Mon 12 Jan 26: No workout today -- had an early doc appt, so had to bork the usual routine. Thankfully the universe has not chosen that arena to pop yet another set of fangs from this dying Year of the Snake, into my third point -- all ok Did get a few useful (to me, anyway) tidbits from the interactions: - the amt of time typical for a perfectly good cardio echo (ultrasound) to degrade into diagnostically-relevant when your diet goes to shite, varies person-to-person due to age, genetic factors, existing disease, etc.... but typically happens well within the span of time between echoes. How much is that? Every 3 - 4 yrs. Why this is important, is due to my dietary / medical history. From 1993 - 2017, had eaten fast food almost exclusively -- and from the worst drive-thru slop-mongers out there (Wendy's being my favourite). Had to change due to panc -- and since then, beans and greens were my staples, all else excluded. My '24 echo showed perfect -- despite 2 - 3 x Trenta Java Chip Fraps, 2 x Wendy's Doubles / 5 x Double Stacks (note: when DSes were $1 and Doubles $4.xx, 15y ago), 2 x largest fries and 2 x Large Frosty. This was one friggin' meal, and I'd eat 2 of these, every day for years. And then came panc, only 2y moved back to after WA. No longer cold enough to burn off that junk... got metabolic disease. As well I should have... So 6y after panc changed my diet forever, big-pipe echoes were squeaky-clean -- even to me who ate right and exercised, that were surprising. This is huge... and proves (at least w/ my cane labourer genes), one can definitively use diet to maintain health of the the worst killer of old cantankerous men who don't eat right nor take their meds as prescribed, but say they do -- metabolic disease Just gotta actually do it -- which I'll venture is more a mental, puncture-the-petulance thing with old men than anything Knee feels... pretty good! Stiff a little bit tho... so hope tmw doesn't sneak another exercise-eraser into my life
Mon 12 Jan 26 (addendum): Worked on a client taken last Sat -- was framed to me as a hard case, but they'd not had much luck w/ Western medical orthodoxy (or "healthcare" )... AS you may've gathered by now... that's not a rare situ at all. Lots of hard cases come to me, often sailing years over my head as I don't advertise (that's how you get the full-bull kooks in the door, worshipping me as a guru or some sh** -- just a technician folks, don't get your expectations where I can't possibly fulfill them). So like most clients of this type, had to set them before I touched a single square inch on their body. Ready for it, they said... nothing else was working. Long, long list of health issues, from twice-done knee surgeries to spinal disc supportive surgery in lumbo-sacral area (big fat red flag), to the 'beetus-melleetus, to osteoarthritis in all phalanges and a particularly-dangerous (and f***ing freaky described to me) brain surgery. And blood thinners atop that. Talk about a friggin' South-Pacific-rainforest-banyan of a diagnostic tree... Risks that actually applied to the work: pressure limits (neuropathy from long-term 'beetus makes feedback from injury delayed or non-existent, increasing risk working at my depths... so conservative hard-stops there. Age made all the big pipes doubly-taboo (just have to recall my massage instructor's story of their mentor's elderly client bleeding out on the table, because they went too aggressively after a neck muscle knot and injured the carotid bifurcation -- very fragile over 70yo. Death in seconds, not minutes or hours)... so no core or deep leg or neck work. Could feel the ties on my hands w/ every detail of the contraindications... But luckily... most of the progress in this broken and exquisitely-tender body... were in the feet. And boy mommy -- did they have some pain in the feet. When you overwork your big toe by doing pickup sports when your muscles are atrophied from 50 hrs doing something not sporty but the complete opposite (sitting in a chair)... the flexor for that toe, used to doing the main work of propelling you in any direction you choose but mostly forward... develops a knot called a trigger point (TrP). This keeps the muscle from both contracting and relaxing properly. Think of a long spring, like one on your door closer. Now tie a knot in it. It can no longer stretch to full length, nor can its intrinsic contraction use anything but the length of spring outside the knot. Very similar situ w/ living muscles harbouring knots -- they become inferior shadows of their healthy selves. This creates compensation by nearby muscles that do something like what the flexor hallucis big toe flexor does... but because they didn't evolve to match the strength of the main mover, they tire easily... which means they too can form TrPs. This continues to happen -- debility, recruitment, exhaustion, recruitment further away... until the lower leg runs out of options in itself. Now it'll send the responsibility headwards -- because that's where more muscles are. And doesn't stop until it reaches literally the head. Recruitment in compensation's bad enough... but also the antagonist, or opposing muscle to the flexor (extensor) also feels this knot's pull 24/7... and being the weaker of the pair, it also develops TrPs and locks contracted. Soon the entire foot becomes more a living prosthetic club of an appendage, than a living, sensing limb. This was the state of my senior citizen. Working muscles ahead of the heel, on the blade side of the foot... elicited screams of pain and jump sign -- involuntary contraction of muscles / muscle groups, in response to intense pain. My pressure was less than the weight of a full can of soda, yet this person had to tap out after 3 strokes. He'd insisted that we only work an hour given his plane ride later that afternoon... so I gave the ultimatum, that in order to meet that deadline... they were gonna have to put on their grownup pants. Grudging agreement... but necessary and defo proven possible, esp since they knew what was coming (worked the other leg on Sat). There's always a 'sick leg' and a 'compensating leg'. Wasn't at all surprised, this compensating side had more pain beat into it decades, than the horribly-misdiagnosed-and-botched sick leg had -- think about it. Both were equally challenging, just in different ways. Was only able to proof the lower leg and L hip (recurrent TrP -- near the greater trochanter in the prirformis muscle, if you care -- had to be redone, as the muscle itself, not surprisingly, was atrophied and struggling even w/o a massive knot handicapping it)... and sent them on their way. (cont. next post)
Mon 12 Jan 26 addendum, cont'd: Was a good example of the kind of progression one can exp in this field: as your skills get more well-known... you'll be availed of harder and harder clients. Haven't had one quite this bad in a while, but also can't delude myself into thinking they'll stay the same or get easier (well, the easy ones get easier ). Even had a nice convo w/ Client on the table about what the swimlane of a bodyworker looks like. I ventured bodywork's ground floor's pretty straightforward, easily-taught and easily-retained. You refine simple tqs to the satisfaction of your mentor, they give you a new one once you'd demonstrated proficiency in it. So far, nothing different from any other trade. But about the fifth year I began to sense a lull in the climb rate of my knowledge, and the first cases that stumped me. Little did I know, this is routine, even with gurus. But that feeling of powerlessness is where a mentor who gives a sh*t about your progress, must recognise and step in. That were not my mentor, unfortunately... but did set about combing thru their literature and online forums and research papers for this gig (forums which do exist but tbh, are full of hacks -- forums are not where real mentors can be found; has to be f2f, ime). Betw. 4th & 5th yr of apprenticeship, exp'd my first breakthrough. What this is... is a sense that someone up there, pops a bubble you've been building years w/ exp putting hands on people, and struggling to solve problems. The first ~6 - 7y of practice are mandatory to bring you to this 'head' of struggle... some take a full ten. I was mightily struggling to help a labourer who were up in the air most of the day, clinging to tree trunks and power poles w/ legs, creating massive TrPs... and sitting there, drenched in sweat & hands aching... all at once like a Tinkerbell wand-anointment... came to the realisation of how to solve his problem. And the effort were halved. This were later explained to me, the human mind-body needs a certain amt of effort thrown whole-heart at a problem, before the subconscious mind brings to bear its own exps, which have been recorded from the moment you were born. And once that part of your mind is satisfied it has what it needs (someone 'up there'), you gain the cultivated neuronal connections necessary to approach the problem, from a completely-optimised pathway between parts of your brain -- often skipping extraneous paths into the cortex as much as possible, and keeping wiring pared down in cerebellum and white matter. This is doing without thinking, what martial artists train years to do. Like Yoda said, 'do, or do not'. Respond to conditions using your six senses all unified and working together, without thought increasing overhead. So since, have been refining other tqs into what I call 'hand-learning'... which my ASD / probably-comorbid ADHD feels is perfectly-natural and quite immersive to do. Feeling for nerves, tiny heartbeats in lesser arteries, knowing what effort to use to gently pull nerves off structures they shouldn't stick to... all developed without any of the insecure machinations from novice days. Yes today's client is today's version of 10-y-ago pole-climbing client... but my toolbag's a lot more populated, and its tools come to hand naturally as extensions of my intent. At the monastery on O'ahu... were once raking leaves as part of daily work around the temple... when a Zen Master, Hosokawa Roshi, walked over and said 'doing a good job, I see'. 'Thank you, Roshi'... and turned to continue my work. 'Somehow, feels natural for me to rake this way.' 'I noticed,' he said. 'Kinda feels like a hand, huh?'
Tue 13 Jan 26: Finally. Got in a workout... and the relative calm in the knee walking into the mall, were ominous, really. Yep. Times were faster on the second-to-last than the last -- instant confirmation of Me Not Working Out As Usual. But this were first time in my life, a mere 2d playing hooky, would see me back on square one (for indoor mall lap times, anyway. Aged half of now, needed weeks to fall off my peak)... Pretty grim: 3:58, 3:53, 3:48, 3:25, 3:38. Easily the worst times for lap-by-lap improvement, I'd seen the several weeks doing only inside mall laps. And have never had last lap be slower than the one before it. Welp, another reality of making sure your muscles are up to the task of both holding the knee together, and ambulating your dead weight on both feet re: knee injury -- because if the joint's strapped down too tightly due to muscles reaching their exertion limit, it'll tend to compress the menisci in full-blast, hail-Mary tension -- which hurts far more than correctly-bulked muscle accustomed to the task and warmed properly. Had to back off the usual jogging last 2 laps, as hurt way too much... I mean, had to show the spinal cord that, in order for it to make a change -- which should take by tmw. Doesn't mean I'll get my Sat lap times back tho... as the workout on this malfing knee, also exerts their own consequences in opposition. We shall see what progress if any, tomorrow
