23 May 2017 -Growth and Self Awareness Part 3

It is a frightening thought that man also has a shadow side to him, consisting not just of little weaknesses- and foibles, but of a positively demonic dynamism. The individual seldom knows anything of this; to him, as an individual, it is incredible that he should ever in any circumstances go beyond himself. But let these harmless creatures form a mass, and there emerges a raging monster. 
-Carl Jung.

CPAP Masks are a hit with the Ladies!

So picking up from part 2: 

I covered my pre-existing mental coping strategies, my messed sleep cycle and lastly physically what the hip joint itself was doing physically to my body in terms of inflammation, cortisol, etc. So where did all this put me mentally? Short Version, you guessed it, not in a good place. 


So when I agreed to go to the psych doc I knew I was in need of some help. I had worked with a professional in the past when I had insomnia about a decade ago so anxiety and worries about stigmas for me were low. I actually learned the last time something I pass on all the time, no one knows you are seeing a professional unless you tell them. I actually had seen the professional the last time for about 7mths and talked to people I worked with daily after the fact and they had no idea that was were I went twice a week. Not every experience just mine.


Initially I thought it was the lack of constant sleep and pain I needed to learn how to handle. As well as learn what was actually happening to me physically that I mentioned previously. So when I stated I was not in a good place. In the first place yes there was depression. From a variety of factors, loss of physical function for one, having no discernible end in sight to any of the physical issues, where I would end up post, being unhappy you do not want to be around people so I isolated myself, my work situation was one in which there was no discernible achievement at the end of every work day, thinking I would never be the same again. These are just some of the things that would spiral through my head.




They were all real to me, they were all minor to me, yet with the incurred sleep debt I could not shut them off. I felt as though I had lost my resiliency and mental toughness two things I have always prided myself on. What made it worse is that I felt I would never get them back. That was when the long term effects of depression started to settle in, thoughts of turning it all off, the thoughts of suicide. The mere fact I even had these thoughts scared me enough. Ultimately I knew I would not kill myself, yet as I the Demon hunter and I talked about, I know I will not carry it through, yet what happens that one day when something major happens and my compromised mental toughness is unable to handle and now I really am in a bad state? She forced me to think it through and make plans if I got to that point.




Through out all this I was still trying to train. Still trying to physically improve and be as fit as I could be for surgery. I struggled, this was not like the ACL repair at all. This was a longer timeline and it became apparent a lot of things I had neglected for far to long wanted attention. Remember that warehouse full of shelves filled with boxes? Yeah they started to fall off the shelves. This may sound bad initially yet it will be the best thing to ever happen to me. It forced me to adapt, it forced me to grow, it forced me to do something I had not done in a long time. I began to move forward again with a real purpose.


When you your forced to acknowledge things it is initially uncomfortable (putting it lightly, at times it creates a feeling of fear and then by extension avoidance). It has taken me over a year for me to truly understand and acknowledge my emotions and to let them have their place. I have wanted to quit more than once, I even told the Demon hunter (psych doc) that a few times.




"I really wanted to cancel my appointment and never come back"
"Why did you come back"
"Despite every feeling I have I promised I would see this through no matter what"


Looking inwards, actually experiencing emotions, acknowledging your own faults and mistakes sucks it hurts. What hurts more is regret. Making mistakes and failing in life is going to happen, not taking the time to learn is even worse. I did not want to numb the pain anymore. It kept coming back, those shelves kept spilling things. It was time to go through them and clean things up so I can move the rest of my life forward with purpose and to start setting goals again. Working towards something instead of just living. If I miss the mark on a goal so be it, I will learn something. If I put in the full effort to achieve something and fall short I can live with that. If I fall short because I shirked on the effort required maybe I did not want it as much as I thought I did. I would still learn though. So I think I have covered adequately what was going on my head and the thought process was. Now how or what I have done to get to where I am now?  That is next. The things I learned, the tools I use, and some of the realizations I have made that have allowed me to move forward.

20 May 2017 - Growth & Self Awareness Part 2

"Go back and tell the Doc I am GOING to have a successful surgery. So he can stop bringing up the High Risk PCAT nonsense" That was how a discussion at the work hospital ended yesterday.  -18 May 2016

June 2016 -2 Weeks Post Op

Dec 2016 with the Help of a professional we went hunting the Demons in my head. My Physio had suggested it based on her past experience with side-lining injuries or her own. It was the start of a journey that I had no idea where it was going to lead me. I am still working through it. It has been a bigger challenge than I thought it would be, yet I have continued to work and delve deeper into my own self awareness. For along time I operated on a very basic level of instinct I will say. I learned to compartmentalize when I was a child and then working in the military that behavior was re-enforced further. I am extremely good at it. The down side is that i never learned to even acknowledge I had anything for emotions except happiness and anger. I know what you are thinking a typical guy. Except I had worked around people for decades that no matter what was going on they could calmly work through any problem. Taking in the scenario, not let it rattle them, and finding the solution. Solution orientated thinkers if you will.
Yet when you live and work this way and never ever open up in any meaningful way those experiences, those emotions go somewhere. The best metaphor I have come up with is that I boxed them up and put them on a shelf. Picture something between that Wharehouse in the first Indiana Jones movie and that giant library of Orbs in that Harry Potter movie. Thousands of boxes pilled high on a shelf. As a system of coping it works, for awhile.

Remember the sleep issues I mentioned last time? Around the time I was going in to meet the Demon Hunter I was shift work in full swing and some days I would get 9 to 12 hours of sleep between shifts. Except no matter how much or little I slept I was always exhausted. Bonking out on the coach for hours at a time. Pulling over for a 30min nap while driving home from Ottawa which was only a 1.5 to 2hr drive depending on traffic and weather. If you have no idea what happens to your body or mind when you sleep you really need to take an hour away from what ever internet hobby you may have and do some research. Everything happens when you sleep, hormones are reset, muslce is built, your mind processes and problem solves. We need sleep being a champion of under sleeping for a long time let me tell you, I was very wrong on that account. 7 to 8 hrs every night, uninterrupted. Uninterrupted is also key, I might sleep 10hrs but I would be up every 2 to 3 hrs to piss, or because i had slid out of position and my hip ached so badly i needed to re-adjust.

Because it is Rickson. 

So far we have borderline coping strategies combined with a near useless sleep system. See how things are building in a bad direction? Most of this happened slowly, incrementally over a few years without me even noticing or simply working through it. As all things do, it built up and caught up with me. There were warnings signs i simply did not notice or know what to do if I did. The answer was always just push through it.

Now the last piece was what the damaged joint was doing physically. Which I already mention the external piece the chronic pain from the arthritis. Internally my body was dealing with large amounts of cortisol and inflammation which triggers weight gain. Which causes more weight on the joints. It got to a point that some days most of my joints hurt to some degree when I really thought about it. My lower back was either inflammed or feeling like I could throw it out at any moment due to the hip being out of alignment (an actual symptom of TIA). I could no longer run or else a few hours later the swelling in the joint would be brutal. To put a fine point to it in a matter of a year I lost most or all of my physical abilities to some degree. I can only imagine people with real actual illnesses or long term chronic problems go through. I say this in the sense I am recovering for all this, which I am deeply grateful for. I actually smiled and took pleasure in being able to do yard work this week. Something a year ago that 30 min of would have put me on the couch for 2 days.

More later.

19 May 2017 - Growth & Self Awareness

19 May 2017

This is a log I have written in my head at least a few dozen times in a variety of ways. The last year has been since surgery has been bigger for my personal growth and self realization than I ever could have predicted. An easy timeline of events leading up to today. Knee Surgery followed by a smashing rehab and recovery, I was feeling back on my game. Roughly a year after surgery my lower back started having issues SI strains and my low back feeling constantly out of joint every few months. When physio would fix these issues then my hip would feel sore. My Hip pain got so bad I pushed for an X-ray, which led to the revelation of how bad my hip was internally leading to the series of surgeon's visits getting me to where I am now.

Along the way a few other things happened in my life. My work sent me 2 hrs from home to Ottawa to live and to start working shift work for the first time. The news of the pending surgery came in at this time. My daily pain levels were rising ever so slowly un-noticed by me causing my sleep to be an issue. My shift schedule and isolated living situation allowed me to sleep more than I had in years. Yet I was still tired. So I asked for a sleep study, which determined the Apnea diagnosis and gave me a CPAP machine. That machine became a game changer for me, still there were issues.

My training was consistently bad with very few highlights. I was living a situation of work, travelling home, consistent pain, decreasing physical function, and consistently exhausted from the messed up sleep schedule and at times insomnia. I stopped creating goals. I started to give up on myself. Depression started to settle in regularly. I decided for the second time in my life I would reach out for professional help. I needed tools to deal with everything going on in my head. I was broken physically and I had sought a surgeon to fix it. When that was repaired I would seek a coach to get me back to a hundred percent. In the mean time I needed a coach to rebuild and train me mentally. Mental toughness is something that needs to be exercised just like a muscle, daily.

More shortly.

06 May 2017 -the thunder rolls in the distance....

"Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt"~Sun Tzu
As much as i reveal here there are still a few things I leave out that key details specific for me. 

Every training session starts with:
(Superset)
Double KB Split Squat 2 x 5 x 8 Kg
Double KB Squat 2 x 5 x 8 Kg
Double KB Clean 2 x 10 x 12 Kg
Band Pull a parts 100 reps
Back Ext 2 x 10-20

Highlights for Week:

1 May 2130 hrs
Pull Ups 10 x 6 x Bodyweight
OH Press 1 x 5 x 115
Some assistance work as well. (Stir the Pot, Bar Rep Squats, Side Laterals, Tricep Rope Pulldowns, Rear Delt Machine, Gladiator curls) 1-3 sets of 20 to 100 reps depending on the exercise.

2 May 0455 hrs
Step Mill 100 flights - 14 min 23 Sec
Glute and Bracing exercises. I should be able to get the step mill below 14 min next time around. I am cycling my Conditioning exercises from week to week. Next week is elliptical. The Week after is KB Swings /Skipping.

3 May 1840 hrs
Squats 1 x 5 x 180, 3 x 8 x 135

Assistance work (Alternating Side Plank, Wide Bar Facepull, KB Swings, Straight leg DL, TKE.)
This felt really good both physically and mentally. I am regaining my confidence that my back is not going to blow out. My bracing is solid, my movement is getting smoother. Hitting depth regularly is also coming much easier.

Oh yeah I and go to Jits class twice a week just to cover technique for now. 

Physio Notes: My TFL is still causing some issues so he worked on it as well my Piriformis (click ink to see where it is located and handy info). He also gave me the go ahead to ramp things up this week as i am doing.

4 May 1230 hrs
Bas Rutten Muay Thai Shadow Boxing 4 x 3min rounds (in the Apt Salt water pool)
I have found this the last 3 weeks to condition my body in a different way as well as safely challenging my hips and rotation through my torso. The water also allows me to build my foot work.I have done some 2 min rounds on dry land as well with decent success. I will be back in Muay Thai classes soon.

Photo proof i can actually skip again. This is huge for me. 

5 May 1840 hrs
Bench 1 x 10 x 155, 3 x 120 x 8
Numbers are super low because I am still working on solidifying the technique Swede & Panora taught at the Seminar. The technique is tightening up and my hip lower back are accommodating the position nicely. My right rotator in my shoulder is appreciating this position and as a result my shoulder is not sore the day after benching. All signs of slow, steady, progress.
Assistance Work (Weighted Pull ups, Chest Supported rows, Barbell Curl, Pull downs, High Cable row

Next week I finish up 5's week of the cycle by Deadlifting on Monday. Transitioning into Elliptical for conditioning and pushing the 3 min shadow boxing rounds from 4 to 5.

Notes:
The last few weeks mentally have had some huge ups and downs. The upside of things though has actually pushed up some deep feelings of joy. The restrictions are starting to fall away. the simple act of being able to jump rope 30 sec On / 30 sec Off is huge. So much fell away or was simply taken away from me the last 3 yrs. I knew I was going to get a lot of physically abilities. Now that they are starting to return fully I am both humbled and proud.
There was a time that i had given up on myself and doubted i would even get half back to where I am now. It is now empowering and humbling to fully realize this about myself. The only limit i have at this point is how much is me. I am working on that part of the puzzle the true mental game. Learning how to focus on what needs to be done rather than listening to the whispering demons of self doubt or fear. I will cover the strategies i have found in the next few blogs.


Goal 1a:
The Meet is in September. My bodyweight is still creeping down slowly, right on schedule. The goal for now is to merely register, show up healthy and go 9 for 9. Finally get on the platform for the first time. This will be the last time I mention the meet until I am getting ready the final week before.

Goal 1b:
Before the meet I plan on doing the PT test for work (FORCE Test). I want to crush the numbers this year new hip and all. I have a rough plan for it in my head right now. Specific proactive will not start until mid June with an eye to complete the test late July.

Thanks for reading.