Back to the Gym: The Trial Run

Friday was my first unofficial day back at the gym. I didn't really have a plan going in but knew I would be hitting cardio and core. I figured that would be a good trial run to see how things were going.

First thing I should mention is that going to the gym with a giant brace on your arm is going to elicit a question or two. I don't mean that sarcastically, I mean it's the same two questions over and over again.

1. What happened?

2. How long does that take to heal?

In fact, everyone is going to ask the same questions. Just remember that people are asking because the care and they are curious. It's not like they are trying to ask the same questions over and over, but they simply care. With this surgery it's a little different. Lots of people have heard of Tommy John surgery but very few people have met recipients of it. It's interesting and fascinating to people especially your athletic friends and your baseball buddies.

Be patient and be informed. People just care.

The gym was overall pretty good. I did an elliptical for 15, then core and shoulder work, then an inclined walk on the treadmill for 10. It was a total of about 50 minutes or so and I didn't push myself too hard.

The elliptical was tougher than I thought. The bouncing movement didn't feel too great so I ended up resting my arm on the side for most of it. That seemed to work out fairly well.

Core work was 3 supersets of weighted leg raises for lower abs and a variation on a twisting crunch on a giant ball. My abs are sore so I think they worked. I then moved over to work with tubing and did some simple trunk rotations mixed in with interior and exterior shoulder rotations.

I finished with an incline walk on the treadmill at just a 4.2. It was an easy finish. That means indeed to find something different. Doing stair work should quickly solve the "too easy" problem.

One thing I discovered is that I can't use the cables and pulleys which are usually a pretty strong go-to for me. It takes two hands to adjust the height of the cable and two hands to switch out the attachment on the end of the cable. So that was a little frustrating but the backup plan was ok. That should just be temporary.