumbent bike initially. The doc emphasized to use the recumbent bike to me. Since I’m walking now the doc said I could use my shoe on the recumbent bike but I don’t strap in my right foot and don’t push hard with it unless I’m down at the 4 resistance level or lower. Anything higher gets achey. I’m not supposed to be doing anything strength related exercises except walking right now. I tried using the shoe on the rower but that just makes it ache too much so I keep it in the boot on the rower right now. I actually get a better workout on the rower as well since it’s arms and legs