Well, dancers, I hope you did more dancing than me this past week! I saw the PT this morning (yay, my hips are sore but re-aligned!). I’m looking forward to working with her and getting back to more dancing. In related news, my neck spasmed when I stretched/twisted the wrong way trying to put sunscreen on my back on Friday and I had to get my hair cut with less mobility and a lot more pain. It was real fun trying to lean back enough so the hairdresser could wash my hair! Not to mention making turns in the car to and from the salon. Ouch. My neck issues will be the next thing I tackle with the PT.
Continue readingTag: physical therapy
Start with Step 1, not Step 20
While I wait for Henri’s leftovers to arrive (the storm, not a weird takeout restaurant), I’m here to make good on my goal/promise from last week and report on the goals I’ve come up with to get me back into dancing form after moving to the opposite corner of the country. Would you believe it’s already been a month since I arrived at my new home?
Continue readingGetting Grounded to Take Flight
When I first had an inkling that I was going to need physical therapy for my knees, before I even got the official word from my orthopedist, I started to research PTs because I wanted to make sure I saw one who worked with dancers. There was no way I was going to see a PT who didn’t understand why I had to keep dancing at least a little bit while I recovered from my injuries. Lucky for me, Doctors for Dancers had just launched and a PT local to my area had added herself to the database of dance specialists.
Two+ years later, we’ve gotten my knees back into dancing shape (mostly), but we’re still working together on other issues. Besides just directly working on healing my body, my PT has been helping me better understand my body and increase my body awareness, which has just been a boon to my dance training!
Continue readingUnderstanding Why My Body Hurts
Happy Saturday, dancers! Life has kept me busy over the last few weeks. I was travelling for about a week (airports and airplanes were a lot fuller than my last trip in February!). The day after I returned home, I was sitting in line to get my second dose of the Pfizer Covid vaccine. I’ll be fully charged in another week, yay! Go go gadget Covid shield! For those interested, I had one day of fever and body aches following the shot. Unfortunately, the body aches triggered one of my headaches (it doesn’t take much) and that hung around for several days. It was interesting how the fever and body aches came and went. I described it to a friend like doing a system check – flip the switches on and then flip them off. I was feverish and then I wasn’t. There was no lingering.
Luckily, I was free of all symptoms in time for my first dance lesson in two weeks. I didn’t have the opportunity to solo practice while I was gone (aside from visualizations), so my body was either going to love or hate me for jumping back in. Sometimes I feel like the Tin Man during those first few dance steps as I shake the rust off my joints. Our warmup Waltz felt pretty good though!
Continue readingBack in the Waltz of Things, But Not the Same Waltz
I’m officially back to regular private lessons, twice a week! I think it’s been over a year since I’ve had more than one lesson in a week. It felt strange, in a good way, to return to the studio for that second day. My sense of what day it was, shaky at best since the pandemic, was also thrown off, but for the chance to dance more, I didn’t mind.
Continue readingOne Impossible Thing at a Time
Tomorrow marks a full month of working from home. Time has been moving at an erratic pace. It feels like months since I had a dance lesson, years since I last competed, and yet, have I really been home for an entire month already?
Week 4 of staying at home brought its own challenges, but I held fast to the idea of pacing myself. Finding the right pace turned out to be one of the challenges, and the search continues.
Continue readingDancing on Carpet and Other Quarantine Challenges
Three weeks in. It’s been interesting to reflect on how each week of staying home has brought something different. The first week was full of stress and anxiety. The second week was full of motivation and determination to not sit and wait for things to “get back to normal” and instead, accept this new reality and figure out how I was going to thrive in it. Week 3 unfortunately had me paying for some of that enthusiasm.
But as I always say, it’s all part of the journey!
Continue readingStaying Fit Through Knee Injuries
It’s been over 6 months since I first started going to physical therapy for chondromalacia patella in both of my knees. In the first couple months, I regained the 6 pounds I had lost during the fitness program I joined at the beginning of the year. Then I signed up for a 90-day transformation program and lost almost 11 pounds.
Aside from the weight loss, the biggest change in the last 6 months is that my body has gotten stronger. I had a lesson with the owner of my studio last week and she commented that she could see that I was using my core as I danced the practice routine she provided. She was impressed with my strength. She’s one of those people who doesn’t give praise just because, so when you get a compliment from her, it really means something.
That plus compliments from my physical therapist on how I was handling my at-home PT inspired me to share what I’ve been doing to not only stay fit, but also grow stronger, as I recover from double knee injuries.
Continue readingCountdown to Desert Classic 2019: 17 Days – Go/No-Go
I thought this post would be coming out next week, but the wait ended early. If you’ve been following along, you know Teacher and I set a go/no-go date by which we would do a final assessment of our Open routines and decide if they would be ready to debut at Desert Classic. I was determined to get them ready, as I’ve grown weary of sitting on the sidelines since my last competition at the end of August. But as Treebeard liked to say, don’t be hasty. Being determined is one thing. Actually being ready is another.
To keep you from shivering too much from anticipation, I’ll just come out with it.
(Bonus points to those who can name the movie references.)
Countdown to Desert Classic 2019: 1 Month – Wait For It
The countdown has begun! Desert Classic Dancesport Championships is only a month away. I’ve booked my hotel room and confirmed my dress rental. I plan on getting entries done this weekend if not sooner. Only thing left is the dancing (small detail).
The Girl with the Tree Tattoo 