I was worried at the beginning of the week that I might have overdone it for the first time.

At the seminar on Saturday – the day after my 12-week mark – I was the seminar guest instructor’s demo partner for techniques. Since it was all guard retention work, and my right/surgical leg is my lead leg, my surgical leg was getting wound up and working overtime for the entire 90-minute seminar. In addition I was drilling the moves myself too of course – because a gal’s gotta learn! It was spider guard details/variations to a shin guard dump sweep with some options for then coming up on top to control.

After all that I cocooned up for the rest of the weekend and did take my meloxicam that evening as well as Sunday night. My surgical hip joint itself feels okay, it’s just all the stabilizing muscles around it feel very tired and well worked over.

Monday

At physical therapy I reported to my PT what I did and she told me that as long as I was able to get out of bed the next morning without feeling pain, then it is fine. She wants me to keep doing more work and pushing it this next week since we are in the strength training and rebuilding portion of my rehab now.

I did feel some extra stiffness in my hip while warming up on the elliptical, but I did warm up in just a few minutes and it went away. I’ll have to make sure I’m not slacking off on mobility training while amping up strength – just to keep the stiffness at bay!

Exercise highlights this session: I got to do my straight leg raises over a 12-16ish inch block this time – I had plenty of clearance for that one thankfully while sitting upright on the table and I actually felt it activate my quads a bit more than I expected. For my leg press we kept me at 87# for the single leg since we increased that last week, but I added reps with my left leg while my right rested between sets (my right thigh has noticeably more muscle than my left now, trying to balance that out a bit). My pistol box squats were changed to 2×10 on each side, and then 3×10 of bodyweight squats with elevated heels.

I had a fun new movement to strengthen hip rotation! Just standing on one leg with it slightly bent and holding onto something about shoulder level, I keep my other leg slightly behind me as I allow myself to sink back and rotate on my hip first one way and then the other. It’s hard to describe but man does it feel good! Finally, I was taken out to the gym side of the clinic and put on the hamstring curl machine to do 3×10 on that. I elected to do 25# of fast curl and slow to lower reps. I could have done heavier weight without the slow uncurl, but I’m rebuilding so I’ll start out low.

By the time I got home I was ready for a nap but plugged into my work computer instead, and then proceeded to roll onto my belly and keep everything stretched out as it cooled off. I went to Jiu Jitsu class that evening and was able to drill de la riva guard sweeps without any problems, including a hook sweep using my right leg as the hook to sit up on/over. I skipped out on sparring rounds as per my usual but felt pretty good overall – it was definitely a jam-packed day!

Tuesday

The real test of Monday was how I felt waking up Tuesday morning – and I woke up feeling just fine. I had no soreness, just a little muscle tiredness from the energy expenditure. I noticed a little more tightness in the deeper abdominal muscles on my right side, so for my morning stretching routine I gave some extra time to that area and my hip flexors – making note to take a few extra breaks from sitting during the workday.

In class that morning we drilled the same move that was taught at the seminar on Sunday – it was good to review the movements! I did some super light free movement with one of our black belts for a couple of minutes during sparring time which felt pretty good although that’s the extent of what I was willing to attempt doing at that time. I had originally set myself the line of only drilling until the four-month mark, but my PT wants me to add more sport specific activity during the week, and I don’t know that I can do that without starting flow rounds.

I went over more focused stretches and strength exercises during evening competition classes. For strength training I did the heel elevated squats, standing hip rotators, pistol squats, single leg kettlebell balance drills, and a few others. I’m breaking a sweat now with my PT routine now which is good, although I have diverted almost entirely away from my routine listed on my app. I really need to remember next week to request an updated app routine from my PT. I get daily reminders to do my exercises and just click the button that I completed everything – I just modified everything up to a more intense exercise.

Wednesday

I did more stretching in the morning on Wednesday. I’ve been feeling a bit more overall soreness in my deep abdominal muscles on my right side (which are the main hip flexors) with the little extra push I’ve been doing in class this week stacked on top of the seminar and then the extra exercises in PT. I’m working to counter that with more stretching and belly time to keep it from becoming an active problem.

That evening I taught my usually scheduled ladies no gi class. I was able to demonstrate techniques from closed guard including options for maneuvering to a ghost armbar and then taking the back. I stayed for the advanced gi class afterwards and drilled for 30 minutes the techniques we learned at the seminar on Saturday – adding on a submission finish to the sweep (with the feedback from the class instructor). I then proceeded to watch sparring for the rest of class and mused over if I could start adding flow rounds in this week or not.

Thursday

New achievement unlocked in class this morning! I was able to be comfortable with drilling the move and also having it drilled on me. We are still working on de la riva guard sweeps which are primarily done on my lead leg – which was the one which was operated on. So it does feel pretty good to feel stable enough to be able to let people sweep me off that lead leg – even if it is only during light drilling practice.

I got really frustrated in morning class however because my knee had a minor subluxation. It’s a pretty common occurrence for all of my joints and usually doesn’t cause me any harm beyond some temporary inflammation, but it’s just an annoying reminder of my need to be hypervigilant at all times. I ended up not staying for evening class and opted to go home to rest my knee and test out the new red/infrared light mini panel that my ortho recommended for collagen/inflammation. It did seem to have a soothing affect, so I’ll add it to my evening joint care routine.

Friday – The 13 Week Mark

Today is the day that marks 13 weeks since surgery and it was another day of mostly me working from home. It was marked however by the second of our team association ladies competition class in the evening – I decided to test myself to see how many of the drills I was able to execute safely. The short answer was that I was able to safely do all of them myself, although there was one of them that I was unable to safely have done on me (rolling back take) due to the impact and twisting motion around my hip.

I was getting really hyped up and feeling frisky enough that I was about to throw caution to the wind and jump in to spar lightly when coach caught my eye and said a quick “you’re not ready yet”. He usually lets me do whatever I want (because I’m usually trustworthy), but he’s the coach for a reason and will put his foot down when needed.

Conclusions

I am struggling right now to find the balance for what more I should be doing. I know I don’t want to overdo it and hurt myself, but I also don’t want to sell myself short and be doing less than I could be doing. Erring on the side of caution has been the theme of my recovery and it seems to have been working in my favor thus far, although at this stage of my recovery it is driving me a little crazy. I do for the most part feel fairly normal and capable of doing most of the things I want to do.

Sticking to the plan is probably the best right now still. Who knows? Maybe when I see my surgeon again in 2 1/2 weeks he will tell me to go ahead and amp it up since it’s the 4 month mark and my labrum is all good for impact? I can wait until then at least to see what he says about adjusting my training plans at any rate!