As a fitness professional, I thought two weeks fully resting post-operation would be enough to restart my usual routine afterwards. But although I was mentally ready to be back, having half of my thyroid removed brought me constant fatigue. The body needs a while to recover fully, and so do scars. Everyone is different, so only return to exercise after having discussed it with your treating healthcare professional. So, you need to be careful about
going too hard with weights to protect the wound. So, I started doing light activities and movements such as walking. A month later, I was back teaching my dance classes.
Eventually, I returned to my favourite activity of daily cycling to the multiple gyms where I teach classes and have PT sessions with clients and I built it up from there.
Body weight workouts focused on the lower body, such as dancing or running, really helped me build my strength without risking the healing process. Because when you’ve had an injury, you need to be careful not to put too much pressure on the wound. I also started adding some body weight training. I started doing only a few repetitions within a set of the
same exercises, increasing the frequency and intensity as the months went by. I leave you here my five simple but efficient exercises which helped in building my strength in the early stages of scar recovery:
Squats
Variations of Squats, where I keep my upper body straight, with my head in line with the spine. The scar made me think even more about keeping a perfect posture!
I started doing bodyweight exercises, 2 reps, 10 sets, increasing to 3 reps, 15 sets and eventually adding resistance bands and pulses, to keep my muscles contracted for longer and strengthen the muscle tissue again. I also added some squats variations, like walking in a squat position or jumping squats and combining both resistance training with cardio workout to have a complete weekly training which kept me super motivated.
My philosophy was simple. Going slowly and following healthcare professionals’ advice was important on the road to full recovery. I set up achievable goals and I was positive, consistent and disciplined, without feeling ashamed of myself because this was a long term investment assuming that I would eventually get to where I was before.
Lunges
Being agile, as a dancer, with good coordination, range of motion in the joints and a strong core is essential to be able to use jumping lunges as my ongoing cardio exercise. This is an excellent cardiovascular exercise that helped me improve lower body strength and power at that stage, as well as challenge dynamic stability. Lunges target a wide range of muscles, the glutes, quadriceps, hamstrings, hip flexors, and calves.
A few weeks later, I did some variations, stable lunges, adding a kettlebell to keep my posture totally straight and increasing the intensity of the exercise.
Upper body stretching exercises for mobility
After I spent the first 2 weeks in bed, working behind a laptop was where I spent most of my daily hours while I was regaining my strength. Back stretching exercises were essential to improve the range of motion of the joints and also to get ready for proper upper body
workout training.
Some basic exercises I started to do included holding a barbell and lifting up my arms over my head, shoulders being the only joints which were moving, also keeping my legs totally straight, so hamstrings were also stretched and while keeping my head in line with the spine, rotating my hip flexors, keeping my back parallel to the floor.
This is a full body stretching exercise that helped me a lot! And I still do it today as it makes me feel elastic and my joints do not crack anymore.
Planks
I was finishing all my workouts with some core exercises, the main muscle that helps us keep a good posture, and is involved in any exercise. The stronger your core is the better you will be able to work out, because you need a strong core to perform every exercise properly.
I started challenging myself with three planks per workout for as long as I could hold. This exercise was perfect for the scar as I was not rotating any part of the neck. Eventually, I added variations, like plank with shoulders touch, reverse plank, walking plank. One of the challenges I set for myself was to do a chaturanga plank. This is basically a plank adding push-ups, the exercises start in a standard plank position, shoulders directly above the
hands, slowly lowering until the body is in line with the arms. The difficult part here is that because the elbows touch the ribs, the core needs to be super firm to be able to perform the exercise properly and at the same time, the core is being trained efficiently.
During the first workouts, I started adding bodyweight exercises, focused on cardio and, eventually, I increased the resistance workout during my weekly training, reaching the goal of doing both to keep myself active and keep a healthy lifestyle as a fitness professional.
After each workout I cleaned my scar, and once dried, I applied Kelo-Cote Scar Gel to help with the healing process.
