[embodiment] physio notes!

[kaberett]

Today was Lower Limb Class #2, as ongoing follow-up for the most recent ankle reinjury. (On which status is: still a biiiit weaker when I'm pushing to limits, but not really noticeable in day-to-day life, e.g. I'm no longer regularly wincing when I jar it getting off a bike; definitely still feeling the work up the outside of my right leg when doing e.g. isometric holds on double heel raises.)

I am very amused by how "???!!!" the physios got when I tried to faint from things that "shouldn't" have been significant cardio and indeed aren't by my standards for cardio but crucially involved a lot of moving around and position changes while upright: sit-to-stand, lunges, crab-walking with knees bent. Apparently I have carefully selected for exercise done while seated or prone for really solid reasons, i.e. that would be the orthostatic hypotension. Which I apparently hadn't told the physios about as its own thing. ...whoops.

Started out Doing Some Exercises From Last Time (double heel raises with small ball between said heels, making sure to keep toes pointing forward; single-leg balance while throwing ball into the air, 15 throws on each side; made it partway through lunges). Upon being checked in with, explained that I'd spent three (3) full days at home since the last class, so had not exactly been adding all of last time's exercises to The Daily Regime, but had been keeping up with normal physio including doing all of my heel raises/balance work on Decidedly Uneven Ground. Got a bit of an Oh No One Of These look. Was very amused when the first exercise I got shown to add in was foot abduction with resistance band and got to explain no, no, I'm already doing that one.

New and recurring things:

• do also work on raising and lowering toes with resistance band, not just the eversion
• sit-to-stand: heel of off-leg on ground with toes raised; 20 per side
  • keep back straight!
  • can (EVENTUALLY HAHAHAHA) progress to raising heel of off-leg entirely off the ground
• lunges:
  • don't bring front knee forward over toes -- extend distance as necessary to make that viable
  • keep back upright!
  • make sure the knees don't wobble out of alignment
  • don't gotta go all the way down!
  • progress by adding dynamic movement: step forwards or back, lunge, return to feet-together, making sure toes point the right way, eventually 10 reps per side per direction, but this is... a long way off
  • NB can manage multiple sets of 5 lunges on the right without making the knee Actually Cross if separated by enough of a rest
• crab walk: band just above ankles, knees bent, BACK UPRIGHT, toes pointing forward, don't tense up so toes are lifting off the floor, if you're doing this right you'll feel the activation in the hips, 2-3 sets of 10 steps each direction

... hilariously it was the crab walk that finally tipped me over into "needing longer than 5 seconds to recover from the dizzy"; I'd managed to keep the other breaks-for-blood-pressure short enough nobody noticed but after Final Crab Walk I was Noticed, and Brought A Chair and Some Water and so on, and was concentrating on "enough breathing to not faint" to a point that was not entirely compatible with "explaining compellingly that it's fine and normal and routine, please just give me a moment".

But just. Oh. Oh I do still have that significant impairment and I have very carefully arranged my life (and improving mobility) around not smacking into it.

Comments

[cesy]

"Oh I do still have that significant impairment and I have very carefully arranged my life (and improving mobility) around not smacking into it." This is a familiar and frustrating feeling.