just how many needles?

Back in May I fell again on my right knee, which began to aggravate my (least) favorite injury my psoas. But for weeks it was just sorta aggravated and then a week chalk full of cycling REALLY aggravated it...as in: i'm trying to not throw up while releasing this trigger point...type of aggravation.

So...i decided to try acupuncture. It's easy to be skeptical about acupuncture, but if you find a good sports acupuncture person they really can help. Especially if there are muscle imbalances and you need muscles to fire correctly as well as muscle spasms. My friend had recommended a sports acupuncturist in the area so I decided to give it a try. I've had it before but wasn't really that impressed with the previous person. This time...i walk in: it's your right hip right? Yep...it is.

She poked and prodded me, noting that my right hip is actually correctly slightly tilted anterior-ly while my left hip is tilted posterior-ly. She found all sorts of interesting things going on in my body, not necessarily related directly to the psoas injury, but not unimportant either. The body tells a story even if you don't want it to. It will give away all of your secrets if you have the right person who can actually read all of them. From some of the comments she made I think she can.

She then proceeded to poke me with a zillion needles as one would expect in an acupuncture session, but she also did a modality called "cupping"

I have laugh this guy in the video and his comments related to this modality that is it soooo relaxing... oh no...it doesn't HURT...um...yea...LIAR. I have one spot that is a bright purple circle and then a region that is very purple and it was very uncomfortable. (still is a bit) The purpose of this is to help move stagnant blood that is in the interstitial regions that stagnates which can happen due to training, ect. The practitioner is also an iron distance triathlete so she understands the demands of training as well as not making me feel like i'm 'too hard on my body' (as one massage therapist told me a year ago).

The interesting part was her trying to get my glutes to activate...at the beginning...not so much and by the end were firing. Now that they actually are being activated while exercising...lets just say after my 9 mile run on Sunday my butt is very sore. But glute activation is actually what I need long term to happen to counter this silly hip issues.

So i think i'm on a good path to both holding off this injury from becoming full blown before Vineman half...as well as figuring out what my body needs to be strengthened equally to be better functioning with less injury in the future.