Forced Rest day .. Part Deux

Last day of coaching! WOOHOO!!! A couple of months off to ourselves this should be great!

However, this means no workout tonight which may be a good thing since after yesterday’s Legs and Back (with Ab Killer) both Nicole and I are very sore below the waist. As exciting as that sounds, don’t get all giggly, the fact is that I have had the following conversation several times today:

Why are you limping?
My butt hurts
Why?
I did P90X legs last night
Is that the infomercial one?
Unfortunately, yes.
Why would you do that to yourself?
Honestly? I am starting to wonder…

Just as day 2 taught me, as the day wears on you do not feel better… In fact you get a quite significant increase in pain towards the end of the day. I am expecting that when I stand up to leave  today my butt may very well catch on fire.

I think this would be a good time to demonstrate what my back surgery did to my legs. The only picture I have of my legs prior to the surgery is below. I will take a picture of my legs as they are now today if possible. The upshot of the surgery was that once I was recovered, I had lost approximately 50% of my strength in my right leg. The size difference at the time was shocking, I had lost about 30% of the mass from my quad and I looked just plain bizarre. I can’t even think of an analogy for it, it was just weird. After what is now 8 years of rehab and constant work on the leg, I still have issues with it. I can’t run up steep hills for example, after a few steps my leg gives out. The other really messed up thing with it is that my body has compensated my giving me a strong butt muscle which makes it feel like I am sitting on an enourmous wallet in my back pocket. Anyway, it’s been 8 years now and I haven’t had a single picture taken where you can see my legs. I think it is about time.

By the way, my back injury was caused by a collapsing rugby scrum which I was caught under as a 14 year old. It resurfaced in the gym when I tried to do too much weight on the incline leg press and the stack came down on me. The motto of my story is do what you can, not what your ego tells you to do.