Brace Yourself
Elevating with bonus hamstring stretch between games on Sunday.
I am back from another fun weekend of ultimate, this time down in Sarasota. The weather was interesting: torrential rain on Friday that caused the start time on Saturday to be pushed to the early afternoon. Saturday was overcast and windy. Sunday was sunny and windy. It never got too hot or too cold.
But you are not here to find out about Florida weather. I had two questions going into the weekend: 1) how would my knee hold up and 2) how would my fitness level be after not training as hard as I usually do.
I’ll start with question two. We got to the fields just before noon on Saturday to warm up for our first game. I threw for a bit, then decided it was time to start moving. I did a short jog around the field and really felt terrible. I couldn’t breath and my whole body was protesting.
I did a mental check in, and realized most likely this was because I’d had a little too much coffee and the caffeine was jacking my system a bit.
So I started doing plyos (dynamic stretching) and felt a bit better. Then ended with some short sprints and that really made me turn the corner and feel okay. Whew.
The first game was against the overall number one seed and points were pretty quick. This meant it took longer to fully get up to game speed because I wasn’t running as much. But once I got warmed up I felt good.
We played four short games on Saturday, and I was able to play at a high level for multiple points in a row. I felt good, and recovered between sprints fairly quickly.
Sunday I was not nearly as achy (aside from my knee which I’ll talk about next) as I expected. Again I was able to play multiple points in a row to save other people’s legs and acquit myself OK as far as play went.
The knee was interesting: I had a hinge brace on my left knee. This brace compresses the knee to keep swelling down and has extra stability at the joint to prevent twisting injuries. It’s a little cumbersome but worth it for the added sense of safety it gave me.
Day one I was able to run just about full speed when I needed to. Starting and stopping were a little tricky, and jumping was a challenge, but my game was not affected that much. Since it was so windy, it was mostly a game of short passes and short cuts and that I could do no problem.
Sunday was a different story. The knee swelled up overnight and was very stiff-feeling Sunday. Had it not been windy I’d have had a hard time keeping up, but again it was a day for short passes and short cuts so I was fine. I never really felt comfortable moving, the stiffness made it hard to get a normal gait going. There was no pain, just a full feeling in the joint.
Now I’m compressing the knee, icing, elevating and also moving it. The goal is to quickly get the fluid to re-absorb into my system and once the swelling is gone all will be well again.
It was great to know I could make it through a weekend of sprinting (13 miles on Saturday, 7 on Sunday) and cutting. Mentally I am now prepared to get back onto the training horse for the winter. We already have two more tournaments scheduled early next year, so I have some short-term goals to aim for.
