Just the feeling of bruising but the sciatica injury is finally over. Merely keeping up with maintenance and being slightly more cautious is what I'll be doing for a while but this long ass episode has reached it's finale. The pain was enough that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemies and being so damn limited made me frustrated, irritable and drove me crazy.
What made me notice that it was gone? I had an idea in mind that was risky but my intuition was telling me it was going to work. I tested myself in a Bear Crawl Sprint Workout that was 10 seconds on, 20 seconds off for 5 minutes. Aside from feeling a little tension, I busted through that workout with ease without a shred of pain, not even a little bit. How's that for irony: A sprint workout told you you were injured and the next sprint workout tells you you're healed. Funny how the universe works.
I'm back and it feels fucking glorious man. I still believe in my heart that if I wasn't in good of shape before, this injury would've been far worse and the healing would've taken way longer. That's the thing, if you train with intent to help prevent injuries as much as possible and be able to heal quicker when you do makes all the difference in the world. This one didn't heal as fast as I wanted to (I' am edging close to 40) but it did heal when it was meant to. I felt my flexibility coming back and my strength was right there when I needed it. Conditioning is really a life saver and in my mind, the fountain of youth.
If you've never experienced Sciatica, I really hope you never will. I feel so grateful not just for what I had to do but I'm grateful to my wife and my mother for being there for me even though I was a royal pain in the ass and feeling so damn guilty that I didn't want to burden them. Putting them through that especially my wife was something I never want to do again, neither one deserved to see me like that. I owe them big time and I will always take responsibility and heat for what I did to myself. I can't and will never blame anything or anyone other than myself. Life is too damn short and you do what's possible to make the best of things.
This was probably one of the most humbling experiences of my life and part of it is starting to show on my age and my ability to heal but in a weird and twisted sense, I needed to go through this in order to understand how important certain things are in life and that it was another one of life's tests where you learn and figure out what you have to do in order to rebuild yourself inside and out. This put another perspective on why I love to train and why it continues to push me even in tough times. The majority of the time, all I did was stretching which to me is still training, I never once led up or took a day off because if I did than I would be giving up on myself and the people who need and I wasn't going to let that happen.
Even on days where I had doubts this thing would ever heal, the voice in my head told me to keep fighting and battle the demons from within. Trust the process, do what needs to be done and be humble and grateful for what you have around you. It goes back to that old notion "With Great Power, Comes Great Responsibility." Be safe, kick ass and keep being amazingly awesome.
