Recovery

Since badly injuring my back and developing Sciatica from my inflamed muscles pushing on the nerve I have had to learn a few valuable lessons.

1). Listen listen listen to your body!

This is a hard one for me because I tend to be of the mindset of "Pain is good when you're working out. More pain = harder work" etc... But there are different kinds of pain. Not only have I been learning the difference between them, but I've also learned that some pains will lead you to incapacity instead of great capacity.

2). When there is the bad kind of pain, patience is the first thing you need.

The whole Rest Ice Compress Elevate (RICE) thing is good too. Add some heat, some stretching, some PT approved exercises for "core strength" and a loving boyfriend who will massage at a moment's notice and you've got a recipe for recovery. These are all active things though. Things that you do. Patience is something you must have in order to recover. This is probably the hardest part of recovery for me.

3). You don't need to workout as hard as you did in the past.

In fact, if you try, you'll just stay injured. Instead of doing what I used to do, I've had to cut back a lot of specific exercises, switch some exercises. Here are a few examples:

I now lift 3 days/week. I have cut out most exercises on "Back Day" and "Leg Day". I can still do the following:

Back:

Face-pulls (works muscles of upper back/shoulders)
Lat Pulldowns (works upper back and lats)
Back Extensions on a machine (Lower back but way easier on the muscles than Hypers)

...yeah thats about all I do for back now other than my PT exercises.

I combine this workout with my "Legs" workout sometimes.

Legs:

Hip Abductors (I am severely lacking mobility in my hips which may have been a cause for getting injured in the first place)
Leg Curls (machine)
Leg Extensions (sitting machine...the standing one puts more torque on the back)

Today I actually squatted for the first time though...after several months of doing very little leg-wise. I did the bar and the bar plus 25s. So little compared to what I'm used to...but remember...patience.

I've used this recovery (and am still using it) to learn the lessons above. I'm trying to really focus on the movement and the muscles, even at light weights while also getting back into running more. Hopefully, once I fully recover I will be able to do more, but I think the important thing is that, even if I never get back to deadlifting or squatting as high as I used to, I'm still happy that I can workout as much as I do and humbled by the lessons I'm learning.