Injury update

Ouch.

I know, that's not much of an update, but it pretty much covers it. Just to get you caught up, I tore my calf at the last grading at DeSantos -- this has been confirmed by my chiropractor. The bruising has started to dissipate, but the muscle has this very bad habit of contracting quite painfully and not wanting to loosen up. This really limits my mobility and ability to train.

I have found the things that I can do: push ups, pull ups, planks and ab exercises. I also think I can do some seated resistance training which I'm going to try next week. But, I can't run or do anything with my leg. Walking is quite painful, as I can't fully extend my foot/lower leg.

I've told my chiro that I have 35 days (less now) until my black belt test. He thinks he can help me get my calf functioning by then, but it is somewhat dependent on my own healing ability. On Thursday he gave me an acupuncture treatment with some electrical current which gave the muscle some passive stimulation and allowed the fluid that had gathered in the tissues to be pumped out. But the aftermath of that treatment was that the next few days have been quite sore -- my calf takes a long time to loosen up and often knots up if I keep it in the same position for too long. I'll be seeing him frequently for the next little while - twice next week and then we'll see how it goes.

On the upside, he doesn't think I did any damage to my Achilles tendon, which would be much worse -- tendons take much longer to heal than muscle, mostly due to the reduced amount of bloodflow into the tissue. So, if you have to damage something in your lower leg, take an injury to a calf muscle over tendon, ligament or bone damage.

I am surprisingly not pissed off about this (which really astonishes me.) I am very frustrated, and tired of my leg hurting, but anger and disappointment are not what I am feeling. I made a decision a while ago that nothing was going to interfere with my black belt test, and this is just one more thing that is not going to interfere with it. It will make it interesting though...