YES oh YES oh YES!!! Sometimes like a rope burn or "road rash", sometimes like it's burning from the inside out - I used to get it a lot when I was able to do intensive exercising and workouts and hard physical labor like hardscaping landscapes and chopping wood. (I used to really love that stuff). And I always got it when I ice skated. It burned SO badly - but no-one cared, so I learned to ignore it.

Now that I have repetitive stress injuries and fibromyalgia, and have the burning because of that, my experience with a lifetime of burning makes it easier for me to tolerate a pretty significant level of discomfort - so every cloud has a silver lining! LOL - that is truly making lemonade out of lemons!

Type of Myotonia: Myotonia Congenita, Becker's type

Country: USA

"The Burn" in weight training is usually the crossover point from aneurobic to aerobic metabolism...you've used up all the available glycogen stored in the cells, but the body hasn't kicked in to start utilizing lactic acid as a fuel.

Normally that takes about 2-3 minutes of continuous muscle contractions, but if it's more strenuous with more repetition it can happen even sooner.

With MC some researchers have noted that there is often an accompanying glycogen storage defect in the muscles so we probably run out even faster than normal. In weight training we reduce the number of reps to avoid that (although some weight lifters work toward that sensation because it means you're stressing hte muscle and it's going to hypertrophy faster). But when you're going up a bunch of stairs you don't really have a choice to reduce the number of reps and our body weight is basically the weight we're lifting.

You can minimize it a little bit by pushing downward on the step with the glutes and the calves from the back of your legs rather than with the quads in the front. I'm not sure why but it seems to help. Same when you're riding a bike...push into your heels instead of pushing down with the thighs/quads. It may have to do with the difference in the type of muscle fiber between the two groups.

The other thing that helps me (I have two flights of stairs up to my condo) is breathing very slowly while I'm walking up the steps...like breathe in for 3 steps, then out for three steps instead of panting and taking a breath for each step. Not hyperventilating keeps the blood more alkaline. We tend to have lower bicarbonate levels and higher chloride levels in the blood anyway and that may contribute to some of the early burning.

Jan

Type of Myotonia: Thomsen's MC

Country: US

Jan:

Very informative. Thanks for the information, I'll give the suggestions a try :-)

It seems to accompany the myotonia a lot more than it did when I was younger for some reason. Maybe because the muscles aren't getting as much use as they used to.

Type of Myotonia: Becker