The Carter IV

Well, once again it’s been a while since I gave everyone an update.  Lots of people have asked since my last update how it’s been, and if the lack of updates was a good or bad thing.  Truth is, it’s neither.  I’ve been really busy at work and filling a lot of my free evenings with jiu jitsu again, so I haven’t set aside much time to sit at the computer and write!

 So that’s the good news.  I initially set a goal of getting back into jiu jitsu by March of this year.  I set the goal thinking I would beat it by a few weeks.  I had some unexpected turbulence in the recovery process, which I spoke about last time, so I didn’t make it back until the first week of April.  Even then, I took it very slow, doing about half of the warmups and sitting out for lots of moves that are harder on the knee.  I’m pretty happy to say that I have been doing all the warmups and pretty much all the moves, as well as sparring for several weeks, if not months by now.  I’m still staying away from takedowns and throws, but I think that is more a psychological block than anything else.

So here’s the bad news.  I’ve gotten comfortable short of the finish line.  I would say that, with regard to activities I can do now compared to before my injury, I’m at about 80%.  And for that 80% of activities, I’m certainly nowhere near 100% intensity for most of them.  Basically, I got myself back to a place where I can jog, jump, squat, and do jiu jitsu (which, in large part, isn’t very hard on the knees).

 This is, of course, a problem!  I’ve been so excited to do jiu jitsu again that I take just about every chance I get.  This leaves less time to do squats, leg presses, lunges, etc.  So I’ve plateaued a bit.  Plateaus are very frustrating, because you usually feel like you are putting in the same, if not more, amount of effort that you were when you were improving, but for some strange reason the improvements stop.  You usually have to change what you’re doing or add another dimension to it in order to start seeing results again.  

This time, however, the plateau came because I simply haven’t been putting in the effort.  I got comfortable being able to “do” jiu jitsu, rather than being able to train or compete like I really want.

 Realizing this puts me in a tough spot.  Unfortunately, I will have to make the gym and leg strengthening a higher priority, which will kick jiu jitsu further down the list.  I know my ultimate goal of competing again requires it, but that doesn’t make it easy to accept.  The best part is that I’ve identified the problem.  Now it’s just a matter of discipline to make sure I fix the problem accordingly, and I’m hopeful that wanting this phase to be over as soon as possible will serve as motivation! 

Failure: Keeping your Focus Forward Looking

Once again, I’ve gone too long without posting anything.  A number of people have asked me about my progress, so I’ll give a little update, but I still want to give it in the context of a bigger picture.  I'd like to write about the importance of looking forward, especially after failing to reach a goal.

I’ve said it before, as horrible as this injury has been, it has taught me a lot.  And when I say it’s been a rough ride, I mean it.  It’s probably the first time in my life I’ve experienced genuine depression.  At first, all the extra time gave me an opportunity to catch up on some things I had put to the back burner.  Work goals, friends, books, learning new things, etc.  I was also spending the majority of my newfound free time working on my knee, which I’ve written about in the past.

But unfortunately, at about 9 weeks after my surgery, I ran into some complications, which I also wrote about briefly.  All of a sudden, everything hurt.  And it kept getting worse.  Despite everyone saying it was “normal” or that it would resolve, I found myself regressing in my recovery at a rapid pace.  I won’t go into all the details as to why my progress started to reverse, but needless to say it’s complicated and hard to pinpoint a specific reason.   Most of my therapy activities and exercises hurt, and pushing through the pain made it worse.  So instead of spending all these hours on rehab, I spent them throwing myself pity parties.

The part that made dealing with all of this so bad was that I had already pretty much laid out my entire recovery in my mind.  In ACL reconstruction recovery, there are generally two “protocols” used (plans/timelines for exercises and recovery): standard and accelerated.   Even a lot of pretty good athletes stay on a standard protocol.  At 9 weeks, I was about 2 weeks ahead of schedule for the accelerated protocol.  I was doing things like 60lb walking lunges, weighted single leg squats, and plyometrics.  In fact, I had set a goal to return to jiu jistu before the end of March.  Unfortunately, due to my regression, I failed to meet that goal. 

Which brings me to this topic, dealing with failure.  Everyone fails.  Even the most accomplished people have flopped at something in their lives.  The difference between being successful or unsuccessful is how you deal with that failure.  I know, it’s so cliché, but it’s so true.  Those who can persevere will accomplish their goals.  My problem was that in my moment of failure, I completely lost sight of my ultimate goals.  Getting better, returning to jiu jitsu…my mind wasn’t focusing on these things.  It was focusing on the pain, the disappointment, and the helpless feeling I had.

That last one is really the biggest problem.  There’s no shame in being disappointed with yourself, or just disappointed with the outcome of any given scenario.  But feeling helpless, that’s the killer.  Because when you accept that there’s “nothing I can do about it,” you have destroyed any chance of getting back up after the fall.  With that frame of mind, there is no resolution because none exists.  It’s out of your hands.  But it’s usually not true.  Of course, positive affirmation only goes so far.  I don’t care how much you believe you can fly, jumping off a building to prove it to yourself is stupid.  But that is an unrealistic goal to begin with.  Mine were not.  Rehabbing my knee after a dislocation, torn ligaments, and surgery?  That’s far from impossible.  But for a brief period of time, I convinced myself it was out of my hands…and I sat around, waiting for it to magically get better.

When this regression started, I was telling a friend of mine who has a great deal of experience in sports medicine/fitness how frustrated I was with how much my progress had slowed.  She simply responded “slow progress is still progress.”  I wish I had taken that to heart a little sooner.  I wasn’t helpless to resolve these new issues, I was just disappointed with my situation.  I let that sadness lead to hopelessness, rather than doing the little things that I could still do. Until you reach your goals, they are in front of you, not behind you.  No matter how good things used to be, or even how back they were…none of it matters.  The main focus should be looking forward to what you hope to achieve, with the focus on what can be done to get yourself closer.

I’m happy to say I am refocused, and in a positive place again.  Big things coming up in the near future, so stay tuned!

Minor Setback Before a Major Comeback

A friend of mine in law school used to say that as a joke pretty often, but it’s actually something I’ve tried to associate with my knee.  This injury really has opened my eyes to a lot, more than I could ever explain in a blog.  I've had a few ups and downs since the last entry, and it’s hard to talk about your progress when you aren't certain if everything is going as it should.  Tomorrow marks 12 weeks since surgery, which is a pretty big milestone.  The ligaments are still healing and scarring, but there has been enough healing that I am allowed to do most natural movements, even if not 100%.  I was making extraordinary progress for a while.  I am told I was ahead of schedule on the “accelerated” ACL recovery timeline – which is exactly what I wanted.  I progressed to doing single leg, rotational, and jumping exercises.  Then, around week 10, I had a lapse in judgment.

Well, less of a lapse in judgment, more poor planning.  I moved into a new apartment, and I didn't think to scale back my therapy/workouts that week.  I didn't lift anything exceptionally heavy, or do anything specific that hurt my knee.  In fact, I didn't move any of the heavy stuff, and everything I lifted weighed significantly less than the weights I was using in therapy.  But I was in and out of the apartment with boxes, up and down stairs, and I think I overdid it a little bit.

So for the past two weeks I've been taking it really easy, without much relief.  A lot of my exercises were hurting, so I wasn't doing them.  I figured rest was my best bet.  I found a nice silver lining in that I took the opportunity to get back into working out my upper body.  Initially, I couldn't do this because (A) I was advised not to hold that much weight while standing or needing to plant my legs, and (B) I was spending any available workout time on my knee.  For the past 3-4 weeks, I've just been a combination of lazy and nervous to start doing upper body stuff for fear of seeing how far I had fallen.  Burying my head in the sand definitely didn't help, but I recognized the “problem” was all mental and have started taking steps to address it.  Better late than never!

I saw my surgeon today – I was going in for the 12 week post operative consultation.  This is the first time I would be evaluated to consider starting a jogging program.  I was certain that with the knee pain I've been experiencing and the swelling I still have (small amounts, but it’s there) that his advice would be a hard “no running yet, wait a few more weeks.”  Much to my surprise, that was not the case.

The short story is that everything I am experiencing is normal, and probably not even related to anything I did.  I had become very nervous that I would need a second surgery to tighten up my MCL.  He was adamantly against that idea.  He said it is healing great and will continue to gain stability for 3-4 more months.  Most of the issues I am experiencing are related to the fact that my leg muscles are still so weak compared to “normal.”  They have improved dramatically over the last 3 months, but the road ahead is still very long.   He gave me some ways to modify my workouts to strengthen everything while taking it a bit easier on the knee.  I got the go ahead to get back into therapy full force.  This “injury within an injury,” as much sleep as I lost over it, was just a minor setback before a major comeback.

He said I could be back to full jiu jitsu classes by 5 months.  I don’t think this means I’ll be back to advanced classes, but drilling most everything, maybe light rolling.  I’m still going back to class some time in March, even if my participation is limited, and even if it’s just a few classes per week.

Oh, he also said I get to start jogging tomorrow too.  Watch out world! 

How bad do you want it!?

I know I haven't written in a while.  The main reason is that I just haven't wanted to.  I spend a lot of time working and rehabbing my knee, so rather than force myself to sit and write something when I didn't want to, I was doing that instead.  I'm really not sure how my recovery timeline is stacking up to the "average" recovery timeline, and I'm not really concerned about that either.  I feel like its coming along at a good pace given my injuries.  I spend a lot of time on my recovery.  I try to squeeze in little things here and there, because I'm sure it all adds up to a little bit faster and better recovery.  I thoroughly enjoy it.  It brings me satisfaction.  As a result, I want to do it as much as possible.

One big problem I've observed is that so many people are simply mesmerized by televisions, facebook, and video games.  These are all huge distractions in life, but that's what they want to squeeze into every possible second of their day.  I have been, and still am, guilty of this also, to certain degrees.  We all get off work and want to plop down in front of the TV...or our laptops.  These things all have their place, but have you heard any inspirational stories where they said "and all that TV I watched was a huge key to my success."  What goals do these things push you toward?  Getting really good at watching TV?

It's so unfortunate.  I bet if most people simply turned off their TVs and computers, they would go insane from boredom.  They wouldn't know what to do with themselves.  What would they fill those hours with?  Hopefully they would find something productive to do, but I bet most people would break down and turn the TV back on.  But imagine if you replaced these things with a hobby you were really passionate about.  Something you just couldn't get enough of.  You'd be so grateful for all this extra time to do it!

I was raised to think that you should seek out a career that gives you this much satisfaction, too.  Try to find someone to pay you for something you'd do for free.  It makes being successful in your job so much easier, because work is much less of a burden (that isn't to say you wont have days you don't want to work).  You probably spend a good portion of your free time sharpening your skills in some way as well.  A perfect example is my brother.  He always thought computers were cool, from a very young age.  He wanted to know how to make programs.  One summer, maybe around middle school, he bought a book and taught himself how to make really basic programs.  He thought this was cool too, so he taught himself the next more advanced programming language, and kept doing it and kept doing it and now he's a software engineer.  He's a mighty good, and he loves to talk about writing programs, if you'll let him.

Regardless of whether we are talking hobbies or careers, the hardest part is figuring out what it is that you enjoy the most, besides watching Kim Kardashian and her sisters spend their money and cry about their lives on E!  Once you figure that out, it's just a matter of setting your goals.  "I want to write a computer program that does twice as many things," "I want to run a marathon," "I want to win a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu tournament," "I want to ______________________________."

If the goal you set is something you truly, genuinely want, you'll find yourself constantly figuring out a way to get closer to it.  Think of the kid who just HAS to have that toy - that genuine desire most adults lack.  He is too young to work a real job and has no money, but he has his mind SET on getting that toy.  He can't stop thinking about it. So what does he do?  He scrounges for change, tries to sell some old toys, sets up a lemonade stand, or begs for odd jobs  just for a little bit of cash.  Sure enough, eventually, he has enough for that toy.  If you can figure out what it is that you really, really want and desire, and tune out the distractions around you, it's almost impossible for you not to reach it.

I really wanted to convey this message, so I took a good amount of time to write this, and didn't stop until I was done.  Right now, the thing I genuinely want is to get back toward jiu jitsu.  I want to do that way more than I want to watch TV, or play video games.  I have a bunch of goals right now to help me get there.  More short term is getting my knee healthy again; intermediate is returning to jiu jitsu classes on a regular basis and being able to spar; and long term includes returning to competition.  I have a goal of getting at least two gold medals before the end of 2013.  Added bonus if they're at the same tournament :)