Workin it out

Strangely motivated. Wanting to start training again kind of came out of the blue and I was surprised by it, but i'm even more surprised that regardless of the current injury I am motivated to get over it and run. I would have expected to be discouraged and go right back to the sedentary lifestyle but this is not so. Furthermore, although necessary, I am 'working out,' and enjoying it, which is a first.


I went to my massage therapist on tuesday and unfortunately it wasn't the miracle cure I was hoping for. In fact he more or less just confirmed what I had figured out on the internet(which was actually worth the fee).  It is indeed the psoas/iliopsoas that is tight, and the reason why is that my gluteus medius(I think) was not firing to keep my spine stable, and so my psoas stepped in to do a bang up job. It turns out, in my massage therapists opinion, that it wasn't so much the ramping up of the long run but just the transition from a life of sitting all the time(school) to starting to run again that was the likely problem. SO, what to do?  I went back to this article I found on how to release your psoas, and have been diligently trying to follow it, which has been helpful, and I've decided to work out my core like never before.  In the past I've found that really concentrating on the exercises necessary to relieve the symptoms of an injury can get you back on the road in a hurry, then you can back off a bit for a longer term cure. Hitting it hard at the start has worked for me in the past, perhaps that is because the biggest strength gains are made from weak muscles!


The workout I decided on was conveniently found in the most recent edition of Canadian Running Magazine written by Jon-Erik Kawamoto(StrongerRunner.com).  The article has a number of core exercises which go from moderate to very difficult, obviously depending on what you have to work with(virtually nothing in my case). You can do all of them in your home with things from around the house, save for an exercise ball.  I don't have an exercise ball so I didn't do those two exercises but you can substitute a tension band with an old bicycle tube, and a medicine ball with a stack of books bound with a belt.  I've only done the exercises a couple of times, and not even the full number of sets because I am so weak but I feel like its going to help my problem by stabilizing my core and getting the right muscles firing at the right time. It is mind boggling how weak my core is, and I don't want to think of how much faster I could have run in the past had I been more professional about my training! More importantly i'm being proactive. I'm planning on going for a jog tomorrow so we'll see how it goes. Here's hoping.

Here's a great video of Billy Mills(Oglala Lakota) '64 Olympic 10k champ I watched yesterday, keep the sound on!


Post Script: Here is the link to the core workout I mentioned above.