So following on from yesterdays post about my troublesome calf, I booked a session with a local sports physio to check the damage, get some treatment and a recovery plan.
I met up with John Winters at JW Physio Clinic (www.jwphysioclinic.com) and after a brief discussion he went through some balancing exercises with me before getting me to lay down on the physio table for some movement and alignment work.
After that was done John carried out a deep tissue massage followed by cupping and accupuncture.
The result is the image below. Very painful but very necessary.
You can see that although the calf is the current problem, as always, the actually underlying issue is likely to be elsewhere (potentially the hips, which I have always been realtively non-flexible).
The marks left from the cupping are all very normal, most of the pain is in the deep tissue massage which is doing it's job of loosening the muscle.
What is interesting is that John did both legs but you can instantly see the right calf, where my problem is, has bruised up. The left leg has no bruising what so ever.
My right leg is generally my problem leg and it shows!!
Tomorrow I start on the recovery stage 1 exercises before another visit to John next week.
The good news is that the calf is only a level 1 strain, so recovery should be relatively quick, which is good considering I have a race in 7 weeks!!!
Thanks to John at JW Physio Clinic for the treatment today!!!