Weekend Recap / New Workout Plan

Happy Monday! Hope you had a good weekend. I mentioned on Friday that I wasn’t feeling well… things just seemed to go downhill from there. I went to sleep Thursday night feeling dizzy and that carried over into Friday. After spending pretty much all morning trying to get in to a local doctor’s office with no luck, I ended up going to urgent care Saturday morning. The NP determined I was having an inner ear issue in both of my ears and wrote me an Rx for some meds. I’m feeling a little better today but I have a follow up with my doctor this morning.

Imagine someone spinning you around like you’re getting ready to play Pin the Tail on the Donkey… that’s how I’ve felt for the past 3 days!

The biggest bummer with all of this is that I had big plans for this weekend. I was going to work on some furniture projects on Friday and then meet my family on Saturday at a winery before we spent the day on the lake. Instead, I think I spent 75% of my time laying in bed. Needless to say, I was very disappointed. Lily was not disappointed, though. I think she actually thought it was awesome that I hung out with her so much this weekend.

Anyway, I’m hoping my doctor will just refer me to an ENT. I tried to get in to one on Friday but they require a referral for dizziness. Hopefully this can get resolved soon.

New Workout Plan

Obviously I’m not working out right now but I already had this portion of my post written So I’m just going to roll with it.

I mentioned last week that I finished physical therapy (woo hoo!) Once I knew that I was going to be released from PT soon, I started thinking about a “where to go from here” plan. The thought of not having someone to hold me accountable every week kind of worried me. I figured things could go one of the 3 ways:

• I get excited, do way too much and end up hurting myself again
• I lose momentum, become lazy and my knee regresses
• I make a concrete plan and follow through with it

The latter sounds like the best option. A lot of my last PT session was spent talking about my concerns, preventing re-injury, building muscle strength and increasing physical activity. I feel good about moving forward!

Prioritizing Physical Activity

Since my knee is kind of in a “so-so” state and I’m still having that baseline pain, it’s important for me to work around that and not exacerbate my issue. This brings up running and makes me wonder if I will ever be able to run again… especially since I’ve always wanted to do a triathlon.

So I’ve really been thinking lately about physical activity that I like to do vs. physical activity that I want to do for the sake of just being able to do it. I love cycling. I don’t love running. So do I really want to jeopardizing my ability to cycle by flaring up my knee from running?  Food for thought.

Keep the Foundation, Build on What You Love

This is the part where I really try not to overdo things. The main activities I can tolerate now are swimming, cycling and walking. I also have to have some leg sessions in the weight room to continue working on my strength-training. I’m walking a fine line right now between controlling my knee pain and causing more issues. I have a solid foundation of cardio and strength training built already with my swimming, walking and the weight room. So I’m going to keep that the same.

I’m going to just focus on increasing one thing right now, and that’s cycling. It’s what I like to do and it makes me happy. By keeping everything else the same, I will really be able to evaluate how much is too much with my bike.

Workout Plan

I wanted to put myself on a weekly schedule because I like the organization of being in a routine Mon-Sun. But my PT was quick to point out that the 7-day week is made for our work and social calendars… not our bodies, esp when recovering and rehabbing from surgery.

So instead, my workout plan is this: work out 2 days, rest 1 day, work out 3 days, rest 1 day

Workouts sessions are:

• Weight session / leg exercises
• Swimming
• Walking
• Cycling

Structuring a workout plan like this gives me a lot of flexibility to listen to my body and adjust workouts accordingly. Walking will be entered into the mix as tolerated, but I’m holding off for this week until my fascia issue calms down.

Since I’m building on cycling, I am going to try to fit that in 2 days per week… everything else is up in the air. This sounds silly, but I usually plan swimming around my hair… I have super thick hair that takes 45 minutes to blow dry and I only wash it once every 4 days. So I try to swim on the days that I’m already planning to wash it. I explained this to my physical therapist this past week and he was probably thanking God that it was our last session together

I’m really happy to be getting back to some level of normal physical activity. It’s nice to go to the gym in the evenings and know I have some options of things I can do. I’m hoping this new plan will help me build time on my bike and strength in my leg! Now hopefully I get get this ear issue resolved first.

Questions for you:

How was your weekend? Do anything fun?

Have you ever had to rehab an injury and if so, how long did it take?