The Purpose of this post is to provide some beta on my healing process so that others might be able to also have fast and positive recovery processes when they find themselves in the unfortunate situation of taking a beating from the life.
To be clear, most of this is not necessarily doctor recommended (or unrecommended for that matter), it's only Graham recommended.
My situation was maybe unique but so are all injuries. I had an undisplaced fracture of my right fibula and a right shoulder blade which was crushed into 6 pieces and small change. Not that sweet, but as it turned out I DID NOT need surgery.
My recovery involved ALOT of physical therapy. I was in Seattle and went to see Gene at Stretch. He was amazing as is the rest of the team there (who have done wonders for a good buddy of mine Roj). I can honestly say that I would not be functioning at the level that I am now without having gone to see Gene at least once a week (often times more) for a 4 month period. No PT is not cheap but it is worth it.
As a side note, if your in NZ, I saw YewJin Tan a lot while I was down there. He is another miracle worker. And you guys have ACC (socialized accident coverage) down there and therefor no excuses!
I also had some chiropractic work done by my man Niall Dillan who works in West Seattle at the. As can be imagined, having pretty uneven bodily breakage meant that I was quite out of balance. Getting all my joints back in the right orientation was important.
Both of these practitioners had a slew of recommended exercises and stretches. I really feel that not slacking on these, in fact sometimes taking them a little too far was clutch. Since I was not able to work during this time (my work being very physical) I had a lot of down time, I spent a minimum of 3 hours a day doing my PT work, yup, clutch.
Not working also meant that I had a lot of time to sleep. It is while we are sleeping that our bodies do the most recovery (this can also be translated to sports recovery) and while broken it's very important. TO be honest, in my normal life getting enough sleep is something that often time does not happen and that I oftentimes rue. So having an excuse that "I need to get at leaste 10 hour of sleep per night" was pretty rad.
After the first couple of weeks (traveling around NZ) of being hurt I didn't take any pain killers. But I did take other supplements. At the recommendation of my bouldering buddy Ander Rockstand (note: I always call my bouldering buddies, esp Ander, when I have white tissue damage as these folks spend a ton of time focused on keeping the're tendons and bones healthy for pulling on tiny grips) I took Wobenzym, a supplementary systemic enzyme designed in Germany and ate an 80% raw diet. The idea behind this was to LOAD my body with enzymes which are fantastic for healing non-vascular tissue. I'll let you do the research on raw food, but it made me feel GREAT. I am continuing to focus on eating mostly raw since it makes my body feel really powerful.
I also took 'Womans once a day' Vitamins which I at least thought was very funny. The idea was though that these have an extra load of Iron and Calcium, two things I needed a lot of for rebuilding bone.
Lastly I ate and took a lot of supplementary Ginger as well as turmeric, these are amazing anti inflammatory agents. Helping to clear the blood and reduce swelling.
In terms of mental training and recovery... I was dealing with some pretty nasty PTSD when I first got back stateside. Reoccurring dreams of being crushed by ice and looking back on other past climbing situations and feeling really uncomfortable about them, no fun. I started meditating the mornings and doing what I would refer to as creative visualization. I had done a lot of reading about injured athletes (specifically javelin throwers) who while injured used creative visualization to maintain the synaptic pathways used for the motions they preform and come back to speed very quickly due to a lack of loss in technique. I worked to apply this to climbing. The process went something like this...
In the morning I would get up, drink a strong coffee, and sit and preform what could be considered classic meditation for about 20 minutes. Passively watching the thoughts of the morning and night before pass, recognizing them and letting them pass. Once agains something I will not go into depth with here, BUT I reckon that watching these thoughts of fear pass by was very important in realizing them to be folly and to move on from them. Then I would spend 45 minutes visualizing myself climbing. I would work on things like making a hard move to a poor hold, upon touching the hold which was not very good perusing a feeling of "I can make that work out" rather than "that sucks!". This was a combination of simple positive reenforcement and continuing to work with climbing even if only mentally. I would also put myself into stressful situations, such as spending 45 minutes of being on a vertical pillar of ice, maintaining composure and moving efficiently. Lastly I would put myself in past situations, big runouts, heady alpine routes, whatever was stressing me out at the time and deal with them knowing that I am safe and in control. I think that a lot of this was really effective in not only remembering that I am strong climber who makes good decisions, but also in turning the event of getting squashed by lots ice from a really negative event into a good learning experience.
Importantly.. when I was getting close to recovered, where I am now, the phase of regaining strength and getting back to it. I have been very diligent about NOT being hurt. I really hate having excuses in my life for not doing things that I would like to. Being hurt is a hell of an excuse, one that I did not want. I have worked to shed this. Part of this can be not sharing it with folks as part of my story as well as not limiting myself with it. Rather limiting myself with the fact that I am pretty damn unfit and have progress to make. I find that this gives me more reason to get out and get after it and to train hard, which is what I need to do.
Lastly, I made my reentry into climbing slow and calculated. Staring with things that were in my box and things I could do safely. For me this involved a trip to Bishop CA for bouldering. I knew that bouldering would allow to make great gains in terms of technique and strength, while also allowing me to be very picky about what types of moves I could and could not do. Then when getting started climbing with ropes, I did a lot of top roping to make sure that everything felt in order. I have seen no reason to blow 6 months of recovery by getting to psyched about leading something heads up. There will be plenty of time for that a month from now.
Alright folks. I think that's enough words on that subject.
Know that I would love to hear from you with questions.
grahamzimmerman@gmail.com
To be clear, most of this is not necessarily doctor recommended (or unrecommended for that matter), it's only Graham recommended.
My situation was maybe unique but so are all injuries. I had an undisplaced fracture of my right fibula and a right shoulder blade which was crushed into 6 pieces and small change. Not that sweet, but as it turned out I DID NOT need surgery.
My recovery involved ALOT of physical therapy. I was in Seattle and went to see Gene at Stretch. He was amazing as is the rest of the team there (who have done wonders for a good buddy of mine Roj). I can honestly say that I would not be functioning at the level that I am now without having gone to see Gene at least once a week (often times more) for a 4 month period. No PT is not cheap but it is worth it.
As a side note, if your in NZ, I saw YewJin Tan a lot while I was down there. He is another miracle worker. And you guys have ACC (socialized accident coverage) down there and therefor no excuses!
I also had some chiropractic work done by my man Niall Dillan who works in West Seattle at the. As can be imagined, having pretty uneven bodily breakage meant that I was quite out of balance. Getting all my joints back in the right orientation was important.
Both of these practitioners had a slew of recommended exercises and stretches. I really feel that not slacking on these, in fact sometimes taking them a little too far was clutch. Since I was not able to work during this time (my work being very physical) I had a lot of down time, I spent a minimum of 3 hours a day doing my PT work, yup, clutch.
Not working also meant that I had a lot of time to sleep. It is while we are sleeping that our bodies do the most recovery (this can also be translated to sports recovery) and while broken it's very important. TO be honest, in my normal life getting enough sleep is something that often time does not happen and that I oftentimes rue. So having an excuse that "I need to get at leaste 10 hour of sleep per night" was pretty rad.
After the first couple of weeks (traveling around NZ) of being hurt I didn't take any pain killers. But I did take other supplements. At the recommendation of my bouldering buddy Ander Rockstand (note: I always call my bouldering buddies, esp Ander, when I have white tissue damage as these folks spend a ton of time focused on keeping the're tendons and bones healthy for pulling on tiny grips) I took Wobenzym, a supplementary systemic enzyme designed in Germany and ate an 80% raw diet. The idea behind this was to LOAD my body with enzymes which are fantastic for healing non-vascular tissue. I'll let you do the research on raw food, but it made me feel GREAT. I am continuing to focus on eating mostly raw since it makes my body feel really powerful.
I also took 'Womans once a day' Vitamins which I at least thought was very funny. The idea was though that these have an extra load of Iron and Calcium, two things I needed a lot of for rebuilding bone.
Lastly I ate and took a lot of supplementary Ginger as well as turmeric, these are amazing anti inflammatory agents. Helping to clear the blood and reduce swelling.
In terms of mental training and recovery... I was dealing with some pretty nasty PTSD when I first got back stateside. Reoccurring dreams of being crushed by ice and looking back on other past climbing situations and feeling really uncomfortable about them, no fun. I started meditating the mornings and doing what I would refer to as creative visualization. I had done a lot of reading about injured athletes (specifically javelin throwers) who while injured used creative visualization to maintain the synaptic pathways used for the motions they preform and come back to speed very quickly due to a lack of loss in technique. I worked to apply this to climbing. The process went something like this...
In the morning I would get up, drink a strong coffee, and sit and preform what could be considered classic meditation for about 20 minutes. Passively watching the thoughts of the morning and night before pass, recognizing them and letting them pass. Once agains something I will not go into depth with here, BUT I reckon that watching these thoughts of fear pass by was very important in realizing them to be folly and to move on from them. Then I would spend 45 minutes visualizing myself climbing. I would work on things like making a hard move to a poor hold, upon touching the hold which was not very good perusing a feeling of "I can make that work out" rather than "that sucks!". This was a combination of simple positive reenforcement and continuing to work with climbing even if only mentally. I would also put myself into stressful situations, such as spending 45 minutes of being on a vertical pillar of ice, maintaining composure and moving efficiently. Lastly I would put myself in past situations, big runouts, heady alpine routes, whatever was stressing me out at the time and deal with them knowing that I am safe and in control. I think that a lot of this was really effective in not only remembering that I am strong climber who makes good decisions, but also in turning the event of getting squashed by lots ice from a really negative event into a good learning experience.
Importantly.. when I was getting close to recovered, where I am now, the phase of regaining strength and getting back to it. I have been very diligent about NOT being hurt. I really hate having excuses in my life for not doing things that I would like to. Being hurt is a hell of an excuse, one that I did not want. I have worked to shed this. Part of this can be not sharing it with folks as part of my story as well as not limiting myself with it. Rather limiting myself with the fact that I am pretty damn unfit and have progress to make. I find that this gives me more reason to get out and get after it and to train hard, which is what I need to do.
Lastly, I made my reentry into climbing slow and calculated. Staring with things that were in my box and things I could do safely. For me this involved a trip to Bishop CA for bouldering. I knew that bouldering would allow to make great gains in terms of technique and strength, while also allowing me to be very picky about what types of moves I could and could not do. Then when getting started climbing with ropes, I did a lot of top roping to make sure that everything felt in order. I have seen no reason to blow 6 months of recovery by getting to psyched about leading something heads up. There will be plenty of time for that a month from now.
Alright folks. I think that's enough words on that subject.
Know that I would love to hear from you with questions.
grahamzimmerman@gmail.com
2 comments:
Thanks Graham! Your words of wisdom helped me to make the wise decision to opt for surgery even if it seemed like the worst possible time do so!
I am backing the raw food from my brief post-op experience so far as well.
Digging the reminder to meditate on past performance. That's pretty clutch. Esp. at my age :-)
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