Ankle Rehab in New Beginnings

Has it really been a month? My ankle is feeling much better, not as well as I’d like, but better still. A few days after the injury, I was walking all right. A week after the injury I was able to start back at the gym. I couldn’t (and still can’t) do my old TKD work out, but I could run on the elliptical just fine along with most of my other strength training. As a matter of fact, I broke my old elliptical record and ran five miles in just over 19 minutes. Not that anyone cares about elliptical records, but at least I know I’m not falling horribly out of shape like when I sprained my other ankle several years ago.

I was able to return to Jiujitsu a couple of weeks after my injury. For the first week after my sprain, I would just go and watch. As for the second week, the school was closed for summer break, so I just focused on recovery. I suppose there’s never a convenient time to get any sort of injury, but at least this incident happened in the least inconvenient time possible. I’m back in class like normal. I can even do the running we do to warm up at the start of class, but I’m always a little uneasy about doing so. I’d much rather just do the hip escapes, lunges, bear crawls, etc. that usually comprise the warm up, but that isn’t always the way class starts. I’m sparring almost as usual. I merely have to be aware of where my left foot is and that it’s not about to get torqued beyond it’s healthy range of motion.

Like I said, I’m still not at 100%. When I wake up in the morning. My ankle looks fine even if it feels stiff. As I go through out the day, it starts to swell. The swelling is nowhere near as bad as it was that first week, but it’s noticeable to me. I found my elastic bands today, and I start rehabbing it’s lateral range of motion. It feels better than usual right now. I really hope if I keep those exercises up, I’ll recover entirely.