And so its arrived. Wednesday February 10, the last rehab training session before I go to America on Sunday. I’ve been at this every week, mostly twice a week,  for almost 11 months and I guess in a way it ends here. It’s like a Uni exam. You study as hard as you can but exam time has finally rolled around. Belinda has done all she can – I couldn’t have asked for anything more – so now I have to go and sit the test. Like a good school teacher she can’t help me now I have to go and do it myself.

I warmed up on the boxes doing one legged squats carrying a 5kg dumbell in each hand

Small Box:  
30 x right legged squats x 3 reps   broken leg

30 x left legged squats x 3 reps

Big Box 
20 x right legged squats x 2 reps    broken leg

20 x right legged squats x 2 reps

This was much harder on the sound leg than the broken one but I still managed it ok although my patella tendon in the bad leg started to hurt. Also the coordination in my broken leg is still not as good as the sound leg.

Belinda arrived full of her usual briskness and I explained about the lack of coordination. She said that’s because of the intrusion in the knee from the surgery. The surgeon sometimes has to push the patella aside to get at the break. This stretches the tendon. This will improve over time and, as she pointed out, it is much better than it was and should improve with skiing although she warned me it may be a bit rough at the start.Thankfully she had nothing too strenuous planned but wanted to concentrate on stretching. It is too late to do any further strengthening work now. The horse has well and truly bolted.

I did a series of the now obligatory jumps off the big box before moving onto squats and lunges on the Kinesis machine. Things then turned weird. She got me to stand side-on to the machine, arms out straight in front of my chest, pulling sideways against the resistance. Then she asked me to stand on one leg. This mightn’t sound hard but it is the first time you try it. All the muscles in the foot, knee and thigh of the leg you are standing on go crazy at once trying to stop youy from falling over. It’s like standing one legged on a Bosu ball.

We had a discussion sitting in the gym after the session about how apprehensive I was about going skiing. It’s like the anxiety I got coming back from Freshwater in the Cole Classic. She had an interesting take: “Happens to people who have a serious injury, particularly if they haven’t been badly hurt before. It comes as a shock to them and you did have a serious injury. It’s also part of getting older. People just seem to lose a bit of physical confidence as they age. I don’t think that’s going to change.”

Such a wise head on young shoulders. I agree with her. Anyway bring on Montana.