Surgical Shoe Workout

As you may have read in my last post, I am wearing a surgical shoe on my left foot for the next two weeks to aid in recovery from bone bruising. I have been struggling with this foot issue since mid-February and am glad to be taking the steps I need to recover. Wearing the surgical shoe has had a dramatic impact on my life. I am supposed to do what’s called graduated walking, where I step the shoe forward and then bring my good foot to meet it. Initially I was glad to avoid crutches, but this style of walking is excruciatingly slow and has caused some soreness in my legs.

The first day I came in to work wearing the shoe I realized how much slower I really am. A one minute walk to the bathroom now takes at least 3 minutes. The elevators are located at the opposite side of the building from the parking lot entrance and it takes me about 8 minutes to get from my car to my desk. One of my co-workers was gracious enough to bring me an old pair of crutches and I have been using them at work because they’re much faster. I will likely bring them home this weekend to aid in whatever I decide to do.

This short experience with being unable to walk properly has made me extremely grateful that I am normally physically able to do whatever I ask of my body. I have a renewed sense of compassion for those who cannot, and am more aware of how difficult it can be to navigate public spaces when you are disabled. My father had a serious stroke last May and is probably going to be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. I know that when I see him next I’ll be much more empathetic and more willing to put in extra effort to assist him.

It’s also interesting to see how people react to those who are injured/handicapped. I work in a community college library and have been amazed both by how kind people have been and how self-absorbed they have been. Some people go out of their way to hold doors or ask sympathetic questions and others make no effort to move out of the way when I come crutching through. It makes me sad to see people with so little regard for others, but fortunately those observations have been much less frequent than the helpful people.

Of course this has also impacted my workout schedule. Prior to my injury I was running 3-4 days per week, road cycling once per week and strength training 2-3 times per week. I continued road cycling when I first had to stop running but think that may have contributed to my injury. I have switched to strength training 3-4 times per week and can cycle but only at the gym. The surgical shoe has made me skip the gym during the mornings before work because the extra time I need to get around isn't amenable to my work schedule. I plan to go there this weekend for cycling and strength training. I've developed a nice little workout I can do without putting weight on my foot (beyond moving from one exercise to the next) and wanted to share with anyone else going through the same challenge.

Surgical Shoe Workout

When I do this at the gym I use more weight (I only have a set of 15lb and 8lb dumbbells) and I add in machine exercises like the leg curl, lateral pull down, assisted pull ups and hanging knee/straight leg raises. I am happy that I’m able to keep some fitness but can’t wait to be on my feet again!

WIAW and a Workout

This is a light week for food pictures, I've been eating lots of leftovers! I also wanted to share a new workout I tried this morning.

Roasted sweet potatoes might be my favorite food! Served with a broccoli, lentil tomato sauce on top of baby spinach.

Quinoa salad with green tomato and peppers, sides of hummus and roasted golden beets.

Bun salad! You can tell this is Carly's plate because it has craploads of cilantro on it. 

Hot sauce line up at Tijuana Flats. The bottom is ghost chiles! 

Beans and rice bowl at Tijuana Flats - topped with their red enchilada sauce. 

Moroccan inspired chickpea stew with carrots, sweet potatoes, green olives, artichokes and currants. Served on greens with roasted butternut squash.

Interval Workout

In late Spring, the big news in the fitness community was the science backed “7 Minute Workout” – a set of 12 exercises meant to be done for 30 seconds each with 10 seconds of rest in between. The research showed that doing these 12 body-weight exercises would give you an effective and efficient full body workout. I began using this workout right away. We had just moved, and I hadn't signed up for a gym membership. I was looking for something that would get my heart rate up but still strengthen my  muscles.
I followed this program pretty closely at first, although I would do two and then three sets at a time to get a proper workout. Now that I am focusing more on running I have been doing less strength workouts, but I still like the format of this one. I've slowly been adapting it to better reflect my needs (quads! and still working on tightening the leftover arm skin from losing lots of weight). I adapted it again yesterday, and did the workout this morning after a mile run for warm up. I use the app IntervalTimer to time my intervals. Each exercise is performed for the full 30 seconds, either as many reps as possible or static hold for the 30 seconds (plank ,etc.).

A couple points of clarification:

Side planks – 30 seconds per side, I usually do one set on my forearm and one on my hand with 10 leg lifts while in the plank

Laterals – I use this to refer to a shoulder exercise where I lift dumbbells first in front, then to the side, then to the side with my pinky fingers aimed toward the ceiling

Step ups – I wasn't able to do these this morning (nothing to step up on!), I subbed with a mix of squat jumps and tuck jumps

Ball – this refers to bridge position hamstring curls using an exercise ball

DD to UP – down dog to up dog, I put this last because I do them slowly and usually for more than 30 seconds

The rest should make sense, if not send me an email or a comment. Enjoy!