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HAHAHAHAHA. It was worth tendonitis just to get that challenge title. So, for those folks who’ve lost track at home, I’ve been having some tendonitis issues in my left knee for a few months, and mid-August I tweaked it really badly and I think it’s developed into ITB syndrome, so I’m spending this challenge doing rehab work and not inflicting any more damage. While I’m at the knee rehab, I have a couple of other nagging issues that need fixing, so I’m going to go for the three-pointer and include those in THE REHAB CHALLENGE. My twelve-step program: Rehab One: The Knee I have what I have self-diagnosed as an ITB injury, so I’m doing the following things to repair and rebuild the tendon: - I’ve pulled all the squat and squat-like movements out of my workout. This means no back squats, no wall balls, no thrusters, no box squats, no rower if I can avoid it. Sigh. So depressing. I can still deadlift, though, so I still have a reason to live. - eat soup once a day, for the collagen, to help rebuild. I’ll start making my own again (bone broth) and eat Mexican Chicken Soup and Pho at my favorite dives as often as possible. *nerd note: the homework I’ve been doing indicates that vitamin C improves collagen & protein uptake, which I found very interesting given that it’s traditional to squeeze a lime into Pho, which is my very favorite thing. Likewise for Tortilla soup, which is also my favorite thing. Actually I think we can all just agree that food is my favorite thing. I’ll be squeezing lemons and limes into all my food is the important bit. - Add abductor work to my workout. Leg lifts! So very, very Jane Fonda. Working abductor muscles should stabilize my knee joint and increase my hip strength, which in turn strengthens the joints below. I bought a resistance band in a particularly eye-searing shade of yellow to help with this. - exercise micro-bursts: This basically means that 3 times a day I grab the little 10-pound barbells I keep in my office and do some OH press, bicep curls, etc for 90 seconds to 2 minutes. There’s some studies that indicate this increases the body’s output of growth hormone, which in turn helps with healing. http://www.gnolls.org/191/walk-it-off-sally-why-exercise-helps-speed-injury-recovery/ Rehab TWO: Blood Pressure My blood pressure is high. I check it fairly regularly at that machine at the Publix, and it runs pretty steadily at 160 over 80. That’s officially hypertension, so unless I want to go on the medication merry-go-round, I need to get it down, stat. I also had a point this summer where it spiked to 190/80 for a few days and I nearly checked myself into the hospital because I was sure my brain was going to explode, but I may have just eaten an entire bag of teriaki beef jerky right before hand so I decided to wait and see if it normalized on its own (I cut all the salt out of my food too) and it did. But it’s not down enough. - Lower salt intake (obviously). Salt free seasoning, no bacon. I’ll have to make my own soups as much as possible because my GOD commercially available soup is salty. I checked a beef broth package in the store yesterday and it had 893 mg sodium PER SERVING. How does it even stay suspended in the liquid? Does it just precipitate out to the bottom and that’s why you have to shake the box? - Drink more water: I ashamed to admit that I drink almost no water. I mean it not like I'm doing shots of Early Times instead, I just tend to drink coffee all day and forget to drink water, and I drink soda with some of my meals. So I’ll switch to exclusively water and only one coffee a day. - Meditation: I had a really good run with meditation for a while but I stopped over the summer. It’s time for it to come back. Calming, lowers tension, blah blah blah. - Add potassium: There’s some studies* that show increasing your potassium is just as important as decreasing your sodium, so I’ve switched to a “Lite Salt” that’s higher in potassium and I’ll eat bananas and potatoes as my preferred carbs, as they’re high in potassium. Finally, an excuse to have baked potatoes every day! - Forest Bathing: okay, this is fucking weird, I admit, but APPARENTLY it’s a thing. You just go out and sit and look at nature, and it’s supposed to be very calming and can lower your blood pressure and tension. The Japanese are all about it. It’s probably effective just because you get away from your goddamn phone for twenty minutes but at this point I’ll try anything. https://www.outsideonline.com/1870381/take-two-hours-pine-forest-and-call-me-morning Rehab Three: Posture I have really bad upper-body posture (kyphosis) from too much time on the computer and phone. The bike probably aggravates this. I swear my head is about three inches in front of my shoulders, like a swaybacked horse. - Yoga, especially stuff that will work that posterior chain. The bike training program I use (Sufferfest) has a yoga program built into it that’s specifically for bikers, so I’ll use that. I already do yoga periodically so I just have to remember to do it. - Trap work and core work: I have a phobia of making my traps larger as they’re already big, but I’m going to work some trap/upper back exercises into my routine and see if I can strengthen/straighten that upper shoulder/lower neck region. I also almost never do core work, so that goes in too. It can take the place of squatting (sob) - I might not get this far, but I may make myself some sort of standing desk. Better for your back and all that. So that’s it! I actually started some of these things last week so I have a little bit of a head start, but I think you’re supposed to be in rehab for 45 days anyway so I don’t feel bad about it :-) I know it sounds like a lot of things, but some items overlap - like dropping squats and replacing with abductor work, or yoga and meditation - and some are just a matter of replacing things once, like buying the “lite” salt and some salt-free seasoning mixes. I’ve already weaned myself off soda (and had a headache for three days) so drinking more water is sort of automatic. (Although I may spend more time peeing.) Eating soup is easy, since I kind of live to eat anyway. The hardest things will be remembering the “micro-bursts” of exercise and the forest bathing. I’m glad mosquito season is over. So my knee has been bad, but when it comes back, you'll know, know, know... By the way, Amy Winehouse looks stoned to the cats in that video. How did we not know she was on drugs? * “God,” I hear you saying, “enough with the studies already!” Nerdbrain. Sorry.