I am on Cloud 9 right now. Not only did I get my certificate for Precision Nutrition in the mail…

Yippeee!!!!!!

But more amazing and totally awesome….

I got to do lateral jumping at PT today!!!! Holy moly did it feel good!!!! I haven’t done any real jumping since before surgery…like 6 months!! To say I’m excited is an understatement!! My PT wrapped a bungie around my waist and set up 3 cones. One slightly in front of me and to the side, one directly to my side and one slightly behind and to the side. I was facing in the direction so that my right leg was the dominant leg starting off. My PT explained what I was going to do and as I stood there listening to him, I scrambled to visualize what exactly this was going to be like. Was it going to hurt? Would my muscles fire properly so that I didn’t fall flat on my face? Would my hip be able to stabilize on one leg while I pushed off it to fly high in the air and not to mention landing back on it as I jumped back towards the bungee?????? Ready???

“Jump! But don’t put the non weight bearing foot down.” Holy crap people.  The beauty of the bungee is it made it hard to jump away from it as I put all my weight on my right leg to do so, but even harder to resist it pulling me back in as I leaped off my left leg heading back towards the attachment of the bungee to the wall and hoping to all hell and back that when I landed on my right leg (please hip don’t fail me now) I would be able to stabilize without pain. And guess what????

I DID IT! It didn’t hurt one bit! And I kept at it for one whole minute!!! Oh man the smile on my face. 🙂 Next up was the left leg which was a breeze since it’s the strong side (left side, strong side right??). All in all 2 whole minutes of jumping!!! I got out of that bungee real quick as I bent over trying to catch my breath. I stood up, patted my belly and said, “Welcome back.” Holy core workout. I then patted my quads and said the same thing. Welcome back body. It’s nice to see you, and feel you again; to feel that burn in the muscles.

After I completed my two minutes, I was embarrassingly out of breath but boy was I proud of myself as I high fived my PT. I think he is proud of me too. He’s watched me since the first day I crutched in with Dora after filling out the evaluation form, answering every question with the “extremely difficult” option and feeling pretty discouraged. He watched me start to make progress towards getting off my crutches and building back my strength. He watched me as I began to get off two crutches and move around with more ease. He then witnessed my set back when I smashed my hip into my door and how frustrated I had become as the hip went into spasms for days. I almost cried at PT that day. As the hip calmed down, he watched me progress back towards two crutches weight bearing, then one crutch, then no crutches, then lunging, squatting with a ball, sliding around on the slide board, jumping on the leg press machine, balancing like a pro on the wobbly disc and finally lateral jumps with my new best friend, the bungee. 

Ah life feels good!! It’s amazing what makes me proud now and what gets me excited and happy regarding my fitness. Since I’ve started “working out” again (some weeks its only 1 day and some weeks it 4 days depending on the hip), I have dropped about 3% body fat. Normally that would get me giddier than anything in the world but not today people. Not today. Today I am proud I jumped around with no pain. I look back on where I was mentally before surgery, to after surgery and how gross and incapable I felt and I am extremely proud of how far I have come. The mental and the physical. Life kind of fell apart last November but I super glued it back together with a little help from my friends, my family, my PT and my surgeon.

It’s the journey that matters. It’s the small accomplishments like jumping around with a bungee chord on your waist that I never would have dreamed would make me this happy. It was literally the highlight of my week and if that’s all it takes, I’d have hip surgery any day. Just kidding. But I wouldn’t go back and change this process for all the Malbec in the world. Again, I am totally kidding. I’ve slowed my life down. I’ve learned to appreciate the little things. We all go through our ups and downs, I recently was on the down swing but if there’s one thing I have learned, “that shit don’t last.” There’s always a way to be happy. It just depends on what you choose to focus on. It’s not easy, trust me. But once you find what makes you happy, oh boy is it the best thing in the world!

Here’s a throw back to when I could actually jump. Look at that right leg go! I can’t wait to do that again!

And with that I get ready for girls night! Dinner, Malbec and dancing baby!! Let’s see how the old hip holds up on that dance floor tonight. I have a feeling after all that jumping around, it will be juuuuuuust fine. 🙂