I was hoping to be making a video of me showing kinda "How to Learn a Unicycle" and not the Electric type but rather the old fashioned peddle one. I picked myself up a beginner 20 inch Unicycle for $20 on Facebook Marketplace and have been hopping on it over the passed week or so trying to learn how to stay on it. I have not had a lot of time to practice but so far I am able to ride it for about 20 feet or so on a good run ;)
I wanted to share with everyone my "Learning How to Ride a Unicycle" experience with everyone and so my plan was to make a video today of where I am at after about an hour or two of trying to ride it.
Well that didn't happen as yesterday while practicing I somehow jammed my ankle pretty bad. I didn't even realize I had injured my Ankle until about two hours after the incident when I got out of my truck after a nice dinner out with the wife. My Ankle just started to really ache and proceeded to cause a lot of pain all night.
Today I did go for a walk to try and loosen it up but it was pretty soar the entire time. After I got home from the walk I did a bit of office work and was expecting to get up with even more stiffness in my ankle from sitting but it actually felt a lot better so I am really confused as to what is going on with it?
Well I hope my Ankle sorts itself out over the next few days as I have this trip I will be going on in about a week, it would be nice to be able to walk! Suffice to say I will not be practicing my Unicycle at least until after I get back from the trip and of course when it has healed up. So sorry you are going to have to wait for my "Learning How To Ride a Unicycle Video" when my body allows me to...
With all the work I am putting in these days at the gym getting ready for this Years Canadian Nationals, well it can be hard on the body for sure. I find my main trouble spot are my elbows and where the bicep connects to them. It is a result of all the pull exercise I am doing and since there is no stopping now the only thing I can do is try and ease the discomfort a bit. I have found that Deep Tissue Class 4 Laser Therapy has been helpful in this area, more so than other types of physiotherapy I have tried.
If you train hard in any sport at some point in time you will most likely get an injury, and if you have never gotten an injury then perhaps you aren't trying hard enough ;) I say that jokingly but there is some truth in it since there is a fine line in between going hard and going too hard...
Disclaimer: I am not a doctor nor do I have anything other than my personal experiences with injuries and training while injured to go by so don't listen to me since I am obviously under-qualified in this area at least from a medical standpoint.
Be sure to watch my video on the subject of working out while injured since I go into much more detail than here in this written article where for the most part I will be summarizing.
Ouch - I think I hurt something? The first thing you need to consider is how serious is the injury sustained. If you are unsure of the severity then go see your doctor. If you feel the injury is not too serious then give yourself a day or two to feel the injury out before you train that part of the body since more harm can be done if the injury is worse then initially thought. Of course treat the area with ice and/or heat to bring down any inflammation. Work on mobility and range of motion during this time doing some light stretching and easy use. Within 2-3 days you should get a pretty good idea if the injury is minor or something more serious.
I did something but I think I'm going to be OK! Once you have established that the injury is not too severe, you can start to ease into things again but keep in mind, a small injury can get much worse if you overdo it so go easy when training around injured areas. Don't forget if you have one area of you body with an injury, often times you can train other areas just as hard as normal so take this time to focus on other non-injured areas.
Work arounds when training an injury: When you do start to work the injured area again, make sure to start with much lighter resistance than usual, do higher reps and make sure to do extra stretching and warming up to lubricate the area. Play around with using different machines that take the strain off of supporting muscles since often times they are the muscle areas that get injured the most. Try using different grips and limited range of motion to find an exercise where you can hit the area that is recovering while not aggravating it even more. A general rule of thumb is if it hurts when you do it then stop doing it.
No pain no gain! Most doctors are going to tell you to stop training for a couple of weeks and it's probably good advice but if you are like me then you are generally willing to deal with a longer recovery time by continuing to train the aggravated area to some degree rather than lose all your gains. Yes it will hurt a bit while training but again keep it limited and use work abounds. Your recovery is also going to take longer so either deal with it or go on your doctors advice and take a vacation.
Yes there have been times when I had to lay off an injured area completely for several weeks but these where pretty major injuries. I have trained through tones of minor injuries and if you listen to your body you can usually find good work abounds that will get you through the recovery process and keep your strength up along the way.
Know your limits: The best advice I can give you is to know your limits and always stay on the healthy side of them. Sure it's great to get one rep PR's but sure enough, that's when many of those more serious injuries can take place. If you're not a power lifter then perhaps keep your reps to 5-8+ per set and stay out of the danger zone. An injury is a sure fire way to reduce your PR or "personal bests" so keep that in mind...
After a week away in Vegas it was back to the grind and today happened to be leg day at my CrossFit Langley class and it was heavy day, on this heavy day we do 5 sets with 3 reps of back squats increasing the weight with each set till we get to our max three rep weight. Of course we do our regular warmups before hand.
All went well right up to and including my 275 pound third set, I felt pretty good and was sure I was going to squeeze out at least 2 reps at 305... Well I did get one off but at a pretty big cost! Right at the bottom of my first rep of 305 pounds, as I was coming up I felt and heard a "pop" that was accompanied by a very significant sting in my left Quad. It actually stopped me in my tracks and I paused on the way up, I was not sure what to do since I had a spotter behind me and did not want to drop the weight on him, so up I went unassisted and to be honest as I went up it was not all that hard and the sting was kind of forgotten since I was so focuses on getting this weight up and off of me.
Needless to say, no more squatting for me on this day and perhaps for a while :( I finished up the workout doing 10 reps times 6 sets of sit-ups, push-ups and pull-ups, and I did get a pretty good workout in for the day considering what happened.
So here I am sitting at home typing away on my keyboard with an icepack on my leg, not sure of the severity of the Quad Rectus Femoris tear? I am thinking it is at least a first degree tear (about a 5% tear). It could even be a second degree tear (more than 5% but less than a complete tear), but I am fairly certain it is not a third degree tear since that would be a complete tear and there would have been no way I would have been able to get the weight up.
Because of all of this I have decided that from now on I will only lift to get stronger in general. I am not going to do sets under 5-6 reps max since every time I have sustained an injury it has been during reps of 3 or lower. So there will be no more single rep Personal Record attempts. What's the point if I get injured in the process and I can no longer train that body part. That is completely anti productive and not worth the satisfaction of saying I can lift "X" amount of weight.
I have always believed that changing up your workout program and adding a variety of workout strategies to your workout program is a great idea, but lately I kind of got a bit away from this. Perhaps I thought that the CrossFit classes I was going to offered enough variety for me and maybe if I stepped back just a bit then the CrossFit alone would have been just fine.
As good as CrossFit is, it can be very physically demanding and there is a lot of repetition involved, it's not really about how much working out I am doing at CrossFit but rather the intensity and demand I'm putting on my body five days a week. if I was in my 20's or 30's, perhaps it would not be as hard on my body, but now in my mid 40's I feel every workout more than ever and recovery time is taking longer than it used to ;)
So I am going to take my own advice and step back just a bit from my CrossFit, maybe only go 3-4 days per week and add some more diversity to my workouts, get back to my Total Gym a bit and do some less jarring isolation type exercises. I believe this will benefit me in the log run by helping to prevent injury, recover quicker from each workout and see more gains in terms of overall joint usability and muscle health and strength.
Watch my YouTube Video as I explain why it is so important to add Diversity to your Workout Programs to avoid Injury, improve recover time and see gains in strength and overall health!
Monday, September 18, 2023 at 4:03PM 
