2025 Recap - From Barely Walking to Training Three Times a Week

Translated from the Spanish original with AI assistance. The original was written entirely by hand, no AI involved.

Early in this bumpy Sabbatical Year, on top of being diagnosed with Sleep Apnea, I was diagnosed with Plantar Fasciitis, which I only recently managed to overcome after a year of physical therapy, shockwave therapy, dry needling, and more physical therapy. It took me a full year to be able to walk and stand without pain again. But this isn’t about a foot problem — it goes deeper than that.

In short: Plantar Fasciitis is an inflammation of the plantar fascia, an extremely strong fibrous tissue that connects the heel to the toes. It’s characterized by very intense heel pain, especially when you get up and put weight on your foot after a night’s sleep. One of the causes is overload on the fascia producing chronic inflammation, and that overload can be related to weakness and/or stiffness in associated muscles and tendons, excess weight, and/or activities with a lot of impact on the sole of the foot.

Beware of communal physiotherapy.

On doctor’s orders I did physiotherapy for a couple of months and improved until I quickly hit a plateau. Here I made a mistake: doing the kind of physiotherapy where one physiotherapist handles a whole group of patients at the same time — which is the norm. Pro Tip: if the people doing physiotherapy around you have a coffee in hand, the odds of you fully recovering are really low. It’s a social club, and the positive impact of the professional in charge is very limited.

Shockwave Therapy to the rescue — but goddamn.

My doctor then prescribed Shockwave Therapy: high-energy pressure waves applied to injured tissue to stimulate cell regeneration, vascularization, and collagen synthesis. In the particular case of Plantar Fasciitis, the fascia develops fibrosis, which produces thickening and loss of flexibility.

The treatment generally consists of multiple sessions, on average between 4 and 6, where they apply two types of shockwaves to the affected area. AND THAT SHIT HURTS, IT FEELS LIKE GETTING STABBED WITH A LOAD OF NEEDLES. The more compromised the tissue, the more it hurts, but it works.

A month and a half later… A NEW FORM OF PAIN

When I finished the Shockwave sessions and went in for a follow-up they found me much, much better, and my doctor — who takes no prisoners — seized the opportunity to do Dry Needling on major fibrosis nodules that had survived the Shockwave Therapy. THAT SHIT HURT WAY, WAY MORE — of course, because this time they were literally sticking needles into my foot.

Dry Needling is a technique used in physiotherapy that consists of inserting a very fine needle, like the ones used in acupuncture, to produce a micro-tear that increases blood flow to the area. The doctor explained that the fascia in my foot was in such bad shape before the Shockwave sessions that the needle wouldn’t even have gone in — and I wouldn’t have tolerated it anyway. The improvement was immediate. Thanks, Doc.

And I started doing honest-to-God physiotherapy.

My wife, in her own process of looking for an alternative to the “communal physiotherapy” that did absolutely nothing for her, discovered that there are gyms that have a team of physiotherapists in addition to trainers; and that’s how I started doing physiotherapy in a gym with all the toys. This time I started improving very fast.

And we went from physiotherapy to full-body training.

Because in the end, in my case, Plantar Fasciitis wasn’t a foot-specific problem but a symptom of a weak core, significant muscular compensations and imbalances, plus excess weight and one leg longer than the other. Now I go to the gym two or three times a week to train under the supervision of a physiotherapist.

And while I’ve reached the point where if I skip training I feel like something’s missing, it’s not really something I enjoy. I force myself to go to the gym, certain that once I walk out I’ll feel great for having gone, and appreciating everything I’ve gained: more muscle than ever, I’ve lost weight, I’m far more coordinated, and I’ve gained stability. That’s no small thing.

The truth is I let myself go — a lot, WAY TOO MUCH.

And at 56, maintaining muscle mass is an absolute non-negotiable part of my lifestyle. This whole ordeal shoved in my face how much muscle I had lost over the last few years, the lack of strength and balance, and in general how deteriorated my health was — on top of the Sleep Apnea. And that doctors and physiotherapists point out a path and walk alongside you, but my health is entirely my own responsibility.

So I had to learn new things.

This year I learned a ton about Generative AI, software development assisted by Coding Assistants, Agent systems, and the use of Agentic Harnesses. But the most important learning has been about sleep, recovery, nutrition, supplementation, and exercise — and the truth is I’m just getting started.

If you made it this far.

Don’t wait until you’re 56 to start going to the gym and doing weight training — yes, weight training, whether you’re a man or a woman. Walking every day is not going to give you the muscles you need to stay healthy for the rest of your life. Seriously. See a Physiatrist or a Sports Medicine doctor and have them help you build a plan.

See a Nutritionist. Odds are you’re not eating enough protein to preserve your muscles, and you’ll need to adjust your diet and/or supplement. Don’t worry, your kidneys are going to be fine — and again, go see a Nutritionist.

Learn to train under the supervision of a professional, preferably a Physiotherapist. As we age the name of the game is “staying in the game” — going to the gym to do stupid things and getting injured or overtraining will only set you back.

Your worst day at the gym — that day you didn’t feel well, when you didn’t feel like it, when you arrived late and rushed, when every single exercise was a brutal struggle — was a great day at the gym, because you trained consistency, commitment, and discipline.

I just realized I’m writing all of this for myself :-) If it happens that someone else read it, I sincerely hope you defy that popular saying that goes “nobody learns from someone else’s experience.”