So, I’m now a week into my recovery. Just to be clear it was only an ingrowing toenail removal nothing serious or major! But that being said, there is still a recovery time period needed to allow it to heal fully.
This however doesn’t mean I should stop training while it does heal, what it does do is just makes me have to adapt and, in some cases get creative. When dealing with any type of injury, big or small it should never be a case of what can’t I do but what can I still do? It really just comes down to what we need to avoid doing, in this case not bending or putting too much pressure on the toe so it doesn’t pull the wound open and delay the healing process.
Obviously in this situation upper body training shouldn’t be affected unless we talk about specific exercises. The lower body is where we need to look, but it’s actually quite a simple training around this injury.Just don’t do any variations of Lunges. Forward, reverse, walking maybe even lateral should be avoided. Just any of those movements where the toe could at any point take a significant amount of my body weight. So, Squats, Deadlifts as static lifts are still technically available, however playing on the side of caution we’ve switched to endurance training. So, high reps’ low weight so we’re not putting too much load into my feet and potentially into my toe. Again, playing it safe and making a personal choice, Deadlifts are out and replaced with RomanianDeadlifts so I can still get good work into my Hamstrings and Glutes but again without too much load going through.
Even though I don’t use them very much if at all machines are handy right now. The Leg press doesn’t cause any problems, abductor and adductor certainly doesn’t provide any issues. Even the leg extension doesn’t affect it either as when setting the ankle pad up it should sit above the shoelaces, nestled between the foot and shin leaves the pressure away from the affected area.
In terms of being creative and wanting to keep some unilateral work in we’ve played around with single leg squat off a step and again found no extra pressure in or around the toe that would create a problem. In terms of the upper body and as I said earlier about specific exercises, Push ups are very hard to do without being on the toe. So, had a think and used the FootCradles on a TRX so pressure is on the top of the foot and not on the toe so Push ups can stay in the programme!
Ultimately whatever injury you may carry big or small shouldn’t stop you from training altogether, just means that for that period of time while recovering we have to listen to our bodies, listen to the advice, adapt and take a slightly different approach.
