Rehab has also begun!

Being a Physical Therapist comes with some advantages when you find yourself with aches and pains.

Here is the plan to deal with this knee and still progress with throwing and training:

1) Manage the pain
This is an injury where if it hurts, it's going to continue to hurt. You can't fix a joint issue by making it hurt or pushing through the pain. It just doesn't work. It's not going to miraculously get better if you keep hitting it with a hammer, so to speak.

2) Allow the tissue to heal
This will go along with manage the pain, if it hurts, it's not helping. I will also be doing a lot of perfusion/restriction and BFR training on the L to maintain strength and garbage out, groceries in.

3) Continue to progress
In order to continue to be competitive, I need to keep throwing as much as possible with as little pain and as little compensation as possible. I will be taking a very comprehensive warm up prior to throwing and then easing into throwing as deliberately and as cautiously as possible. I also really need to look at some biomechanics with jumping and throwing to ensure the patella is tracking as appropriately as possible. I will be adjusting to high box squats with chain loading to stay out of the painful ROM, I will be taking all cleans and snatches from the hang with no catch. Jumps will be avoiding deep countermovement, and unilateral work will be shallow lunges, step ups, and side steps. Another thing to check will be heel drop with footwear. I will not be using olympic shoes or shoes with a high heel. Squats and cleans with be done on a slight decline (in my garage I'm either inclined or declined, so I'm choosing the one that will reduce as much stress on the patellofemoral joint as possible.

This will get tweaked as I go along, but I will be sticking to my regularly planned days and workouts with minimal adjustment there. The things that will change are the individual exercises done that day.

Updates as they are available...

Wish me luck!