Man… this sucks. 🙂

Based upon Paul Carter’s LRB-365 and Base Building – dealing with ankle injury

• Squat
  • BW x 10
  • BW x 10
  • Bar x 10
  • Bar x 10
  • Bar x 10
• Deadlift
  • 65 (bar + 10# bumpers) x 10
  • 65 x 10
  • 65 x 10
• Leg Extensions
  • 50 x 15
  • 50 x 15
  • 50 x 15
  • 50 x 15
  • 50 x 15
• Leg Curls
  • 50 x 15
  • 50 x 12
  • 40 x 12
  • 40 x 12
  • 40 x 12
• Hyperextensions
  • BW x 10
  • BW x 10
  • BW x 10
• Standing Calf Raises
  • 20 x 10
  • 20 x 10
• 10 minutes on the elliptical

Ugh. 🙂

I knew today would be no fun. But I have to tell myself if I want to get back to lifting heavier weights, I need to ensure the ankle heals well.

Squats — they actually didn’t feel too good. It’s a few things. First, the extent of flexion the foot goes into when you’re in the hole? That was a lot. It felt odd, it hurt a bit, and I found myself wanting to lean right to relieve the pressure — maybe not a real need to, maybe more mental fear of reinjury. When I forced myself to be fully relaxed and just go up and down, weight on my heels, it wasn’t so bad. I’ve been doing lots of circles and rotational type stuff, and static “stands” on my ankle, but not enough stretching and bending with resistance. While at the gym I ordered a set of surgical tubing of varying “weight” (hooray for mobile phones and Amazon!). I’ll add more stretches and such band resistance work into my at-home rehab work. Talking with a friend of mine that has plantar fasciitis, he says calf stretches help him a lot, so that might have double benefit for me.

Second, I felt lots of lateral stress on the ankle, throughout all things I did today… mostly squats and the hypers. Playing with foot position helped, but it does tell me I’m not ready to put a couple hundred pounds on my back just yet. 🙂

Deadlifting went well. No pains, no problems. I hated only moving 65#, but again, today was about finding where I am and what I can and cannot do. I really want to up the weight here, but I know of course that will put stress on the ankle. I might start a slow creep tho, like put the bumpers on with a 25# plate or something. I do need some level of stress to force the body to adapt, just can’t be too much. Must be slow, must restrain, even if it’s so damn boring and un-fun.

Doing extensions and curls were just an attempt to get SOME sort of actual leg work in. Do them slow, squeeze at the top, etc.. Made sure the bar/pad was at the top of my high-tops, not actually hooked into the ankle area.

I wanted hypers to be AMRAP, but again that lateral stress feeling wasn’t too great so I just did 10 and stopped. Again, these were very slow controlled movements. Which is good, I think. Gets me in the mode of feeling the muscle, not the movement.

Calf raises tho. The intent here was NOT to move much weight at all — to get the stretch, to work the range of motion. I planned on 3 sets, but after 2 well… something said stop, so I did. It’s not worth pushing it (because I even have a mild wondering if seated calf raises contributed to my problem in the first place).

Heck, I even spent 10 of the longest minutes of my life on the elliptical. Mild incline, mild resistance, mostly to give some extra work to the ankle. Steady pace, like 130 BPM heart rate, got some 1200 strides in. Again, nothing major, just trying to add some help to the ankle rehab.

I’ll get there… eventually. 🙂