Back to Back Talk (a slight reprise)

Just home from the pool.  Tired, mentally more than physically, though I did manage 2 hours+.

Okay.  Stuff happened today, and I want to try to document as much as I can, even though I am certain I won’t be able to describe things well.

Getting out of bed this morning, some muscle set (I suspect right shoulder) went forward too soon and set off a cascade that seized my back, from about halfway up to underneath armpit level.  Not a good start to the morning, I figured it a bad sign.

[Two days ago, when the swim from hell left me with all that pain, the wind had blown my hat into the pool before I had been ready to start.  My goggles and underwater iPod where in the hat, then in the water.  It was not warm because of the wind, and I really was not ready to start, but I had to dive down and get my stuff, then put it on, then swim.  Of course, the iPod ear buds had water in them the rest of the day on top of never loosening up before all went to shit.  Afterwards, I concluded I should have seen the sign, the bad omen, when my hat blew into the pool, and just turned around and gone home.  Just saying , this is why I am suddenly seeing signs everywhere.  A boatload of pain after a “If I was superstitious, I would have known that was a bad sign” moment and you get a little superstitious for a bit afterwards.]

Movement was terribly difficult.  I soaked in the hot tub for 20-30 minutes or so, but it did not help at all, making me presume the issue in the back was kink based, something crunching a a bunch of sets of muscles together, rather than a tweak that could be relaxed.

I suspected it may have been sleep related.  I can never sleep on my back for more than a few minutes.  I am always flopping from side to side, usually waking with both arms very out of position and very much in pain.

Anyways, I decided the pool would be the best chance to work things out.  I took a double dose of my Adderall (the full day dosage, instead of once, twice a day, a grand total of 20mg, not exactly a lot), and I set out.  The bike ride to the pool was very slow, but my posture sitting on the cruiser relieved more pain than any position I had managed before that point in the day.  I took it as a good sign.

I was nervous about my opening hour of breaststroke, given the groin pain of previous days adding to the back, but I figured I’d go really slow.  I warned the lifeguard that I’d be a bigger freak than usual, and that any stops mid-lap were just dislocations and back adjustments and not to worry about me unless I was on the bottom of the pool motionless for a few minutes (I’ll add that I was definitely in a ton of pain, because normally, I’ll say I am not lucky enough to drown.  I could only think it to myself).

What happened may be important.  I changed (play, started to change) my breaststroke.  Now that I am home and have bothered to look at Wikipedia, I see that I got closer to correct.  The timing of my legs had been early.  Yes, let’s call it early.

Old Stroke - when pulling with my arms, which has always been incorrect and hard to describe (also been adjusting lately, not sure if I wrote about it or not), I bring up my legs such that when I am pushing my arms forward, I am kicking.  It’s a bit like an inchworm.  I used the force of the arms to counter bringing forward my knees, and then launching with the kick.

New Stroke - I don’t begin pulling the knees forward until after the arm pull.  It is almost as if my hands come together on a string connected to my knees, and I pull them forward with my hands starting to go in front.  The kick happens before arms are extended, and both finish around the same time.

Okay, why is this a big deal.  Well, my torso completely changed how it works during the stroke.  The left waist did not take over very often, leaving the left hip/leg to kick, which stopped all the groin issues.  I believe the abdomen work may have inverted.  I also did not have to aim down unnaturally, at least not as much as I had been so far this year.

Next, a “crease” of sorts got work.  My rib cage and chest needs to drop more down my torso, and the “crease” under the rib cage was able to be felt during the stroke, instead of more feeling up under the ribs.  This may have help being able to keep my waist unused, this change of a pivot point, of sorts.

The biggest issue was in both shoulders, where I could feel corkscrew-type connections and how they were both out of place in relation to the chest.  I did not get close to figuring this puzzle out, but I know that both shoulders need to be raised up the torso, likely moving a bit forward, overall.  However, the right shoulder needs to move forward AFTER unwinding from a kink based in the back (maybe under the shoulder blade?).  This may have been what caused the seized back this morning, the shoulder just lurching forward with tremendous torque on the rest of the back because of how tweaked it has become.

Okay.  I am spent.  Nearing brain dead status, lol.  If I manage to repeat this tomorrow or the next day, I will add an update to this entry instead of a new one.

Back talk

I don’t think I can explain what’s going on in my back very well, but it’s causing big changes, everywhere.  My limbs are all rewrapping / unfolding and re-aligning a lot.  Stability anywhere is near non-existent.

Basically, I’m having movement around the spine, back, chest and/or sides.  Potentially, I am making incredible progress.  I just don’t know what extent adjustments are permanent versus temporary slides that revert the moment I lose attention.  Yet, my Breaststroke is improving and changing form, so it would follow that some structural changes may be happening.

 I’m too tired to try in depth analysis of any type.  I have gotten up to 2.25 hours for the average swim.  Open with an hour of “open water” breaststroke (no touching sides of pool, it’s kinda like being a goldfish going back and forth), kickboard for half an hour, then 500m with the kickboard on my back in a pattern to hit various muscles (having good success during this portion often), then 500m of sidestroke (250m per side, alternating 100 each, 50 each, 100 each - and this tends to really hurt on my left side, which is just so difficult to maintain, but I may be getting a handle on it, hope to write about later), then some more breaststroke and several 25m dolphin kicks while on my back.  Last, a cooldown or whatever hurts least by that time for just a few minutes.

I’ve been pushing it harder than last year.  Weight down to 227 today (woohoo, but had hoped for more by now).  Of course, today was the first day over 100 degrees.  I swam too late and got a little too much sun, but the weight loss should pick up now with long swims and hot bike rides.

All I can manage to update as of now.  At least I have a little optimism after today.  It’s been a while.

Happy Birthday Left Breast!

Summer kinda started!  We’ve had some days in the 90s mixed (mixed with 70s unfortunately), and the pool is finally open 7 day’s a week for lap swim.  Well, unless a swim meet is using the pool, like tomorrow.

Anyways, with more frequent swimming come “adjustments,” and I’ve been adjusting.

Yesterday was pain, pain, and more pain.

My left side had some serious success two days before, both the shoulder and hip freeing some, well, something.  The result, though, was that the left side was totally slacked, a truly difficult thing to express.  A usual strength, sidestroke, was near undoable on my left side, which is usually my strongest.  Couldn’t pull with the arm, and trying to kick was agony.  I managed to finish the lap only by switching the scissor kick, bottom leg forward.

Today, I was nervous.  I told myself that I would go slow, and I did.  Yet, early on, I started focusing on my left hand and foot, as if I were left handed.  Then, inoveremphasized it.  Like this, I started my swim with an hour of breaststroke, no touching the pool’s edge.

After about 15 minutes, my left arm adjusted multiple times, and my “pull” became a quick twist up near the arm pit.  Low and behold, I could feel my left breast being used, maybe for the first time ever.  I realized that my left breast was leading the stroke!  Go figure, right?  Who would have thought your pectoral would lead the breaststroke?

Embarrassed, I still told this to the lifeguard, given the ridiculous aspect that he has watched me do my almost-but-not-quite breaststroke for several years now.  Jonathan responded, “Happy Birthday, Breast!”

Yes, happy birthday to my left breast.  Let’s hope this is the start of something good that I can keep building on, it being so early in the summer.

A Predicted Pain?

Long anticipated, not in a good way, but part of progress, I may be entering a difficult aspect of my metamorphosis.  Let me back up.

Part of my twisted, perverted, structural posture that evolved as I grew, included the an issue with my hips.  I have pointed out before the sharp pain I would sometimes experience as a teen when I entered a car, which I believe would result in a bad adjustment, a twisting or folding of muscle and/or ligament out of proper position.

An odd result of this which I never questioned was that I could pick up heavy things without pain when observers thought it should hurt.  By this, I understand now that I picked up things not using my legs, but my back, only, because muscles around my hips were out of place, too wrapped further up my abdomen on one side, back on the other, my muscles had incorrect leverage from a position/posture that an observer would assume was all back muscles and should hurt.

Well, I have long wondered if I would get those muscles in the right place, and what would happen as a result.  Would I be vulnerable to back injuries?  Strain and/or hernia?  Would my muscle memory have me picking things up with my back still, without that leverage?

It may be starting.  I’ve had substantial rotational shifts in both thighs at the hip and internal shifting in my abdomen (sometimes leaving me in gastro-intestinal distress afterwards, just to add, as I presume things work their way into positions, hopefully improvements).  My lower back is hurting and tender towards bending, even lowering my head sometimes causes strain pain.

If only my gut were not so big and I could ascertain how my flexibility has changed.  Still go just as far, but clearly more bending at hip, not back, at least until the gut gets in the way, lol.  Anyways...

An issue at present is that my lower back need to strengthen and maintain an arch leaning backwards that it is not used to, while at the same time, my lower abdomen needs to crunch and cause tension as if an arch forward.  Predictably, when I think “arch backwards,” the arch happens at my lower abdomen, not the lower back, and when I sit, my lower back is like the opposite of a lumbar support arch.  To revisit a lyric from Oingo Boingo’s Not the Same Man I Was Before, “Everything you do is wrong!”

This is going to take some serious mindfulness.  At least for now, I get quick and sharp pain reminders when I am doing things wrong.  As I get a little better, a little stronger, I will have to start worrying about really hurting myself with a “traditional” injury, I believe.

The Summer cannot get here soon enough.  I’ve gotten to the pool twice, but weather is still too cold, really.  Hopefully, I’ll get good pool time before May rolls around.

What the . . . ?

It’s been a very difficult winter.

Last Tuesday, I had a most unfortunate trip to the DMV where nearly everything that could go wrong did go wrong.  Their computers went down, voiding appointments, making the start of the experience waiting in line outside the building in the rain.  It could have gone much worse, but the hour+ I spent in line has left me a complete mess since.

My hips have been a nightmare.

Until 45 minutes ago.

I stood up to go to the kitchen, and found I could not put any pressure on my right ankle.  It feels like a horrible sprain.  It sometimes gets similar to this pain, but a quick crack of the ankle looping the toes usually takes care of it.  I find myself unable to crack it at all, which, if you think about it, is probably some kind of improvement.

Yet, the pain of pushing off at all is nearly unbearable.

Then, I noticed I no longer had the hip pains that plagued me all week.

Did I send the “excess” bunched up in the hip down the leg to the ankle?  Without realizing it?

Possibly, I think.  It would not surprise me.  I have been stretching and contorting around the hip so much it is becoming unconscious, save efforts to alter the direction of movements.

Sigh.  What’s next?  Guess I need to figure out how to walk again.

New Moves, Same Story?

Toungue-tied and twisted
Just an earthbound misfit, I
                         - Pink Floyd

I swam near two weeks ago.  The swim went okay, 45 minutes or so, very good for a first swim, but it worked me over something fierce.

-  -  -  -  -  -

I’ve been playing with meditative focus on Chalkra points (the 7 common ones used all over the web), and had some interesting changes in my neck, though it was in combination with the shoulder changes of late.

It, too, had changes to my neck and throat, making swallowing difficult again for some time.  That was until it got really bad, and I found myself pulling my arm out of socket to stretch some perceived knot in my throat.  Then, that food swallowed, the neck felt much better, and has felt better since.  Some changes still progressing from this up into my jaw and face.

-  -  -  -  -  -

The other new move, just today, was around the shoulders.  Instead of focus on the joint, or a point on a 360 around the joint, I broadened.  I went on the chest and back, maybe 5-7 inches from the shoulder.  The results were immediate, new “adjustments” to the shoulder.

The first time, it changed something in the right shoulder that cascaded down my right arm, quite involuntarily.  Similar to how some old “adjustments” made me punch myself in the head accidentally, this one sent the arm in an awkward swing.  Of course, I was not lucky enough to only hit air.  The back of my hand slammed into a counter top edge, a rounded one, but hard enough to break skin.  Should leave one hell of a bruise.

I did some more playing with it in the hot tub (mainly because I had just added chlorine and thought it the easiest way to disinfect the hand, lol), and after some moderate work, the body feels quite different, hopefully for the better.

Predictably, putting the comfy shirt on afterwards, the shirt was not so comfy anymore.  I changed some form again, though not much, I believe.  It’s just suddenly tighter in some spots, looser in others.

I am really not sure how much longer I can do this.  I am mentally spent, just trying to hang on until it warms up outside.

A Useless, Unimportant, Boring, Not Interesting At All, Update

I hate cold.  This remains true.  It has been very rough since I stopped swimming.  I’ve already gained 12 pounds, too.

That said, I got one of those, under the desk, pedal exercise thingies, with my Christmas Amazon gift card winnings, and just started using it, although in a ergonomic gamer chair.  The result is that I can do a little work on my back, somehow, by pedaling in a crunched-like position, and focusing on my back.

Doing it, I found myself working a muscle group I would often target while kicking in the pool.

Best case scenario, it helps me continue to work muscle up my back and to the shoulders.

Time will tell.

See.  I told you this was boring.