My Journey With Health And Fitness – Taking Time To Heal

When it first came out I saw trailers for Killers of The Flower Moon and I thought hey, I’d really like to see that movie. Then I learned it was 3 1/2 hours long (3 hours and 26 minutes to be exact). Ok, there was no way that I would sit in a movie theatre for that long to watch it despite how interested I was in the story. Then of course the weather changed and more walking was being done on the dreaded treadmill and I wondered if I could watch it in segments. Turns out this was a great idea because it wasn’t overwhelming in length that way and I really enjoyed the movie.

So I am on day 4 of my recovery and I am pacing myself as best I can. Monday, other than the bootcamp class when everything went south, I didn’t do any other workouts. Tuesday I opted to do nothing and instead rested with my leg elevated. Yesterday the pain had significantly decreased and I decided to try some walking so I walked the 20+ minutes to the coffee shop and after resting for over an hour I walked home. That didn’t turn out too bad and while my knee was tired by time I got home I wasn’t in any debilitating pain. Today I decided a couple easy walks on the treadmill were in order so I did 2 30 minute sets and the pain has definitely almost completely receded. Tomorrow I’ll try 2 45 minute walks then hopefully 2 1 hour walks both Saturday and Sunday with the goal of returning to bootcamp on Monday.

I have committed that I am not going to push myself right now as I want my knee to be back to normal (well as normal as it had been). Don’t get me wrong, compared to Monday I have come a long way in just a few days. Today for the first time this week I was actually able to climb the stairs properly with no pain. Sitting working all morning has not made my knee really stiff as it did on Tuesday. However, I also know I am not there yet as I still feel like there is a tight metal band wrapped around my knee and quite frankly my range of motion right now sucks. Still, backing away from heavy workouts as well as using the prescription anti-inflammatory cream seem to be doing the trick.

Now I just have to keep myself under control and not decide to up the ante. I need to stick to moderate exercise carefully increasing it over the next few days. So far this has worked and I have been good about keeping my calories down a bit so as to not increase my weight. Next week if I go back to bootcamp I’ll be dialing it down a bit and not doing anything high impact until I am positive this flare up has passed.

Overall, I’ve given myself some time to heal and that seems to be working.