Ouch
As some of my friends and family might remember, I sprained my ankle pretty severely back in early May. I knew it was a really bad sprain, but I didn't realize just how long the pain from that injury would actually linger. At the time, my doctor said my recovery would actually have gone faster and been more complete had it been broken. Apparently he was right.
I had a severe sprain in the same ankle while playing soccer back in my high school years. At that time my recovery was much quicker and it seemed to be fully healed within a couple months. But my x-ray from this most recent incident revealed that the original injury was apparently severe enough that it prevented two bones in my foot from properly growing together - which might explain why the recovery is taking so much longer this time (that and I'm not 15 anymore.)
The ankle has good days and bad days, but it generally doesn't interfere with my normal day-to-day activities. However, it's severely limited my ability to engage in any remotely aerobic activity, which has in turn affected my workouts. I've never liked jogging, so that's no loss. But I do enjoy biking (we have a stationary bike) and I also had previously discovered a fondness for Tae Bo. However, both of those activities still place far too much stress on my ankle.
I do a fairly good job of working out regularly with weights, but since my job entails sitting in front of a computer all day I know I need some aerobic activity as well. The only low impact solution I could think of was something like pilates or yoga. We have a couple DVDs of those laying around so I popped the yoga disc in to give it a whirl.
Yikes! Who knew stretching could be so difficult? It certainly wasn't as aerobic as something like Tae Bo (although it was the faster-paced 'bikram' style yoga) but it definitely got my heart rate up and my muscles are now on fire. Next time I might even make it all the way through the workout.
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