Injuries...

I'm fine, but I want to acknowledge how quickly and easily an injury can happen.

I keep complaining about my left hip injury. It happened almost three years ago, when I took the smallest and lighter fall, but I pulled something. I haven't had experience with injuries, so I didn't allow myself time to rest and heal, I continued skating. Not only I made the initial injury worse (I felt sharp pain few times), but all my hip muscles started to hurt from overuse, as they tried to compensate and help the injured muscle. And it took over two years to kind of heal, and I'm still "feeling" it occasionally.

Few years before the hip problem, I had an injury to my left ankle, I've felt some pain after a ballet jump (I didn't properly transferred the weight over the foot I picked with). It seemed fine. I think I kept re injuring it with bad salcow and toe loop technique and also spinning on the toe pick. It was never very bad, but nagging, so at some point I decided to stop jumping and spinning and let it heal. And then is when I started ice dancing. I also did calf rises regularly to build strength into ankles. I'm very happy to report that it feels totally fine, but looking back I did "feel" it for around 2 years...

Tuesday I skated twice. I bought ice at my home rink for the whole month for Tuesday, Friday, Saturday. Afterwards, ice opened to the rink where I could take lessons with my coach, and he was available only Tuesday. So I decided to take a 45 minutes lesson every second week. So twice this month I skated first a lesson and then I went to my home rink and skated an hour more. Two weeks ago I was so shocked by how bad the ice was, I took it very very easy. This Tuesday, the ice was not much better, but better and I worked on Freestyle and small moves. Towards the end of the hour I fell on a back 3-turn... very light fall, but I felt immediately I pulled something at my right hip. It didn't feel to bad, but I was very worried having the bad experience with the left hip.

My next skating was Friday. I took it very very easy. I felt the hip bothering just twice, and not sharp pain. But surprise, my both ankles were hurting. Whaaaat? As I looked back to Tuesday, I've realized I've felt the skates loose while I skated the second time. I think the skates got more flexible from skating an hour before and I should have had tighten the laces more. But not too tight because I also had pain at my right ankle from that... tightening to much!

Saturday I felt better, but again I took it easy.

There are some sayings about pushing for skating progress: everybody falls while skating, if you don't fall you are not working/ trying hard enough...

There are also many "wise thoughts" about preventing/ minimizing falls and injuries:
- stop skating if you are tired,
- let an injury heal,
- strive for the correct technique...