It's been a long while since my last blog. Unfortunately I had a bit of an injury and recovery is taking longer than expected.
First of all a bit of history:
Back in November 2006, I sustained a very nasty back injury whilst deadlifting.
I had done my heavier sets and was just coming back down to a lighter weight when I guess I got a bit complacent and probably lost a bit of focus and managed to prolapse a disc in my lower lumbar spine.
Despite this, recovery seem to be swift and within a week I was back in the gym. Then, whilst leg pressing a large weight I felt a real 'crack' in my lower back. I racked the weight and attemted to get up only I couldn't as I was in total agony.
What was probably a partially prolapsed disc originally was now a fully prolapsed disc.
What followed was a very depressed period of my life. I didn't want to be told by the osteopath that I wasn't to train for a period of 8 weeks but that's what he said and I had to stick with it. Twice weekly visits were helping but after a while I decided to switch to a physiotherapist instead.
I felt this was probably a better way to go and I started to feel better straight away.
Once I was reasonably clear of pain and had regained the strength in my left leg (my strength in this leg was down a good 50% due to the pressure on the sciatic nerve) I was able to resume training, albeit somewhat tentatively.
The whole process from initial injury to full recovery took about 4-5 months.
Now, once you've had an injury like that, you certainly don't want it back.
I've had a multitude of soft tissue injuries over the years since then, but I have always recovered from them within a few days.
About two weeks ago I played my first game of aquash in about 7 years. I played someone better than me (Perry) and as a result I was doing a lot more running around than he was. We played for a full hour and despite losing badly, I thouroughly enjoyed it.
The next morning I was pretty sore all through my torso but didn't feel as bad as I thought I would. Ordinarily, sore glutes would be the problem but I guess due to all the lunging in my training, this wasn't a problem.
Perry then suggested that we play again the following day.
We started out and 10 minutes into the game I felt a twang dead centre of my spine. I stopped immediately and knew that the game was over. I stood there whilst Perry continued to play just knocking the ball back and forwards to himself. Unfortunately however, as the boy came towards me I insticttively reached out to hit it and thats when I really hurt my back.
I hobbled home and prayed that it was just a muscular injury.
4 to 5 days later the pain was easing off and all felt good but then I started to get a little bit of refered pain in my left side of my backside. This is clearly indicative of a bit of sciatica and straight away alarm bells started ringing.
This is pretty much where I'm at as I write this. It's certainly not bad and isn't really bothering me at all but I know that until it eases, I can't train properly for fear of making it worse. It's very frustrating but at the moment it's minor and I've got to have the patience to stop a minor injury becoming a major one.
