Pins and needles

I've had several issues with my arms over the years mainly through training, overuse and through strains and tendon damage. I’ve always been trying to overcome the injuries by intense resting, which seems to work well but with three month long, non climbing gaps its hard to really get much stronger. Recently I’ve had lots of pains in my left arm, a numbness which seems to come from triceps recoil (usually pinging off a hold whilst in a compression move). Sometimes it’s random and radiates down the whole arm. It’s always bloody painful and always stops me from climbing which is rubbish because I don’t do much else…

So, I’ve been hanging out with a cool Californian girl who’s super fit and into training in a big way, she knows a thing or too about the body and has helped a lot in understanding what goes wrong and how it can be fixed. She also had a long-standing shoulder injury that prevented her from climbing too much. And so off she went to a body repair clinic for some crazy sounding electro therapy. It seemed to really work and movement has improved for her, I asked for the number, I trust her, so I figured, why not ?

 I’m not a skeptic as such but I’m always unsure until I can see physical proof of something, a bit of a scientific approach perhaps.

 Anyhow I went for session this morning with Colin Reader at the body repairs clinic in East Sussex, it is in a lovely little location with beautiful scenery.

 First of all he took all my details for the files and then started by asking me about the pain, to try and locate where all the tenderness was. He looked at the surface of my tongue, I'm not sure why, maybe to check if i'd been drinking. We then proceeded to step over to the electric current machine it’s a pretty cool looking machine with knobs and buttons and dials and LED’s, yeah, LED’s I love LED’s…So he applied these two pencil like electrodes to every muscle on my arm, hands and shoulder, on the inside of the biceps. As the machine is switched on, you feel a tiny sensation, it’s a micro current with the same amplitude as your natural system. It’s weird but there is almost an instant change, although the pain does not subside, it really feels different, like I could actually feel the fibers in my muscle, where as before, just pain that I could not locate precisely.

 From what I understand about the micro current procedure, it applies a small amount of electricity to the muscle's energy channels, rather like what the body provides to initiate everyday movement.

 When damage is done to the tissue due to overuse or an injury, the tiny electrical pathways can become blocked and this leads to a slow recovery. Micro current unblocks these pathways and allows the electricity to flow back into the muscles and also loosens up the tissue damage.

 I felt myself moving my arm around to try and initiate some pain but just felt loose, the pain was going.

Colin then applied Acupuncture to my hand, my wrist, my shoulder and the inside of my bicep. The needles were only in for a few moments but as they are going in you can feel a slight relief of tension in the muscles. Again this is new to me, a new science, new therapy, I generally don’t even go and see the GP for anything less than a burst spleen.

 Pins come out and the arm felt different again, like the stiffness was gone the pain was subsiding and movement was much freer. I found my self making audible conclusions of the relief, bizarre.

 So, I've booked myself into the next appointment in a week’s time as it generally takes 2 to 3 sessions to completely free the muscles from these kind overuse injuries. From what I can see, already the treatment has worked, although I was slightly skeptical, Colin tells me that he has treated professional boxers and other top athletes. Not that I’m either of these.

A few hours on and I can feel that there’s certainly something different about the way the arm moves and feels. Looser. freer. better.? Hmmmmm….

On another note, theres loads of chickens running around the farm where our workshop is, which means free eggs! bosh!, so I just had four bangin' free range poached eggs.....

Right enough of the typing stuff lets go climbing.