Updates

To say the last few months training has gone as planned would be a huge understatement, but while it has been some of the most frustrating it has been a  huge opportunity for growth both mentally and physically....but mostly mentally! About three months ago now, I sprained my ankle...and we are talking about couldn't move my foot, in a boot for weeks grade 3 sprain here.

It was just a silly trip in the woods that caused the whole thing, one second i'm running the next i'm down and have no idea how I will walk out of the woods. It was absolutely surreal,l I was stuck sitting in the wet mud wondering if anyone would happen by or how I was going to be able to walk out . After those very scared minutes I somehow picked myself up and managed to walk a mile out of the woods on it...this gave me hope that as long as I iced it once I got home i'd be ok. Boy was I wrong, the pain and swelling got worse and worse as the night went and got to the point that I could not flex my foot, or feel a lot of my toes by morning.

Thank God for wonderful friends, Stacey got me into Dr. Hatic a foot specialist the next day and I was immediatly booted up...I could not even put pressure on my foot in the boot and pretty much almost passed out anytime anyone touched my foot! Despite this however I immeditly got back to trianing in the boot, all upper body, and this was surprisngly easy. I knew it was so important for me to stay positive during this time and do everything I could to help my body heal. 

Two and a half weeks later and I finally got the boot off, and in my head I was ready to squat!  This was not the case however, I could still barely move my ankle and it is damn hard to squat  if you have no ankle flexibility. Ok, so I got my head around the fact that I still needed to limit myself on movements and focused on PT...so painful stretching, balance work, strenght work, icing and EMS work on the regular. 

It was another 6 weeks until I was actually able to squat, but my squats felt foreign and the pain shooting up my leg from my ankle was unnerving. Mentally this was very hard to swallow, that even with all the work I put in at physical therapy and how positive I had stayed I wasn't back to 100%. This was one of the hardest times for me mentally, some days I would honestly feel like I was completly broken and just lost. The questions of "will you be ready for The Open" or "do you feel like you were stronger last year" from gym members did not help my mental situation, it made me angry, but not producitve angy just frustratetd with myself and my body.

As the weeks have gone by though, everything has felt better and better, my lifts have continued to climb and I've even broken some pre-injury PR's. The biggest thing  though is that I have put serious work into  my mental state, I will write more about this part later but I really need to thank Heidi Fearon and Josh Bridges for their words of wisdom here! This has been the biggest game changer in the past few weeks.

The past few months have  been quite a challenge for me, I have gone through every emotion with this injury and it has been a hard fight back both mentally and physically, it has also been beyond hard for me to put my faith in others and let them help me.  I have no idea where I would be through all of this though without to my Coaches CJ and Tino, it is amazing how just knowing you have people in your corner wanting you to sucede. Also the athletes camp they held this Novemeber really picked my spirits up, and while I was scared as hell to go and not be 100% it was so rewarding! I also owe so much to my friends who supported me the entire time, I could not even believe all the support, help and loving words I recived!