Workouts With Modifications (or Dealing With A New Injury)

This was an interesting week of workouts for me. I was feeling great from doing 4 workouts the past week and had every intention of doing the same this week. But then everything changed for me.

My Monday workout was fine. I was a bit tired from my birthday fun the night before. I swear that I was sweating out cake during the class. I might have been a bit sluggish, but nothing too extreme. I continued working on increasing my weights and my treadmill speed and felt like I was finally getting into a good groove of taking my workouts to the next level.

Then on Wednesday, my right calf was bugging me all morning. I thought maybe I slept funny because it felt like a bruise or that my calf muscle had been squeezed all night (like a charley horse). I didn’t think too much of it because I figured a workout would help get things stretched out.

I gave the coach for the class a heads up that I was feeling sore, and she said to take it easy. I got on the treadmill to warm up at 3 miles and hour, and after maybe walking for a minute I felt a pop in my muscle and my vision went white.

I was terrified that I did something horrible, but the pain decreased a bit when I stopped walking and my vision returned to normal after a second. So I hopped off the treadmill and went over to the bike for my cardio. I told the coach what happened and she noticed that a bruise was forming on the back of my leg. She said that I needed to not push myself and to not do anything that would hurt me.

I stayed on the bike for the entire cardio portion and really took it easy with the weights. By the end of the workout, the bruise on my left was from my calf down to my foot and I was still in pain when walking.

After consulting with my mom and dad, we figured that I must have torn my calf (the bruise is from the blood from the torn blood vessels). There’s nothing you can really do for this type of injury besides rest, ice, and elevation. So that’s what I did all evening.

Even with the pain, I knew that I wasn’t going to skip my Friday workout. I decided against doing a 4th workout for the week, but I was going to get my 3 in for sure.

By Friday, the pain was about half as bad as it was on Wednesday. I wrapped a compression bandage on my calf and went to my workout. I tried the treadmill but it was just too painful for the speed that I would need to get my heart rate up. So I moved back to the bike again (guess my birthday bike ride was getting me ready to work out on the bike at Orangetheory). The bike hurt a little, but I was ok. I had lots of issues rowing because I couldn’t bend all the way, so I did little half rows. And I used lighter weights for the lower body work, but that meant that I increased the weights for my upper body.

I’m so used to working out with my hip issues or when I get sick, but this is an entirely different thing. With the type of tear I have, I should be close to 80% better either today or tomorrow and fully recovered in a week or two. This sucks, but it’s not the end of the world. I just have to continue with extra modifications and remembering that it’s all about consistency.

Hopefully this week will be a bit better with my workouts, but if not, I know that soon enough that I will be back to my normal self.

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