In reply to guy127917:
> Dandan82: Your ultrasound experience sounds really interesting- it’s pretty cool to be able to confirm the extent of the injury!
Cheers Guy,
Yes it is good in two ways, firstly it's good to definitively know exactly what the issue is, and secondly it was great that it matched Huffy's diagnosis completely, which gives me great confidence in his abilities.
Another decent week, net gain in elbow health through the week despite once again getting a bit giddy and pushing quite hard at the wall once or twice. I should accept that this level of over-reaching seems to be doing the trick as I have done it several times now with no detrimental effect but immediatley after a strong session the elbow can feel pretty worked, enough to concern me at the time.
M: Lock offs. May have done some stretching/calf massage but I have trouble remembering when I'm not writing it down day by day.
T: Indoor boulder; Got to have a bit of a climb with AJM which was a pleasant surprise. I was really chuffed to be able to do some powerful moves on a problem pretty comfortably when everyone else was struggling with it, although the move suited me perfectly as it was essentially a 1 arm lock-off on a reasonable crimp, it might as well have had my name stamped on it. Felt like I pushed a little hard (one arm lock-offs, duh) but again the elbow felt great the next day.
W: Handstands; managed my best ever handstand of nearly 20 seconds, then immediately followed it with my second-best ever handstand! Progress.
T: Indoor boulder; Brought another noob along but got a bit of climbing in myself too. I set a goal of completing one of the 5 nails comp problems on the darkside wall, after a bit of discussion with another climber, it turned out one of them was less hard than we had realised, so goal achieved but only though beta tweaks. Still, it's improvement of a type, reading routes is important stuff.
I did make considerable progress on another of the problems too, I was feeling pretty good about my progress on the second problem until Huffy arrived and casually flashed it... I've never seen him climb before but it turns out he is just as strong as everyone says he is!
I kept the session short and punchy and again the elbow was good the following day.
F: Spent a portion of the day reading through Overcoming Gravity 2nd Edition with the aim of putting together a 3 per week antagonist/bodyweight session to try to get some of these gymnastic skills nailed, namely handstand press, V-sit, front lever, back lever and strict ring muscle-up.
Unfortunately the book is very focussed on ensuring you create your own plan using the information in the book which requires several hundred pages of reading and note taking to achieve, there aren't really any sample plans to get started from so I spent a lot of time reading and ran out of much time for exercise.
What I did do though was ring dips and ring press-ups, holy cow both of these exercises are hard with strict form!
I can do sets of 8 weighted bar dips, I only managed 4 bodyweight ring dips.
I can also do 40+ floor press ups, I only managed 8 ring press ups!
S: Incredible DOMS from the ring work, right in at the shoulder joint on the front. The triceps felt ok but the pectoralis was absolutely destroyed, I put it down to the much longer ROM on the ring exercises versus floor/bar versions.
Indoor Routes; Off to chilly Calshot, I did a few routes up to 7a, warm ups are definitely feeling better than they had previously but climbing routes seems to tire the elbow quickly and then the pain builds so I try not to do too many.
I did a 6c that actually required a rest! It is very hard for the grade and I ticked it next go, but still, this is telling me that my endurance has taken a tumble. I'd like to pick it back up before Margalef in Jan but as I said, high volume seems to be the enemy at the moment so i'm not sure how I can train endurance with minimal hand moves?
S: Stretching; beat hell out of my calves again but this time I took advantage of their fragile state to try and encourage a bit of stretch immediately afterwards. It worked quite well, I definitely got closer to my toes, and my straddle was quite wide too.
I need to improve the straddle to achieve one of the gymnastic goals, the V-sit. It seems like the simplest thing, and probably is to some people, sit on the floor with your legs in a straddle, knees straight, then place your hands on the floor in front of your body, inside your legs, lean forward and lift your bum off the floor, then lift your heels up too.
Currently I can barely place my hands in front of me without toppling over backwards, the idea of putting any weight on them seems totally impossible! It's purely the flexibility I lack so i'm keen to make progress on this one.
Goals are still on a week by week rehab basis at the moment, i'll review my long term goals at the end of the year and then sort out a nice new set for next year.