How I got back into exercising after my spine surgery - L5-S1 fusion as a dancer

It’s been around a month since I last posted, as I’ve been busy enjoying my summer! However, I’ve also been using my time to exercise and try to regain the fitness I lost whilst recovering from my surgery. Today I want to talk a little bit about what this involves and how it’s impacted my back, both in positive and negative ways.

 

So gyms were reopened at the end of July, and I knew that I really badly wanted to go as working out at home is something that I’ve always found difficult, because I find it much harder to motivate myself this way. I was a little bit worried at first due to everything with the Coronavirus, so I did leave it a few days before I went back as I thought that the initial first days after it opened would be incredibly busy. However, my first day back there were only four people in there! This really surprised me, but it also meant that I felt much more comfortable being there.

 

For my first session I took things at my own pace as I was just trying to test different things out first and see how this affected my back, as I didn’t want to push myself too much and end up injuring myself. I started off with a jog on the treadmill, I managed about 2.5k which isn’t much but it has been a while since I’ve done anything like that so I wasn’t expecting to have the same level of fitness as before! I also did about ten minutes on the rowing machine and fifteen on the bike, before deciding that would be enough for my first time back, and I spent the last twenty minutes or so using the mats to do an ab workout and stretch. Honestly, this first session was really tough, as I haven’t been able to workout this way for a long time due to my recovery, but I also felt a real sense of achievement for managing an hour’s workout! After this session, my back was really stiff and I did have a nice hot bath when I got home, but I knew that I just needed to keep on persevering and that I’d eventually get used to it!

 

Something that I’ve also really gotten into over the past month is swimming. This isn’t something that I ever really did before my operation, as I just never really enjoyed it as much as going to the gym, but I thought I’d give it a go! I have to book my time in the pool, and at first you could only have half hour slots. I approached the swimming in the same way as I approached my first gym session, and just decided to see how much I could do and how it made my back feel. I managed 34 lengths on my first half an hour session, which really surprised me! I actually found it much more tiring than I thought it had going to be, and so I didn’t think I’d even be able to manage 20, so swimming 34 was unexpected!

 

Since that first time in the pool, I’ve been back and used it more times than I use the gym! I really wasn’t expecting much from swimming, but I’ve found that I really do enjoy it, and I’ve also realised that it’s such a good way to help with your fitness. The sessions have now been extended to 45 minutes, and on a normal session I’ll manage about 50 lengths give or take. I have a friend who is a swimming teacher, and he told me that swimming is very good for supporting your back as well as strengthening other areas of your body, so I’m definitely really happy that I decided to try it out.

 

Over the past month I’ve been carefully building up my time in the gym, not overdoing anything but also trying to push myself a little bit further each time, so that I can slowly regain the fitness that I’d had before the surgery. There are definitely harder days, and my back feels stiff after most of my workouts, but I feel really happy that I am able to exercise properly again. Most weeks I’ll try to swim four or five times a week, and then use the gym a few of these days as well, so I feel confident that I’m slowly getting my fitness back.

 

I’ve said this in a few of my posts now, but I genuinely am so surprised at how well my body recovered from my surgery. I definitely didn’t think that six months down the line I’d be back in the gym working out the same way that I did before my operation, so I am so happy. It has made me realise that if you work hard and put your mind to it, you can absolutely achieve your goals, you just have to be willing to be patient! J