Going through the motions
Being injured sucks, I mean really sucks. My favourite things are being outside running, cycling or walking. So any time something stops me doing those I’m so grumpy, which is probably the same for most people.
But one thing it does do is focus my mind on wether I could have done something to prevent it. In this case there’s 2 things I’m pretty sure I can point a finger at:
- A particular over enthusiastic hill run in Corfu
- Not looking after the little bits that aren’t running, talking about core, glutes and flexibility
Number 1 I’ll come back to in another post, but number 2 is something I’m working on during the enforced downtime.
Background
Bit of background and it’s probably obvious why I get running injuries every so often (I’ve had biking injuries, but thats normally been down to gravity being stronger than my ability). I’m 40 something and desk based for 8 hours a day, and my previous long distance cycling endeavours left me with great cardio ability but no flexibility. If there’s one group of athletes who like stretching less than runners it’s probably cyclists.
I’ve not been able to touch my toes since about 18 (tight hamstrings and lower back) and I can’t get down into a proper full ‘ass to grass’ squat (tight calves). Though it’s not quite as bad as it sounds, hands are only 4″ above my toes and if I hold a weight in front then I can get into a deep squat.
I was doing a pilates once a week that was dead handy for our house, but unfortunately the instructor closed that down about 8 weeks ago. Whether that’s a cause I don’t now
The Plan
As I’ve got some larger plans in the long term I really want to stop the cycle of going well, and then hobbling back to another couple of weeks off. So after a lot of reading around I’ve come up with the following plans:
Gym
Trying to make 2 lunchtime trips to the gym. Going to work on some basic large compound movements looking to build up some good movement practices. Currently this is looking like:
Goblet Squats (weight in front to stop me falling backwards)
Threaded Lunges
Single Legged Deadlifts
Kettlebell swings
all of these should work my hamstrings and calves nicely. And my hips, hip abductors and core should also get some benefits.
Classes
I’m looking for another Pilates class, and also trying out some yoga classes. Over the years I’ve tried a lot of the online videos, but it’s hard to push through them when it’s easy to just think “done enough, let’s do something else”. And from doing the pilates class I found I get much more out of it when an expert points our what you’re doing wrong. I’ve got my eye on a couple of classes, so I’m going to try them out to see which one I fit in best with
Home
Just to save going out for everything I need to do. There’s going to be an increase in post stretching routines, and i’m going to carry on with the calf raises/drops to make sure the achilles doesn’t flare up
Work
And because I spend 40 hours a week here it’s a good spot to work on some issues. The main one is making sure I move more. I work in IT, and once I’ve got my headphones it’s perfectly fine for me to sit there for 5 hours engrossed in debugging something. So the plan is at least every 90 minutes (set to cope with most normal meetings) to walk along the office, and then make use of being on the ground floor of a tower, walk up to the top and back down. Total time is about 6 minutes, which is less time than the vapers take to get outside and back, so can’t see anyone complaining about that.
Bits of these are in progress as I’m typing, and hoping that putting them out into public will keep me working on them.