"If it ain't broke don't fix it."

Having been in Jonesboro with Daniel and Mark has immersed me into a much greater rhythm. Instead of getting up in the morning and feeling like I am training alone all day, I can picture them hard at work hundreds of miles away, and feel like in a way, we are all training together. Mark said it best “like minded people, with a common goal”.  Hopefully this charge can last as long as possible. When it fades I will have to find a way to get back Jonesboro, or cross paths with my great friends again.  In the upcoming months it will become much more difficult to make such a meeting happen.

Meanwhile I am doing well. I’m growing stronger in mind and body each day, and the pain in my Achilles tendon is almost nonexistent. Thankfully I was around smarter athletes than myself when I injured it, and they talked me out of continuing to aggravate it through jumping. With the temptation of being in Jonesboro if front of some the greatest sets of eyes, it was extremely difficult to swallow my pride and sit on the sidelines. Now even with it feeling about 90% I still plan to give it another full week before I test it through some light running. There is no reason to push. The only change in my training it has created is that I haven’t been able to jump, nothing else has been interrupted. But honestly, I wasn’t getting much jumping done before it happened anyway. If it wasn’t the Achilles it was something else.

Although the season was a roller coaster, I was able to get through it and even end on a great note. My body was finally fed up, and has given me plenty of warnings to remain off the runway for a spell so that it can recover from the continuous   beatings I’m putting it through.  Vault sessions were becoming more strenuous. The effort I was forcing myself to put in was yielding lesser results and suddenly my poles had to be smaller and smaller so I could make it to the pit.

 My absence from the runway is already paying off. The chronic pain erupting from my left scapula has quieted down a great deal. The pain in the lower left side of my back and hip has decreased dramatically, and I have something close to 90-95% reflex response returned to my left leg as well as a complete lack of my normal numbing and tingling sensations it encounters throughout a normal day, meaning the pressure from the herniated discs on the sensory and motor portions of the nerve stems in question, are actually retracting. Is it my heel lift? The Spinal Distraction? The lack of vaulting? Therapy? Pool Work? The 20 different daily vitamins and minerals? Happiness? I don’t know, probably all of the above combined. What I do know is, I’m still training hard, the right way, I’m getting better, and I’m not going to change anything to disrupt it. Well maybe one thing in a few weeks, but we’ll get to that. I always tell my athletes “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.” Now I’m taking my own advice, for once.  Imagine me healthy…….. Combined with who I have become. Scary.