Wednesday, July 7, 2010

The injury that kept me away for some time

Have been away from jotting down my training experience for some time and have realized that discipline is as important for blogging as it for the squash training!! I had been down for 4 weeks in between with a hamstring injury - it was a pull and it was so painful that I was barely able to limp - leave alone walk!! I believe it was primarily due to dehydration and playing the hot and humid climate in Bombay - I was playing at 12 in the afternoon and our courts are not air conditioned. I was sweating by bucketfuls - but then that is a normal day of squash in Bombay in summer. Then suddenly I felt someting snap in my left calf - it was as if someone has hit me extremely hard on the calf with the racket!! I crashed on the court and could barely limp out!! Just imagine my luck - the player waiting to play after me was a doctor!! He told me not to worry - it looked like a cramp and I should drink lots of water to rehydrate and ensure that my body gets back all the salt that I have lost through sweating.So I did all of that and was hoping that the cramp will be fine in a couple of hours.

However, things did not get better after a day or so and I realized that the ligament that joins the calf muscles to the bone are injured and would need time for healing. Even moving my left leg was hell!! A lot of fomentation, crepe bandages and massages improved things slowly - but the slow healing - without any painkillers was frustrating. Anyway, I just tried to be patient - did upper body workouts that did not put too much pressure on the left leg and did slow stretching exercises for the hamstring!! It took about about 4-5 weeks for me to start moving around without feeling any pain in the hamstring.

Lessons learnt:
- Warm up the lower body and upper body well before playing
- Always make sure that the body is hydrated well to prevent any major cramps and injuries.

I guess that I learn things the hard way!!!

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