Embrace the Breaks: Learning When to Rest, One Ankle Tweak at a Time

A couple of weeks ago, I tweaked my ankle while doing box jumps with a gal from Mark’s boot camp. I came down on it terribly wrong, and it hurt something awful. You’d assume I’d take it easy and let it heal. But I iced it and got right back in the gym. Fast forward a week; I tweaked it again walking down the stairs at home. I rolled it and the grimace on my face was uglier than all the trolls in all the cyberspace lands. This behavior all coming from a girl who shouts to those at boot camp to not be a hero … to listen to your body.

Hi, my name is Tish, and I’m a hypocrite sometimes.

That last tweak left my ankle swollen with a golf ball-sized bump poking out. I took a day off and then worked out again. Can you all say stubborn?! I was just so caught up in not missing a workout. Scared to death of losing my workout rhythm, I cost myself some pain-free workouts. Doing burpees with a sore ankle is scary hard. And pretty stupid. Do NOT try this at home, folks.

What I’ve learned from all of this? You really can’t let the fear of fresh workout soreness deter you from taking breaks and resting your body when it needs to heal. I finally listened to my coach (aka the husband) and put my foot in an ice bath and took some time off, but boy, was it an internal battle to frickin’ smarten up and get off the foot!

Ice baths are brutal but crucial when you have an injury!

I may live with a trainer. I may write for a fitness blog. But I’m still a (human) work in progress. Every day is a new lesson. I’m learning you have to give yourself a break unless you want to experience a break … ever so stubbornly slow.

Have you ever been stubborn about an injury and kept pushing it when you should really take a break? —Tish