Dry needling, take one

This morning I headed into Magnolia Physical Therapy* for my first dry needling. My PT pointed out several areas that need work, including the left gastroc (which is contributing to the pulling on my hamstring tendons) and of course my adductors and hip flexors. Ever since the diagnosis of Osteitis Pubis I've been painfully aware of my adductors, and my right hip flexor is so tight that when I do the Thomas Test my left foot dangles a full six inches lower than my right. In fact my right upper thigh doesn't even come in contact with the table, the flexors are so tight.

Source

Nobody told me that dry needling hurt like the dickens.
The process doesn't take long: the PT locates an area that responds to stimulation with twitch, then uses a long thin needle to probe the deep muscles to reproduce the twitch. It hurts. The needle passing into the muscle is painless (it is a fine needle), but the probing and subsequent deep twitching is pretty rough. I take back everything I ever said about being able to tolerate pain: I was biting my lip and gasping for breath.

And then the pain goes away, except in your calves. My PT warned me that the calves would stay painful all day, and so far he's right; I'm limping a little!

I have so much ropey tightness in my adductors that this process will take a few visits, but already after today I had astonishing results. Part of my workup was the Thomas Test, and after needling I repeated it. To my amazement, my right leg relaxed easily downward, hanging identically to the left side. I couldn't believe it! I had heard that results from dry needling were often instantaneous, but it was still a surprise to observe! So witch-doctory!

I'm back off running again during treatment. I definitely need to get this pesky hamstring taken care of, and to do so I need the rest of my muscles doing their jobs. Hopefully dry needling will help me get some muscles back to normal function. In the meantime, thanks for still reading even though I have NOTHING to say and NO PRs and NO RACES - basically nothing fun to talk about. If all goes well in the next few weeks I might still run RnR New Orleans, but drop down to the half. But that will be a fun run only - no racing. Which sucks. And I won't do it if it's risky, so we'll see.

* this post is sponsored by Magnolia PT, which has agreed to offer all treatments free of charge as long as I only say nice things about them. HA. In reality I have a $2500 deductible and they're out of network, so blargh.