"Don't try to rush progress. Remember-- a step forward, no matter how small, is a step in the right direction."
Coach sent this to me this week and it was perfect for how I was feeling after an extremely long recovery and no real progress in my opinion. My second metatarsal in my left foot was broken on May 17th, of course I didn't go the doctor about it until July so that was my bad but it is JANUARY! I watch the countdown clock click down closer and closer to IM Chattanooga (245 Days) and I'm trying not to freak out but it is hard not to look at what other people are doing training wise and get concerned.
Rule number 1: STOP LOOKING AT OTHER PEOPLE. Why do we waste so much of our time comparing ourselves to others? Sometimes we even say oh well we are using it as motivation when in reality we are using it to make ourselves feel badly about what we can't do. I need to stop looking at other people and comparing my workouts, looking at their stats and seeing that mine don't measure up and then stressing about it. I am coming back from an injury, I need to respect my body and the process of healing and recovery which leads to rule 2.
Rule number 2: Respect the Process. Stop expecting to be right back where I was when I got injured. It took months of training to get me where I was when I got hurt and I can't really expect to be right back there after months of no training. My brain seems confused as it thinks I should be putting up the same splits and same endurance. I have to start back small and gradually, another reason I got a coach to make sure I don't over do it and get hurt.
Rule number 3: Remember healing takes time. This one doesn't even just apply to training but to all aspects of life. The PRP injections were extremely painful and took between 6-10 weeks for the full effect to be felt. Patience is not my strong suit and I wanted immediate relief and results. Now I am 14 weeks out from the very first round and finally I can say that the foot is healed. At manual therapy on Thursday at Performance Health my therapist said those blissful words, it seems healed. Ahh I think I heard a choir of angels. Often times we find ourselves wanting to fast forward through the hard and trying times but in reality those are the times we learn the most about ourselves and those around us. I think walking around the city in that boot after the PRP injections was worse pain than any work out or race I have ever done. Trying to walk down the stairs from my third floor apartment with my trash actually reduced me to tears more than once, those walking boots are impossible on stairs!
Rule number 4: "Take it easy" to quote the new man in my life. Starting slowly to get back into a routine of working out 6 days a week, just single workouts for now but I forgot how tired it makes me. New training schedule coupled with some really intense hours at work and I am completely exhausted but very happy. My routine involves icing every single night and so far this week it feels we have turned a corner although I am taking it easy and still mostly wearing sneakers at work.
Rule number 5: Don't forget to enjoy the journey. Every single small step is part of the journey and if you aren't enjoying the journey then you aren't enjoying life. Here's to an amazing next 245 days of accomplishments leading up to Ironman Chattanooga.
Showing posts with label #PRP. Show all posts
Showing posts with label #PRP. Show all posts
Saturday, January 24, 2015
Monday, November 24, 2014
No Pain No Gain
I think that people throw around the saying "No pain, no gain" pretty frequently without really understanding what it means. After going through rehab for my foot injury I feel pretty sure I know EXACTLY what the saying truly means to the nth degree. Several people have asked me about the PRP therapy that I did so I thought I would write a nice little blog post for you to describe it in detail and hopefully answer any and all questions.
First, bones and muscles have a lot of blood flow going to them and as you probably know blood carries your body's healing agents. This is why muscle injuries and bones can heal much more quickly than tendons or ligaments which have very little blood flow.
I did several rounds of biopuncture leading up to the September race in an effort to speed along the healing process while stubbornly staying committed to doing the race. Biopuncture is the injection of biologically active substances which are physiologically regulating. The injections generally also include some sort of pain management ingredient. These injections while fairly painful at first leave the area pretty numb after a few minutes, the worst injection was into the second metatarsal joint. I think biopuncture is a useful tool if you start treating an injury pretty soon after it occurs but the level of pain I was in coupled with the fact my tendons where essentially fused together meant that biopuncture was not effective in solving my issue.
After my race failure I threw up my hands and told the doctor I would do whatever he wanted me to so that I could get back to full training by January 1st. He immediately mentioned a boot and PRP. PRP stands for Platelet-Rich Plasma and is a process by which the doctor draws your own blood, spins it for 14 minutes to draw out the platelets and then injections the platelets into the affected areas. This process is the most painful procedure I have ever experienced. Drawing the blood is no problem at all but the needle used to inject them back in is rather large and these injections go much deeper than the Biopuncture.
Dr Scott at performance health suggested that we do three rounds, each spaced a week apart to really get ahead of things and attempt to aggressively get me back to training. The first round as scheduled at 10am and I went to work afterwards and that was a HORRIBLE idea. The pain was intense, white hot pain that made it almost impossible to walk even with the boot. I promptly changed the appointments for the next two rounds to be later in the day. I highly recommend doing the injections late and then going straight home and putting your foot up. You are not supposed to take any sort of anti-inflammatory because your body's natural healing involves swelling and let me tell you my foot looked like a Flintstones foot for the better part of those three weeks. The intense pain that limits walking and movement lasted about 24 hours the first time, however it increased with the second and third rounds. With Biopuncture it is important to get the area moving immediately post injections, however with PRP the goal is actually to keep the area pretty immobilized in order to allow the platelets to do their job and repair the area.
The first round of injections was done on October 13th and Dr Scott said that typically it is 6-8 weeks to notice the gains from the injections, this week is 6 weeks from that first round and I have definitely noticed drastic improvement. I no longer have constant pain in my foot, however I still am not allowed to do much as far as training. We have coupled the injections with pretty intense manual therapy, which is essentially a very focused, very deep massage. For me this has been an extremely painful but cathartic process to break up all the scar tissue and fascia that has formed binding the tendons together and keeping my toes from properly moving.
While this whole process has been extremely painful I am starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel and I even got in the pool on Saturday and swam 1000 meters with the pull buoy, still can't kick but at least I was able to practice!
If you have any other questions that I didn't answer let me know!
First, bones and muscles have a lot of blood flow going to them and as you probably know blood carries your body's healing agents. This is why muscle injuries and bones can heal much more quickly than tendons or ligaments which have very little blood flow.
I did several rounds of biopuncture leading up to the September race in an effort to speed along the healing process while stubbornly staying committed to doing the race. Biopuncture is the injection of biologically active substances which are physiologically regulating. The injections generally also include some sort of pain management ingredient. These injections while fairly painful at first leave the area pretty numb after a few minutes, the worst injection was into the second metatarsal joint. I think biopuncture is a useful tool if you start treating an injury pretty soon after it occurs but the level of pain I was in coupled with the fact my tendons where essentially fused together meant that biopuncture was not effective in solving my issue.
After my race failure I threw up my hands and told the doctor I would do whatever he wanted me to so that I could get back to full training by January 1st. He immediately mentioned a boot and PRP. PRP stands for Platelet-Rich Plasma and is a process by which the doctor draws your own blood, spins it for 14 minutes to draw out the platelets and then injections the platelets into the affected areas. This process is the most painful procedure I have ever experienced. Drawing the blood is no problem at all but the needle used to inject them back in is rather large and these injections go much deeper than the Biopuncture.
Dr Scott at performance health suggested that we do three rounds, each spaced a week apart to really get ahead of things and attempt to aggressively get me back to training. The first round as scheduled at 10am and I went to work afterwards and that was a HORRIBLE idea. The pain was intense, white hot pain that made it almost impossible to walk even with the boot. I promptly changed the appointments for the next two rounds to be later in the day. I highly recommend doing the injections late and then going straight home and putting your foot up. You are not supposed to take any sort of anti-inflammatory because your body's natural healing involves swelling and let me tell you my foot looked like a Flintstones foot for the better part of those three weeks. The intense pain that limits walking and movement lasted about 24 hours the first time, however it increased with the second and third rounds. With Biopuncture it is important to get the area moving immediately post injections, however with PRP the goal is actually to keep the area pretty immobilized in order to allow the platelets to do their job and repair the area.
The first round of injections was done on October 13th and Dr Scott said that typically it is 6-8 weeks to notice the gains from the injections, this week is 6 weeks from that first round and I have definitely noticed drastic improvement. I no longer have constant pain in my foot, however I still am not allowed to do much as far as training. We have coupled the injections with pretty intense manual therapy, which is essentially a very focused, very deep massage. For me this has been an extremely painful but cathartic process to break up all the scar tissue and fascia that has formed binding the tendons together and keeping my toes from properly moving.
While this whole process has been extremely painful I am starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel and I even got in the pool on Saturday and swam 1000 meters with the pull buoy, still can't kick but at least I was able to practice!
If you have any other questions that I didn't answer let me know!
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