Between the knee surgeries and gaining back some of the weight from my initial weight loss, my legs are not back 100%. Not only does my knee still need to heal up but the quadriceps, hamstrings and calves are all weaker and less conditioned than they were seven months ago. In the past, I could do leg extensions with the whole weight rack at the gym for reps of 10. Now, I can’t even budge it one millimeter.

If I had to put a number on the overall condition of my legs, I would say they are about 60%. Some of that missing 40% is mental. I have no idea if my knee with recover back to what it once was and that uncertainty is not an easy mental hurdle to jump over. All I can do is push it daily with my rehab and continue with RICE treatment – Rest Ice Compress Elevation.

Today was such a beautiful July 4th day that I decided to shoot baskets at a local outdoor park. I haven’t shot a basketball outdoors in at least eight years, maybe more. As a kid, I played at outdoors parks all the time- day, night, weekend, rain, it did not matter. As I got older and could afford to join local gyms, I became spoiled by the air conditioned, perfectly manicured basketball courts provided by an indoor facility. So when I started to shoot around today under the blue sky and Florida sun, I felt great. After ten minutes, my knee was loose and the sweat was pouring down my face. After twenty minutes, my legs started to get tired and my shooting form was getting sloppy from the fatigue. After thirty minutes, I was done. I wanted to push my knee further, who wouldn’t? There was no pain and I was curious to see how my knee would handle a single leg jump or a strong pivot with more stress on my knee. I caught myself mid-thought and slowed myself down. There will be a time to test my knee out, but that time is not now when I am still out of shape and overweight.

When I was down to 292, I was able to lift weights, do a full plyometric workout AND then shoot around. Even at 292, my conditioning was stellar for my size. As much as I wanted to push myself today, I used some common sense and stopped when I was tired. Yes, it is a letdown to know that I am so far away from where I was just seven short months ago. It is easy to undermine my own efforts by being too hard on myself, so I try to remind myself each and every day that all these small steps will lead me down the path to my ultimate goal.

Here are some great quotes I found about taking small steps:

“It is better to take many small steps in the right direction than to make a great leap forward only to stumble backward.”

“A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.”

“Have a bias toward action – let’s see something happen now. You can break that big plan into small steps and take the first step right away.”

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