If you want to know more of the backstory on how I got rhabdo and my adventures in the Hospital, you can go listen to the last few episodes of our LHRL podcast. Mainly this one: https://www.liftheavyrunlong.com/lhrl-147/

It’s a pretty crazy story and as I’ve slowly began to recover from it I am finding that there aren’t a whole lot of stories out there on the internet detailing the recovery from a pretty serious case of rhabdo. So I thought I would blog my training for the next few months or so in order to document the recovery process.

I am on week 4 since I went to the hospital and was diagnosed. My shoulders have taken a very slow route to recovery. My right shoulder is the worse of the two. My CK levels when I got to the hospital were 650,000. I’ve lost A LOT of muscle and strength. I am very weak across the board. I can’t do any testing or anything, but my 12 year old son can beat me at arm wrestling still and until recently I could barely lift a drink up to my mouth with my right hand. Mobility improves a little bit every day though and I’m VERY grateful for that. I can clean myself in the shower, shave and dress myself now which I couldn’t do when I got back from Canada so I’m really really happy about that.

My Doctor said I could start jogging a little bit and moving around, but nothing serious until after at least four weeks. Here at the start of the 4th week, I’m not feeling ready for anything anywhere near what you would call serious. But I’m moving. 🙂

Day Zero

I thought I would start out doing ROMWOD or as much of it as I was able to do followed by some light jogging. So this past Sunday (today is Monday) I did a 20 minute ROMWOD routine followed by a 2 mile jog. The pace of that run was 11:29/mile.

For some perspective, a month ago I could have comfortably ran 2 miles at a 7 minute pace. So I am easing my way into it for sure, but there is no way I could run a mile at a 7 minute pace right now. At least I don’t feel like I could.

Day One

Today (Monday) I started out with 12 minutes of ROMWOD. I did the shortened routine. Then I went out for a jog. 30 minutes of 1:00/Running and 1:00/Walking. Here is the result of that run:

Again, not pushing too hard, but I felt pretty good. It just feels really great to be out there moving and doing something.

For a little more mobility perspective, here are a couple of instagram videos I took over the last couple of weeks to show you some of my range of motion improvements.

Then a week or so later:

 

Mentally I feel ok. At times it gets frustrating to not be able to move or lift things like I use to, but it’s not bothering me as much as you would think it would. For the most part I’m pretty positive about training. I’m looking forward to seeing what kinds of things I get into as I start easing back into things.

I weighed in today at 185 lbs. I haven’t been down to this weight in several years. In my mind I feel like it is mostly because of losing a ton of muscle mass.

I look forward to day two. These will be short check in posts. If you have any questions, as always, just shoot me an email at von@liftheavyrunlong.com or look me up on social media.

The Rev