Acupuncture = pain

For the past week I have been performing the stretching programme I was given on a daily basis. My thigh is still extremely tight, despite my best efforts to stretch the injured muscles. Although painful, the stretching has seemed to help slightly. After stretching, I have been applying ice immediately afterwards which has helped to relieve the pain.

Today I had my second appointment with Ross at SPACE and he spent the first few minutes pressing hard on my injury sites. The pain was horrendous and made me feel quite sick - but I could see the point of it. Ross then decided to try some acupuncture, as he was finding it difficult to target the deeper injury site in my sartorious - and he said it would be less painful... but it wasn't!

The next 20 minutes or so was agony. After positioning several needles in my muscles, Ross began to 'tweak' each of them until it hurt. As he moved the needles further into the injury site, each movement was like someone holding a naked flame on your skin (only deep inside your leg) for a few seconds and then fading until the needle was tweaked again.

I'm not gonna lie: it was quite painful, but my leg is feeling much better and is certainly less tight this evening. After a hot bath, I noticed that I now had some bruising at the injury site on my sartorious in the middle of the front of my thigh.

Ross has given me some more stretches and has said that he wants me to start jogging lightly - getting there... slowly!

Thigh injury - 3 x grade II tears

Since injuring my right thigh on Monday, I have been treating it religiously with ice and plenty of regular Ibuprofen - it is still very painful.

This afternoon I visited SPACE for a full damage report on my injury. I was assessed by Ross Mayberry and he soon found the extent of my injuries after a rather painful assessment! He told me that the primary injury was to my sartorious but I had also badly injured my tensor fasciae latae and my psoas major muscles. He explained that all three muscles were damaged by the way I had kicked the ball: across my body with my right foot. He said that the injuries were quite bad and he estimated that each muscle had sustained a grade II strain (tear) so I was looking at 6-8 weeks recovery time at least.
My heart sank - that meant that I would be out for the first part of the winter season at least and it would probably be nearer December before I could attempt any winter climbs this year. Ross told me to continue to rest and he gave me some stretches to try and get some movement back in my leg, which was now very tight and stiff indeed.
All I can do is follow the good advice and try to get back as soon as possible... gutted!