Ahhhhh. What an awesome few days so far - my wonderful boss gave us today off so we ended up getting a four day weekend. Can I say how much I love him? Hubs had to go to work today so I've just been chillin' at home and started thinking about Marathon Quest 2011.
I've been thinking about what I learned during MQ2010 and what I can do to make sure that MQ2011 is a success. First step - a gait analysis. As you guys know, I was having some issues with my right foot which my physiotherapist thought was due to muscle imbalances affecting my gait. At the race expo for the Goodlife Victoria, there was a booth with a local physiotherapist who can do a gait analysis with a special new fangled machine - woohoo! I'd read about gait analysis on the Running Injury Clinic site online and in Canadian Runner a few months ago but it hadn't come to Victoria yet - so was super excited to see it was finally here!
Hubs and I went to talk to the guys at the booth and Hubs was soooo excited - he called right away and made an appointment. He's been having troubles with pain in his bum/glutes and the gait analysis he had done totally confirmed that it was the way he was running that was causing the issue - he actually has weak glutes and he would drop his right hip when he runs. What they do is stick little sensors all over your legs and get you to run at your normal 10K pace, tell you what's going on and then give you a report afterwards that you can take to your regular physiotherapist for exercises or other treatment. Sold! I booked an appointment for the beginning of December and I'm excited to see what it tells me.
So gait analysis is my starting point - I figure there's lots of time between now and May to work on whatever muscles or issues I need to work on to make sure MQ2011 is a success. Once I start marathon training in May, I'm booking monthly physio and massage appointments to make sure I take care of things before any issues start up. Goodlife Victoria 2011 - here I come!
TMI and My Mind is Blown
5 months ago
3 comments:
Wohoo!
Great post! A gait analysis is the best place to start when experiencing any type of pain when running.
Injuries occur in athletes when excessive forces are placed on the tissues of the body. This can happen as a one off force or more commonly a smaller repetitive force, commonly known as an over-use injury. During the gait analysis the state of the art motion analysis software can track all of your movements from all four sides of the body and see where these repetitive forces are acting.
Then as you say you can take away your results to your Physiotherapist and he/she can give you particular exercises to help strengthen weaker areas.
Thanks ProGait - I'm excited to try it!!
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