so... i joined a cult

@mfladd i think i’m a little (a lot) ways from doing after pics. but, i do eat my bacon after the workouts like a good boy.

@carl669 Bacon does the body good.

@moondrake
Good for trying.

I’m afraid to try anything that puts lateral pressure of any kind on a knee. Because I want to avoid surgery.

I have some crossfit family members who are annoyingly healthy and energetic and inspirational and happy about doing all that.

@moondrake good for you for giving it a shot at least! we do some team workouts, but mostly individual ones. on the team workouts, i occasionally get paired with someone much fitter than me, and i had the same experience as you. they’re unfailingly supportive and motivational.

@f00l a lot of the movements can be scaled or changed to accommodate for injuries. i only have about 30% meniscus left in my left knee and those lateral movements kill me as well. the coaches were more than happy to give me a different movement to do. doesn’t mean the workout was any easier though. one thing i have noticed is that as the weeks progress, the accessory muscles in that knee have grown stronger. i can now do movements that would have killed my knee 6 weeks ago.

i like the small gym aspect of it because the coaches really get to know you and your capabilities. they seem to know when i should back off a bit, or when i can push harder. in the end, they still leave the decision to me. just today, one of the very fit athletes had to tap out at the 12 minute mark because he tweaked his back. no one pushed for him to keep going.

if you’re feeling it, go to a place and talk to the coaches.

@carl669
One of my knees is so messed up that a single misplaced step could have me needing surgery if I ever wished to walk again.

I won’t even think about tennis. I can walk jog, climb stairs ok. Anything the slightest bit sideways…

I always carry a knee brace w me jic. A few times a year I step off a curb wrong and have to put it on for a few days or a week.

It hurts my knee if I even think about Crossfit. I wouldn’t even think about it without talking to a physician. The Dr would prob want me to do some specific Nautilus type stuff first.

I am starting jogging or “very very slow running” again. I surprise myself my being able to do three miles, much to my astonishment. Next comes intervals, assuming I keep this up. Once I get into better cardiovascular shape, I might go see an orthopedic and get some advice re P90X (is that the name?) and Crossfit and all that.

And of course jogging/running plus springtime means I have so order some suncreen. Hi Amazon!

@f00l i’m actually kind of surprised you’re jogging. that’s the one thing my ortho specifically told me to avoid. he said walking was fine, short sprints were ok, but the repetitive impact with jogging long distance would probably be more detrimental than helpful. that’s just for me though. like i said above, i’ve only got about 30% of my meniscus left. then again, when he told me that, i still weighed close to 270 lbs. might be different now, but i still hate jogging.

@carl669
Jogging and running don’t bother me so far at all, and don’t seem to cause deterioration.

I don’t have a wear and tear situation or a sprain-type thing. I have a specific catastrophic injury than happened when I was about 18. No surgery that time.

Then I re-injured it exactly the same way, a few years later, except much worse. Boy did I get good with crutches. This time, surgery. The surgeon told me “basically you reduced everything in there to total junk”.

Incredible surgeon, but this was the early 80’s? and they didn’t have the fancy techniques they have now.

For me, anything slightly sideways on that knee is that prob.

FWIW, when I jog, I use “barefoot” type shoes.
Supposedly motion studies indicate that highly cushioned shoes xmit the impact and stress up the skeleton to the hips, knees, and back. Not that I have any real knowledge here.

Of course there are activities where you want highly cushioned shoes anyway. And my understanding of all this impact on the body stuff may be all bunk. Most of the marathoners I see, and my cousin the Ironman addict and her daughter, the Super-Ironman addict, all use very high-tech cushioned shoes.
If I were doing gym-stuff in a gym setting, I would prob want cushioned shoes for the “grip”.

So I’m the lonely idiot here. Oh well. I like my xeroshoes and the other brands I have.

@f00l I know a pretty good local ortho doc, in case you ever want a (second?) opinion. Father of a coworker/Ultimate teammate - he’s treated several injured Frisbee players I know; does sports injuries as well as std stuff.
I’ll paraphrase my 4 relatives who are doctors: If it’s affecting your quality of life, get a real diagnosis. Ask questions; get a second opinion if necessary. Don’t ignore the condition. Hopefully, start a treatment.

On a semi-related subject: My dad had 2 rotator cuff surgeries. In the 5 years between them, the state-of-the-art had advanced so much that there was almost nothing similar about the experiences. I encourage you to get a fresh check of the troublesome knee.

@f00l You have a catastrophic injury that happened when you were about 18? Was that a foot in mouth injury?

@Barney for your comment to @f00l

@compunaut
@carl669
Thx. Who are the local orthos?

My older bro is an anesthesiologist (local) and a tennis player and hunter himself, he knows all these people. Prob works with them.

Re: my knee

The real thing that is impacting my life is simply not making myself exercise much. IE being lazy. I get pretty steady running for a few years and then something interrupts me and I wind up completely abandoning the routine.

And then I turn into more or less a total potato. (As at present).

I’ve lived with this bad knee now for more than 30 years. AFAIK I don’t have other deterioration there such as arthritis or wear and tear - or no more than someone else whose knees don’t bother them, anyway. At first I didn’t realize that playing tennis on it was a really bad idea. After a few times having to stop chasing the ball and put on a brace, and limp for a few weeks, I figured it out. But I was never crazy over tennis, not the way some family members are, and didn’t really have anyone to play with at that time so it didn’t bother me.

But the knee doesn’t stop me from climbing stairs or running - at one point I was doing 5 miles x 4 times a week - or bicycling - or climbing reasonable walk-up mountains (several in NY and Maine, plus a few climbs in Big Bend and NM). Mostly those climbs just made my leg muscles and lungs and heart feel like they were about to die. Of course I wore a knee brace for that.

I don’t even know what my old injury is called. My understanding is that I basically have “nothing left” in there, but that may not be true.

The main issue is that my knee is completely unstable. One of the reasons I kinda dread going to an orthopedist is that they seem to all want to know right off how “loose” the joint is. Well mine is really really loose, and the thought of them testing the looseness and even touching it makes me want to put a machine gun between my knee and a medical person. I know this is irrational, but it’s my first instinctive reaction to the thought of seeing someone about it.

Prob what I need is some surgical repair to the ligaments plus maybe some rebuilding of something or other. Or something else. Since I never bothered to find out exactly what the injury was, which was stupid, and the surgeon died, gosh, 2 decades ago? I wouldn’t have a clue who might have the medical records now. And it really hasn’t been in my way much. Never stopped me from walking for 10-12 hours in a day in NYC and then doing the same thing the next day and the next (I really liked walking around NYC.)

I imagine they could pretty easily figure out what was what with a dye injection x-ray or whatever. I’m prob centuries behind the medical tech now.

Never stopped me from being on my feet all day when I wished to. So really a hindrance only for certain sorts of sports.

Since I brought up my knee earlier today in this thread, my knee (ie my atavistic fears of re-injury), has been whining at me all day. TIny little shooting bits of pain and a constant ache. It’s talking to me, or some portion of my brain is.

“No, I don’t wanna go see a doctor! That will hurt! Put a brace on me and leave me alone! Please don’t hurt me! Those doctors are mean! I’m just fine! All you have to do is take care of me and be nice to me! You don’t need those mean doctors!”

And on and on. But this is nothing, it’s no worse than any other day; it’s not hurt, this is anxiety pain. So I growl at it to STFU. Which my knee ignores.

“I’ll show you! I’ll swell up!” Which it actually did. Pure fear-based swelling.

All this at the same time that my wrist is still twinging sometimes from being sprained or whatever it was I did to it, and I don’t let it out of a brace for more than half an hour or so at a time. Just such bliss.

Thanks, bod. You’ve been a joy today. The entire day has been such a PITA of meaningless level constant twinges and little reminders of pain that I was forced to compensate by eating a chocolate donut.
OK, truth. Two chocolate donuts.
Fuck you, knee. Fuck you, wrist. You cowards. You made me do that.

I had decent insurance last year. This year my insurance is garbage. Next year it will be good again. If I am going to mess w knee and have to possibly be on crutches or get surgery again, I’m prob gonna put it off till the better insurance kicks in. Have only procrastinated more than 3 decades now.

I know they have major magic available to them now. They can practically make one from scratch, better than new. I wanna $6 Million Dollar Knee. A knee that’s faster than a speeding bullet and can resist kryptonite.
My knee does not like this idea at all, but once my insurance is better, …

I do wanna know the names of the orthos.

Thanks. Oh, BTW:
My knee hates both of you. My knee wanted to make sure I sent along its best wishes for you both to be in extreme pain and die horribly.

My knee is a manipulative evil little beast.

@Barney
Oh you are clever. So purple clever.

No, the injury was a “Brain Absent, Full Throttle Ahead Injury”.

Thanks you very much. <bows>

/giphy "purple clever"

@f00l If you’re going to wait anyway, I can give you ortho name & contact info next month while imbibing @ Wed Night T&P Craft Beer specials

@compunaut
I will certainly wait until my insurance doesn’t totally suck unless something bad happens sooner. Also the list of current physicians in my group is so minuscule that I haven’t bothered to figure out who any of them are. Next year all that changes.

PS: my knee still hates you but is willing to call a truce if you keep your mouth shut about orthos.

@f00l Just tell your knee that if it doesn’t behave it will simply be replaced. That wasn’t much of an option before

@f00l not sure where you stand on things (pun not intended) but I thought I might share a story. My mom is three weeks post-op having had her hip replaced due to osteoarthritis. She was working from home two days later and has been back to work full time for over a week now. Today she is walking about using a cane, in all seriousness, as more of a security blanket than any actual need for support and I expect that to be gone before March is out. She is standing taller and straighter than she has in years and her whole outlook on life is notably cheerier now that she’s not subconsciously suppressing pain (it only got impossible to ignore since late September or so, before that she was, at best, only vaguely aware of an issue if at all).

Have you considered talking to a doctor about a knee replacement? Join replacements like mom’s hip have gotten so routine that they only had her in the hospital for two days after the operation and most of that was just making sure she recovered properly from the anesthesia and such. From stories we’ve heard from others who have undergone such replacements her new hip is, quite literally better than the best Mother Nature has managed to come up with after millennia of evolution. It’s a true miracle of modern science that amazes me every day I see her up and around.

Edit: Just saw I missed a bunch while this sat unsubmitted for over 24 hours. Story bears telling anyhow so…

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

P.S. - If you get a knee replacement you can be the Bionic Woman and get your name legally changed to Stephanie Austin. You’ll be better than you were before. Better, Stronger, Faster. We have the technology.

@jbartus
My insurance sux this year. Next year I will have great insurance. At that time I was always planning to talk to my brother the anesthesiologist about it.

The recovery from the original surgery took months on crutches. I know they can do miracles now. All those sports people get these formerly career-ending injuries and then are back competing at a high level in a month or two.

Have you ever considered rebounding on a mini trampoline for cardio exercise? It is very low impact but you can get a great workout. I also have bad knees and they aren’t bothered at all - may even be making them stronger (I hope). Kind of fun too.

@f00l
/giphy "exercise for cats"

@conandlibrarian i did. and i also said i did 150 snatches today.

@carl669
Fuck that.

@f00l exactly.

@carl669

@carl669 Sooo, I guess your T-levels are OK…

@ACraigL i kind of had a heart to heart with myself about getting fit. i knew i would never go to a regular gym… just not that motivated to do my own workouts. i considered the P90X (and various other programs) route as well. but, i knew it would be too easy for me to get distracted trying to do something at home. (insane kudos to you for being able to!)

aside from having someone else program the daily workouts, the biggest draw for me for this particular place was the small class sizes. they cap it at 10 people. i go to the 5:20am class and there’s usually only 4-5 people at that time. 1-2 of them is at my fitness level. so, having someone to pace myself with really helps.

@carl669 It’s funny about finding the thing that works for you. Fitness seems like such a struggle until you do. I legitimately miss working out when life gets in the way. Mind you, I keep my workouts to around 30 minutes, high intensity, mostly resistance training (i.e. weights, push-ups, pull-ups), then run for 3-4 miles on my treadmill on the alternate day.

My rallying cry is that I don’t do any working out for 23 and a half hours a day. 30 minutes seems like a low barrier to entry in that regard. Even this limited time has dropped 15 pounds off me since I started and I gotta say, I look pretty good for my age, even with a shirt off. My wife agrees.

@ACraigL exactly. find the workout that you can stick to.

@f00l the place by me (i’m in the aurora/naperville area) had a new year special running. i think it’s normally $160/mo for unlimited visits. they had a BOGO special. once that expires, i’m going to be doing the 3x/wk package. i think that’s $120/mo. granted, it’s substantially higher than a regular gym. but, i know i will go on a consistent basis so it’s completely worth it to me. apparently, i enjoy getting my ass kicked.

For years, I have been against the movement of crossfit–not because I am anti exercise… I am against crap form and doucheyness. I understand that not all crossfit is that; however, I have seen too many injuries as a result of bad form, improper supervision and training. I recently found an awesome gym with a hint of crossfit. The training, coaches, etc, everything is perfect! I am moderately a convert but just ever-so-much. I woldn’t say I have gone full blow crossfit–just a taste.

@connorbush come to the dark side. we have WODs, EMOMs, AMRAPs and other various acronyms.

seriously though, i’ve probably read the same things you have as far as injuries from crossfit. i picked this place specifically because of the small class sizes and the coaches. they seem to have no problem stopping you in the middle of a workout if your form starts going to shit. one of them had me reduce the weight i was using so i could keep my form correct.

i guess it’s probably the same whether it’s a crossfit gym or a regular one. it comes down to how well the coaches can teach and how attentive they are during the workouts.

@carl669 maybe one day. but today is not that day. I am on a way too expensive contract for 11 more months. Once I get my base health in check and lose a 1/3 of my present mass–then I might check out a box as the kids say.

@connorbush i still can’t call it a “box”. maybe i just haven’t been brainwashed enough.

@carl669 We call ours a gym for the most part. I don’t think I’ve ever heard my coach call it a box. Same with the previous one I belonged to.

@connorbush There are good coaches and bad coaches, like anything. My first coach had me squatting onto a box while holding PVC or an empty training barbell until my form was rock-solid. Took four months before she finally let me start squatting regularly with nothing under me. If you ever look into joining, make sure to find a coach that really stresses form above all else.

@Barney come on! i have a feeling you’d kick ass more than you let on.

@carl669 I’m afraid I’m a bit of a klutz.

@milosbaby thanks! i’m looking forward to 17.2. well… if looking forward to getting your ass kicked is a thing.

@mikey good luck! due to current knee issues, i did it scaled (step-ups). it’s still killed me. it’s actually the burpess that do me in every time. i fucking hate burpees.

@katylava what is that? i have a friend that does it and posts pics from time to time. everything has a weird orange glow. it looks like he’s in a weird nightclub, but with no booze.

@carl669 it’s a gym with guided 1hr interval training workouts where they monitor your heart rate to see how hard you should be working at it. they alternate between rowing, treadmill, and resistance exercises over the course of the hour. the intervals are something like… heart rate in the “green zone” for a few minutes, then heart rate in the “orange zone” for a minute or so. hence the name.

i really liked it but it was frustrating when the person next to me would try to encourage me to push harder because they would look at my speed or incline and it was low (to them), and i’d be like, stfu i’m in the orange zone. the coaches were great though, they never tried to push harder if you were in the orange.

i was like, really bad at it though. so unfit.

the orange “glow” is just branding.

@f00l i imagine, like anything else, the claims are as true as what you put into it. i think any workout program will do you good if you do it consistently . haphazardly doing a workout every once in a while probably won’t reap any benefits.

@carl669
Sigh. Regarding sticking to exercise routines, “haphazard” is my middle name.

@f00l @carl669 @katylava Spouse does Orange Theory. I think the idea is that when heart rate is in ‘orange zone’, fitness improvement is happening. That zone is different for everyone. Since you have monitor gizmo strapped on & broadcasting, coaches (& others, I guess) can help you get in the orange, maintain it, & back off as reqd.
A workout has to actually be work or it’s kinda just wasting time.

@compunaut
Not completely true for endurance work that a workout has to be work - i think - in that you don’t have to constantly push yourself past all kinds of barriers in order to gain from it, if the workout is serious in the first place.

People who did serious aerobic long-form work - esp as part of daily life - walking, running, carrying, other work - and did it for decades, can then be sedentary for decades and then still show the benefits, when they are quite elderly, on a medical treadmill test, even if they haven’t done the “aerobic work” for a really long time.

But for most muscles and flexibility, i think it’s true that you have to keep pushing.

Not what I was looking for, but I’m going to leave it.

@DaveInSoCal hmm… apparently, i’ve been doing it all wrong then.