Recovery, Rehab, and Coaching

It's been about 2 1/2 weeks since my shoulder surgery.

When I went to see the hip orthopedist he was SHOCKED that I had just had shoulder surgery one week prior. He couldn't believe how fast I was healing. And I'll tell you, neither can I!

I was back in the gym teaching my women's class barely 48 hours post-op but I couldn't lift my arm up at all. Can you believe, I was on Tylenol with codeine for only 3 days after surgery and have been completely off pain meds since about 5 days post-op?! I think I scare my therapist, lol!

Today I can lift my arm straight up and by myself to 160 degrees! Out to the side, I have a little more to go but it's probably up to 120 degrees now. We just started deltoid strengthening exercises yesterday at PT for the first time. And I can't wait until we can start with the biceps and triceps, because mine have completely atrophied.

The only bad thing with improving so quickly is that you can't rush the protocol, you can only go at the pace the doctor set, even if I'm a little ahead on recovery time. Oh and the other bad thing is that I keep forgetting I'm not supposed to do certain movements because it no longer hurts all the time...until I do the movement I'm not supposed to, like reaching back to put a seatbelt on or reaching into my back pocket. Then I get a sharp pain to remind me not to do that again...for a while at least. :)

But teaching Jiu-Jitsu is still difficult. Luckily, the women have been preparing for the US Grappling Women Only event in Hampton, Virginia tomorrow, so we've been doing a lot of straight drilling and less detailed technical work. The timing worked perfectly because I can just show a quick simple movement and then have them repeat it a lot as fast as they can.

Last night though I had to teach the regular class and specialty class and then the regular class again today because Ryan took Seph, Quang, and Ostap (visitor from Canada) up to NJ for the ADCC Trials and Rick's in Brazil. (The guys did well at ADCC, no one won their division, but they each won at least one match and everyone learned a lot and next time will be able to go out much stronger.)

Anyhow, it was difficult for me to show some of the movements in the regular class. We were working on the catching the trail leg mount escape to half guard to taking the back and I would have to show one movement on one-side then switch sides to show the next movement on the other side since I still can't put weight on or post on my arm. Luckily, the guys were all patient with me and everyone seemed to get the movement despite my difficulties in showing it.

Specialty class this month has been all footlocks, but I'm not great at them yet so Ryan wanted me to teach wrestling instead. Have you ever tried to teach wrestling with one arm???? It is sooo hard! Lol! Thankfully, most of the students there that day had experience with the snatch single so I could just remind them about the details rather than show everything. We also added the flare to double, and I think they picked it up pretty well. But my arm hurt like HELL by the end of class today so I went immediately home to attach myself to my ice machine for an hour before packing, picking Megan up, and driving down to our hotel here in Hampton.

Good luck to Megan, Tammy, and Lisa tomorrow!!!!