MY TRAINING HELL!

Article was written in 2011

3 months and 3 days ago I was gearing up for the National Weight Lifting tournament in Belfast.

I was on a 13 week programme to prime my lifts for competition. Looking to hit a 111kg clean and Jerk and a 90kg Snatch.
I felt good and ready for competition. 2 week out from the event I Squatted heavy in the gym wear I work. All was good and I left the squat at 145kg. After training I went through my mobility training.

After my shower I went to coach my client for the night. As the night went on I found my right foot - toe starting to hurt. By the end of the night I ended up limping. I did not put much thought into it and went home to bed.

The next day I woke up to find my foot twice the size and immovable. I happen to have crutches in my apartment from a previous injury and proceed to go to work. After about 3 hours I was on my way to A&E. Spending an hour in the waiting room a doctor called my name. Straight away he diagnosed this as a tendon tear.

Treatment = rest, anti-inflammatory and keep off the foot for 2 weeks. This meant that I was out of the competition. Needless to say I was not a happy camper.

So I did the treatment and all seemed well and in 2 weeks I was walking fine. At the beginning of week 4 I woke up in the middle of the night with my foot throbbing. I could not believe this. So I Spent the morning trying to cool down the heat and pain until the chemist opened to get painkillers.

By the end of the day I was back up at the hospital and found the rudest doctor in the country. I told him what had happened and that I want an x-ray to find out what was going on. After the x-ray came back and was clear I asked what can I do. This is the second time it happened. DOCTOR said “take pain killers and walk on it” I could not Dorsi or Planter (up-down) flex my foot.

So I went to a good Friend who had a look at the tendon. Because of the diagnosis  she believed that there was a big tear but was concerned there was no bruising and the history had no impact to the joint.

I went back on pain killers and rested again, took time off work and treated my foot as best as I could. Every thing seemed to go well as I went back for light training.
Everything was going well. I started movement again which after a week I found my grove. The next week I started to add weight to my lifts and by the end of the week I was feeling great and ready to push the weight back up.

2 Days later I woke up to at 5am to my foot in bits again. You can understand I was Pissed. I could not believe what was happening to my foot. I rang our Physio In  East Coast Barbell and booked an appointment.

Emma was very good and asked a lot of questions to find the cause of the injury. After a lot of time Emma came up with the conclusion that it could be Gout (GOUT F#*K THAT)  I had to go to my GP for blood tests to confirm it.

The Doc said all the symptoms are classic signs of Gout and tested my blood. Blood came back negative (no sign of gout in the blood). So I was given a higher does of anti-inflammatory  and went on my merry way.

3 weeks later I start to get a pain in my foot. The Tuesday I was back limping and on the Wednesday I was back at the docs. I was not happy with my treatment and sought out a new Doc that was recommend to me by a client and friend.

So My new Doc seemed to have a better handle on what was happening. She is convinced it is gout but took blood and explained more about it. As much as people say Gout is Food related, new studies are saying different and there is new and better treatment for it.

So Im back on pain killers and anti-inflammatory and have had to take another week of work. Over the past 3 month I have trained some upper body when possible and had 1 week of weight lifting.

Having this Injury/condition has halted a lot of things in my training, work, and social life. But out of this nightmare I pushed to do something that I new worked and have confirmed it over the last 20 days.

Imagine not been able to train, it’s a mind fuck to say the least. But what if you could still get fat loss (not weight loss) amazing energy, lose weight and feel better even though your on crutches.

Well guys I’ve done just that.

My next article will explain how I did and do it.


Thank you for reading

Stephen Kinsella