|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Brach-dancing | ||||||||||||
| By | ||||||||||||
| Ray Purcell | ||||||||||||
| My friend's and I were at a bouldering area in the Mojave Desert not far from where I live. There's an amazing assortment of challenging problems on superb quartz monzonite and perfect winter weather. Even in February the Sun is warming, the breezes calm, and the days are generally t-shirt friendly. On the most crowded days I've never even seen a pair of Prana pants. As far as I know Chris Sharma has never climbed here. Mick Ryan lives two hours away. Which means this is just a little corner of heaven, and that's all you're going to get out of me about where it is. | ||||||||||||
| I was standing at the bottom of a boulder problem on a formation that, when I stood next to it, looked like a baked potato from the Land of the Giants- no toppings. Except that this potato had cleaved in half leaving the thinnest not-even-a finger crack bottom to top. As I examined the crack and considered the possible sequence of moves to best the problem I found myself thinking of two things: first, Andreas Vesalius; and second, mouse soleus muscle. | ||||||||||||
| No, Andreas Vesalius isn't the latest Wunderkind to float up a V11 at Fontainebleau. He was, never-the-less a 16th century Flemish bad boy who brought down a death sentence on himself from the Roman Church for dissecting human cadavers in violation of Greek and Roman law. But all's well that ends well since Andreas' sentence was reduced to the inconvenience of the charges, and I'm sure some small amount of scandal, after he agreed to a pilgrimage to the Holy Land- it seems the dear boy was connected being physician to both the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, and Spain's King Philip II. | ||||||||||||
| The up side for the rest of us was that Andreas wrote the first accurate book on human anatomy. De Humani Corporis Fabrica was published in 1543, it detailed skeletal and muscular structures and with out that I might never have known about my supraspinatous muscle. Spina or spine in Latin refers to a small and unassuming muscle the lies supra, or above the transverse spine of the Scapula; the upside down triangular bone behind our shoulders, or as my mother used to call it my "angel's wings". Simply put, the supraspinatous muscle is one of the muscles of the infamous rotator cuff, and it's the one that enables us to shake dog food out of the can, is a mother to keep strong, and therefore easily injured. | ||||||||||||
| Well maybe not so easily. Last year over a long weekend in the deep of winter I'd decided to move three rather mature trees in my front yard and then, since I'd already served house penance, go bouldering in the desert with friends. Suffice it to say that both the trees and my tendons are mature, and even though I lift weights regularly I had neglected the dog food muscle. Had I been less ignorant, the painful arc that I felt the morning of that trip to the desert would have been a tip off to spend an hour in the spa with a whiskey instead. | ||||||||||||
| Any muscle contraction against resistance that is greater than the load bearing capacity of that muscle or it's tendon can lead to strain or rupture, which ain't good, and shoulders are the most commonly injured joints among climbers after fingers. Never mind that humans are natural born brachiators. Brachium not only refers to our upper arms but the verb form refers to the action of swinging, or to brachiate, like from tree limb to tree limb. Unfortunately, once our forebears dropped down out of the arbors to gather around the clan fires and wander about the flats on our two feet we began to neglect our swinging muscles. I hate to say it but if you don't swing you... well loose it. | ||||||||||||
| I was in considerably more pain after that day of climbing and the next morning couldn't lift a hairbrush. Anxious to avoid any doctor in general and the orthopedist in particular- the proper term is orthopedic surgeon- I went directly to a Physical Therapist. P.T. for short is an ancillary discipline of medicine that not only stands tall on- pardon the pun- the shoulders of Andreas Vesalius but also has no invasive procedures. The therapist's examination was thorough and afterward I began a progressive program of range of motion and strengthening exercises for the entire rotator cuff. | ||||||||||||
| To isolate and strengthen my supraspinatous muscle the therapist gave me a yellow tube, which in my estimation was the same size and elasticity of a vermicelli noodle. I was instructed to stand on one end of the band and hold the loop tied in the other in my hand. Then with my hitch hiking thumb pointed down I was instructed to raise my extended arm in an arc about 45 degrees in front of me. I was told to but I couldn't. All of the exercises with my uninjured shoulder were no problem, but the injured shoulder was not only painful but also weak. I had notably less power even with movements that didn't hurt all that much, and that's where the mouse soleus muscle comes in. | ||||||||||||
| If you're a member or sympathizer of PETA just skip ahead a bit. The soleus is a teeny-weeny but powerful muscle located on the hind limb of a mouse that helps the little buggers to run like hell when you turn on the garage lights. A mouse soleus is also a model on which contraction induced muscle injury can be studied in a controlled laboratory setting, unlike the average bouldering comp or yard project. I stumbled across this kind or research on a casual afternoon flipping through back issues of the Journal of Applied Physiology- it was all I could lift. | ||||||||||||
| The research of one author in particular caught my eye. Christopher Ingalls Ph. D., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Kinesiology at Georgia State University, had been an author in several studies that essentially answered the question of why muscle looses strength after overuse. That research found an "uncoupling" which occurred between the exciting nerve and the contractile muscle fiber in the first few days after injury but was then followed by a loss of contractile protein in each muscle cell. The practical application of course is that if we can just make the damn mice run harder they'll slow down and become easier targets. In the case of my shoulder it meant four months of physical therapy. | ||||||||||||
| Now, how does one keep ones shoulder from turning to dog food. There are the tried and true pull-ups and push-ups. But to add a little more zest and burn you can do your push-up with one hand on a basket ball and then transfer the ball from hand to hand with each repetition. This is not merely unnecessary masochism since it works the muscle groups in your arms, shoulders and torso that stabilize the movements. Along the same lines you can assume the basic push-up position, but with your body bridged with your feet on a weight bench on one side and your arms supported on a now trendy Swedish Medicine Ball. Simply support your self in this position for three sets of thirty seconds or until you smell smoke. | ||||||||||||
| Don't neglect simple extensions since these target the rotator cuff muscles. Begin with one or two pound weights that you can do three sets of ten repetitions with. Stand with feet shoulder width apart and holding the weight at you sides extend your arms with the thumbs up to the level of your shoulders. Next, point your thumbs down and extend your arms 45 degrees from center and 45 degrees from the floor. Last, with thumbs up and/or forward abduct, in kenisiologic parlance, 90 degrees from center to a point 90 degrees from or parallel to the floor. To add a more dynamic component, or blacken the catfish, do all of the afore mentioned movements with both, or better yet one foot on a balance board. To fully round out these groups of movements support your torso on the ol Swedish Medicine Ball so that your body is inclined and extend and abduct as before; season to taste. | ||||||||||||
| Another little hummer that will target the Supraspinatous requires a Thera-Band. Attach one end of the band to a door knob, preferable on a door that's not going to opened while your doing this exercise, so avoid the bathroom door in the morning. Standing with your shoulders perpendicular to the closed door and bend your elbow to 90 degrees. Imagine your bent arm is like a gate and rotate your arm in against the resistance of the band. Next change position so that you can rotate your arm out against resistance. Three sets of ten each way, each arm. | ||||||||||||
| Of course these exercises are discussed purely for entertainment value; because like climbing, exercise is an inherently dangerous activity, like yard work, and should proceed only with competent instruction. For a thorough program I recommend a personal trainer. The only problem is that they're expensive so it's probably better to fake an injury so your health insurance will pick up the physical therapy. But if you're like most people you don't have insurance, especially if you're a climber, so I recommend the programs presented in the Body Works section of Outside magazine or any number of other publications that seem to know what they're talking about. | ||||||||||||
| November, 2002 | ||||||||||||
| HOME | ||||||||||||