Training Area: Recuperation - ex.R4 [PILATES]

Ana Barretxeguren, from Blibao (Spain); a pilates guru, biomechanics expert and amazing spiritual person. This was for whom I had woken up at 4:30 in the morning and driven 5 hours to see after a recommendation from family. It was more than worth it. :)

Ana works from the feet upwards and is a specialist in myofascial tissues. When I arrived she did a few tests on how I walked, my posture, my head position, my movements, my general biomechanics. I was told that due to my pelvis injury I was walking with one side of my hips higher (e.g. skewed to one side). I had to improve my flexibility in this hip to eradicate my problems in the right lumbar muscle. So I've been working on exercises similar to this one below:

On top of this Ana told me I was walking on the "sides" of my foot. This is likely to have been accentuated when I broke my ankle ligaments. As the ankle is directly connected to the adductor (groin) muscle and abdominals it is very likely a lot of my muscular problems in these zones have been caused my walking differently to before the injury. In addition by walking on the ball of the big toe when extending or lifting up the foot (instead of the little toe which the majority of people do) which gives greater spring and explosivity. This is because the big toe is the connected to the high arch of the foot (the bones which are at the top of the foot) whereas the little toe is connected to the heal of the foot (at the bottom of the foot and importantly flat). You can view this in the anatomy of the foot photo below.

Using statics theory in the field of engineering an arch shape is stronger and more powerful that a flat one which is way so many bridges were made with an arch in the past. So by walking on the big toe also gives more performance, more speed, more spring as well as correcting my pains in the back and legs.

My exercises are presented below.

So I bet your saying this is impossible:
      - "How can you change something which you have done all your life. How can change how you walk after 24 years." Well firstly, it is the natural way to walk - we have diverted from this as we have evolved but if we connect our minds with our body we will revert to what is most efficient and effective. Besides if you have an attitude that you can not change then you will never change. There are countless cases of people who have been told by doctors that they would never walk again but after decades of trying they find a way to walk again. One should never say its impossible.
      - Or maybe you're saying "His problem is in the back, not in his foot or how he walks". Well this is true but we contact and impact the ground firstly and always. If we don't do this well we are going to get problems in some part of the body. Imagine walking with one leg longer than the other, you are really going to put stress on the knees, back, spine, neck and hips. Thats why doctors usually operate on children who don't have equal lengths legs because they are going to have problems later in life.

Well perhaps the best defence is after 2 weeks working on the exercises once/twice a day (1-2 hours) I am feeling the best i've felt in 4 months. I'm swimming 1-2 hours a day, doing core exercises and walking an hour without pain. Im going to keep you updated but right now its definitely doing me good. THANKS ANA :)

Training Area: Recuperation - ex.R3 [OSTEOPATH]

Its been a month since I last posted about my treatment and rehabilitation for the pelvis injury I sustained during my fall in July. Since then I've had 4 treatments with my osteopath Nick Tuckley.

The first couple of treatments Nick had to re-align the pelvis as it would not go back into place easily. I guess its like trying to go on a no-cake diet after months of eating loads of cakes...The first few weeks you crave cakes and probably will eat a few - but then it gets easier until you stop altogether!! Well thats what its like for my pelvis - its been so long in the wrong position that it now doesn't want to stay in its new position. However, Nick has managed to stabilise it and now its well aligned. However, my injured ankle was also poorly aligned and the changes in my bodies structure was causing pain in my legs, my trapezius muscle and my lumbar, so Nick still had lots of work to do in our sessions. All in all it was 3-4 weeks of treatment until I was back training (well rehabilitation training).

Some pilates exercises

Nick instructed me to start with light swimming, pilates and no rotational movement. A week of increasing from 20 minutes to 1 hour of front crawl, breast stroke and back stroke followed:

However, on Friday the day of Nick's final treatment I had a sore right Lumbar. It turns out this was done from the previous day and Friday's side-running (in the pool) of 4 minutes. After a long time without training I can understand that you can easily injure yourself again but after just 8 minutes of side-running I wouldn't expect the injury I got...I had 3 frustrating days of rest in pain that followed. 

We are now looking in to the reason as to why I'm getting some many injuries. Right now we're stumped but my next blog post is hopefully going to shed some light onto the reason. I have a meeting with a well-respected pilates expert. 

Ciao