Injuries

My knee after stitched came out

My knee post Op!!

Thought it might be a good time to talk about injuries.  Everyone at some point in their training career would have experiened some kind of injury, whether it be a simple sprain or broken bones or tendon and ligament damage or having an injury that is so severe that surgery is required like my knee.  


As you can see from the pictures above my knee injury was quite severe that even with intensive physiotherapy, my knee was beyond repair.  The surgery that I had was a Fulkerson's Osteotomy and Renicular Release, so basically they re-aligned my knee cap, cracked my shins, put some pins in to hold it in place, and also released part of my ITB, so that my knee will start to track properly with the help of physiotherapy post surgery.  

At the moment I'm a year post op, and even though I still get some pain, my injury is 100 times better.  So here is the question, once we get an injury how do we still train and prevent it from getting any worse, well, for me, it was developing the muscles that were causing my knee to track incorrectly into retraining them into working properly  with the help of my personal trainer Shane and also my physio Graham.


Basically I believe if you do have an injury the best thing to do is to speak to your coach or trainer, and amend your training to steer away from the things that are causing you injury, unless specifically advised by your physio.  For me before I had the surgery, I was advised to stay away from running which was causing everything to tighten and due to my weight caused more damage to my knee.  Instead exercises were subbed for controlled movements that still used those muscles and that body part but in a safe way to protect the knee.  


Anyway guys, if you have an injury always best to speak to your coach and physio and come up with a plan to continue your training, and protect your injuries.  Remember train SMART!