Injuries and Tweaks

The Hard Things project has mostly been about dodging injury; although I prefer to call injuries “tweaks” because if I downplay their significance they might disappear quickly. I have no randomized, controlled, double blind, placebo trials to show this to be true, nor a Cochrane review meta-analysis. In fact, I think it likely is not true, at least in old people.

On Tuesday 21 February, I wrote in my training log “hip gammy.” For the first few days, I thought this was a tweak that would completely disappear and so I followed my usual “injury, ignore” cycle. A week later I wrote “hip still gammy,” in my training log and I cut down on my usual 50 to 70 kilometre per week walking routine. Today’s entry will likely read “hip a bit gammy but improving slowly.”

Training logs are useful because when you look back you can recognise patterns. Turns out that the Hard Thing for February 20 was 100 squats to the ground. I remember feeling pretty shaky on these at the end, and data would suggest that 100 squats to the ground was actually a pretty dumb idea. Not the first, won’t be the last. Today is day 40 of the Hard Things project and while I refuse to quit before I hit 60, I am having to look for Hard Things that won’t actually break me.

For day 38, I tracked my dietary intake. Everyone knows this is tedious and time consuming although tracking is always a high level suggestion from dieticians for weight management. Tracking, at least for a while, probably has it’s place in health management. Most people, particularly older folks who have high protein requirements, are notoriously protein deficient which is why sarcopenia is such a big problem.

Anyway, I had about 130 grams of protein on day 38, almost all from biologically available animal sources, although, one meal did fall short of 30 grams of protein. Thirty grams of protein is thought to be the minimum amount to trigger muscle growth and older adults should aim for 30 grams of protein at each meal. A popular misconception is that 30 grams of some kind of animal protein is equal to 30 grams of protein. This is not true. To achieve 30 grams of protein one needs to eat, for example, 100 grams of white fish, 120 grams of fatty fish, 100 grams of chicken breast, etc. Thirty grams by weight of most animal flesh is actually only seven grams of protein. Protein from non-animal sources is both poorly absorbed and not complete in amino acids. Don’t be triggered. I can’t change facts to support belief systems.

On day 39, I limped along with a gammy hip to boulder at a low tide beach. This was the day after I had climbed on my wall and it was early afternoon and the hottest part of the day as that coincided with low tide. Boulder pads are awkward to carry and as I have a short torso – I’m short overall – mine sags onto my hip which seemed to accentuate the gammy qualities of that hip. Never mind, I made it, and kept the streak alive.