Dealing with injuries (personal goal)

June 14,

Two Thursday's ago,  I was walking normally down the street on my way to a gig when I suddenly felt a "pop" in my left knee.  This sensation was followed by some awkwardness around the knee cap without significant pain.  As the night went I could tell it wasn't 100% despite being able to do the gig without any real limitations.  Went to see my chiropractor who is amazing and after he did some tests mentioned that it was a bit loose.  It occurred to me that my tight left ankle probably had something to do with it.  More specifically, as a result of rupturing my achilles tendon 1.5 years ago my left calf is still weaker than my right.

One of my personal goals for the mastery program is to rejuvenate my achilles tendon and calf as much as possible.  This incident with my knee reminded me that in addition to stretching the area,  I also need to strengthen it on a daily basis.  My goal is to do 100 calf raises in two sets of 50 which is going to be a real challenge.  I can just get up to 30 with the final reps being extremely difficult and small in range.  In comparison, I can lift much higher and doing more reps with my right leg.  As a result of doing these exercises for the past week and half my knee seems to be getting better.  I'm closely monitoring how it feels.

In addition to the above,  the another aspect related to this personal goal was returning to karate 7 months after surgery.  Sensei Paul mentioned that all of us would question whether or not to continue at some point on the road to black belt.  This happened to me last summer before returning in August.  I'm glad I did!! The other piece of this goal is to do a rigorous backpacking trip with my boys this August since I wasn't able to do that last year.

Finally, I've also had to back off pushups for the past few weeks since my right shoulder has been somewhat problematic as a result.  Pullups haven't been an issue and I'm consistently doing at least 30 a day.  I'm going to ease back into pushups and see how my shoulder responds.

Bottom line is that as I get older I have to watch how I push myself making sure to keep a balanced perspective on what and how I'm training.  As frustrating as these injuries have been, I also look at them as an opportunity to learn more about myself through observing both my body and mind.  Being frustrated with the situation doesn't do anything but generate negative thoughts which aren't helpful to my goals. 

Hopefully this post hasn't seemed like a big rant. 

JL