Saturday, February 23, 2013

Strengthening the hip girdle

I'll be the first to admit that I don't know what is necessarily wrong with the muscle(s) posterior lateral side of my right hip. And of course that's not stopping me from self-diagnosing the issue.

I have a soreness in a muscle or muscles on the posterior lateral (basically 4 o'clock position if you were looking at me straight down and I'm facing toward 12) side of my right hip. I don't think this has affected my stride, but I don't want it to.

I think I caused it my playing disc golf, basically a result of pulling something in the twisting motion of the throw. What's wrong with my throw? My best guess is that it's a form issue in the twisting motion, starting from the fact that I twist on my ball of my plant (right) foot instead of the heal of that foot, and that I played a round or so in my hiking boots, which have a more elevated heal (my MT10s are about the perfect disc golf shoe, and Will Schusterick wears them when he plays).

Anywho, I felt like the stars aligned when in the span of about three days, I read about Tony Krupicka's injury issues and that they were related to weak hips/glute muscles, learned about Jay Johnsons Mrytl Routine, watched videos related to hip weakness from the therapist who keeps America's top marathoners healthy at the Oregon Project, and recalled meeting Eric Orton - Chris McDougall's coach - who again repeated the line that many running issues are related to weak hips.

So what am I doing about this? I'm doing Johnson's Mrytl (rhymes with "hip girdle") after almost every run, and adding two things to it. First, adding a set of 10 reverse clams after the initial set of clams, and adding Orton's one-legged-stand (for as long I can hold the form each time) at the end of the session. I can already tell my hips are not used to the exercises and are responding positively to them, although there is some pain still there. It's only been a week and I know I can't expect miracles, but I've been very pleased with the work thus far. I'm going to carry it into the season and see where it takes me. If it helps me stay injury-free and reduces core and hip fatigue in face, it'll be well worth the 10 or so minutes after each run it takes to complete the circuit.

No comments: