Today is March 30, 2009. I'm 58 yrs-old. I've been fighting this cursed sports hernia for a few months now. I've read the many posts about surgery, but reject the idea for me.
After trying some rehab exercises I seemed to improve immediately. However, after about 3 days of it, I started getting more sore again instead of less sore.
I've now come to believe that honest-to-goodness inactivity for several months is the only viable solution.
I've been addicted to exercise for many years, addicted to the wonderful feeling afterward, in the evenings after a vigorous day. Until SH, exercise had brought me nothing but happiness, fun and excellent health. Like they say, the best things in life are absolutely free.
But now I've finally come to terms with giving that up so that I can at least stop SH and have the simple ability to walk around like a regular person does, comfortably.
I now believe that sports hernia is a repetitive-injury syndrome of exercise addicts, like me, who are convinced that exercise fixes everything. But SH is the exception.
I'm guessing that SH slowly begins to heal itself a little tiny bit every night, but then the athlete destroys the precious delicate repair foundation by exercising again a few days later.
SH can heal, but only over a long, long time. The athlete must give up all forms of exercise that affect muscles attaching via facia tissue at the pelvis. Unfortunately, because the pubic bone is the hub of the mechanical body, and acts as a fulcrum for almost all forces of skeletal movement, that means giving up almost any exercise at all.
If the athlete remains addicted to exercise, sports hernia will slowly do more and more damage, eventually affecting not just the groin, but also eventually hips, knees, back, and the mind or soul.
Me? I'm going to give up all sports for a full year beginning today. No basketball, no surfing, no swimming, no jogging, no calesthenics, no weights, no cycling, not even long walks.
I'm going to let my body do what it's been valiantly trying to do for the past several months -- repair itself.