The first week after leaving hospital on the 16th December where very boring from a food point of view. Pretty much soup and other liquids. Took awhile before I was able to stomach a decent solid foods. Got the all clear from my surgeon yesterday which is the best news this year.
From a shoulder surgery POV I have been making excellent progress. The resistance band strength exercises have been tough going but I am slowly getting to the 2 x 15 reps of each exercise. From a bike view I have been able to ride on my turbo trainer and some road. Hoping to be able to attend the Shuttle Sunday at Grootfontein Bike Park this weekend, weather permitting. Won’t be using my Kenevo SL but going to ride with my Stumpjumper as it is quite a bit lighter. Manhandling the Kenevo has been a struggle.
In 4 months will be riding the Sabie Experience Lite, 120km and 2250m Ascent on more than 80% singletrack in the amazing forestry in the Sabie area. I have been experimenting with some additional resistance exercises for core, and lower body strength along with 30 minutes Anaerobic and VO2Max intervals and longer baseline rides on the trainer.
Busy with writing my exercise plan journey to possibly inspire and give some hints into a plan that has worked for me in my recovery journey as a recreational mountain biker that does long days out and can still survive a long decent.
In September 2023 I hit a tree with my shoulder after going OTB. I only had pain a day or so later and was lucky enough to get seen by a sports medicine doctor that Thursday.
We tried alternative therapy like shoulder infiltration and physical therapy.
On the 5th February we made the decision to go ahead with surgery as soon as possible. My doctor arranged for my first appointment with an orthopedic surgeon (Dr Leonore Botha). After that I was admitted for my surgery on 21’st of February.
That evening I had my first physiotherapy session and rehab program developed. The first two weeks where focused on post operative shoulder mobility. A large part of my rehabilitation was buying a Garmin Tacx Smart Trainer. I was able to start riding on the trainer the day after I was discharged. Initially I was unable to put any pressure on the shoulder for obvious reasons, however after 3 weeks I was riding fairly comfortably and slowly progressed to 30+ minute sessions multiple times a week.
After 10 weeks of rehab I was able to take part in the Sabie Xperience Lite 3 day stage race, 120km with 2171m of ascent. My wife and myself improved our time from 2023 by 1 hour 17 minutes.
I would say I am somewhat lucky that I did not injure myself worse, e.g tear of rotator cuff.
Last September less than a minutes into the day’s riding went OTB at 30kph and shoulder first into a rather stout tree.
Spent about 5 minutes sitting on the ground considering my life choices I got up and rode enduro stages with uplift for another 4 hours.
After spending the last few months trying less intrusive recovery options like physiotherapy and shoulder infiltrations I eventually got to see a Sports orientated orthopedic surgeon thanks to my GP. It came to requiring a Shoulder Subacromial Decompression, also known as an Acromioplasty, which was done almost two weeks ago. The pain relief has been worth risk. I went in with 7-8/10 pain, and left the hospital with what I would call discomfort, so 3/10.
Both my surgeon and physiotherapist are confident I will be able to ride a 3 day stage event (Sabie Experience) in May.
My current rehab schedule is 15-30 minutes on Tacx smart trainer, and exercises from my physiotherapist.
I bought my Kenevo SL Expert in September 2022 after test riding a comp at the my local LBS, Lynwood Cyclery. Over the year I have made some changes however in general have been very happy with what I have since moving from a 2022 Levo SL.
The items I have changed are: 1. Brakes, well got rid of the 1.8mm stock rotors and changed them for the HS2’s which are 2mm rotors. That was a big change alone, the changing of the pads was the other moment. Have some RSC levers on the way, which I only really want so that I can change the bite point as the pads wear out. I found I have to change my pads at around 500km with 2mm of material left which sorta sucks.
2. Handlebar to a 50mm Burgtec Josh Bryceland bars cut to 780mm. These alone made me so much more at home on the bike due to the effective change in stack height that on the first day out I set PR’s on every stage at the Grootfontein Bike Park.
3. Grips to Ergon GA2’s in Yellow. In hindsight not the best choice, as they are not easy to keep looking yellow. The grips themselves are amazing at removing handpump.
4. Change to Schwalbe tires. I had to send my Butchers in for warranty as I had ripped most of the side knobs at less than 500km and I am by no means an aggressive rider. One thing I definitely noticed is these tyres are way quieter on the trail is they are so much quieter, and I can here when grip is changing. Front is a Big Betty at 2,6” wide, terrain I ride does not really warrant the Magic Mary. The amount of front grip is quite crazy, although that could also be due to the step up from 2,4” Hans Damph in the back 2,4”. The difference in rolling speed is so worth is and again this tire is grippy when needed and is easy to make it loose grip when you want it to for those style points 😁
5. Rear wheel to a 32 spoke as I kept breaking spokes on the 28 spoke. the hub is a high engagement from ZERO HUB REAR SL6.0. The best part of this hub is it is nearly silent. Paired with the quite tyres life is good.
Pros: – Adjustable geometry. Only messed with the head tube angle. When at +1 makes it feel like my 2022 StumpJumper. At Neutral it is very much an all rounder When set to -1 it is really a downhill monster, however does not quite the trails in my area as they tend to have very tight corners which I did not find comfortable on. However on a flow / jump line this was scary how hard it was to not just let go. – Stable at speed, scarily so – Components are for the most part good. I have made a few quality of life changes – I feel like I am part of the bike, not the other way around. This was something I really did not like about my Levo SL 1.1 (Large) as I always felt like I was just sitting on top and just never felt in control.
Cons: – Bike is long, switchbacks especially in the two slacker positions are really touch to get right. – Stock rotors are rubbish. I was fortunate enough to be able to buy some SRAM HS2 rotors when I was in Germany and these made the brakes actually usable. I know everyone is always complaining about the SRAM brakes being terrible, however it is really down to the stock “consumables” not the Code RS, even my wife’s Code R’s work really well with the change in Rotor and pads
For those interested I have some riding videos on Youtube. Not talking to the view ones. YouTube Channel
My Ramblings and experiments 