Slight change of tone in these articles for the next couple of months I’m afraid. Just to give you a fair warning, you may or may not be interested in the content.
Last night, while taking a class, I ruptured my left achilles tendon. That is the thing that attaches your calf muscle to your heel and lets you stand up on your tip toes, among other things. Surprisingly enough, it was not done while I was doing something stupid! We were doing various jumps (like I have done literally millions of times before) and I was unlucky and when I landed, it went. Shit happens.
I’ve heard people describe snapped achilles in the past, and within a minute I was pretty certain it had happened to me.
- Happened on the point of landing, when the forces being absorbed in achilles is highest.
- You could hear a snap/pop, just as if a rope/cable had snapped in half.
- Foot actually felt all floppy, like a puppet with its strings cut.
- When touching where my left achilles should be, there was just a gap.
At this point, I want to say a huge thank you to all the punters who were in the class with me. They were all lovely. They looked after me amazingly well. Kept me calm, stopped me from passing out and got the wheelchair for me. A special thank you to Anna for getting me to the hospital and back and generally making sure I was OK for the rest of the evening.
At the hospital, the wonderful Dr Paul did the Simmonds test on me:
This was the first time I have come across this test, but I will certainly remember it from now on! Suffice it to say, I failed!
So they whacked a plaster cast on me, gave me some crutches and I’m booked in for an ultra sound on Thursday morning to see just how good/bad a snap it is. Depending on how that goes, seems its either a good 6 weeks in a pot or worst case scenario – an operation to stitch it back together.
So what now for my outdoor clients?
As you may know, a whole bunch of my coaching is done outdoors. It looks like I wont be able to do this for the next few weeks. Not only because of the crutches, but also because I can’t bloody drive now! So I will be contacting my outdoor clients to explain and say sorry. Where possible I will offer them the alternative of indoor training.
So what now for my indoor clients?
I’m spending this morning testing out what I can and can’t do. But so far looks very positive for indoor training! So I will be getting in touch with my indoor clients to explain everything. Hopefully they wont mind training with me hobbling around on crutches! My main fear is turning into a classic PE teacher! Standing on the sidelines, barking orders at people! Please don’t let me become that 🙂
So what now for my Stroke clients?
I’ve just heard back from Craven Fitness and they are happy for an invalid to continue taking the Friday afternoon class (click here for Skipton Stroke Rehab details), so that’s good! See you there Friday where no doubt you will all be more than happy to take the piss outta me 🙂
As for my one on one clients (click here for private stroke rehab details), I’ll contact you when I know more. They biggest issue will be that I can’t drive and so won’t be able to get to you. But as I keep on telling you until you want to punch me in the face, there is always a Plan B! 🙂
So what now for me?
So now we got all the business out of the way, this is the part that you may get bored with. Because here is where I start to just talk about me! Feel free to tune out from here on in…just me navel gazing…
The biggest surprise I have so far, is that there has been no real physical pain at all. Not when it happened, not at the hospital, and not now the following day. It felt badly bruised yesterday, but that is all. I’ve been badly bruised before and will be again.
But I was expecting to be really suffering, but so far, nothing! No real physical pain. And looking ahead, I am totally confident I will physically recover from this. I’ve been really lucky to have trained, and trained with numerous people who have suffered injuries and conditions. So I know for a fact that I am in really pretty good shape to get through this without any problems! I’ve already found out that all those single leg squats I’ve done are going to be invaluable to me!
But those who know me, know that it’s the mental, rather than physical aspect I will need to work on. I’m going to need to keep myself busy and have a focus to stop myself spiralling down into places I don’t want to go.
To that end, for the next couple of months I’m going to use this webpage to record how my rehab goes. So I warn you now…there will be more of me just getting things out of my head for a bit (you may want to avoid these bits!)
Luckily, there should be other bits where you may learn useful stuff about rehab and about achilles rehab in particular! But consider yourself warned 🙂