Calf strain. Bad news :(

[prand]

I'm sitting watching the Commonwealth sevens finals a bit glum tonight. Not because England missed a medal, but because I've got my leg raised, and an ice pack on my calf and am in a fair bit of pain.

I was at my regular Sunday morning social touch rugby session when it happened. I had the ball and was running sideways and sidestepped to straighten up and pass to a player who was looping around behind me. I felt a sudden whack on the calf and it felt like the player had clipped me on the way round

I had fallen over and and when i tried to get up i couldn't stand on my right leg, definitely couldn't run, and my calf was very sore. As nobody had touched me I guessed it was a calf strain of some sort.

So one of the other players is a physio, and said this was classic 'Tennis Leg', me being in my susceptible 40's with a woefully inadequate warmup, and he laughed at me looking behind for the culprit as it's a textbook symptom when you think someone or something has hit you. We worked out it wasn't my achilles thankfully and he recommended a lot of RICE then gentle stretching once the pain goes after several days, some strengthening and gentle exercise for at least another 2-3 weeks before getting back on to the field of dreams.

I'm not really looking forward to a layoff, but I guess it's better than further damage. But does anyone have any good calf strength or flexibility exercises to help with rehab and further prevention?

[Crush]

When I played our calf warmup consisted of two footed calf raises on a step, and also as part of the forward lunging type stretch (will try and find a photo, never learned the name )

Prior to this we usually had a slow lap of the pitch followed by some dynamic stretches and then the static stretches (advice may be different now as I last played ten years ago and sport has come on a lot since then!)

[Dammit]

When you've RICE'd it better try doing some calf-raises through the day.

My physio used to recommend 300/leg/day when I needed to gain strength to prevent the reoccurrence of a calf injury.

[22s]

A great calf stretch is to put your foot against the wall (heel the floor, toes on the wall pointing upwards).

Twist your foot to the outside whilst maintaining contact with the wall, and push forward with your hips.

Hold for 30 secs, then repeat on other leg.

[prand]

Well a couple of day's rest and a bit of ice has helped, I can walk around fairly comfortably, but with a bit of a limp as I can't spring at the end of a step, running feels out of the question as I can sense the pain just lurking there waiting to bite if I overdo it.

It's odd, I don't really have any mobility issues rotating or stretching my foot and ankle until I put some weight on it. The calf is pretty tender still though

Anyways, I'll give it a few more days until the pain really goes to start stretching it out and doing some of the above strengthening exercises. 300 lifts a day looks like a good challenge!

This might also be a bit of a wakeup call for this weekend warrior to do a bit more decent, regular exercise beyond going out for a blast once or twice a week as I have recently. A decent warmup routine looks key too, I've heard a bit about Dynamic Stretching now, which I'll have a look into. I was always a static/ballistic type stretcher, which now sounds like I was doing it all wrong!