It's been months, like semester long timespans between me and my last zumba class. Last December, I hurt my knee in a zumba class. I was at a gym that I wasn't familiar with and my shoes were just a tad too tacky for the floor, and so I didn't have the slide that is so important to a zumba class. With so many lateral shifts, shaking hips, and moving around the dance floor, there is this crucial balance needed where you have to have lots of slide on your shoe, but not too much that you can't grip the floor when you need stability.
Well, I tweaked my knee just enough that it kept me from going to classes. I thought that rest and taking some time off of it would heal it.
It never felt quite right. I could go to a Body Pump class, without it being aggravated, so I stuck with those. Then it started hurting when I went down flights of stairs. I had to get it looked at.
Thankfully, no tears or major damage. Some inflammation and what was actually happening to make my knee hurt going down the stairs and putting pressure on it is that my kneecap is off it's track. It's basically being pulled to one side because of my outer thigh muscles are stronger than the inner thigh muscle. No surgery but physical therapy is needed. Good news.
Also, the face that my doc made when I said I twisted it in zumba class did not escape me. Lots of zumba induced knee injuries come through his office, apparently.
So I went through some PT. Some very fucking expensive PT bc my insurance does not cover me outside of my zipcode. woo.
It was pretty intense and I wish I was able to do more, but I was already getting transferred out of that city for work. It's been feeling ok as long as I've been working it out with my trainer, and when there was a stretch of 4 or 5 days in between sessions, I noticed that it started to kind of hurt again. I knew I needed to work it out somehow.
Well, there was a zumba class this morning that I could go to with plenty of time for me to make it to work. I was planning to take it really low impact and just get it moving a bit. Thankfully, the class today wasn't one of those really frenetic, high impact, jumping around classes like you hear nightmare stories about. It was a good balance of mid to high tempo and not too many reps of the same thing to make it boring. Perfect to go back to. My knee stung for the first few minutes but then it seemed to warm up and I didn't have any problems with it. I refrained from anything twisty, and didn't jump on it. But I got my heart rate up and made it through the class in a good zone.
I have to remember to spend some time on the elliptical before I go to my next zumba class to warm up the knee. That's how we started each PT session. I should also keep doing my inner thigh strengthening exercises at home before I forget what they are.
To be honest, I didn't miss Zumba as much as I thought I would. Since body pump and weights and HiiT, I have found out that I really just don't like moving around that quickly that much, and by much, I mean I just don't like having to move quickly, period. Maybe it's because I am so overweight that I still feel like I'm wearing a fat suit and I'm lacking in agility.
How to turn this into a goal or something useful? Through lifting, I can build enough muscle to move my body, and I can go back to zumba classes and enjoy myself. I mean, LeBron is massive, and he is still quick. So that's the goal.
All in all it was a major success to be able to go back to class. Shoulder day resulted in my being able to get through the all arms songs in zumba without burning. Effective working out is Effective.
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