Holiday Weekend

I was an absolute slug all weekend since it was a holiday on Monday in the states and my office was closed. I taught a great ladies class Saturday morning where we worked on side control escapes and then I stayed around for the open mat. I got a few rounds in with people I knew and trusted who needed a light flow round to get warmed up before they proceeded to maul one another. Then I went back home and watched the first three episodes of the new season of Rings of Power that just was released before settling in to play videogames all weekend.

Tuesday – Physical Therapy

Since Monday was a business holiday, I had PT on a Tuesday this week instead. A good portion of my exercises were scaled up to some degree. My single leg press remained the same at 112# and then I followed that by pistol squats to a 20 inch box, and also side plank with top leg extended. We added a 5 second hold to my bird dog rows, increased weight on my heel elevated squats, increased height on my lateral tap downs, added weight to my hip thrust, added weight to hamstring curl. It was a bad hypotension day for me though for this session so I had to sit a few times between some of the exercises to keep from getting lightheaded and falling over. I’ve learned that once you fall over they tend to cancel the rest of your exercises for the day.

I made it back to the office/gym just a few mins late for our 10:30 jiu jitsu class so I was able to jump in and get some drills in as well as positional escape rounds. It was a lot of activity for one morning so I was pretty beat for the rest of the day and concerned about being horribly sore for my follow up visit with my surgeon the next day – so I opted to skip out on participating in our evening competition class and watched instead. I did take a dose of meloxicam when I got home just to be on the safe side too since I had so much activity and did not want to be super sore for the Dr to be testing my range of motion and such the next day.

Wednesday – Surgeon Follow Up Visit

I had my follow up appointment with my surgeon this afternoon. I got an appointment in right after their office lunch break so everyone was fed, happy, and running on schedule. His nurse brought me back almost as soon as I sat in the waiting room (early for my appointment) and did my quick intake noting PT and training progress. One thing I’ve learned is that I start to go into a bit of weird zone out when alone in patient waiting rooms which makes it hard for me to engage when the Dr walks in – so this time I got up to walk around and pace instead of letting myself disconnect during the 10-minute wait.

The Dr came in and opened up with comments about PT beating me up – I agreed but told him that I do like it that way and it’s all in good fun. He did an assessment of my range of motion at all angles as well as comparative hip flexor testing and declared me to be “very strong”. I told him how PT was telling me to “do more” but I wasn’t sure they knew what “more” meant for me, so I was taking video of my movements in class to show what I was doing – he said he loved that and to keep doing it.

All told he said my approach of “slow is smooth, smooth is fast” is paying off in a big way. I still need to stay on that path however as I’m only officially 3 1/2 months out from surgery and have healing still left to do. Same considerations as before to follow: don’t overdo it, stop if anything hurts.

I will be continuing with physical therapy weekly and rechecking with my surgeon again on November 6th which is 9 weeks away. He said that I’m definitely still on track to be competing at the European Championships and Tokyo Grand Slam in January – nothing any sooner than that. I asked about doing the Nashville Open tournament in November which would fall right at the 6-month post-op mark and he made a face then started responding with a sharp inhale and “wellllll” and I interrupted with “It’s all good – if it’s borderline then it’s off the table.” He then went on to explain that it would be definitely pushing it and he wouldn’t want me to try to accelerate my rehab process to try to make an early sports event.

I did check my after visit summary notes and he wrote that I have “full and painless range of motion”, 5/5 strength on all planes of movement without pain, as well as a negative Stinchfield test (I failed that one miserably pre-op).

That evening I taught a small no gi ladies class and then went home afterwards to take some headache meds and relax a bit after all the excitement of the day and still riding a bit of exhaustion from the hard push of the previous morning (in spite of the vitamin shots that one of my nurse teammate gave me before class)

Thursday

I felt pretty good for class this morning where we were working on armbars from s-mount. I was only drilling to one side, modifying actually for my knee not my hip this time since I’m not able to bend my heel to my butt far enough for a proper s-mount on one side (I had a previous procedure that was purposefully healed stiff for maximum long-term stability – it was the lesser evil).

We did positional escapes from mount again – these two weeks working from mount position (top and bottom) are going to be rough since I don’t really have the proper movement to safely do most escapes. So, I’ll just have to hunker down when it’s my turn on the bottom and practice patience and resilience. We did have a couple of full-length rounds in class today which I ended up joining in for this time – it was a little rough at first but with some communication on my end it worked out just fine in the end.

I’ve been neglecting my home PT exercises lately in favor of bjj training. Very tempting to do of course, but probably pretty stupid at this still early phase of my recovery. So I opted to dial it back down and skip out on doing evening comp class in favor of doing my exercises instead. I will keep doing that going forward so that I’m getting the proper strength and stability gains in that I need to be making every week. I have fewer exercises now to do outside of the clinic, but they are more strength focused and higher intensity than before. I’m adding in more stretching and recovery-based things afterwards however just to keep up with the increased demand.

Friday – The week in summary

After seeing my surgeon again I decided I needed to pull the reins and slow my pace a bit since I was starting to pick up speed a little faster that I probably should be at this stage of the recovery process. I haven’t done anything to hurt myself or my recovery, but I was just starting to move toward a direction of a bit more impact than I should be taking at this point.

This isn’t a step back in any way, just putting the brakes on the snowball that was starting to form with my progression on the mats. Still on track and slightly ahead of schedule with my recovery!