Since my last post I have redoubled my efforts to restore my skeleto-muscular health. The tipping point came a couple of Saturdays ago when I did a round of my August strength routine. I don't know what happened as I went through the exercises that morning, but I spent the rest of the weekend with a horrible throbbing ache in my left shoulder and lat area that radiated down my left arm. The addition of that to the existing soreness along my upper spine that had persisted since March sent me into a pretty bad emotional funk. I had spent my 30s and most of my 40s feeling strong and spry, as though there was nothing I could do in my 20s that I couldn't still do; but now, all of a sudden, I felt like a falling-apart old man. I am a vain person--let's be honest about that--and there I was feeling not just physical discomfort, but very negatively about myself as well. I had to do something more than just the groping attempts at self-help that had failed to bring about any relief.
A while back I had posted something on Face Book about my back discomfort, and my friend Andy mentioned that several people he knew had had good experiences at a place called Back In Motion. So I called and made an appointment, and as of this writing I have been through two sessions. Back In Motion is actually just one guy, a Mr. Jon Harvey. He's a massage therapist with some chiropractic experience in his background, and he specializes in treating sports injuries and other specific ailments. When I told him what was going on, he sounded very confident that he could put me on the road to recovery.
To make a long story short, my shoulders are sort of hunched forward, putting undue stress on the muscles of my upper back. I think I can understand how this happened. This past season I did more workouts involving short, fast sprints at a high stroke rate than I'd ever done before. Ideal form calls for the paddler to sit erect with square shoulders, but I can believe that I erred toward slumping forward and downward--"bearing down," as it were.
So in our sessions Jon is manipulating numerous spots on both my front and my back, seeking to get my shoulders to relax and open back up. He spent that first session targeting trigger points and explaining the bearing they had on my pain. He then prescribed me some exercises to do in between sessions that address the imbalance between the muscles that pull my shoulders forward and those that keep them open.
Now, ten days after our first session, I'm not free of pain yet, but I'm optimistic that I'm on the right track. I can feel the stuff I'm doing having an effect on my distressed area. For my strength routine, I'm still doing the core exercises hanging from the gymnast's rings and the vertical lunges, but I've backed off the other exercises for now, replacing them with my new rehab exercises.
On the water, I'm taking a break from straight-ahead kayaking and doing some drills in my whitewater C1. I'm thinking about running the Gauley River in West Virginia at the end of this coming month, possibly after doing some "warmup" paddling on the lower Youghiogheny while I'm up in that area to watch the slalom world championships on the 18th through the 21st, so I figure it's wise to get back in that boat and make sure I still know how to paddle it. Also, a whitewater boat with a non-wing paddle allows me to do some stroke drills that open up the shoulders: compound reverse strokes, for instance.
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