It’s
amazing how the same piece of news can be both the best thing you could ask for
and the worst. For me that news came
just over three weeks ago, when frustrated with my physio, I went for a second
opinion. This gentleman invited me onto
his torture table and attempted to bend me every which way he could think
of.
The
three words he then uttered redefined my running, and have been the cause of
severe optimism, and unimaginable frustration, as shown in the two blogs that I
wrote on two consecutive days.
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Day 18: Going to the physio was
the best thing I ever did.
Anterior pelvic rotation weren't new words to me.
Three years ago I was diagnosed as having a massive anterior rotation, caused
by ridiculously tight hip flexors, which restricted my pelvis position, and
thus how high I could lift my knees, which stunted my stride.
This problem
hasn't gotten worse, but I had wrongly assumed that I had maximised my range of
motion. Not true. This physio demonstrated that with my pelvis in
neutral, I literally cannot move my upper leg backwards beyond vertical. I
therefore have to choose between enabling knee lift which restricts my stride
length, or enabling my glutes (the largest muscle in the body) to work
correctly without being able to lift my knees.
Just 15
minutes of stretching three times a day should be enough to change this, and
given that the first time I made this adjustment, the biomechanical change
allowed me to train effectively to reduce my 10k time from 37:14 (Sept. 2009) to 34:41 (Dec. 2009), the optimism of even a slight improvement alone
is enough motivation to stick at this.
It’s not easy, but it’s exciting.
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Day 19: Going to the physio was
the worst thing I ever did.
Anterior
pelvic rotation is like a curse. I
thought I had resolved this. I went
through all of the physio three years ago.
The problem is I’m now really aware of how awkwardly I run. I can feel when my whole pelvis tilts
forwards now. It annoys the hell out of
me. An evening run through the
countryside shouldn’t end in me screaming and kicking a fence in pure
frustration. Writing 18 seconds off my PB last week should feel satisfying, not worthless because I know that this
time is easily beatable if I can overcome this problem.
I
hate stretching three times a day….it uses all of my free time. Just when I want to relax, its time to
contort myself again. Now I struggle for
motivation to run because I know that it’s pointless without rectifying
biomechanical factors first. I wish I’d
never known and could just carry on in ignorance. I was happy being a very average runner. Argh.
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It’s
amazing how the same situation can be perceived in two such different ways. I’m just hoping that the positives eventually
overcome the negative.
