About ten days ago, I was on the incline squat machine when I felt a sharp, sharp pain deep in my left butt. I had to immediately stop and basically limped out. My left butt and hip hurt with each step. The next day, on what was supposed to be my last physical therapy day for my ankle, I told my therapist about this injury, and I’d probably need more sessions to fix this.

She said, “You didn’t tell me you were using those machines. Those things aren’t good.” I was kind of sure I did, but fuck. Great.

Her opinion is basically any leg machine, including abduction and adduction machines, at the gym is bad news. They force your body into a dangerously rigid position. Good form is crucial for protection and effectiveness, but some flexibility is necessary. That’s one of the reasons joints are the way they are.

She poked around, had me move, and I have what appears to be classic piriformis syndrome. I screwed up a muscle deep in my left butt. It directly affects the hip, too, so my rotation movement is all wonky.

So yeah. Her recommendation, and what I’ve been reading online, is at least two weeks of rest. This definitely throws a damper on things. I was about 40% into the marathon training program (about 17-19 miles/week) so now I have to pause that. Side note, the new stride is mostly ok, but I keep hitting a wall with it between miles 3-4. That’s why the leg strengthening. Leg endurance is just not that great to do a full half with this stride right now.

The most immediate problem though, is I have Iron Horse Half in a little over a month. Two weeks will give me just under a month of training, plus it’s supposedly a mostly downhill/flat run. I should be fine.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 18th, 2019 at 9:42 pm and is filed under Keto, Running. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.