I started on just 3 sets of 3 squats and added just one squat (so 3-3-3 on day one, 4-3-3 on day two, 4-4-4 on day three and so one). I do this once a day, right at the end of the day. After the squats I do some light stretching and use my foam leg roller, then bed. This is just about the most gradual increase I can imagine. This time I have been much more rigorous about keeping a diary. Every day I score my activity (I don't do any exercise - this just means how much walking about I have had to do out of 5 and my pain out of 5. The calibration of this scale is as follows
Activity
0 = In be all day - example when ill
1 = Just at home all day and being particularly inactive
2 = The load incurred by walking around the house, driving to work and being at work
3 = Same load as a normal day but also includes something like a short walk (1-2 miles) with the kids
4 = Loads of on-and-off walking all day long. For example a day sightseeing and going around attractions
5 = Guess this would be if I took some kind of exercise :-)
Pain
0 = When I am cured! I.e I get no problems at all in an normal day or with gentle exercise
1 = Some twinges and stiffness but no pain. Generally feels good most of the day and I don't get any discomfort from siting for long periods. Would tend to feel mentally positive, walk briskly and go up stairs two at a time
2 = Average day - stiffness, areas of soreness, on my mind quite a lot, would walk more slowly, feel stiff on rising from sitting and go up stairs one at a time
3 = Lots of soreness. Unable to ignore it, perhaps limping a bit when walking. Not keen to put weight onto it and slow on stairs
4 = Lots of soreness. Unable to ignore it, limping when walking. Specific bad spot on patella tendon (or quad tendon) lit up
5 = Like after the marathon. Can't bear to bend it, any touch/impact is painful. Whole knee one big lump of pain
This has been much more successful. In the whole period I only had to skip one session and have got up to this target point. Combining this with some physio work on trigger points (see other post) and my leg roller I have some reduction in neuro symptoms. Here are some graphs derived from the data in my diary:
Here is a graph showing the weekly average for activity levels and pain levels. It is interesting to note how they do indeed follow each other - but perhaps with an offset. For example
an activity spike in week5 is followed by a pain spike in week 6. I wonder if I will get a similar spike in Week 9 to match the activity spike in week 8?
I have also extracted just the pain values and generated a predicted linear trend line to see if there is any week to week decease and, if so, how substantial is the rate of decrease. This trendline is based on day-values and not on the weekly averages.
On the plus side the trendline shows a decrease - but there is a caveat to this. That decrease could be because (over long periods of time) I may become inconsistent in my use of the pain level scores (is a 2 now the same as a 2 eight weeks ago?). I might be measuring my desire to see progress rather than actual progress! If it were indeed a linear progression (probably unlikely) this would predict that I would be 'cured' sometime in April 2010. This does indeed feel unlikely suggesting that it won't be a linear approach.
That said things definitely do feel easier at the moment - far from cured but I do see some minor gains.
Next target is now to go to one legged (drop right back down on the numbers ) and work back up to 3x15 one leg squats......
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