So, Let's Start With the Theraband...

The differences between my two physios are really quite significant. If I were an outside party just observing, I'd find it kind of fascinating, as it's somewhat representative of the clientele they most frequently deal with, but living it, I often just find it annoying. 

The more annoying of my two physios also has a student. While I have nothing against either of them personally, every time that student tells me to start with the theraband I want to smack her. Unlike a large percentage of their patients, I am doing my exercises. In fact, I do them multiple times a day. I have therabands attached to the table in my office. I have a wobble board in my office. Hell, I have measurements taped to the ground so that I can do the dorsiflexion lunge test and gauge my progress. I digress, but seriously, fuck your therabands. I am not fucking up my theraband exercises, and you're not even watching how I do them anyways, so why are we running through these in my appointment? 

If we aren't gauging my progress or adding a progression to the equation, don't make me do these stupid exercises at my appointments. You are unnecessarily adding time to my appointments and driving me insane. 

Thankfully this week she didn't try to get me to move my toes more forward as I attempted squats. I WILL NEVER SQUAT TOES FORWARD; IT'S NOT HAPPENING. I just looked up videos from my last squat cycle healthy and my toes are in fact even more out than I thought (and I'm in weightlifting shoes, which lift your heels/take some of the need for dorsiflexion away). I'm all for improving my movement patterns, but how about we start with a goal of getting me back to the movement patterns I had previously...



Anyways, in happier news, I was in the clinic before my workout last night (they are attached to my gym, so I stop by most days to warm up my ankle on the wobble board and with some bosu work) and Laurie (who owns both clinics, used to treat me, and is someone I will often ask questions to) was like "oh, I called an ortho surgeon to ask him about you. Come talk to me, I have some context and answers". So that was great. She has downgraded me picking up a 465 yoke on the week-end from "OMG WTF" to "ok, it's not the end of the world, but it's not a movement you really need to be doing right now, so please save us all the stress for a little bit longer". At least she no longer believes I'll break my hardware (something Marlies has been saying from day one. She does failure analysis on metals for a living and is quite confident in the load bearing abilities of my seven screws and plate). So at least this batch of anxiety producing garbage can be laid to rest.



I heard back from Miles, my other physio today as well reference my progress and next steps. He is going to send me for another x-ray. Having past 12 weeks, I should have a hard callus on my break site. I am hoping, if everything looks good on x-ray, I could potentially get cleared to start doing some controlled contact drills. I'd mainly like to start working on drive blocking with a friend I trust and/or Marlies; I'd also like to try hitting our tackling dummy. 

The three criteria for me returning to play from my first physio were:
1. Full mobility
2. Full strength
3. X-ray that shows I am ok to take contact.

Miles has said he would be happy with 90% mobility and 80% strength, as he anticipates my mobility and bony integrity will be back sooner than the strength will. In terms of mobility, I've been measured at 16/20 degrees of dorsiflexion and 33/50 degrees of plantarflexion. I am going to get Miles to re-measure tomorrow since we didn't measure last week, but my other physio said I didn't have a change over the last week (which was frustrating). I think the last couple degrees of dorsi are blocked by swelling still, but I'm not sure with plantar. 

My five goals for this week:
1. lunges - have improved substantially. Last week when introduced, I was struggling with balance and arch mobility, such that it was hard to get into a lunge with my right foot back. Last night I was competently doing walking lunges in sets of 10. 
2. single leg heel raises - not there yet, but improving. My double leg I can do freestanding now, with a 10 second hold on each rep at the top. Balance is still a bit wonky at the top. Single leg I'm up to two reps of starting at the top of a two leg, transitioning to single while holding on to something and slowly lowering, followed by 5-10 reps of single leg as high as I can go. 
3. strengthen foot - rolling on the beastie ball while at work and at least 3x30 seconds of foot stretches.
4. lateral movement - steadily improving. I've been upgraded to "at least as fast as our slowest player" on the ladder.
5. free squat - improving. still can't hold in the bottom.