Patience is a Virtue…

My grandmother had a saying to respond whenever someone told her, “patience is a virtue.” Her response was:
“virtue is a grace, and grace is the cricketer with the messy face.”

For years I didn’t know what this meant, only to recently discover that W.G. Grace is an all time great cricketer who does indeed, have a messy face.

Anyway, this saying was not just an unprovoked attack on a legendary cricketer but rather a comment on the difficulty of patience for many people. As I have discovered this summer, this certainly applies to me. I’m sure I could apply this message of patience to many areas, I want to be stronger and I want to be stronger right now, I want to be more flexible now, and I want to lose weight NOW. Certainly all of those have applied to me at one point.  But somehow I have come to an understanding that all of those things will take some time, and will come to me if I eat the right way, push myself in WODs and really work my mobility issues. I’ve made pretty good progress in all of those areas over my 1.5 years doing crossfit. However in one area I’ve realized that patience is much more difficult: Injuries.

One day back in July, during a great PCF Bootcamp, I was running a 40 yard sprint and felt a sharp pain in my right hamstring. The pain was pretty intense at first, but after some stretching and slow jogging I was able to finish the workout with some sledge-hammer swings and felt ok. That day the hamstring really tightened up and Ryan and Liz both told me to take a few days off and to rest/ice until I was able to return. I took the next week off from working out and just iced and stretched until I felt better. I returned after 7 days and felt 100%. I was able to do everything including running, deadlifts, KB swings, fence burpees**, etc. 2 weeks later, there was a Robb Wolf certification at the box so Brian held a track WOD at W&L high school. I thought this would be a good test for my hamstring but knew that I also had to be careful. I showed up early to the track and did a few warm up laps and stretching to make sure I wouldn’t injure myself. The workout started fine, with a 400m run and no problems with the hamstring. However, during the next part of the workout was 60 yard sprints. Looking back, I probably shouldn’t have participated, but I felt fine and even ran a couple warm up sprints on the side of the field before we started. Anyway, the very first sprint, about halfway down, I felt a real intense pain in my right hamstring, much worse than the first time. I knew this was bad. I had a really hard time walking home and wasn’t able to move much more the rest of the weekend. All I did was ice, rest, compress and elevate. For the next week all I could do was ice, stretch, lax ball, etc. 2 weeks ago, I started adding in some bodyweight movements, and felt ok, I thought I was ready to move back into real WODs but then last friday, while crossing the street during the day, the light was getting ready to turn so I needed to hurry up. When I went to try to do a little jog/run to make it across, I felt another pull in the same hamstring. Not as bad as the track WOD, but it sure made walking uncomfortable the rest of the day/weekend.  Today it felt better, but when I tried to do an air squat as a test, I couldn’t make it halfway down without some pretty good pain. So I guess a few more days of ice, rest, compress and elevating is the plan.

I’ll give you a little insight into how I feel right now: FRUSTRATED!!!!!!!!! I basically haven’t been able to work out in 6 weeks. All I’ve been doing is ice and stretching. Each time when I feel like I’m all better something happens that sets me back.  So I am really working at this patience thing, but it truly is not easy. The longer you are out, the longer it is going to take to get back.

I also understand that it could be much worse, I know there are athletes at the box who has had much worse injuries. I think that is part of it. I don’t really think of this as an injury,  but rather just something that hurts. I don’t know if that is the right way or the wrong way to look at it. If I had a serious injury like a broken bone or something that needed surgery I think that would be easier to deal with because it is not like I would have any other option. With my hamstring is just feels like something should be able to push through, and now that I can’t is why I am so frustrated.

I guess I just wanted to write about this as a way to vent, I know that I need to be patient and do the right things with my recovery and my diet. I don’t want to push too hard, too fast and have this become a nagging thing. I want to do it the right way to minimize any reoccurrence. It is going to just take a little more time, and have patience, after all it is a virtue.

I also want to give a big thanks to Ryan Powell and Brian Wilson, who have both helped me during this recovery. Ryan has been able to offer insights during his own hamstring recovery after an injury suffered in an intense breakdancing accident. Not his fault though, if the DJ is going to be reckless and play Michael Jackson, you have to expect this type of thing.

**if you don’t know what fence burpees are, then you obviously did not get involved this summer. I’m not mad, I just feel bad for you.

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