Another Wednesday morning has gone by and I’ve missed the swim at Manly. Woke up with a sore neck and hauled myself off to work. Dr Farey has advised no swimming until we get the MRI out of the way. So that’s another couple of weeks. Shame as I like the spring swimming as the water warms up.

Sore neck or not the show must go on. I’m in rehab for a broken leg and it’s Wednesday. That means my appointment with Belinda has come around again. I’ve been coming to the gym every Wednesday for eight months. You need a lot of discipline and perseverance to keep up with this stuff. The last thing I felt like was two hours in the gym. As Belinda was not available last week, this was a double session.

We did the usual such as stepping up onto the Bosu ball on my bad leg then balancing there and skipping sideways over the ball. She also showed me how to do two-legged squats on the Bosu ball which wasn’t too bad.

But good rehab instructors are not to be trusted. Just when you are getting comfortable they come up with some new torture. This week it was the Freeform board. This is a dinner plate with wheels. I was suspicious. She showed me how to use it but I was far from convinced.

“I’m going to do myself some shocking injury, rolling around on that thing,” I said, imaging doing the splits.

“It’s another form of one legged squat,” Belinda said.

Surprisingly it was easy, one of the easiest she has given me so far, considering it involved putting all my weight on the broken leg then bending it. It involves a lot of stretching of the inner thighs but that’s not too bad either.

She seemed very pleased about how much bend I could get and that I could keep my ankle, knee and hip in the same plane. The key to this is to not let the bent leg drift out. We then did some jumps from a squatting position. My feet would just come off the floor at the top of the jump, so I wasn’t going very high, but I haven’t tried anything like this since I hurt myself. It wasn’t too painful although I was tentative as I thought I’d hurt my neck .

I felt pretty good after I left the gym slurping on a cold protein shake. No doubt rehab has moved into a different plane. The goal has always been to give the patient -me- exercises that are just out of reach. Lately that’s becoming more difficult as my legs strengthen.

I don’t find all these new things as difficult as much easier exercises 6 months ago. Except for my neck, I’d be feeling pretty good about my recovery. Guess I should count my blessings.

The dogs bark, the caravan moves on.