My Road to Recovery

As a fencer, I love Dragonwing clothes because they keep me comfortable when I’m doing intense workouts. Unfortunately, I have not been able to do what I love lately due to a knee injury. In May, I was told I have a condition called patellar tendonitis. Basically, it’s an overuse injury that, when aggravated, leads to inflammation of a tendon in my knee. Considering that I play a sport that requires lots of leg work and strain on my knees, you might see how my injury could be a serious setback.

Even though I’ve been spending a lot of time doing exercises and physical therapy, the hardest part of my recovery process is simply not being able to do the sport that I love. I’ve been fencing for five years and have never gone this long without fencing.

Luckily, the summer is the slowest time of the year when it comes to tournaments, as the number of national level tournaments is very limited. I normally do lots of training over the summer, but this time I took a seven-week break from my sport and focused on my recovery. I spent a few hours almost every day with either my physical therapist, chiropractor, or swimming trainer. Here I am doing plank exercises on the porch -- in my Dragonwing Racer Sports Bra and Chill Weight Capri Leggings, of course! Because swimming is a low impact form of exercise, I could do it for as long as I want without injuring myself any further. In fact, the swimming helps speed up my recovery because it develops many of the muscles that I don’t use as much when I fence. My chiropractor and physical therapist give me stretches and exercises that will eventually get rid of my tendonitis. I do these exercises with them and every day at home. About three times a week, I will go to my fencing club and take a 20 minute one-on-one lesson with my coach where I do mostly arm work with some light footwork and no lunging. I’m determined to get better as soon as I can so that I don’t have to worry about my knee when I am older and my injury could be worse.