September is Coming...
Training through injury
The sinking of the titanic must have been a sight to behold… and I managed to pull off my best reenactment of that sinking ship in the aqua-tots swim parking lot a few days ago. You, see for the past few weeks my wife and I have been battling COVID and stomach bugs and in that melee I managed to bulge my L4 disc while clearing logs off of our cabin property.
Why does that suck? Well, for starters… it has triggered a bunch of other muscular issues in my back, which included the upper-back spasm that put me on the asphalt in that aqua-tots parking lot, but more so it has almost completely halted my normal working out.
Usually this time of year I am just starting to kick my fall Elk hunting training into high gear. I start to pair back on jiu jitsu to avoid injury and dive into a heavy and high volume workout program from Mountain Tough Fitness. It is called their 45-70 program and it consists of leveraging your hunting pack as your main lifting tool and leverages sandbags to simulate weights. Aside from the packs, it also throws in a metric crap ton of lunges, runs, and pull-ups for good measure. I’ve used it for the past two years and have felt ready to rock n’ roll each September when archery season for Elk kicks off…
But, as Murphy would have it, I am currently in “Learn to treat your body better and focus on longevity” mode as the years of wrestling, ultra running, and jiu jitsu seem to have finally caught up to me. Despite the physical hurdles, the truth is that the mental hurdle is way harder for me to tackle. All I want to do is go out my front door and sweat and suffer until I wanna curl up and quit… and then do it again. However, that’s just not happening.
So, I am trying some new things to try and rehab my back (the smart way) and get back into my heavier training a little later this year — hopefully in time to be ready for those bugling September elk. To do that, I joined the Y. Yes, while we are in Boise waiting on baby #2 I have retaken up my main childhood sport of swimming. Every day I am trying to get in at least 1500-2000 yards of pool work in, in hopes of staying fit and stretched out. After the pool work I am pushing myself to stretch in the hot tub and then top it off with a few cycles of the steam room broken up by a cold shower.
To me, the process feels painfully slow, but I am hopeful that within a few weeks I will be able to add in some light weights and start to shoot my bow with more frequency to prep for the upcoming season(s). For those out there who are dealing with injuries or just plain getting older… let me know how you deal with these things :-)
Hang in there! Y’all have all had a tough month!