Taking care of the body

[mad_m]

Hello fellow Bodies in Motion! Wondering about your stories of healing and recovery. I'm on the road back from a long layoff from running related to overtraining and muscle imbalance, and a major rock fall last September. Without getting into the details of the problems (long, boring, trust me), I finally owned that I'm getting older and simply taking a few months off with stretching just won't cut it anymore. That was a long road of getting past depression of not being able to move the way I wanted, at the speed and with the power I used to.

I hate it when I get the advice from medical professionals or massage therapists to not run, not push it, perhaps take it easier - I found the right mix of body work with an acupuncturist. After a few months of work with her, and on my own (stretching, rolling muscles, and pushing tennis balls into my trigger points at home), I'm now able to do some walk-running, body weight exercises, and the occasional short dyno at the rock gym. I also got outside to lead a few easy sport routes over Easter weekend. I used to be too proud to mix running into my walking, wouldn't climb routes I thought were beneath me, and didn't think strength training had a place in improving my climbing (totally bought into "if you want to climb, then climb!") In short, I was holding myself back with standards that my injured self couldn't meet, standards that were arbitrarily set. After letting them slack a bit, I realized how much I really can do after all, and that I'm on the road back to where I want to be.

What are your stories of breaking and rebuilding? What personal myths did you need to overcome?

Comments

[fred_mouse]

Figure skating at the enthused adult amateur level isn't necessarily about technique (depending on the coach - they shuffle the classes every term, depending on coach availability and how fast the class is progressing), although they do incrementally teach a lot of skills. I think it took about 2 years to get to the very first spins and jumps, and I feel I've barely got better at some of them in the intervening 2.5 years! It's really interesting in one way, that the more I feel like one of those 'in motion' pics of the really good skaters, the more likely it is that the jump or spin will work -- some of that posture really is about the physics!

[mad_m]

Wow! It sounds like you have a lot of focus and patience to really work at it, a combination of speed and skill to pull off those moves...

[fred_mouse]

I think I'm more stubborn than patient - I *will* eventually get this working, despite the issues that my body has. But I find it hilarious to consider that in terms of figure skating skill, I'm at least in the top 1% and probably the top 1 in a 1000 (or more) in the state, just because we are a mediterranean climate, and we have four rinks (that I'm aware of) in the state, and they are all in the capital, and so most people never ice-skate!

[mad_m]

That's awesome. Keep rocking it!