Well, it's certainly not been the best 12 months for having an uninjured body! My wrist recovered well from the surgery after a couple of months and is pretty much fine now, with a feeling of dullness in the wrist sometimes and slight cracking and ache when rotating the wrist around, along with the permanent scars which actually consist of just three small dots (arthroscopic surgery is brilliant these days).
Unfortunately, it turns out there is something else wrong with this body of mine. A few times in the past my kneecap has given way as a result of some, not excessive, twisting motion of my leg which causes great pain but usually felt okay after a couple of weeks recovery time, and never impacted my life as my life was almost entirely sedentary. These days I've actually been taking a focus on fitness and strength training so overall the strength around my knees has increased greatly but it still didn't protect my kneecap from giving way after a nasty twist, which happened as a result of landing short from a running jump to step-through, causing my foot to twist inwards at an extreme angle, the result of which was a feeling of multiple parts of my knee feeling like they were giving up and running away from my body, tearing through the tissue that might be in the way. Much pain, but I was surrounded by many of my friends (a subset of our "Sunday Trainings Supa XXL" group, who are a perfect example of the overwhelming sense of friendly community in the world of parkour) so I was in very capable hands, so when the ambulance arrived I was there with a makeshift ice pack comprised of many ice-pops wrapped around my leg, tied with a piece of clothing that belonged to someone (not even sure who!) surrounded by many people trying to help and sharing their knowledge of the body and tales of past injuries.
The short story of what happened was a patellar dislocation. The long story is a patellar dislocation due to my knee having a predisposition to do precisely that which could be fully fixed only with surgery which will happen if it reoccurs. This brings my "injury requiring an MRI" count up to two in my lifetime, both times in the past 12 months, both due to a preexisting condition that causes an injury to be much worse and longer lasting than would have otherwise been the case.
The full medical description of current problems: "transient patellar dislocation with an injury to the medial patellofemoral ligament and bony oedema on the medial facet of the patella and non-weightbearing lateral femoral condyle"
I'll be starting physio soon, much later than planned due to a lack of expected communication from the NHS physio department that I was referred to about a 9 week waiting time..., but it'll still be a few weeks before I can do any form of impact at all, so my usual leg training with plyometric jumps and precisions won't be happening anytime soon.
I was off of crutches within a week but I've still got a slight limp now four weeks on, and holding balance in any squat position at all (various angles tried) soon causes pain in a few spots on my knee, and normal, very mild angle, twists when muscles are tense still causes pain and discomfort. Bad times. I'lll always be worrying about the chance of the dislocation reoccuring so may have to seriously reconsider my future in parkour.
Until then, upper body conditioning! Having had a couple of months with a recovered wrist I've been free to make some upper body progress and will try and continue this trend during my recovery, and beyond. I've still got plenty of muscle-up progress to make which is the main focus of a session or two each week these days.
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I miss jumps!
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