u/uniquadotcom

Hey everyone.

I’ve been climbing for about 8 years and have spent most of that time following the same pattern: if I spend my training days doing hard limit bouldering and project sessions, I get strong and send hard, then I get injured. If I start mixing in “light” sessions, I stop improving and even start to go backwards, but stay healthy.

So what does a submaximal bouldering session look like for you? I tried one yesterday and felt like I was just farting around on stuff way below my max. I did some perfect repeats, hopped on my anti-style (slab) but it felt unfocused and like I was probably just accruing junk volume.

How do you incorporate sessions that are mostly working below your limit in order to refine technique, keep injury at bay, work weaknesses, etc? What’s your rep scheme? How often are you having sessions that look like this? How far below your max is most of this work happening?

For context I have climbed V7 on the mini Moonboard and have a handful of V5s outside.

Thanks!

Today is Day 6 of recovery. Had it done last Tuesday.

I’m an athlete and itching to get back into my routine after 6 days of laying on the couch watching Game of Thrones. My only pain right now is some aching in my left testicle.

I’m currently taking 600mg of ibuprofen every 6 hours. I had previously been taking 200mg every 4, but I called the doctor and he said to up the dosage. I’ve been taking ibuprofen for about a week.

My question is this: is it possible my body is more hurt than I’m feeling because of the ibuprofen? I want to ease back into lifting and rock climbing again (super carefully of course), but I’m concerned I could overdo it and be too numbed to get the pain signals telling me to back off.

Any advice on how to safely ease back into sports after the vasectomy?

Quick question. I seem to be a bit constipated after the surgery. Pushed a bit too hard on the toilet yesterday and could feel it in my lower abdomen while pushing. Today I woke up with my balls in the same state they’ve been, but with a pretty high level of pain in my abdomen. At the moment it’s pretty painful to walk or stand due to this pain. This is the area directly above my groin and below my stomach. Normal or cause for concern?

Yesterday at 0900 I received my no-scalpel no-needle vasectomy as a 26M.

One hour prior to my appointment I took a prescribed Valium. This was my first time taking one so I didn’t know what to expect. I suppose I felt a little calmer at the time of the procedure, considering I was a ball of anxiety on the way there and in the waiting room.

I did my consultation on the same day, which was a short (3 minute) conversation with the doctor and my partner in which he verified that we didn’t want kids, that I understood a vasectomy is permanent, and that we were doing this so she could go off birth control.

Then, he had me take off my pants and began to SQUEEZE MY BALLS! This was pretty uncomfortable. He rolled the boys around like it was some sort of circus act. He located my vas and made sure they were in an accessible spot.

Once this was done, he had us watch an 8-minute long video of him talking more about the vasectomy. This was a bit weird and felt a little impersonal. It was in this video that he talked about PVPS, hematomas, and recanalization.

Then it came time for the procedure itself. I laid on the operating table with all my clothes on sans pants and underwear. No medical gown or anything like that. He looped a rubber band twice around the head of my penis and ran another rubber band through it, which he had me pull to my chest to keep my penis out of the way. The rubber bands were the most painful part of the procedure. They were very tight!

He used the lidocaine-injecto-machine thing to push the local into 4 different points on my sack, 2 along each vas. Just like everybody says, this feels like someone very lightly tapping your sack. I have very sensitive balls as is and this did not cause any pain.

The cutting itself took less than 8 minutes from here. I looked at the ceiling the entire time because I get freaked out by this sort of thing, so all I experienced was the sounds of the snipping. On the right side I felt a tiny bit of tugging in my lower abdomen, but mostly because I was looking for it since everybody here talks about it.

The right side took most of the time. I’m not sure if there was some sort of complication or excessive bleeding, but he used a lot more time and tools on that side and had some mysterious whispered conversation with his attendant. This was a bit unnerving. I asked him if something was wrong and he more or less shut me down and said everything was fine. Okay!

Once everything was done, I put on 2 pairs of tight-fitting underwear and endured a 2-hour long drive home. I tried to ice during this time, but the ice packs hadn’t stayed cool in the insulated bag so that didn’t really work. Bumps were uncomfortable and scary but not painful.

I laid on the couch and watched TV the rest of the day, icing 20 minutes on and 20 minutes off. I took 1 200 mg ibuprofen every 4 hours. For the remainder of the day until I went to bed around 2100, I felt zero pain at all while resting. My balls are tender and swollen to about 30% larger than normal, but I have no standing pain in them at all even when walking to the bathroom or taking off my underwear and jock strap to pee.

This morning I woke up pretty much the same as the end of Day 1. A little more swelling, but less general discomfort. I genuinely feel fairly normal aside from swollen and slightly sensitive balls.

So far, the only pain I’ve experienced is a bit weird and I would like to hear other’s thoughts. When I stand up, cough, or laugh, I feel a brief but sharp pain in my lower left pelvis area, not in the balls. The pain area is about 2 inches to the left of my shaft. The pain appears, then immediately disappears and does not seem to have any lingering effects. Anybody else experience this?

I hope my recovery continues to go well and that my boring, not-very-nightmarish story helps ease the minds of anyone else going into this.

Also, huge shout-out to my wonderfully supportive partner who has been nothing but a gem throughout this entire terrifying process.

Update at the end of Day 2: Just took my first shower. No bruising, discoloration, pain, discomfort, etc. It feels like I didn’t have surgery at all. The only notable change is that my right testicle feels a bit larger than usual, maybe 20%, and feels very firm and tight to the touch. Not painful or tender at all, but a bit like someone replaced it with a walnut or something. Thoughts? Is this something to be concerned about?

I’m not sure if this will be helpful for others, but my therapist gave me some insight into a possible cause of my retroactive jealousy during our last session that I thought I’d share.

Historically, I (26M) never suffered from retroactive jealousy. I have had a fairly high number of sexual partners (15+) and have considered myself a pretty confident and self-assured guy. However, I also have a very avoidant attachment style which has caused my past relationships to end mostly through emotional withdrawal and self-sabotaging tendencies.

I have started seeing this girl (25F) several months ago and everything has been wonderful. About a month in, I began to suffer from pretty intense RJ, even though she has a far lower “partner count” than I do and has been very vocal about these being mostly negative experiences. I’ve really struggled with the RJ nonetheless and started seeing a therapist to address the issue.

In our last session the therapist told me that he suspects the RJ is a result of the new relationship being so perfect that my avoidant nature doesn’t know what to do. Normally, I will fixate on some small issue, withdraw from the relationship, and eventually bring it to the end because I’m so fixated on that problem. This relationship doesn’t have any problems like that, so the avoidant attachment style searches for anything to fixate on and give me an escape route. According to my therapist, it is not uncommon for avoidant people to “create” an issue in an otherwise healthy relationship to give themselves an out. In my case (and maybe yours) that is through retroactive jealousy and an obsessive fixation on her previous relationships.

Maybe this won’t be helpful to you, but it’s been very healing for me to reframe my intrusive thoughts and mental movies as an intentionally detrimental process that my brain is using to sabotage my relationship, and also recognizing that her previous history is only a real problem if I allow it to be. It’s also been good for me to consider my own brain as a sort of enemy, so when the intrusive thoughts pop up I will tell my brain “Not today! This relationship is great and I won’t let you play your tricks.” Then I find something else to occupy my mind and time and I can move on.

Just something I thought I’d share. I hope this is as useful to any of you as it has been for me.

TLDR: Relationship is great, I am avoidant and have self sabotaging tendencies, brain doesn’t know what to do so it panics and attempts to “create” a problem through retroactive jealousy. Symptoms are eased through a reframing of RJ as an attempt by my avoidant nature to ruin a perfectly good thing, and that my partner’s relationship history is NOT a legitimate problem.