Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Injury and Recovery

This blog update isn’t about Europe and all of our wonderful travels, or the crazy drivers in Naples. This update is about recovering from injury… actually the interesting thing that I learned is that recovery starts before you are injured.

It has been six months since I slammed into a tree snowboarding. I suffered a partially torn ACL, MCL, and Meniscus. Before I crashed into the tree I was doing a workout called Cross Fit pretty religiously. It is a workout regime that combines Olympic weight lifting, running, gymnastics, and calisthenics. The program is designed for people that are fire fighters, cops, and military, and gives anyone an overall good level of fitness. The workouts are killer, but only take 20 minutes in some cases. I had been doing Cross Fit for almost two years when I hit the tree, and I was probably in as good a shape as I had been in since the end of Navy Dive School.

Suddenly, with one bad turn on a snowboard, my leg was busted and ligaments in my knee were torn. A severe injury that might require months of rehab and surgery. Because the wonderful Navy docs kept my leg immobilized for 11 days the recovery process got off to a slow start. 12 days after the surgery I was on a bike trying to turn the pedals on level one and I wasn’t even able to get the machine to register that I was riding it. But I kept pressing the rehab, and working out as hard as I could pushing the injury as far, and slightly further than the docs wanted to let me go.

It is almost 6 months to the day since the injury and without surgery I am back to 95% of where I was when I was injured. The last 5% seems to be the biggest challenge, but I am back to my Cross Fit ways just like before I was injured. For me, the moral of the story was to stay in shape so that recovery would be easier later once you do get injured. And also, that no matter how bad you are injured, you need to keep training to get back into shape for both your body and your soul.
Ciao, for now. More fun Europe stories to follow.

2 comments:

  1. Joe, sorry to hear about your injury. You forgot to mention the massive amount of pilates and scientology -both keys to your healthy lifestyle.

    Only 30 more days until no more Navy.

    -Eric

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  2. Glad your recovery is progessing well...
    From My experience injuries sustained at 17, 25, 35, seem to go away.... but come back to bite you in the ass (create aches and pains) when your 60...

    But, I'm not a very fit 65 either...
    So you might be right... that said I emphasize that no matter how fit you are!!!!you're not invincible so use some judgement when participating in potentially dangerous activities...

    Just a father talking...

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