Okay, so while we were in the midst of moving and had our house packed and moved except for necessities, I'm at home alone and was using a wooden chair as a stool to reach up and open an air vent. Well.... I didn't have the chair directly under the air vent so while I'm reaching, I'm also leaning... and lost balance. The chair went forward and I went down, face-up on top of the chair. Fell square on the small of my back and knocked the wind out of me! I was able to wiggle my toes so that was a good sign and my sweet dog came and licked my face so I was okay .... right? For the next week I thought so. I had an area on the right side of the small of my back that was swollen but that was about it. No bruising or discoloring of my skin. I was continuing with my workouts at the gym and helped my husband move a lot of our things. All was okay as long as I didn't wear anything too tight around my waist. One week later I went to our house to clean it before we had the carpets cleaned. It was about 4 hours of shower scrubbing, sweeping, dusting, vacuuming, mopping, etc. That night it was everything I could do to just get showered and ready for bed. My lower back hurt so bad that I just wanted to lay down. So apparently I over-worked it or re-injured it but from then on I couldn't do any extensive exercise without suffering that night. After about 3 weeks, I was pretty frustrated! I decided to stay home from work and the gym until I was able to see what a doctor said about it.
At this point I was so frustrated and unmotivated, I was ready to throw in the towel on my training. I ate pizza the night before (my husband was working) and ate some candy. I was so on the fence that I was losing my balance. The day I stayed home from work I got an appointment with a sports chiropractor. I think my back hurt worse after I saw him! And I hadn't been to the gym in two days! I was literally in tears because I was frustrated and it was out of my control. HOWEVER, the chiropractor said I could still go to the gym but I needed to take Aleve, use a cold pack on the affected area and he showed me a stretch I needed to do every hour and I would be FINE. We went directly to the pharmacy to get some Aleve and a cold pack and I tried my best to hold onto hope that it would get better as quick as the chiropractor said until after I had time to let the Aleve, stretches, and cold pack work. This was on a Weds and I had not gone to the gym the day before or this day and I still decided not to go to the gym until I saw how I felt on Monday. I DID re-direct my diet back to my training meal plan. One of these nights I was reading my current issue of Muscle & Fit Hers to try and get me re-motivated and I read an article on getting contest ready and one of the things it said was to start 12-14 weeks out because when it goes over that time frame you can lose motivation. That's when it clicked that maybe I started too early and that's why I had lost so much motivation. But I look back and see how everything had fallen into place so far I didn't think that was the case. I think that I needed to start that early to build my foundation but I did lose motivation because I started so early and therefore, I think that my little break to heal my back was much needed to get me going again.
That Saturday evening I decided to go run around the loop by my house. It felt SO good to sweat again! Granted it was only 4 days I didn't exercise but mentally it gave me a REVAMP that I needed! Both the break and the "Second Start". One of the things different was that I had always done my cardio inside the gym. This felt really good running outside on the road! The next morning I stopped at the gym on my way to church. I was running late, AS USUAL, so I only got 20 minutes in on the elliptical machine and only 157 calories burned but hey, it was better than putting it off! That evening I went for another run around the loop by the house. I felt GREAT! I was ready to get back to the weights!
