Hello deadlifts, my old friend

Injury Diaries, part 10. Back to the barbell.

Read previous installments in the Injury Diaries here.

I’m three sessions deep into my return to lower-body lifting.

Two weeks ago — about a week after the last time I wrote, when it felt like a full athletic recovery was nowhere in sight — I finally tested out deadlifting and front squatting. The days that led to that moment made me feel exactly like this song. After publishing my maybe-too-melodramatic love letter to long weeks, I proceeded to fret over my ankle and its perpetual soreness, stress over that letter from my insurance, and cry at physical therapy.

Yes, you read that right: I cried at physical therapy.

I picked a great day for it too. My regular therapist was out of town so I was working with someone else. This therapist I could tell from previous observations was really good at her job, but she was also the type of personality that moves way faster than I can generally keep up with. Her questions and directions kept coming, and then her corrections:

“You shouldn’t need to hold on for this.”

“Take a break. I can hear your joints cracking on both sides.”

Maybe it was her speed, maybe it was my mounting worries about running out of insurance approvals or the bump on my ankle that I thought was my bone spur growing back. Maybe it was hormones (likely; I started my period the next day) or maybe it was a lack of sleep. But halfway through my session, I found myself holding back tears and right at the end, when the therapist told me to walk around a little —

“How does it feel?”

“It feels fine,” I shrugged back, and then I couldn’t keep myself from crying.

The therapist, PT assistant, and rest of the team didn’t know what to do. The assistant set me up with an ice machine like usual and then came back with a box of tissues. The therapist asked, “Are you okay?” I nodded and managed to say, “It’s just a long time,” and she tried to comfort me by saying they tend to see people for a while because recovery takes time.

“But you should be able to hike this summer.”

I nodded and the tears kept coming.

The recovery process involves trust. Not just trust in myself (the easy part), but trust in healthcare providers like my surgeon and physical therapist and trust in my body itself, that it will heal and respond to the exercises the way it’s supposed to. I knew at the outset that this process would take time. In 2020, when I went to PT after hurting my knee playing tennis, I took longer than the average person to recover. My therapist then assured me that everyone heals at their own rate. I figured this would be the same.

But that doesn’t make waiting any easier. Patience is a virtue I chronically lack, and waiting for things to happen that are outside of my control is not my idea of fun. The good news is that some of those things I was missing a few weeks ago weren’t too far off.

What led me to go ahead and try lifting Monday, June 2? I think I looked at my “get my legs back” plan and saw that I was at the lifting stage, and I think my nervousness about running out of approved PT sessions convinced me I might as well try to lift now so I could tell my therapist how it felt.

I wasn’t sure what to expect. I’d been pretty consistent with my upper-body workouts over the last few months, but how were my legs? Would I even remember how to lift properly?

My setup for my first deadlift session since November 2024 with the jankiest bumper plates in existence (the 25s are, no joke, falling apart at the center).

I did deadlifts first. In my socks, as always. And I kept it light. Started with 65 pounds for 10 reps, did a few warmup sets with progressing weight, and then settled on 125 for five sets of 10. I could tell my back was deconditioned and I had to actively think about pushing through my left foot, but my ankle and legs felt solid. Then I tested out front squats.

Front squats are generally easier mobility-wise than back squats. They don’t require as much ankle flexion as a back squat (especially for someone with my dimensions), but I still got stuck on the way down. Full depth was out of reach because my left ankle would only fold so far. I did 5x5 slowly with super light weight (the heaviest I went was 85 pounds) and tried to focus on keeping my foot engaged through the whole movement. Along with lacking ankle mobility, my arch didn’t have the endurance to do its job for 10 reps at a time.

Those observations weren’t surprising at all, nor were they disappointing. The most important thing: I had no pain in either movement.

That week, the first week of June, I reported back to my therapist about my first lifting session. She gave me more stretches to help with my ankle mobility and recommended I elevate my heels for now when squatting. That same day, the receptionist had me fill out a questionnaire to help with insurance and told me I should be fine as far as approvals go for the immediate future. I also asked my therapist about the bump on my ankle and she checked it out.

“I can feel what you’re talking about,” she said, and then she pulled up a diagram of the talus bone. She emphasized that it’s supposed to have a ridge and mine was in normal range. The mass that was there pre-surgery, then, must have been inflamed soft tissue, and my bone spur had been somewhere else, I guess. Since she told me that, I’ve barely noticed that part of my ankle. It still gets sore sometimes, but I’m not obsessing over it.

Last Tuesday, I lifted for the second time and felt more confident. I went heavier on both (up to 145 on my deadlift) and used lifting wedges for my squat. I still noticed the weakness of my arch when squatting, but I’m expecting that to improve with time.

Since I last wrote, I’ve taken multiple long walks, started using my roommate’s massage gun to work out the knots in my calf, and now three weeks back into lower-body lifting, I’m practically jittering with anticipation of a full recovery. My PT exercises are currently focused on speed in my ankle to prepare me to run and jump again. My last therapy session, I did some hopping in the leg press machine (which combined with my squat session left my quads sore for three days), and my left leg was only slightly less fluid through the movement than the right.

You would have never thought I’d cried at PT the way that appointment went. I felt the closest to athletic that I’ve felt in a while — except for my time working on my deadlift.

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Previously in Women’s Barbell Club…

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Recommended Reads

• The Denver Onyx Are Absolutely Dominating Their Competition (5280 Magazine) — I wrote this one! Took a deep dive into my local pro women’s rugby team, which happens to be the top contender for the inaugural Women’s Elite Rugby Legacy Cup. If you’re in Minnesota, you should totally go.

• Attempting Movement: Learning to Let the Body Be (From the Hand by

  Angelina Danae
  ) — Angelina and I were classmates in college, and she is one of my favorite writers on here. Always has beautiful thoughts to share and her word choice is impeccable.

• Inside the Exclusive, Obsessive, Surprisingly Litigious World of Luxury Fitness (The Atlantic) — I’d never heard of Tracy Anderson until Monday of this week, and then I spent way too much time watching one of her workouts on YouTube and groaning. Two things I’ll say: 1) If you do any movement over and over again for 30 minutes, you will wear out and get sore. That doesn’t mean it’s an effective workout. 2) Save your money and just do this Barbie workout from when I was a child.

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What’s coming next…

I said this last time, but I’m finally drafting this piece so watch for it in a few weeks: What one of the earliest feminist writers has to do with fitness