The Injury Diaries
Part One. A new series. Featuring my broken body.
I haven’t done any lower body lifts in ten weeks.
On Monday, November 18, I had the best back squat session of all of 2024. I’d spent most of the year dialing in my form, figuring out the right stance for my dimensions, finding the right spot for the bar to rest on my back, and adjusting my grip to better lock my upper back. Finally my squat felt good. My hips weren’t getting stuck a fraction of the way down, my lower back wasn’t doing the worm. The descent and ascent of my squat felt identical and smooth.
The program I follow was gearing up to test the one rep max, lifting progressively heavier loads each week while shaving off reps. That day, I went heavier than I had the rest of the year, inching up to within a few pounds of my previous 230 max. Initially, I chickened out on moving the prescribed percentage for the last set, but the lower weight felt okay so I added weight and did a bonus rep at the prescribed 97.5%, 225 pounds. It was tough — I think my hips reached parallel — but I moved it and the rep felt clean.
I was so excited about the fact that my squat was feeling good, smooth, not awkward and clunky, that I posted about it on Instagram and Notes.
I was looking forward to testing my max the next week. I hoped to at least hit my previous numbers, if not a few pounds heavier.
But no such luck.
The next day, on my way out of a friend’s house, I misjudged the width of the walkway and stepped off the edge. My left ankle collapsed, the empty chili pot I was carrying went flying, and I completely wiped out, belly down, on the front walk.
I lay there a few moments, catching my breath as friends came over to see if I was okay. I don’t remember what I said, just what I knew: I’d fallen because of my ankle and I needed to take care of it already.
My left ankle has been a thorn in my side for years. In 2008, when I was a sophomore in high school, I stepped in a hole in the woods and it turned completely sideways. I was on crutches for a week or two, and the rest of high school was a series of reinjuries on the soccer field. In college, I hurt it again playing intramural soccer and the campus health center ordered X-rays because of how bad it was. But no break. Just damaged tendons. I was on crutches again.
There were a few years where I didn’t injure it seriously, but no year since was completely free of a resprain. When I moved to Colorado in 2017, it wasn’t long before I injured it again playing pickup soccer. I spent the next few weeks riding the exercise bike, no running. Then I stopped playing soccer altogether, but I’d still turn my ankle hiking, usually on the way down the mountain. I’d turn it when stepping from curb to street or not stepping fully on the curb. I’d turn it on uneven pavement. I’d turn it wearing stiff shoes and moving slightly on flat floors.
This past June at the gym, I was dropping down from doing pullups. The stool I used to get up was pulled out slightly farther than I preferred, and instead of landing fully on the stool or fully on the ground, a corner of my foot landed on the stool but the heel and the bulk of my bodyweight went the other way. I heard a crack and fell to the floor.
I got up, took some deep breaths, walked around the gym a bit, tried to finish my workout. But my body was screaming at me. My ankle was throbbing. I ended my workout and went home. I didn’t lift on my foot — no squats or deadlifts — for six weeks. I kept telling people that I needed to have it checked out, but I never went in to see my doctor. When I started lifting on it again, it would feel fine during my workout, but afterward I’d have some pain toward the bottom of my medial malleolus, the bone that slightly protrudes from the inner ankle. It wasn’t back to normal.
My ankle was still like this when I had that successful squat session in November. The next day when I wiped out on my friend’s front walk, I was fed up — with my ankle and with myself. I’d just given notice to quit a job that I hated. I was on a roll with tackling procrastination and not accepting cruddy things in life that don’t have to be that way. I was tired of reinjuring my ankle every three to six months and how much it impeded the rest of my life. I was also terrified at the thought: What if I fell that way when carrying a child, not an empty pot? What if I hurt someone else or fell into the street or broke a bone because my stupid ankle doesn’t work properly?
The next day, for the first time in over a decade, I set up an appointment for my ankle. I saw my primary care two days after I fell and got X-rays right away. The X-rays showed evidence of a past fracture in the medial malleolus (which I’m assuming happened this summer) but no new breaks. My primary care physician referred me to an orthopedic surgeon who had me get an MRI. When he pulled up the results in early January, the picture showed my outer tendon to be a smushy blob, rather than a solid line, along with the beginnings of damage to various bones within my ankle.
“This isn’t something you need to fix tomorrow,” he said, “but most people, by the time they come to see me, they’re ready to do something about it.”
For once in my life, I was most people.
I’m having the operation on Monday, January 27. The surgeon is going to clean up any broken off cartilage or bone that’s floating around in my ankle and tighten my tendons, which will probably make the biggest difference. I’ll be in a cast or boot for 6-8 weeks, which will limit my workouts for a while. And then I’ll be working with a physical therapist to rehab the joint and get back to my regular level of activity.
Normally, a sprain would set me back for a few days, maybe a week. But since November, my ankle hasn’t returned to normal. I still have pain if I stand or walk for too long. The last few weeks, I’ve been getting two to three workouts in — two upper body workouts, one combination core and lower body workout with bodyweight movements — but even bench press I can feel in my ankle.
I’ve expected for years that I would need surgery. 21-year-old me thought it would happen around 27. I’m 32. I’m overwhelmed thinking about the recovery process and what it’s going to take to get back to squatting like I was the day before my last injury, but I would rather do this now than develop arthritis in my ankle by age 38 and have to do the same or a more invasive procedure when I’m older and recovery is even harder.
I’ll be chronicling my journey here in The Injury Diaries: what I’m doing to stay somewhat active (and sane) while I’m in a cast/boot, what the rehabbing process is like, how long it takes. For now, I’m counting down to my operation. I thankfully landed a morning time slot so most of my fasting will happen while I’m asleep.
Wish me luck.
Recommended Reading
The Decade That Changed Fitness Forever (New York Times)
This Is Not Your High School Gym Teacher’s Stretching Routine (Outside)
How to Safely Increase Running Intensity So You Break Through Plateaus (Runner’s World)
What’s coming next?
Either the pullup guide I promised before or Injury Diaries part two. LMK in the comments which you’d prefer =)