Triumph! Or, how I made friends with my brachioradialis.

A Day in the Life of the Elbow

When last we left our intrepid (insipid?) blogger, Enid was mourning the death of her left arm.

Well, boys and girls, Enid learned a new word this month:

Brachioradialis.

It all goes like this:

After the last post, I got a lot of commentary and feedback (usually in person, rather than in type, which is why it isn't too crowded down there in the archives) from other fencers. Fencers I respect, fencers with years more experience than I have, fencers who I want to be like when I grow up. Almost universally, their response was "Take time off now, before it gets any worse." So I put my feelings on the matter aside, carefully considered their advice, inserted my fingers into my ears, and went LA LA LA LA LAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

But I did everything else they told me to do. :) Namely, I went out and got a pressure-point brace, started an anti-inflammatory regimen, made sure to ice it every night, and had it massaged twice a day by kindly Tibetan monks. Well, not really with the monks. But that would have been awesome. And let me tell ya, I wore that brace every damn day. I wore it driving, wore it when while I cooked, wore it playing video games, wore it sewing, and wore it at work (especially when typing. Talk about tendon isolation, wow. Typing was a pain in the butt. Well, arm. You know what I mean). The only times I didn't wear it was when I was in bed or when I'd been wearing it long enough that it started to chafe.

I also picked up some fish oil supplements and have been taking them 1-2 times per day, but that's more incidental--they're supposed to help with your joints and other things longer-term, and I'd been meaning to start on that for awhile, so it seemed like the appropriate thing to do.

The esteemed and extremely spiffy Cap'n Lot also took me out in his backyard and schooled me... in how to hold my sword more effectively. He worked with me for about an hour? ish? on getting the sword better balanced in my hand, and maintaining a more correct grip and balance through the lunge, so I'm gripping it less tightly and letting the weight of the sword counterbalance properly in my hand. It's interesting to note that it was much easier to do a "proper" Italian lunge (first the arm, then the body, then the foot at the very end... when do you move your head, anyway? with the body?) with the "proper" grip on the sword, but other than noticing the improvement, I'm not really well-educated enough to observe much about that.

I was a little apprehensive about working with the arm when I planned on going to Altavia practice two days later (fencing two days in a row is what first made it start hurting), but when I was holding it right it didn't hurt at all. It actually relieved some of the pain in my arm by using different muscles, which forced the tight ones to relax so the others could contract. It was great.

Even better was the fact that it didn't hurt any worse at all the next day, and had even improved. I'd been noticing incremental improvements over the course of the week, usually first thing in the morning, with increasing soreness as I used the left arm during the day, so I expected to feel sore again on Sunday, or at least the same level of pain and weakness, but it had actually improved. It was very encouraging. I'll have to keep working on holding my sword the way he said to, because it was very comfortable, but very different from what I'm used to, and as I concentrated on lunging properly, I found myself sliding back into my old grip.

The trend continued at Lyondemere Anniversary last weekend, where by the end of the day my entire arm was exhausted, but the elbow wasn't making a peep. I pretty much danced and sang.

I woke up Sunday morning really sore, but in a bunch of new places and no old ones. My shoulder ached a little, my left lat was sore, and my bicep and tricep were both sore, but my elbow felt good. It ached a little bit, and felt warm like it had been working hard, but it didn't have that persistent, stinging throb that it's had in the last few weeks. It was really nice. It had felt good the week before, but the fact that I could go out and fence all day and have minimal side effects the next day was really reassuring.

I feel like I'm doing the right stuff to take care of it, and that's excellent news. Now the trick will be remembering to continue taking care of it as it keeps feeling better. I think I might keep wearing the brace at work, because typing really does isolate the poor bugger.

Fun at Lyondemere and New Drills

In other news, Lyondemere Anniversary was a lot of fun. I got to hang out with good folks (and adorable babies) and fence some new folks (and adorable babies) and generally have a lovely day (also, there were babies. They were pretty cute).

Laertes and I got to hang a bit, which was good. He gave me a new parry drill because I'm still having trouble synchronizing my right and left hands. I can parry fine with the sword or with the dagger, and I can attack fine with the sword, but I can hardly parry with the dagger and attack with the sword simultaneously. Well, correction--I can do it great when I think about it, but that kind of defeats the purpose. I need to get the counterattack into an instinctive, fluid motion, and specifically one This drill starts nice and slow, then gets progressively faster as it gets more comfortable. The drill is a shot to the hip, shortly followed by a low parry, then a shot to the shoulder and a high parry. The idea is that your opponent is doing the same thing in mirror, so when you attack them, they're parrying, and as they attack you parry.

I definitely need to concentrate on doing the first few rounds of this drill slowly, getting my parries locked without overcommitting them and really working on lunging with a good turn of the hip for distance, not snapping the arm out to full extension (that way lies tendon strain).

I'm having a different issue with the sword parry--I tend to take my point dramatically off-line while I'm parrying because I'm parrying with my whole arm, rather than just by adjusting the angle of my elbow and shoulder. Rather than lifting or dropping my hand, I swipe with the whole arm from one side to another, which is effective, but slow, and only works defensively. I can't counterattack effectively when my guard is off to the side, and if my opponent is fast enough to counter my parry, I'm pretty much hosed.

So in comes drill number two, some basic parries with my point resting lightly on something. I'm a little worried that I'll end up really resting the point on whatever it is (a tree, a wall, a kitten, whatever) and defeat the purpose of the drill, but I'll give it my best shot. I think if I do this one before my arm gets tired and with good concentration, I'll be okay.

Both of these drills are designed to be done with someone else, but I think I can do them at home. That inside wall of my patio is looking awfully inviting. Not to mention I have this boyfriend...

Fencer's Elbow

I've been having a touch of tennis elbow over the last couple weeks. Well, tennis or golfer's elbow, not sure--it's aggravated by lifting things and bending the elbow, which is a tennis elbow thing, but I also have some pain when I do finger-specific movements (typing, etc.), which is apparently more common in golfer's elbow... screw it, I have fencer's elbow. So say we all.

I first noticed it after an Altavia practice the day after a fairly vigorous Darach practice about a month ago, and it's sort of come and gone since then. It's gotten significantly worse in the last week, starting last weekend. I'm pretty sure I slept all of Saturday night with both arms fully extended and locked outside the covers, (odd, aren't I?) which probably aggravated it.

On Sunday I went out and bought a forearm strap on Don Eogan's recommendation. It was a little unnerving to put it on and feel an immediate relief from pain that I had previously been unaware of--I didn't realize it had hurt at all until it stopped hurting.

Fencing at Altavia on Monday with the strap on was awesome--I could feel weakness in the arm, but other than one over-extended lunge (that ended with my elbow getting clipped by the edge of my opponent's sword, arg!), I didn't feel any pain or discomfort at all. It wasn't sore at all the next morning, either (another standard symptom of tennis elbow is morning stiffness, which I haven't experienced at all yet). It got more sore as the day went on, and by Tuesday night it was pretty painful, but I went all day on Wednesday without the brace and it really didn't bother me until the end of the workday. Typing and fine finger movements (spinning the iPod wheel, for example) definitely bug me a bit, so I'm tying to avoid them... in my left hand, anyway.

At the moment, I've put myself on an ibuprofen regimen to decrease swelling, am wearing the brace almost all of my waking hours, and icing it in bed every night. I hope with a little rest and coddling it clears up by itself, because my range of motion and activity in my left arm has been badly impacted. Fortunately I'm not entirely left-hand dominant--after a couple of days I've successfully taught myself to eat with my right hand like I did when I was a kid, and as long as I keep the left elbow propped up I can type and things at work with no discomfort.

So, outlook? Well, I've had a lot of people tell me their tennis elbow stories, most of which end in "...and then I had to take two, four, six, fifteen months off! And have surgery! Which was really painful! And then my marriage ended! And my dog died! And I NEVAR FENCED AGAAAAAAAAAAAIN."

I will not be that person. I've decided. Kthxnook?thxbai.

Seriously. I'm just, just barely feeling like I'm starting to improve, damn it, and I'm not going to take some lame months off to lick my damn elbow tendon and feel sorry for myself (because, I assure you, I will feel sorry for myself, and it will be unbecoming). The very idea puts me in a cheerfully destructive frame of mind.

That being said, I'm not going to be a moron about it, either. I'll take my Advil and rest my arm and wear my brace and rest my arm and ice it every night and rest my arm and stop typing so much left-handed and rest my arm. I'll only fence once a week, I can do that. I'll stop using my left arm entirely six days and twenty-three hours a week, but I'm not going to give up my one hour of fencing unless I absolutely have to.

I may light that incense regardless.