Ever since the sharpening that messed my blades up I have had a fair amount of muscle pain/tendonosis type of pain.
How horrible!
Can anyone here guess why a bad sharpening would do that? I can't figure it out.
I understand why a bottom-of-the-boot whose shape doesn't match your foot well (e.g., assumes that you have flatter or higher arches than you really do, or has a bend in the bottom that is too far from the ball of your foot) would cause problems with your muscles or ligaments. Essentially, I guess it is scrunching up or over-stretching your muscles, ligaments, or other connective tissues.
And I understand why continuous muscle use, if you need to use muscles because the sideways or forward/back slant of the bottom of the boot and that of your foot mismatches, and/or the blade offset isn't set right to effortlessly balance your foot, forces you to continually over-use those muscles - though "tendonosis" sounds more serious than muscle over-use. I had muscle pain big-time myself, before I learned how to reshape and rebalance my boots.
And of course, too much pressure on muscle tissue (including tendons) can rupture those muscles (e.g., the classic top-of-the-back-of-the-skate rupturing the Achilles tendon problem), so a major pressure point on a boot (which could be stretched to fix the problem) could easily do bad things.
But why would a
blade shape create tendonosis or sore muscles?
I could sort of see how a little muscle over-use could occur, from trying to stabilize a position by making your body a little too stiff, because you aren't sure how to hold yourself. But to the extant of causing actual damage to the tendons? Especially since you aren't jumping. I don't see how.
I could sort of see how massively uneven edges (e.g., inside edge higher than outside edge, or vice versa - which you can detect by balancing a Popsicle stick across the blades, and see if it looks square to the blade; repeat at many points along the blade) might cause a little excess muscle use too - but any careful skate sharpener who has had more than 15 minutes of instruction would fix that, because it may be the most common beginner's mistake, that annoys both figure and hockey skaters. And you say your current sharpener is careful, so I assume that isn't the problem.
Can anyone explain how a mis-shapen blade could even possibly do that?
P.S. jbruced, approximately where are you located? Maybe someone here knows of someone really good near you who could help.
If all else fails, jbruced could try submitting a question to
Mr. Edge. He is a Chicago skate technician with a medical background. He's even written a book.