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How Peloton Rebuilt Me
With Technology, Healthy Competition, and Presence
Two years ago I tore my meniscus. It wasn’t good. I didn’t just tear it. I flipped it upside down. Fortunately, my doctor saved it. And somehow I recovered better than I had from strained hip flexors in college. But my recovery continued with physical therapy.
It was going fine until one day when my regular physical therapist was out. I was initially miffed because we had a good rapport. I was secondarily miffed because this new therapist didn’t know how far along I was or wasn’t. A chart can only tell so much.
Machismo pulsing through me for no reason other than wanting to be better again, I told her I was ready to get to work. So she put me to work. And it was going fine. My meniscus was strong. But then something tweaked when I was doing medicine ball squats. It was my back.
I stopped going to physical therapy to recover. And because I was blaming them for my mancercising, a version of mansplaining via overexertion from exercise, my back hurt off and on for a couple of weeks. This had happened before and usually, it just went away.
And then one night I bent down to get in bed and I was done. My back was out. Like nothing that had ever happened before. I thought my meniscus was the worst pain I had ever felt. Until my…
