Guess what?
I've done it again.
That's right. Given the freedom and opportunity, I have managed to extend the time frame of personal injury one can inflict upon ones self in a relatively short period of time.
I am so proud.
Remember a couple posts back, my story about the back injury? Well, this isn't about that. While I was nursing that back to health(get it? Back? My back, back to health? Ha! Haha! See how I'm funny? Shut up.), I was mixing up my work-out routine to take some strain off of my back.
A couple weeks ago I decided to use one of the seated hamstring curl machines. In a nutshell, you sit down, strap a bar across the top of your thighs near the knees, and then starting with legs straight and a different bar under your ankles, you pull your feet down and do "curls" with the back of your thighs.
In case you weren't sure what those were.
Now, I don't know how many of you work out with any regularity, but a couple things you start to get picky about when you work out with free weights or machines, but especially machines, are range of motion and not slamming the weights back on the stack (especially due to lack of range of motion.)
As I was adjusting the machine, at first the weights were slamming back to stop before I was getting my legs close enough to straight. This was hampering my range of motion in the exercise and was, in general, just plain annoying.
Fortunately, the machine had several wonderful adjustment points for the both the knee support bar and the ankle pull bar.
And, as it turns out, you are allowed to adjust yourself straight to stupidity and injury.
Because I wasn't attempting to pull a lot of weight, I adjusted the bars so that I would basically have tension all the way back to stop. But, apparently, it was a little to close to stop, and in fact, a tad past stop.
Which, I knew.
And yet...
... at the last return of my last set, I forgot myself and let the weights go back to stop, and my left knee made an ever so slight, slightly wet, pop.
At first, I wasn't even sure anything had happened. But over the next few hours... and days... I realized the truth. I might have ever so slightly hyper-extended my left knee.
(grumble)
But wait, it gets better. (No, not my knee.)
After about a week of me being careful with a knee that just felt... off, I was feeling pretty good. So what did I do? I jumped on an elliptical machine and hammered out a mile and half just to see if my knee was ok to run.
Surprise surprise, it was not.
My knee went from pretty good, to not very great, very quickly.
And now it's been another week or so.
Did I bother to go see a doctor you might ask. No.
Am I going to see a doctor? Yes.
Funny story...
Have you ever had a problem with your health and put it off for a while, then finally made an appointment only to have the problem go away before you got in to see the doctor?
I made an appointment to see a doctor a couple days ago. I can't get in till the beginning of the week. Then, last night, I woke up in the middle of the night, and while groggy, absent mindedly stretched my legs straight. I haven't been able to straighten the left knee without discomfort at straight lock. Well, the left knee popped.
Today as I was going about my day, I noticed my knee was feeling decidedly better. It's entirely possible the "pop" last night was a good thing.
It's not perfect, but it's much improved.
Don't worry, I'll still be seeing the doctor.
Sooo...
Isn't that just all manner of dumb? You might be thinking about how I seem to do lots of idiotic things.
It seems you may be correct.
We were talking about "spiritual gifts" at church this past weekend, and I made the statement that I'm becoming increasingly convinced that my "spiritual gift" is "stupidity."
*sigh*
One day, maybe, I will learn that, no matter how smart or clever one may be(I may be making incorrect assumptions about that), I am not immune to doing dumb things. And that, no matter how smart or clever one may be, they need to be ever vigilant against doing said dumb things.
Take care of yourselves. Take the time to be patient and dedicated to the task of, not just maintenance of ones self, but improvement across the board.
Measure twice and cut once, as they say.
Till next time...
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