At least, not at my day job.
Seriously though. I played basketball last night, hurt leg and all, and on second thought – it was probably not a very good idea.
I stretched, took ibuprofen, warmed up for a long time, and it still just plain hurt, and it hurt the entire night. But, there were only 8 guys total that showed, so I kind of had to play, even if it was just to take up space on the floor. If I didn’t play, nobody could play (at least not full court).
So, I was a trooper and limped around the court as best I could.
What was not so smart was that by trying to run & play ball, I was putting a lot of undue stress and wear & tear on my good leg, as well as stressing my foot, ankle, knee, hip & whatever else it all attaches to. I just was not running regular, and I could feel that I was really stressing things by trying to compete even though I was hurt. It was a no good situation in terms of potential injury to things above and beyond my sore leg.
I can’t fathom how professional athletes do it. During the season, unless they get seriously injured, they don’t get a break. Granted, they have a team of sports specialists that are paid to take care of their injuries for them – special treatments, ice downs, stretches & rehabilitation exercises, drug therapy, massages, the whole nine yards. BUT – they still play through pain! Incredible.
I simply could not convince my leg to cooperate, even though I knew there was no serious injury – it was just sore! But for the life of me, I just could not will it to go through the regular motions.
So, I’m calling an injury time out, and will take it a bit easy until the leg feels better. I do plan to be back on the court next Tuesday, and will do some good walking/jogging in the next few days if my leg starts feeling better.
In the meantime, I’ll try to do some resistance exercises – maybe some weights or something.
This also makes me think about what the heck I would do if I had some kind of serious injury – broken leg or ankle or something like that. I mean, what can you do to raise your heart rate that doesn’t involve your legs somehow?
Yesterday was also a site change day, and I tried a couple more suggestions from my support team (that would be all of you out there!). I’ll put something together and give you all an update very soon.
