Den,A guy named dave expressed an idea that seems to be holding true as I observe my sports hernia, and may be crucial. Dave said,
These workouts only tended to cause pain after my muscles were fatigued.
That happened to me on my surfboard the other day. It was about my 10th session on the surfboard since I started 3 weeks ago. So my arms, chest, abs, and back muscles had become much stronger than my first weak, measly session. So I paddled more aggressively and longer distances. In my prior 9 sessions, I had never had any abdominal pain, but in this session, near the end, all of a sudden I had pain in my lower abdomen, boom. I stopped immediately.
This fits Dave's theory about fatigue. By fatigue, I mean fatigue of the tear in my lower abdomen which is trying to mend itself. During the other paddling sessions, my arms, abs and shoulder muscles were so weak that my healing wound was put under only low stress, so it held up well for the entire paddling session each time.
But in this last paddling session, the healing wound had so much work thrust upon it by my newly strong paddling muscles that, after about 20 minutes, it finally fatigued out, and got re-damaged. Like a patched tire, its nice new patch (natural repairs accumulated over the last few weeks) got damaged by me overdoing it.
So I'm thinking Dave makes a very valuable point about exercise to a certain point helps, but once the healing wound becomes fatigued, you start damaging instead of helping.
The problem of course is that I can detect fatigue in my muscles because they get tired. But I personally cannot detect fatigue in my healing wound until I feel pain from it, and at that instant, I think, I've set myself backwards a few weeks.
So my plan is to get good exercise, but err on the side of avoiding fatiguing the tire-patch that nature in building over my wound. In other words, I want to work that wound as hard as I can, but not to the point where it becomes fatigued and then sends me back to square one every day. In the morning, being fresh, the healing tire-patch can take quite a strong force, for a certain number of repetitions. But with each repetition or step or stroke, it quickly becomes more "tired", even though most of us don't sense that.
Dave's nervous system, however, seems to have a special sensitivity to fatigue in fascia wounds, so he discovered this crucial concept. But we can all benefit from it perhaps, if it's true. And I think it is.
Kind of like an airplane wing of advanced metals. Once fatigue in the metal occurs, it instantly becomes subject to failure.
Here's the post by Dave at SportsHerniaForum.com
http://www.sportsherniaforum.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=16------
Albert,
This concept, if true, could make your rehab better, too, it seems to me.