Do you want to run faster and catch better?!

Why am I sitting here with ice on my crotch? It’s all because of a 5-year-old, my nephew Colby.

War

It’s Thursday evening when Randy (7-year-old nephew) and Colby come into my room with a deck of cards asking me if I want to play War. So I say “Sure, but first I need to put on some music.” I turn it to a Latin Jazz station and we sit down on the floor to play. A few minutes into it, I realize I need some Perrier. I ask them if they like fizzy water, and they look baffled. I say, “It’s just water but it has bubbles like pop.” Randy says he can’t drink caffeine. I say, “there’s no caffeine in it, it’s just water.”

So I find 3 cans of Perrier and we start drinking.

They decide it’s pretty cool to listen to jazz and drink Perrier with me, but Colby goes out a few hands into our War game. He is messing around bored and finds my weights. I show him a few lifts, and we decide that War is way too boring and we are going to lift weights. I show them some of the lifts I do, and they show me some of the exercises Randy does for football. Colby is still too young for football.

We have a pretty good time until Grandma Honey calls the boys for dessert and discovers they have been drinking Perrier right before bed. Then we all get into trouble, but mostly me.

Come Saturday

Then on Saturday, Randy and Colby ask me if we can lift weights again, insisting on more pop-water and Latin Jazz. Since it’s the afternoon this time, I feel it’s pretty safe and get the Perrier.

We start lifting weights, Colby on 2lbs, Randy on 5lbs, and I’m lifting 10lbs. They show me some more football stuff, and we try to figure out how to do the football exercises with weights. Christopher (9-year-old nephew) comes in and shows us his football exercises too.

Soon enough Randy and Christopher get bored and wander away. That’s when Colby starts shouting “Do you want to run faster and catch better, Aunt Jenn?!”

I have to think about that, but I agree, sure, faster is preferable to slower, and I can’t really catch any worse than I already do.

The race

So, we grab our weights and start sprinting up and down the hallway, which Colby informs me is a race. At first, I let him win the ‘races,’ because he’s 5 after all. Then I realize we are going really fast, so I start trying to win and failing to win. Finally, I can feel my lungs in the back of my throat and we are (I am) forced to stop.

Colby moves on to something else, and I start feeling a familiar and unpleasant sensation, my old adductor strain is back. Where’s the adductor? You guessed it. Shoots right out of the front of the pelvic bone.

What can I do?

I really hate it when I get on a roll exercising only to be sidelined by injury or sickness. I have had to learn how to keep exercising with an injury. In this case, it is a re-injury, and I really want it to heal completely so I don’t have to worry about injuring it over and over.

I’m not a doctor, so you know the standard disclaimer: check with a doctor first.

With a lower body injury, you can work on upper body strength, sometimes even abs depending on the injury. You can also do low impact exercise like swimming or I guess bicycling. Bicycling really messes up my body, but you just have to know yourself, right?

As far as re-injury, I don’t know if anything can truly be done. In my research, I found many contradictory statements. If anything can help, it would be taking it very easy until it doesn’t hurt anymore. Then you can work in exercises to specifically strengthen the injured muscles. Finally, once you put it back into use, heat it before exercising and ice it after.

There you have it: “ice it after.” I put the ol’ adductor back into use today and yeah, I can feel the burn.