Injured and struggling to stay motivated

First of all congratulations on your little girl! If nothing else take this as a chance to spend time with her. I am sure that it's horribly frustrating, but you can make the best out of a bad situation. Here are a few ideas you can look into:
- Improving your eating habits. Cooking and tracking your meals can take a lot of time and this is a chance to do that, learn more about what you eat and this will pay off later when you eat healthier in the long run.
- Work on your upper body. Sounds like you should be able to do that despite the injury.
- planning on how to get back to training when the injury heals. Running can be high impact, so you might look into something lower impact to start off with. Perhaps swimming or I've heard cycling can be good for the knees if done moderately.
The main thing is that a person's perception of how good they feel is tied to the perception of progress. If you feel you are improving, you will will feel happy. If you feel you are regressing, you will feel unhappy. You can find other ways to progress, while you are injured and they can help in the long run too.

Hi
Congratulations on the birth of your daughter.
Why not do all the working out you can that doesn't involve any knee pressure? Lots of upper body strength - weights and resistance. Pull ups. Floor core work - sit ups, leg raises etc as well as the Superman stretch if that is possible. If it feels right, you could continue to work on your uninjured leg with some pistol squats.

All of these will give you the buzz you need, help your body feel fitter and stronger and also help protect your knee because other muscles being stronger can help compensate for it. I did this when I was left almost bedridden with agonising plantar fasciitis. I followed youtube exercise videos for serious foot injuries and built up from there.

ianplumlee1 wrote: »

I knew the day was coming, and it's finally arrived. After years of athletics and being in the military I stopped working out as consistently as I had in the past. Recently, my wife and I welcomed out little girl to the family and it's motivated me to starting working out consistently again. Well, after a couple weeks of running and feeling exceptionally well, I woke up about a week ago to some serious pain in my knees. After a week of no running and little improvement, I visited my doctor who said that, while it's not 100% certain, it could be a meniscus tear. That's about the worst possible news I could have received since physical activity is what drives me forward everyday and I work in a physically demanding job. It's been pretty depressing to sit around and not do much and I'm really trying to figure out how this is going to affect my training and physical activity in the future. In all my years of playing sports and being in the military, I've never been injured like this and it's become difficult to see the light at the end of the tunnel. It's really been a challenge for the past week and it sounds like it might be another 6-8 weeks before I'm able to do much working out again. Talk about frustrating...

I hear and understand your frustration. When being active is important to mental health and even economic well-being, it's especially annoying to have periods of enforced reduced activity - even when that's essential for healing so future progress. I get it. I get mildly PO-ed when I need to take even short breaks to recover from essential surgery or something.

But letting yourself slip into catastrophizing about it can lead to some worse places . . . so don't. (I'll let you Google the research studies, because they exist, but oversimplifying, essentially it's that if we catastrophize, it becomes more likely that pain perception increases, and effective countering actions may decrease.)

There are usefully active things you can do *now*, as people have outlined above. If you prioritize healing, including repair if necessary, there likely are many more things you can do later. They may not be the same things you've previously done, but there's no way to be sure of that now.

Believe me, even though I get how bad it feels (and actually is) in the moment, a torn meniscus is not literally the worst possible news you could get.

How do I know this? I was diagnosed, 100% certain sure via MRI, with a meniscus tear. That was on top of pre-existing knee arthritis. I got a cortisone injection, went to PT (which won't fix a torn meniscus, but helped me learn to walk and use stairs in ways that would reduce future stress on the knee). I was told I'd need clean-up surgery and even knee replacement at some point, possibly soon, but that I wasn't burning any bridges to do any exercise that I could tolerate, while deferring surgery. (Note: Don't assume you can do likewise until you get a firm diagnosis. Some knee problems can be made much worse by enduring discomfort/pain.) That was around 5 year ago, and I haven't needed surgery yet (and my pain/discomfort is very manageable).

After that diagnosis and PT, I experimented. I found that I can do things that do straight-line hinging knee motions, even with strong pressure, but that high impact or torque on my knee is a bad idea (makes the knee worse, non-temporarily). After your healing from the acute stage, you may find something different from that. For my situation, biking (stationary or "real") and rowing (on-water or machine) work fine, and allow for quite intense workouts. I avoid activities that involve twisting/torque on my knees, which includes some games (basketball, tennis, etc.) and things like dance-y aerobics. I can walk briskly (with a slow buildup after any long hiatus) but not run. Once again, you may not find the same things - I recognize that both sports and running are important to you. I can swim, but I hate it with an awesome fiery passion, so I only do it enough to stay tuned up for on-water rowing swimming needs (it's easy to flip those skinny boats). I can strength train, but some specific lifts are not a good plan.

Long run, you can figure out what works for you. If it isn't the same stuff you've enjoyed in the past, don't assume you can't enjoy some new things. I often think that the wisest sign in the world is one you see in lots of places; it says "You are here". That's the only place you can proceed from - not where you wish you were, where it would feel fair to be, etc. Just here. But there's almost always a path forward, IME . . . unless you do get the actual "worst possible news". (As an advanced-stage cancer survivor and cancer widow, I have some clues about what neighborhood that might be. I don't say that to pose as somehow noble, but to suggest - once again - that you avoid catastrophizing, and focus on what you *can* do. Finding the factors you can control is powerful, and empowering.)

You don't mention bodyweight, but if you've added a little by being comfortable and less active for a while, lose it. I wouldn't do that during the acute phase of healing (you want to prioritize healing, and that requires calories/nutrition). Once you are past that, managing eating - getting it a little bit below calorie expenditure at whatever activity level is sensible at the time - is what's needful. When I was diagnosed with the torn meniscus, I was overfat. Losing weight - to the lower end of what's healthy for me - made a *huge* difference in pain/discomfort frequency and severity.

Get good nutrition, as a bet hedge. Consider supplements that *might* help, like glucosamine/chondroitin (I'd try those, if I weren't vegetarian).

TL; DR:

Catastrophizing is a bad idea: research suggests it INCREASES pain and extends recovery (possibly indefinitely).
Find things you CAN do, don't wishful focus on CAN'T: It's a waste of your time & energy.
If you have excess weight, lose it via changing eating habits.
Get good PT.

Wishing you excellent long-run outcomes!

I hope you can be helped by the advice here. Injuries are no fun. But with the right help, you can get past it. Keep going. But also ask a physical therapist for help.