In which I set a plan for improvement

I finally made the decision today to take care of myself. I've been in some serious fucking pain for two days in a row, partially because of pushing myself in practice more than the doctor originally wanted me to, partially because I've been in shitty work shoes walking around like crazy for two days straight. Tonight I didn't skate as hard as I probably could have. I sat out for the last half hour or so. After about 10 minutes of sitting out, I know I could have gotten back up and tried again, but I didn't want to risk getting up, feeling horrible pain again, then sitting out again.

I didn't get to finish out some necessary practice time. I'll fall behind a little more still. But hopefully I'll get caught up soon. Once I feel a little more comfortable with the ankle situation, I'll start heading over to Barber Park and practicing more, talk Shae into coming down from Ocala and working with me, and maybe trying to hit the Luna practices on Sunday.

But yes, taking care of myself. While the doctor hasn't said this, I recognize that part of my ankle issue is my weight. I've struggled with weight problems for a long time, stemming from poor nutritional habits built during childhood. So today I downloaded an app for the phone to start tracking food and exercise in order to try to lose a little bit of weight. I'm also back to taking my vitamins again, something I got off of fairly recently. I've done stuff like this before, but I've never kept up with it because of it being inconvenient, getting bored with it, falling off the wagon and never getting back on, etc. but hopefully derby proves to be the driving force that keeps me going on this.

I'm also going back to my weekly goals. Having just a small amount of things that I really need to focus on helped me out a lot early in this recruitment.

1. Derby stance. I need to do this even more. I think the new exercise I picked up in PT should help with this. It reeeeally works the quads.
2. Balancing on my right leg. The right leg is the problem leg, but if I can't balance on it, I'm going to struggle with blocking. I have a hard time hitting on that right side, and fall fairly easy on the right.
3. Staying positive. I whine. A lot. Not necessarily in practice, but on here. It's a new goal to make some sort of statement about something awesome that I did.
4. Controlling my arms. I need to keep my elbows in when making a hit and doing crossovers. I feel like a chicken flapping it's wings.
5. Do the full range of my ankle exercises instead of only half of them.

And to start off my goals? Something positive: I took a hit, fell and did a pretty decent superman without even thinking about it.