Weekly Goal Summary And Thoughts

Over on my blog at Spark People I write down a summary of the past week's goals. I'll do my best to post one here as well every Sunday.

My goals for last week were to get in three days of strength training. That was basically it. Seeing as my toe was still giving me problems, I took the week off from my elliptical again. I did get in my three days of strength training, I had to really force myself on Friday to get it done. I had a bad night's sleep Thursday and was just not in the mood. But I told myself "It's only 45 to 60 minutes out of the day. DO IT!". So I did.

Normally when I force myself to get it done, I have one of my better workouts. Friday, not so much. Yes, I felt good for doing it, but it just seemed to take forever. I'd find myself thinking "Am I done yet?" "Can I be done now?" and similar things. When I was done, I thanked the weekend gods for arriving and that I didn't have to do this again until Monday.

I had the plan of wearing my shoes all day last week to see if that would help my toe heal. Well, it didn't happen. I went barefoot like usual. I wasn't in the mood for shoes. I also think that what happened to my toe is actually a sprain. Due to how I push the peddles of my elliptical, that toe joint was just getting too much pressure on it, and it sprained. I looked up what to do for a sprained toe, and it gave the usual R.I.C.E treatment.

R: Rest - I did indeed rest my foot.
I: Ice - Ice never really works for my injuries. I find heat works best for me, and I have a couple of bean bag heating pads that I use. Just pop those babies in for 45 seconds and let the heat loosen the muscles and tendons. I have cold feet anyway, so they always feel good.
C: Compression - I didn't use any kind of compression other than squeezing my foot with my hand to see where the pain was originating from. Doesn't really count though.
E: Elevate - Yep, I sure did. I propped my foot up on the couch when watching TV, or else I'd put it on the coffee table.

The good news is, it's not hurting as badly as it was. It used to hurt all along the inner foot. That part has gone away, it's just the big toe joint now. And that's slowly improving. Not so much that I'll be doing 30 minutes on the elliptical Monday morning, but I might jump on maybe Wednesday and see how it is. If I feel any discomfort at all, I'll stop. I'm doing my best to be patient.

As far as this week's goals. Pretty much the same as last week. Three days of strength training and that's it. Rest the foot. I'm thinking of skipping my standing leg routine as that puts pressure on the toe, especially standing leg lifts and calf raises. So that pretty much nixes my entire standing leg routine. In the past, if I skipped one portion of my strength routine, I'd skip the entire thing. I need to get rid of that "all or nothing" attitude. It's OK to skip part of a routine. I need to get that into my head.

I have my weekly weigh in Monday morning, and I'm not expecting a loss. I had some high calorie meals last week (i.e. Domino's pizza), so we'll see what happens.

How do you deal with an injury? Do you do what you can or do you take a break from all exercise?