It is amazing how something as simple as catching a football wrong can derail your workout plans. After my mile race on Sunday, I spent the afternoon at the beach tossing the football back and forth while out wading in the ocean. One wrong catch, and the finger has been jammed. Five minutes later, it’s still hurting, which is starting to get to out of the ordinary.
Yesterday, I got up and went about my morning all the way up to the point where I leave for the gym, when I realized that my swollen and bruised finger was not going to do very well trying to support a barbell. As the morning progressed, the bruising kept spreading from the base of the finger until it had gotten about a third of the way past my last knuckle. It is still discolored today, but it is not nearly as purple and is starting to look more fleshy. It is still swollen though. If my wedding band comes in again this week, then I will not be able to try it on.
My workout plans are flexible enough to account for minor setbacks like this. I took Monday off from lifting, and very well may take the rest of the week off and let my finger heal. In the meantime, I will get plenty of running done, which can be held without having to support weights that are heavier than myself.
How much would your training be derailed by something as silly as a broken finger?
The last time I broke a finger (one of my own, anyway) was a few years ago, and I wasn’t lifting weights at that time. I suspect, however, that if it happened now it’d only have a minor impact on the training; but that I’d notice it a lot in everyday things such as shaving or tying shoelaces.
It’s still swollen and purple, but I’ve got most of the flexibility back. I may take the rest of the week off from lifting just to be safe, but then again I may not. That’ll probably depend upon my work schedule.
The thing that derailed me the last two weeks was an odd flu-like sickness. I couldn’t get up in the morning to weightlift or run, and I was just tired all the time. I’m finally feeling better so I think I’m ok for the next week, but it was a major bummer for a while.
It’s the small things that get you off your routine, and then it’s hard to get back into it.
Yeah, I took a week off to let it heal. I am leaving in a few minutes to pick up where I left off last week and get back into the swing of things. It is still a little sensitive, but the bruising and swelling are (mostly) gone.
My routine shouldn’t be too bad to get into, since I ran the whole week so I didn’t just sit on my butt the whole time.
Hope you get healthy soon; I hate being sick.