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Thursday, April 11, 2013

Physical Therapy ... and Puppies

So what does physical therapy look like when you are two weeks post-surgery and still on crutches? Not much. Right now my therapy sessions look like this:

Heat
Manual therapy - hip rotations and movements
Small ab holds/ab engaging exercises (small press ups/hip flexor stretching, angry cat stretch, quad sets, glute sets)
15-20 minutes of non-resistance biking
Ten minutes of icing

So, in short, it's really exciting. But when you can't put full pressure on your foot, it's pretty difficult to do exercises. Once I'm off crutches (next week, we are hoping), things should get more exciting, and hopefully we'll be making more progress.

It's hard to be going so slowly and feel like nothing's improving, but both my surgeon and therapist have emphasized how important it is to take it slowly and not strain or push through pain. Doing recovery correctly the first time is easier/better than developing soreness/ additional pain/ stress reactions. Patient recuperation is so hard for athletes, but considering I haven't exercised without pain since last August, I think I am going to survive. I'm just waiting for my emotions to catch up with this mental acceptance of the situation.

I tried to do a search for some of the manual hip exercises my therapist has been doing with me, but I don't think they really have names so I couldn't find anything. However, Google did return this incredibly relevant photograph. So here you have it:


{source}


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