A set back is a step forward

So after my burst of motivation and energy I find myself limping around the house, moaning and groaning when I sit down or stand up. Waking up to muscle soreness that......well you get the idea. Just because I could jump again I thought I could do all the stuff I stopped doing (all together in about 3 days). And now I'm paying for it. I thought I had it all figured out in the weight room as far as keeping my body sharp. Turns out, there are a lot of areas that you just can't train without some good old fashion hard sprinting. The back hurts a bit which was to be expected, but that shouldn't slow me down. However I'm experience a strange tingle in my left quad that is bordering numbness. Before I push it that far I decided to shut it down. Shut it all down. Not knowing exactly which returning exercise has irritated that particular nerve stem I have to back off of everything until it feels normal again. As hard as it is with the fresh taste of vaulting in my mouth, its the smart thing to do, and that's who I have to be now. When it returns to normal I can pick apart those days, splitting up the new training items, and if the problem returns it will be much easier to decipher the cause. Like I've said before, guess and check. Each week I learn something new that is ultimately helping me in the larger scheme of things. I've already got a dam good idea of what it was though, and I'm pretty sure its not from the vault. Obviously I'm biased, but we'll see. 

I realize now that I will never be the athlete that I once was. I will never be able to do heavy squats, cleans, jerks, snatch's, or lunges again. I will never be able to pound away at the ground with plyometric training like I once could. I will never be able to block my left leg into the ground at high speeds to launch over a high jump bar or to wing a javelin with a violent roar.
Well the list goes on. And i don't want you to think I'm rambling on about what I've lost or this is some weak aim at your sympathy. Because honestly, I got my chance to do all those things, and I went for it, and I enjoyed it. But none of those things hold a candle to the vault, and are not an absolute necessity for success in the event. And if I can find a way to continue to vault, that's all that matters.
Because I can't train like I did in the past, does that mean I will never jump as high? No it doesn't. I think that I can still have a lifetime best, its just going to be a little more difficult with what I have to work with now. Before I was getting by with athletic ability, the guts of a hard worker, and balls of steel. And that was fine. Now the game has changed. I have to train smarter than ever. I have to be more humble than ever. I have to become emotionally disconnected from all new obstacles thrown in my path. And most of all continue to learn and grow stronger from it.

Short term failure is just fuel for long term success.