My Recovery Methods

I am now 6 weeks after my Achilles tendon repair.

In cased you missed it you can check out my previous quick update when I was 3 weeks out:

I am no longer in the inpatient frame of mind.

I am beginning to see and feel the benefits of all my recovery efforts so far.

So I wanted to share with you the recovery methods that I've been using so far. Maybe they could help you with recovery from your aches and pains.

Sleep

I have been very intentional in getting as much sleep as possible throughout this process.

I use my Whoop band to track my sleep. Whoop has a feature that not only tells me about the quality of my sleep, but also my recovery metric for the new day.

Recovery is measured in Heart Rate Variability (HRV).

This is measured in milliseconds, for the time between each heart beat.

The lower the HRV, the better the recovery. The body is ready to take on more activity.

Higher the HRV, the lower the recovery. The body isn't quite ready to take on more activity for that day.

This is a duh moment, but the better quality sleep I get, the better my HRV stats are for the day.

Blood Flow Restriction training

Since about week 2, I have added blood flow restriction training to my rehab.

Blood flow restriction is a training method that pushes your body to high intensity like metabolic state without the actual high intensity exercise.

In other words, your body's metabolism is jump started immediately to the anaerobic system. The benefits of exercising in the anaerobic system are plenty, like improved muscle synthesis, improved cardiovascular strength, or increased growth hormone response.

Getting to this energy system usually needs high intensity exercises, like sprinting or jumping. But when you're injured like me, doing those exercises aren't safe.

This is where blood flow restriction training comes in.

To get the body to jump start immediate into the anaerobic system, the BFR cuff is effectively limiting the amount of oxygen rich blood flow into the limb. Because the limb is now limited in oxygen, the anaerobic system starts.

Because BFR can jump start muscle synthesis, I've started using it on my right leg. Adding BFR has helped prevent further atrophy to my right leg muscles, and I am now seeing my calf muscles grow.

Red Light therapy

To assist and possibly even accelerate the healing process, I have included red light therapy for my leg.

Red light therapy helps the body create more energy in the mitochondria of our cells. More energy production assists in the overall healing processes in our cells.

Red light therapy also helps decrease reactive oxygen species in damaged cells. This helps in decreasing excessive inflammation, which could delay proper tissue healing.

So I've been exposing my lower leg and especially my post-surgical scar to red light every night. My scar has been looking healthier each day.

I'll need to do a deeper dive into red light therapy. Because once I get to more intense whole body workouts, I plan to definitely include total body red light therapy exposure to my training methods.

Thanks for you reading! Catch you all next week.