How my Ankle Fracture recovery Progressed

Ankle Fracture – Week 1

Fairly awful A&E experience. So glad we had crutches in the house otherwise I think I would have been on my hands and knees trying to navigate triage.

I got called back the next day to have a weight bearing x-ray as the type of fracture (Weber B) can often be unstable and require an operation to fix it.

After a few days I started adding a daily sauna back into my routine. This isn’t recommended officially. The party line is to ice and elevate and to stay away from saunas. I chose to ignore the recommendation as I find the sauna incredibly relaxing and that was / is something I need. I did compromise by staying on the lower level – not that I had any choice, as I couldn’t have climbed onto the higher bench anyway.

Going Up: ABC (Able leg, Bad leg, Crutch to the same step).

Going Down: CBA (Crutch, Bad leg, Able leg to the same step).

How to manage the stairs with crutches

Week 2 – Fracture Clinic

First visit to the fracture clinic this week. Another weight bearing x-ray showed the Weber B fracture was still stable so I persuaded the clinician to agree to a boot. He was going to put me back into a cast but thought made me claustrophobic and I was determined to be able to mobilise the joint early on.

This article supports the idea that you can get a faster functional recovery using walking boots over casts.

The visit to the FC was exhausting as there was so much hopping to be done. I managed to find the most opportune entrance to be dropped at but then I discovered I should have been put on anticoags from day 1 so then had to hop to the pharmacy in main reception. May as well have been 5 miles away.

In the boot now and so grateful as it means I can take it off in the evening and watch telly with my feet elevated. I could wash my foot too which was an absolute necessity after 4 days! Buggering hot those things.

Still unsure whether to keep weight off entirely or try a bit of crutch supported walking. I opted for the latter.

Week 3 – bathtime

The swelling in my leg decreased but my ankle started to look odd. I was worried that maybe I had done too much walking and shifted the fracture. I contemplated trying to get another x-ray but decided to just chill out and see it as a result of the general leg swelling going down.

Managed to get myself in the bath from week 3. Initially I stepped into the full bath with my boot on (no liner) then removed it for my soak. I’d then empty the bath, replace the boot and get myself out using the good leg and some tricep power to push myself up. My wrists weren’t quite up to the job after weeks of crutch pressure so I stabilised them by wrapping with floss tape which made them pretty solid.

Week 4 – QiGong

I discovered seated QiGong this week and started channeling my recovery life force. It was nice to move again and have some mobility focus in the day.

Week 5 – Callous growth and Peloton

Back to the fracture clinic to get an update on my ankle fracture recovery and thankfully there was good news from the x-ray. Signs of callous growth was visible on the edge of my bone which showed that the fracture was knitting together. The doctor gave me the go ahead to start gradually increasing weight bearing while listening closely to my own body. I really appreciated that approach as I like to be in control of my own destiny. I checked whether I could start some resistance band exercise and also whether a realistic trajectory would be for me to walk into my next appointment in 4-6 weeks without boot or crutches.

All confirmed but with the emphasis on me listening closely to what my body was telling me.

I intended taking things super slowly until week 6 as I’d read that was a point when significant callous growth could be expected but having taken my boot off to try standing with just the crutches, I was alarmed how light and cloud like my calf felt. I began to feel concerned that I would never be able to walk again, never mind walk unaided within 4 weeks.

My calf had obviously withered. Next plan of action was to resume my paused Peloton subscription and pop myself back on the bike for some low intensity rides. So from about 5.5 weeks post fracture I started doing daily 15-20 min stationary bike rides. Which gave me renewed confidence in my ability to recover.

How to use a Peloton with a Broken Leg

The way I got on the peloton was to have the shoe (injured side) clipped to the bike with all fasteners and straps loosened. I stood in the boot while clipping good side to pedal and stepped up and out of the boot. I then positioned the pedal, applying the brake so I could slip my injured foot in the shoe. A gentle rotation proved to be comfortable so I took it for a spin. I never stood during a ride to protect my ankle from excessive pressure but of course that meant the pressure was felt in the saddle area instead!

Week 6

More and more time spent out of the boot using crutches only. Still doing daily peloton sessions for 20 mins. Each day increasing the effort and distance recorded as my confidence grew and I got stronger.

Week 7 – Look no boot

Started moving around the house without boot or crutches. I started with a noticeable limp and an increasingly tight calf muscle. I worked on using the stairs normally, albeit with use of the hand rail.

Very early in week 7 I decided I my ankle fracture recovery was complete and took the dog for a walk on our local common. I used crutches as I was still limping but opted for normal shoes. I did probably 5000 steps and on my return my ankle started to swell and feel really quite uncomfortable. I spent the evening concerned that I had effed things up royally.

Week 8 – knees over toes

By now I discovered that walking for about 5000 steps in one duration would cause my ankle to swell quite significantly but it would deflate after resting for a few hours. I therefore felt ok walking 8000-10,000 steps over 2-3 walks each day. I also moved from using crutches to Nordic poles.

Also back to knees over toes routine using the modifications well explained in ATG for Life and using The Iron Shin from @rawform_functional_fit to scale tib raises.

Week 9 – Discharge

I was back at the fracture clinic and had been determined to walk in unaided. The doctor saw me walk and discharged me on the spot which was great news.

His advice was to carry on increasing the load so long as it didn’t cause pain in the moment. So that’s what I’m doing, walking unaided, mobilising my ankle joints, almost daily ROMwod and performing the ATG Knees Over Toes routine at least 3 times per week.

Week 10 – Ankle Fracture Recovery

I would say that I am almost back to normal now. I am not particularly nervous of slipping while walking on wet muddy slopes and I can even run short distances without pain. The only residual awkwardness is a slight reduction in rotational mobility and pain when pushing my foot into a laced shoe – I still have to unlace my trainers and slide them on delicately. What a pain!

Things that Helped my Ankle Fracture Recovery

• super wide legged Harem trousers (also checkout Forgotten Tribes)
• elephant sized foot warmer for cast wearing in winter
• voodoo floss band for increasing the rigidity of my wrists
• The Iron Shin for scaling tib raises but you could also use a floss band again for strapping a light weight to your foot
• Margaret Dabbs cream for the decidedly nasty state of your skin after removing the cast (this stuff is like a miracle cure for scaly feet)
• GOPO Joint health supplements with ginger and rose-hip
• Kirsten from LittleTank training for supporting me throughout and providing advice on mobility routines that wouldn’t task my ankle.

Useful Recovery Resources

• Blog – Another real-life recovery blog with tips and tricks
• Blog – Mostly links to gadgets that have provided assistance with bone healing
• NHS rehab – When can you weight bear on a broken ankle
• NHS rehab – Weber B Fracture recovery

I’ve been humbled in recent weeks by a broken ankle that has required me to hobble around on crutches while keeping as much weight as possible off my left leg. It seems that my wrists have not really been up to the job and can’t adequately support my bodyweight through the full range of motion required for day to day life. Getting in and out of the bath without using my injured leg has been difficult and that makes me feel way more vulnerable than I would like.

So my latest experiment is driven by a desire to eradicate a few weak spots and increase my resilience. It is also likely that there will be some significant crossover into general strength performance. I suspect that by training for increased grip strength I will also note more general strength increases for example being able to perform a heavier deadlift. As they say, if you can’t grip it, you can’t lift it.

Pavel Tsatsouline is a former Soviet special-forces instructor is a no nonsense kind of fella, who uses simple methods to deliver uncompromising strength gains.

When in doubt, train your grip and your core

Pavel Tsatsouline – episode 55 of the Tim Ferris podcast

He has a strong preference for maintaining a grip and core focus during training because of something he refers to as ‘irradiation’. Certain areas of the body generate significant spillover of muscle activation. Where tension in one area (say the fist) can be felt through the arms, shoulders and back, dramatically increasing efficiency and power of the initiating movement.

Make a fist, and feel the tension in your forearm. Now make a tight fist. You’re going to feel tension in your biceps and triceps. Now make a white-knuckle fist. You’re going to find that tension is spreading into your shoulder, your lat, your back, and so on

Pavel Tsatsouline – episode 55 of the Tim Ferris podcast

It’s the reason why, when performing a military press for example, you are encouraged to squeeze or rip the barbell.

How I plan to train Grip Strength

My goals are to generate a pair of functionally very strong wrists, which means being able to hold, lift and hang my body weight. I’d also like to have an objective measure of my grip strength that confirms that I am significantly stronger than most women in my age bracket. Most of my focus will be on crushing exercises rather pinching or rotating movements.

I am going start by performing daily sets using hand grippers and also dead hangs for time.

I have my set of hand grippers on my desk so I break regularly through the day to knock out a set. Initially I am aiming for 10 reps at 60 lbs with a hold to failure on the 10th rep as a warm up and then repeat at 80 lbs for 5 reps.

The dead hang is currently a very short lived affair while attempt to hold on to a pull-up bar bolted to a door frame.

I’m also conscious that I don’t want to develop overuse injuries or create imbalances so I will also be training the extensor muscles by spreading my fingers outwards under tension. You can use rubber grippers, elastic bands or just apply some resistance from your other hand. Also some wrist extension and flexion stretches to relieve pressure. I’m using the rubber band that Sainsbury’s use to put a price label on the broccoli floret.

How to Monitor Grip Strength

I am using an electronic hand dynamometer and taking readings following this approach:

• use a chair with arms for each reading
• feet flat on floor
• arms resting on armrest with wrists just over the end of the chair’s arm, thumb facing upwards.
• hold grip and squeeze as hard as possible for a few seconds
• Repeat 3 times recording the max reading each time

I record my 3 max readings from each arm on my grip strength monitoring spreadsheet. You can see my progress (If you are on a desktop) as it unfolds on the chart below, which is a publication from the spreadsheet I linked to above.

I’m also recording my max hang duration as I would like to see some improvements here if I’m ever to approach a pull-up. My 5 second record just doesn’t cut the mustard.

Best Exercises for Grip Strength

I am going to defer to this excellent article by BuiltLean that explores grip types and the different exercises to maximise strength.

If you want to see some excellent advice on grip crusher technique, check out this video from jujimufu where they learn some cool grip tricks from the experts.

Equipment for Grip Strength Training

Hand Grippers

Captains of Crush from IronMind are clearly the best hand grippers you can buy. Excellent quality and total reliability. These are the grippers you are going to want if you get to the heady heights of grip strength accreditation and record breaking.

They are reasonably expensive though at around £30 per gripper and you are going to need a few to cover warmup, training and max attempts.

As I’m in the early stages of my grip strength career (I’m writing that tongue in cheek), and also initially was unsure how much I could crush, I opted for a much cheaper and adjustable hand gripper from fitbeast. The first model I went for was the Fitbeast Hand Gripper 40 – 100 lbs (18-45 kg) which has 4 settings 40 – 60 – 80 – 100 lbs in just one gripper.

Interestingly I can close this at it’s max setting (45 kg) despite my max hand dynamometer reading being only 32 kg at the moment. That’s is perhaps due to my controlled method for gathering recordings.

Fitbeast also do the next level up Fitbeast Hand Gripper 120 – 180 lbs (54 – 81 kg) but I think I might be tempted to move to Captains of Crush 1 when I get close to being able to close it.

Extensor Training Bands

If you don’t want to give yourself tennis or golfer’s elbow from too much crushing you should attempt to balance your program with some extensor training as well. These ripper bands provide 5 different resistance levels to work against.

Gripedo

If the Gripedo was available in the UK, I would definitely get one.

Looks ideal for rotational and pinch training, along with wide grip farmer’s carries. You should go and check out their demo videos because it looks so versatile.

Electronic Hand Dynamometer

If you want to have an objective measure of your strength gains then you should use a hand dynamometer. Providing you take measurements in a controlled and methodical way, you will get consistent readings that can be used to plot progress. See my grip strength monitoring template for more details.

I am using this hand dynamometer model from GripX which goes up to 200 lbs or 90 kgs.

So for my latest experiment, I’ve started a program of grip strengthening which of course requires a spreadsheet to monitor grip strength progress over the coming months.

This Google Sheets grip strength monitoring template can be used by anyone to record grip strength progression and includes performance metrics for males and females from 18 years and up.

I’m using strength statistics from the Journal of Orthopaedic and Sports Physical Therapy to split grip strength recordings into percentiles and then the standard Captains of Crush levels to further split strength feats in the top 10%.

This is not a linear scale. Most people will not exceed level 5 (Strong – top 10% performance). From level 5 it is probably an exponential strength scale. In terms of level 10 which corresponds to Captains of Crush 4, I think only 2 men have ever closed the gripper and no women ever have – so we are talking superhuman strength at this end of the scale.

I am monitoring my grip strength weekly using a hand dynamometer following a standardised measuring technique.

• use same chair with arms for each reading
• feet flat on floor
• arms resting on armrest with wrists just over the end of the chair’s arm, thumb facing upwards.
• hold grip and squeeze as hard as possible for a few seconds
• Repeat 3 times recording the max reading each time

Then recording 3 readings from each side, in my spreadsheet so that performance can be charted.

In the following excerpt, you can see my starting performance which falls into the Normal strength range (third quartile), followed by a series of demonstration recordings from the future.

I’m also recording a max hang result so that I have a real world indication of my increasing grip, which is obviously the important part of any strength increase. As you can see, my ‘normal’ grip strength is only enough to hold my excess body off the floor for 4.8 seconds. That’s not terribly impressive.

In my imaginary world, my performance goes without a hitch and my increasing grip strength is presented on a timeline chart with annotations indicating the movement through the different strength classifications.

Feel free to save a copy of the grip monitoring template to your own google drive and tweak to your hearts content. No need to ask me for edit access – if you save a copy of the spreadsheet, it becomes yours to edit as you see fit.

If you want to follow my progress, take a look at my latest experiment in grip strength post.

I have very limited coordination and as the routines get slightly more complex I rapidly end up in a dither, but I think the brain focus reduces my awareness on how breathless I’ve become and maybe that’s why I like it. Luckily my boxing buddy has more coordination than me so can keep us on track for a few rounds at least.

Adidas contacted me recently and offered up a selection of their plus sized clothing range for me to try out so I selected my clothes with boxing in mind.

First into my shopping bag was a pair of iconically styled boxing gloves (not quite from the Adidas women’s clothing range – I know).

There’s a huge range of shorts available on the Adidas site (even in plus sizes).

I like a decent length short, by which I mean knee hugging. I often wear padded cycling shorts to exercise in, or lounge about the house, ever-ready to jump into cycling action, so it makes a pleasant change to have all that comfort without the crotch pad. In the end I kept 2 pairs of ultra sleek shorts from the Adidas range along with a pair of standard cotton shorts to wear over the top on those days that I feel the need for modesty.

Paired with some classic Adidas t-shirt designs and the 3-stripe joggers, I feel like a professional athlete but of course they are well suited to apres-boxing lounge wear as well.

At the beginning of the year I was trying to ignore my niggles and revive my love for running, this time with a dog leading the way. Unfortunately by week 6 of the C25K program it was clear that we weren’t going to be entering any canicross events until I’d sorted out my feet / knee / leg / back problems. I was shuffling sideways down the stairs to avoid bending my left knee and crawling up the stairs on my hands and knees for the same reason. It seemed a bit ridiculous to then lace up my barefoot running shoes for a painful jog around the park, trying to block out the plantar fascia pain.

So very recently I had a session with a Sports Therapist and Osteopath who suggested my knee was fundamentally ok. My kneecap wasn’t tracking smoothly (probably due to the arthritis) but determined that most of my issues stemmed from my lower back and other muscular imbalances. I found this remarkably inspiring and it’s given me the motivation to call a halt to what turned into a year long rest protocol. No one ever gets better by stopping all movement and I need to get moving again.

At this point I started to hear a buzz about the @kneesovertoesguy and went off to investigate. His story is really compelling. Multiple knee injuries and operations that wrecked his passion for basketball but motivated him to focus his efforts on rehabbing and ultimately bulletproofing his knees. If you take just a cursory glance at his instagram page you’ll have trouble believing that he also used to walk sideways down the stairs due to pain. A decade later and he’s a slam dunking superhero.

I would quite like that sort of turnaround for my own knees so I’ve investigated further. Here are some great resources to find out more:

KneesOverToesGuy presence

• Medium – https://kneesovertoesguy.medium.com/
• Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/kneesovertoesguy/?hl=en
• YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGybO-bWZ3W6URh42sdMQiw
• ATG (Athletic Truth Group) website – https://www.atgonlinecoaching.com/

Podcasts Starring KneesOverToesGuy

• Joe `Rogan Experience (on youtube) or find on Spotify
• RealMvmt
• School of Calisthenics
• Strong Habits

Ben Patrick (aka KneesOverToesGuy) has an online training program at atgonlinecoaching.com and my Experiment Number 4 is to spend the next 12 weeks working through the first (Zero) stage in his program. Hopefully I will be amazed by the results and will continue from there by following the next two progressions.

His program isn’t cheap. It’s about $50 a month but I signed up with a 50% code FRESHSTART2021 (now FRESHSTART2022) in order to see if I thought it would be good value. I’m only 2 weeks in but I’m going to continue at the full price. I could easily cancel and continue on my own as I know the routine now but the training platform is good and I get daily feedback from his coaches after I post my session videos and that is quite motivating as well as being super useful to get actual form feedback.

Ben Patrick is very passionate about helping ALL people and he puts loads of stuff out for free and I suspect he would be happy for you to take his technique and go it alone. So don’t let the price put you off. Watch his videos and start building from the ground up. There’s also a picture guidebook for the Knee Ability Zero available now.

Knees Over Toes Guy – Knee Ability Zero Program Protocol

To be completed 4 days a week, although I try to add backwards walking everyday.

• Backwards walking 10 mins
• Anterior Tibialis foot raise * 25
• Flexor Hallucis Longur Calf Raise * 25
• Repeat Anterior Tibialis foot raise * 25
• Knees Over Toes Calf Raise * 25
• Patrick Step * 25 each leg
• ATG Split Squat (when I can do the last stage without pain)
• Elephant walk * 30 each leg
• L-Sit Progressions – 1 min each leg
• Couch Stretch – 1 min each leg

I’m hoping that I’ll be able to walk down the stairs at the end of my 12 weeks, I’m also hopeful that me and the pooch will run again.

I’m wondering whether I could even put my knee pains so far behind me that I could entertain practising some of these sissy squats before the year is up.

Update

10 weeks into my experiment with Knee Ability Zero I had an accident and broke my ankle. I spent the next 7 weeks with my foot encased in a cast and then a fracture boot.

I’m now eager to get straight back into knees over toes training as I have complete faith that this will be the best way to regain lower limb strength. Ben Patrick is such an inclusive bloke, he is often talking about training a diverse group of athletes from the very overweight to the elderly and as such he is passionate about scaling exercises to the point of zero pain motion. This is absolutely ideal for me as I have to take my recovery seriously and avoid straining my newly fused bones. For the next few weeks I will be following the program in his latest book ATG for Life, as it has the most information on scaling routines.

While freediving has its attractions, my extraordinarily buoyant body precludes me from this activity.

This hasn’t stopped me from gathering a small collection of freediving books and an assortment of apnea iPhone apps in a quest to hold my breath for an extraordinary length of time.

The latest obsession with breath holding follows a really interesting podcast by Ben Greenfield where he was talking to a freediver about the mammalian dive reflex and apnea tables. I didn’t know much about either.

As part of his training, the freediver regularly runs intervals on his treadmill, gradually picking up speed while holding his breath before breathing again on the rest cycle. This apparently helps him to dive deeper and deeper into the ocean’s mysterious depths.

Much as I am intrigued by the ocean, I don’t think I’m ever going to be a freediver, however, I am interested in whether I could significantly improve my breath hold abilities and whether an improved performance there, could translate to improved running efficiency.

While I don’t think I’ll ever take up free diving, I’m rather too buoyant to get anything more than my face under water, I am keen to ensure that if the worst came to the worst, and I was ever trapped in a sinking vessel, I might have more than 20 seconds of lung capacity to enable me to swim to freedom.

Training advice on assorted free diving websites suggests that regular training from the comfort of your sofa, could result in a 3 minute breath holding ability within 3 months.

That is pretty impressive and whether it would have knock effects for running or not, it sounds like a worthy task to exploit ones physiological potential. It reminds me of the yogis who can depress their heart rates so low that they can feign death for ages. That’s another skill that I can imagine being extremely useful in disaster situation.

Although you can hold your breath longer under water, this breath hold training is best completed from the sofa rather than the pool because it is dangerous and foolhardy to push your breath hold limits in the vicinity of water. The Mammalian Dive Reflex means you can hold your breath longer while ever your eyes are under water and it also means if you pass out, your final breath will be a massive gulp of water to the lungs and you’ll be dead.

Apparently if you pass out while breath holding under water. You won’t breath immediately. You will however start to sink, and if someone doesn’t fish you out of the water, your body will eventually take its final breath! Not to be advised.

If you are lucky enough to get pulled out before your last breath, a skilled rescuer will know to blow across your eyes, to alert the body that you are no longer submerged and that it is safe to breathe again.

Anyway, you can rest assured that if you can hold your breath for 3 minutes on dry land, you are going to be able to eke out a few more seconds in a sinking ship scenario.

Having been inspired by the podcast I went in search of other material and went on to read Deep by James Nestor, which is a pretty impressive piece of journalism, a sort of Born to Run for Freedivers.

Free diving sounds exciting, but as a spectator sport it has the potential to be more than stultifying. A diver bobs below the surface and soon descends out of sight. The Marshall counts down, then counts up and maybe 3 mins later the diver reappears. It sounds dull I think, but on the authors first visit to the world champs most of the divers passed out in the depths and needed to be retrieved, one went AWOL as he lost his ankle tether and was feared dead and others came up with broken blood vessels smearing their face. That sort heroism adds to the interest but not the appeal.

Now Deep is a really interesting read but its low on transferable advice for runners. For that I recommend The Oxygen Advantage by Patrick McKeown, although you should be aware that Patrick is a breath holding zealot and appears to view it as a cure-all – anything from asthma to obesity.

The argument is that most Westerners chronically over breathe, due to mouth breathing and/or sighing and yawning which creates no end of health problems. Fortunately we can learn to calm our breathing and expand what he calls our BOLT score which is a non-extreme breath hold capacity. Most people will experience health and performance benefits by extending their breath hold capacity.

Anyway, the book includes a whole section of breath holding exercises and specific Oxygen Advantage programs including those that stimulate the advantages of high altitude training.

In the pre-lockdown parkrun days, I used his Nasal Unblocking method:

1. Take a small, silent breath in and a small silent breath out through your nose
2. Pinch your nose with your fingers to hold your breath
3. Walk as many paces as possible with your breath held. Try to build up a strong air shortage.
4. When you resume breathing, do so only through your nose; your breathing must be calmed immediately.
5. After resuming your breathing, your first breath will usually be bigger than normal. Make sure that you calm your breathing as soon as possible by suppressing your second and third breaths.
6. You should be able to recover this breath hold within two to three breaths. If you cannot you have held your breath too long.
7. Wait about a minute and repeat.
8. Repeat this exercise five or six times until the nose is decongested.

I also use an apnea training app on my phone and follow the CO2 tables provided. This are very similar cyclic breath hold exercises but as ever I like the benefit of the automatically recorded progress.

After haphazardly breath holding for a month I increased my maximum breath hold from 30 to 121 seconds (without preliminary Wim Hof breaths). Thats probably not sufficient to escape the sinking ship and only time will tell if it has any short term benefits for my parkrun times but I feel good about it.

Most of these scans revealed only micro improvements to my weight. However, having this scheduled check-in booked, seems to curb the worst of my excesses and keeps me oscillating back to the straight and narrow. Historically if I take my eye off the ball, which typically means removing my daily or weekly weigh in, then my weight climbs. Easily half to one whole stone can slip onto my body over the year. So I had been happy at least to stop the inevitable climb. 

Trouble is, at a weight drop of about 2 lbs per year I wasn’t going to reach my goal weight til my mid 60s. Not a very happy thought given my ever crumbling arthritic knees were/are becoming more and more restrictive as months pass. 

Triggered by starvation viewing in Alone and then an Instagram post by big_silver_bird who now uses a nutritionist that I respect. I decided to start dabbling with Exante a VLCD or very low calorie diet.

I say dabbling because after a fortnight of strictly following the 800 cal plan I started to half arse it a bit. Adding back a G&T (or two) and having a more substantial dinner. My argument is that I still wanted to have energy for exercise and so was happy to sacrifice some of the very dramatic rates of loss that people experience on this diet. 

I still lost about a stone in a month and then hit a plateau which I am now trying to dislodge with a month of Whole30. 

For me, this bitting and bobbing approach works or at least I like to tell myself it does. It delays the desire to throw in the towel as I have something new and shiny to try but I am obviously sacrificing pace. 

I had another scan last week to freeze the progress into another no-holds-barred view of my interior.

In the past 2 years I’ve lost 10kg (22lbs) with largest drop occurring in recent months as I started the VLCD.

Overall I lost 2 kg of lean mass in the two years since I’ve been accurately monitoring it. Most of that was lost in my legs and coincided with lockdown 1. I suspect this related to the loss of my daily cycle commute and increasingly painful knees. I was pretty surprised to note that the period that spanned my VLCD experience was not associated with losses in muscle mass – during this period it stayed constant while 5 kg of fat dropped off me instead. 

Ever since that first scan was taken, the number that registered most with me was the VAT score or Visceral Adipose Tissue area. This is the fat that sits around your internal organs such as heart, liver and kidneys and does no one any good. Levels above 100 cm2 are associated with significantly poorer health outcomes and my initial reading was 142 cm2.

Heart attack city. 

This latest reading was 106 cm2. That’s a 25% reduction and makes me feel good. Hopefully I can dip under the 100 mark by my next check in point. 

I pay £180 for two progress scans per year. Personally I think that is well worth it for the accountability and empirical evidence. There are cheaper ways to achieve accountability though, like a tight fitting set of clothes. I actually think it offers a starker and possibly more motivating contrast than the side by side shots from the DexaScan.

This last year was truly an odd one. Where the world did its best to tackle the covid-19 pandemic, I managed to adopt a few healthy habits while I got used to a new life of working from the spare room. Despite my new habits (and a lockdown puppy that helped improve my step count), there is no denying that the negative effects of morbid obesity and advancing years are not easily escaped. Swinging a few clubs, an occasional inversion and a few spin classes have not held back the tide of decreasing mobility and excessive joint pain.

I don’t want to turn this into a whine about my current aches and pains but suffice to say – I have them! I’m 50 this year and don’t have faith in my body holding me up for another 10, never mind 30 years.

That is pretty appalling so my next experiment is one focussed on reclaiming my future health.

Operation Healthspan is here.

I’ve been back to my old habits of reading books and listening to podcasts on biohacking and longevity studies. While I have no particular desire to extend my life significantly, I would very much like to extend the number of healthy years that I have left to me. I’d quite happily die at 80 if that very morning I had taken the dog for a jog around the local common and knocked out a couple of chin ups on a low hanging branch. At the moment that doesn’t look to be my future……

Much of the inspiration for Operation Healthspan comes from the book Lifespan by Dr David A Sinclair. Sinclair is a scientist working on ageing and longevity studies and his book is heavy on the science of the disease of ageing with much discussion on biochemical pathways, gene expression and animal experimentation. It’s an interesting book but if you’d like to go lighter on the technicalities try a podcast featuring David Sinclair (see links below).

Living longer and/or living healthier doesn’t really lend itself to a 30 day experiment format, it requires more of an all or nothing approach and I may not appreciate the affects of the program for decades to come. Still, I found the rodent and worm experiments documented in Lifespan to be convincing enough for me to commit to a longterm experiment – just don’t expect daily updates for the next decade.

Operation Healthspan

This is my planned protocol. Note that not all of these come directly from Lifespan, for example, Sinclair doesn’t say much about fitness other than to recommend HIT.

I’ll be doing some do-it-at-home blood testing just a few days after starting this protocol so I have a biochemical baseline but I also have a long list of aches, pains and moans that I hope to be able to reduce as the weeks turn into months.

Alcohol

• Quit alcohol – ideally moderate red wine consumption would be useful but I don’t trust myself with anything short of daily consumption so I will be going stone cold sober instead.

Fitness & Resilience

• Daily mace swings again for shoulder mobility, strength and a bit of zen
• Original Strength resets
• Mobility and strength with LittleTank
• Breath work using my airofit to improve retention and lung capacity
• Temperature shock – dog walks in a t-shirt, cold water exposure, chilipad to sleep on. I’d like some heat exposure as well but saunas are tricky in covid times.
• Powerzone training challenges on the peloton

Nutrition

• Monthly fasts between 20 and 48 hrs
• Shift to a heavier focus on plant based meals. 80% vegetarian. More lentils and legumes. Blue Zone style eating
• No more protein supplementation
• Renewed vigour with fermented products – sauerkraut, kombucha and yoghurt
• Drink water – 4 litre per day

Supplementation

• Metformin (prescription reqd)
• MNM
• Vitamin D
• Resveratrol or grape skin extract (probably not required if I hadn’t given up red wine)

Lifespan Resources

If you haven’t read the Lifespan, here are some comprehensive notes from the Joe Rogan podcast where he interviewed David Sinclair on the topic of Longevity.

Fast Hacks details David Sinclair personal supplementation strategy.

Recommended podcasts:

• Ben Greenfield
• Joe Rogan
• Doctor’s Kitchen

While I am totally up for the concept of bodily inversion, I’m a little bit lost as how to go about it.

The traditional, zero cost method to inversion is the bog standard handstand or headstand. The latter being a move that I would dearly love to be able to do, but unfortunately I do not have the strength, balance or bravery required to get my 240 lb frame into that position.

Another method is by use of an inversion table. I reckon I’d be able to do this but inversion tables are big and ugly, like a glorified ironing board and where the heck am I going to keep one?

The extremely brave or foolhardy, use gravity boots. Not a chance in hell that you would get me in these. I would need to be winched into place and winched back out again. This is the reserve of particularly evil torture chambers and will never be seen in my garden gym.

Now I have tried a yoga sling for inversion and providing you have somewhere sturdy to suspend it, like a massive power rack in your garden, I think they are a pretty good option. I couldn’t really get the hang of it though.

This clip shows my first attempt with the yoga sling. Turns out I’m wrapping my legs the wrong way so I’m lucky I didn’t tip myself out onto the concrete floor. Trying the wrap in the opposite direction didn’t get me any closer to a full inversion. I suspect my bum is too hefty and I’m sitting too far into the sling. Anyway, it feels nice but it’s not stretching out my vertebrae.

So finally I get to the crux of my latest experiment in health and Fitness, I’m going to be spending 30 days with the FeetUp trainer and maybe even longer if I’m successful.

The FeetUp trainer has been relentlessly marketed to me since my first inversion attempts appeared on instagram. I’ve been resisting (weakly) but now I think the time is right to give it a go and see if a large and unwieldy woman can get anywhere approximating an inversion by using the commode-like frame to support the movement.

The FeetUp trainer is a bit ugly and a bit bulky but has a good finish and maybe I can hide it in my shirt cupboard when not in use to avoid critical comments from the family.

My plan is to use the FeetUp trainer daily for about 5 minutes at a go until I can actually get myself upside down. Then I would like to try and build the time spent decompressing. The recommendation is up to 30 mins spent upside down but if I can manage 10 I think I could treat this experiment as a major success.

Here’s the daily-ish log for my 30 days with a FeetUp trainer.

As lockdown started back in March I thought it would carve out a chunk of time and therefore an opportunity to learn a new skill. I opted to learn how to swing a pair of Indian clubbells. We are a few months on now and while I still swing clubbells consistently, I can’t claim to be very good.

I’ve heard that we are likely to remain working from home at least until Christmas so the absence of a commute means I should squeeze in another learning opportunity.

Rather than continue with an existing project and set my first challenge to attain mastery, I thought I would continue with my time honoured path of seeking new and shiny things to play with. So experiment No 1 is to:

Learn how to Swing a Mace 360

….in 30 days

The gada or mace is an ancient weapon used by Hindu warriors and is still studied as a martial art. Nowadays the mace is used a functional fitness tool.

The mace’s weight imbalance and swinging motion has impressive benefits for the body including shoulder, strength and mobility, core rotational strength and a killer grip.

More importantly it looks blinking cool when you can swing it properly and any self respecting warrior woman ought to be able to swing a weapon with grace.

Here’s Steph Sorenson swinging Mace 360s with consummate grace.

So in readiness for the challenge, I have prepared my own mace. I’ve made it with a handle from an old garden tool and embedded it in a ceramic pot of concrete.

My first attempt at mace making was not successful, so for this mace I followed instructions from Bill and Steph Sorenson (see the instagram post above) and I have been much more successful. In fact it was such fun that I’m tempted to make my experiment to make a new gada everyday, it’s amazing the things people throw away that would make perfect mace bases.

The homemade mace has had 3 days to dry and is now ready for Operation 360. I’ll do a wrap up post showing my Day 1 to Day 30 progress shots but I will also attempt to write up daily(ish) progress reports on my experiment log.

Resources for learning to swing a Mace

Mace Video tutorials

• Nourishing Moves – How to Swing a Mace

Mace Instagram Accounts to Follow

• Steph Sorenson
• Bill Sorenson
• LittleTank
• Mr Maceman
• Kells Bells
• Iverta