Although I didn't realise it, I'd pushed things a bit far on the bike last Sunday and it's been a week of icing and taking care of strains to the sides and backs of my knees. I forget that although my quad and hamstring muscles might be strong enough to take a certain tension, the ligaments and tendons that anchor those muscles need time to catch up. I'm not sure why tendons/ligaments seem to take longer to strengthen than muscles but, for my body at least, that's the way it is. I have to be careful to consider the structures other than muscles when thinking of pushing the limits!
I played a little longer and harder at table tennis on Tuesday evening and definitely felt the effect through the scapular/shoulder muscles/tendons. Again, I've been icing and nursing stinging strains all week to, I guess, the latissimus muscle which connects round from the back/scapular to the ribs under my right arm and I've had the usual aches/refered pain from teres major and minor. The pool work on Wednesday was limited to the bare minimum - I couldn't realistically do any breast stroke because of exhaustion and aching through the shoulder/scapular muscles and the 'sides of knees' strains.
It's hard going and frustrating to have to still be so incredibly careful with pushing my limits. It's still so easy to strain a weak structure that I'm unaware of. The pockets of weakened muscles etc obviously remain and it really is going to take a long time to target and recondition them.
I stuck to the 25 mins bike time yesterday but didn't up the resistance for more than 5 minutes. I followed it up with 15 step-ups and 3 lunges carrying 1.5 kg dumbells for each. Of course, that was pushing things a bit (which I discovered later, lol) and so today my glutes, knees and right inner thigh/groin are twingey/mildly strained. It's hard to know how to add strength to quads and hamstrings without straining the associated ligaments/tendons....but then again, I suppose I should be thinking of the legs as a whole, and the weakest structures should be the baseline I work from.
Today will be a bit of a rest day. I've had a 20 mins walk and will do the shoulder physio exercises this afternoon.
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