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Quote du jour: I'm fine, and my hips are fine. My false knee is fine. My false hips are fine. Everything's cooking.
- Liza Minnelli
Recap: I keep bitching about Damn Knee. If you missed the saga, here's the 10-second recap:
- Two months ago, a vicious garden hose leapt up and caught my right ankle, causing me to land with all my considerable weight on my left knee and left hand.
- My left elbow (Damn Elbow) was so swollen I couldn't bend it more than 90 degrees for a week.
- Damn Knee was swollen, and a lot of pretty colors, but I could walk on it, so I didn't worry.
- Until a month went by, and I still couldn't walk without pain, or kneel down without agony, or...
- Anyway, the doctor said things like "Bone bruise" and "patience" and "exercise anyway."
- So I did, in a limited fashion, for another month.
- Which brings us up to now.
What's really weird is that it is much, much easier to spend an hour on the elliptical working up a sweat than it is to spend ten minutes doing yoga. Downward facing dog? I last maybe 90 seconds. I can't fully straighten Damn Elbow, and it can't take the weight. Child's pose? Damn Knee throws a tantrum.
A saner woman would say "screw yoga" and stick to the elliptical, but I want to stretch myself in both senses of the word. So I'm compromising by aiming for 10-minute yoga sessions and lots of pilates or belly dancing DVDs mixed in with the ellipticalling.
Exercise du jour:
Morning - 1 hour elliptical
Noon - 1 hour core-strengthening drills
Done... well, if you call 1/2 hour elliptical and 1/2 hour raking exercise.Night - 1/2 hour elliptical, 1/2 hour mixture of what yoga poses I can manage and pilates.
Done. Except for the yoga and pilates part. 1 hour elliptical. However, I reduced the resistance to make it much less of a workout.
7 comments:
90 seconds at downward dog!! Holy crap, woman, you are a champ! I can barely do that for 9 seconds. And child pose is torture, hate it! But there's lots of other good stuff.
Gotta watch out for those treacherous garden hoses.
Seriously, the elliptical machine? I tried one once and was bored stupid in about 15 minutes, plus all my joints hurt. Joints that typically don't hurt running. Easy choice.
Hang in there...
Sometimes an inflammation needs a week or two of full rest to resolve and not become chronic. I pushed my sprained ankle to walk five miles a day due to foster dog needs. It wasn't until half a year later, once they were re-homed, that I rested and got rid of nightly swelling and pain. To push, or not to push? That is the question.
Push gently, just enough that you don't undo the healing, but increase capacity slowly. How's that for "Thanks, I could have come up with that myself" advice?
Chiming in:
ibuprofen
ice, ice, baby
water exercise
double up on fish oil
learn gentle stretching specific to knees recovering from injury
[learned from episode with right hip that became inflamed after pushing too hard on an elliptical]
good luck & keep going :)
I've rested it for two months.
I've done ice, ibuprofen, stretching.
Matter of fact, I still do all three. Especially the stretching.
Okay, just ow.
I can't believe you are doing as much as you are!
We trudged today, farther than I should have. I am SO tired of this already.
Julie
I'm a poor one to give advice, since I keep re-aggravating my recently healed broken elbow by putting too much body weight on it when I strength train. The advice I SHOULD be following is to stretch gently, go gradually, and let pain be my guide. By the time it hurts enough for me to HAVE to stop, I've already caused a flare-up than can take days or weeks to calm down. So on the yoga poses, I'd say back off the intensity until you feel a good stretch but no pain. And if an exercise isn't modifiable to get to the point of no pain, then skip it!
Said the pot to the kettle.
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