Campusing = Healthy Elbows?

Well, not exactly.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, I've been experiencing some elbow issues.  These issues arose as a result of climbing five days on at HP40, where all the constant squeezing left my poor elbows screaming for mercy.  Unfortunately, upon return from HP40 I was scheduled to begin the power phase of my training, in which I had included campusing.

Frankly, this scared me a little.  Campusing is precisely how my first round of bad elbow problems began.  However, that was then, and I had no idea what I was really doing on the campus board.  I'm smarter now, right?

Ummm... maybe.

I know; I wrote the schedule, so I could easily change it.  I could rehab the elbows and skip campusing and all would be well.  Not a chance.  I did what any self-respecting trainer would do, and I ignored my own advice to experimentally take one for the team.

Of course, I would never recommend this to a client or a friend.  Probably not even to an enemy.  It wasn't a good idea and I knew it, but I felt compelled to know exactly how much the elbow workouts I detailed in  my previous post actually worked while still training at a high level.  And so it was that I drug out my old friends dumbbell and "Therabar", placed them in a prominent position in the living room, and I headed to the gym to campus.

As of this week, I've finished with my 4 weeks of campusing, and I'm happy to report that in fact, through dilligent work on my elbows, they are healthier than when I started.  They've gotten better gradually, to the point of almost no pain now.  They are still stiff in the mornings, and they take a while to really warm up, but by all measures they are in good shape.  Not only that, but my campusing improved markedly over the 4 weeks.  Of the three main exercises that comprise the meat of my campus workout (which I'll detail soon), I experienced a big gain in all three.  In the final 2 weeks, as the elbow pain was really subsiding, the strides were bigger than I had expected, which was a nice bonus.

I'm now at the start of an off week, continuing to work on the elbows, the shoulder (which also felt no ill effects from campusing), and my ridiculously tight IT band (more on that later as well... Jesus, am I falling apart?!).  The start of the season is just around the corner, only a short anaerobic endurance phase away.  I'm feeling strong, healthy, and can hardly wait to get back out.