Welcome to the Pain Free Zone!

Been talking about my planned campaign to get better range of motion and less pain in my left knee.

Plan has been to:

Workout as intensely as the knee would allow....

Try different workout programs - Body Pump, Boot Camp, MMA and now CrossFit.

Lose weight - get as light as I can possibly be.

Rotate NSAID's (Non-Steroid Anti-Inflammatory Drugs) every few months.

Part of the Plan was to get below 180 and stay there and see if that relieved the knee pain.

Check that off.... been below 180 for over a month.

And it didn't help....

So enter Phase 2...

Rehab and Physical Therapy...

Enter the Dragon...

http://bzrehab.com/aboutus.html

Or the Lifeline if you will...

Brazosport Rehabilitation and Wellness aka

Allison Bennett and the Crew....

More on the Crew later...

Lemme just say going into this....

I was a little discouraged and....

Skeptical.

I mean - come on - what's physical therapy gonna do for me that CrossFit's grueling workouts ain't gonna do??

Or the intense cardio of Boot Camp?

So I sit down with Allison Bennett and I had been warned about her already...

What was it Stephani Bradley said on the recommendation?

Oh yeah.... "Y'all are gonna get along fine - she's beautiful and fit".

Jury's still out on the getting along part but the beautiful and fit was an understatement.

Hell just looking her in the eyes I felt better already...

But back to the real story here.

She examined my knee much like my orthopedic surgeon.... Flexing and pushing and asking me where it hurt.

But then she had me do some exercises - squats, lunges, one legged squats...

"Well I think we can do something here" she says.

"You've got some weakness in the glutes and left hip and the muscles around your left knee. We're gonna work on getting you stronger and that will relieve your pain".

Huh? Get me stronger?

Geez - I'm busting my ass on max weight in all the CrossFit WODs, squatting 315 and jumping up and down on 24" boxes....

And you want me to get stronger...

How's that work?

Well Old Dog, it's time to learn some new tricks...

Enter the Crew....

That's the Bevy of Beauties that support the Indomitable Miss Bennett...

I walked into the Physical Therapy Room....

And thought I'd fell off in the middle of the comeback tour for the Spice Girls.

I mean first of all, there's 4 of 'em besides the one at the front desk....

That's a whole nother story....

Geez don't get me started on that - just suffice it to say that caramel is involved....

So where was I - oh yeah - the Spice Girls.

So first of all, they're all dressed in different colored scrubs - no two the same.

I asked about that and was told that there are different colors that can be worn.

And I'm thinking WTF are they doing - calling each other at 6 o'clock in the morning and coordinating their colors?

I don't know but it looks like a freaking M&M convention....

And I love M&M's.

Back to the knee treatment...

So AB starts off with ultrasonic heat treatment where one of the Spice Girls rubs this heat conducting gel on my knee and then massages it with this heated paddle that shoots ultrasonic waves into my knee and heats it from the inside out.

Let me go back to the part where the Spice Girl is rubbing gel on my knee.

At this point, I'm thinking I don't know if this works and I really don't give a shit if it works or not....

In fact, I'm actually thinking I hope it has the opposite effect and messes up my knee, cause I done fell off a shit wagon and landed in a rose garden.

Okay, ultrasonic over...

Go to the bike with Upper Body Ergo meter option...

That's one of em where you pedal with your feet and hands.

First time I did it was Ok cause Easy Spice set the resistance pretty low....

2nd time I did it, Queen Mama set the thing....

I think she was pissed cause I was wearing a tank and workout shorts to PT and talking loud and being all obnoxious - like I am all the time - cause she cranks the bike down to "I'm climbing Mt Everest" mode and says "Ok - Do 15 mins for me" and walks off.... I know she's thinking "I'll show this loudmouth who's in charge". Well I hunkered down and grinded out Level 807 or whatever it was and got off the thing and Grumpy Spice looks at me, scrunches up her cute little nose and says "Ooh you're sweating".

No shit Sherlock. I just pedaled up an HC in the TDF.

Whadduya expect?

So then Mama Spice says "Now we're gonna do the TRX".

I'm thinking No Problem - dunnit at FF - I got this.

Whaddup AB?

1 legged squats holding the TRX strap....

20 on each leg.... Both legs.... 2 sets.... 80 reps total.

Oh and I want a 5 second negative and a 5 second positive - a 10 second rep.

Gulp....

So lemme see....

Naught carry the naught....

That's 800 seconds or a little over 13 minutes of 1 legged squats.

So I do the first few and I'm wobbling all over the place cause it's a strength, control and balance exercise.

And it's hard to do.

"Yeah - I can see we got some room to improve. If you'd've done those easy, I'd've said we might not be able to help you. But we can get you stronger and that will relieve some of the pain" Beauty and the Beast says and tells me for the 3rd time to slow down on the reps.

Thanks.... I think.

"Oh... and when you're done with those 1-legged squats, knock out the same with lunges with your back leg in the TRX sling..... and hurry up cause Me and the Home Girls got a High Noon Workout on the TRX Machine and you're in the way."

WTF?

So that's the exercise part - let me rephrase that -
That's the workout part.

And I mean there's no mercy cause AB is hard core bad ass in shape so she don't listen to no whining.

So there's ultrasonic heat, workout and....

Kinesiology tape...

I did a post on it last week....

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elastic_therapeutic_tape

http://science.howstuffworks.com/kinesiology-tape.htm

www.rocktape.com

If I'd've got $5 for every person that asked me about it at the 3 day RedFest Music Festival in Austin this weekend, I could've paid for the trip.

Question 1:  Is that a tattoo?

Answer 1:  No Moron.... it's KT.

Question 2: Does it work?

Answer 2: YES!!!

So much so that I had the right knee (which ain't much better than the left knee) taped also...

Thank you Young and Beautiful Spice!!!

So what's this whole post about other than having a good time ribbing the best Young and Beautiful Physical Therapy crew ever?

After 2 weeks of PT, how's the knee?

Best it's been in years.

Now there's a lot of other things going on....

Down to 171 this week so still cutting weight which is a big help.... For every 1 lb of weight loss, you reduce the felt impact on the knee by 10 lbs.

And I did get a cortisone shot from Dr. Hudson last week.

So, hard to determine how much of the pain relief and increased range of motion is attributable to what....

If I had to put numbers on it, I'd say it was:

30% weight loss
20% Cortisone shot
50% Physical Therapy and KT

Doesn't really matter how I got here....

I'm somewhere I haven't been in a long time....

I'm in the Pain Free Zone.