Strength and Conditioning During Injury

Being a competitive gymnast means a lot of training. Even though I have been injured, I still have to maintain my strength and flexibility. Some of the ways I have been able to do that are:

1. Doing a lot of upper body conditioning and work on my abs. My mom and I made a video showing my top 5 favorite arm workouts to do while injured. Over 100 people have watched our video!

2. I spend a lot of time on the trampoline training my skills still so that I can keep practicing without having so much pressure on my injured knee.
3. During some of the time I have been injured I have still been allowed to train on beam and bars. Making sure I keep up these skills is important to coming back. They have less impact on my knee, and bars is mostly arms and stomach, so I am able to do most of my skills on those events.

4. Swimming has been good for strengthening my bad knee, but it is also good for all of my muscles. Swimming is a great, low impact way to work out if you are injured.

5. All of our injured gymnasts spend a lot of time on the bike and elliptical in order to get in our cardio without having the impact of working on all the regular events.

Injury Recovery and Physical Therapy

One major part of recovering from an injury has been rehabilitation and physical therapy. Some of the things that I have done to help heal and strengthen my knee have included:

1. After my doctor's appointments and getting a diagnosis, my doctor sent me to physical therapy, where they had me do conditioning to strengthen my muscles around my knee. I did squats, balancing, stretches, and worked with a strength band.

2. Swimming: My doctor recommended I get in the pool to help regain my strength and range of motion. My mom found lower body exercises online to help me rehab my knee. http://tinyurl.com/Keehn4Hswim

3. When I wasn’t at physical therapy, I still had to take care of my knee. We used KT tape, a brace, and ice massages to relieve pressure and pain.

4. My physical therapist tried many different techniques to help get rid of the pain in my knee. We did ultrasound therapy, electrotherapy, and he even worked on my knee with cocoa butter and weird tools.

5. Because I’m still 100% better, I have to go back to Iowa City to have some needling done. This means they will make my knee numb and go in under ultrasound and poke my tendons with needles to try to get them to respond to the other treatments better.

End Puppy Mills

Please End Puppy Mills! They are not a good thing!

  I went protesting for a bit. I protested against puppy mills. We have a friend named Mindy who works for a group called Bailing Out Benji. I want puppy mills to stop. if you read this please know not to buy puppy mill puppies! Help us take an END to puppy mills. Protest against it. Help save puppies from bad lives.

My Injury

My right leg hurt, I went to PT, but it was only tendonitis. Soon my left leg hurt, and we went to the doctor, and found out I fractured my petela. I was scared. I thought it was the same thing. I now have a brace, and I have crutches.  I was sad. I have them for 4 weeks.

The New Puppy

My grandma and I went to get a puppy because she was looking for a dog and we found this puppy. So we went to go get it.
  She is a miniature australian sheperd and her name his Cassy. She loves playing, and I get to train her for the fair! I am so exited that I get to train her, and I absolutly love her.

Clothes for Girl Dogs

This summer I have been working on clothes for girl dogs because I got a donation of some girl onesies. It was hard to make my brother's onesies look good for girl dogs. I am very excited to share them. My grandma gave me some leftover dog food from her dog that died to donate to the shelter dogs in memory of Kaia. I miss Kaia. My girl dog clothes donation will be in memory of Kaia too.

I am also going to a movie premiere about puppy mills. The movie is called Dog by Dog. I can't wait!

Spring Show

I had a spring show for gymnastics and I made my round-off 5,4, and 3 backhand springs. It was fun and we did a dance and the coaches danced. My routine was beam and i upgraded my skill to a cartwheel instead of a handstand. I also got to spend time with my friends and I got to stretch with them and I watched them do their routines. I also helped them and that was the biggest part because they were higher level than me and I helped them.

This is the team dance.

This is my routine.

This is the coaches' dance.