There are still huge piles of toys still in their boxes and a half-eaten pan of baklava on the kitchen counter, but hopefully after today our house will look a little bit less like a disaster area.
Last Monday, I went to see a physical therapist (who turned out not to be a gigolo after all), and he gave me tons of good information on my stress fracture and nailed down the contributing factors. There are enough of them to warrant a full post on the subject tomorrow - so come back if you want to know how to give yourself a femoral stress fracture of your very own.
After testing my strength and flexibility, measuring my legs, and doing some adjustments, he had me hop on the treadmill to videotape my stride.
I ran for a few minutes as he taped different angles... it was weird. I couldn't relax and felt like I was swerving all over the treadmill because I was hyper-conscious that this guy was videotaping me from the waist down while I stumbled along in compression shorts. Even worse, I had to hike my shirt up over my butt so he could
Anyway, I had to come back on Wednesday as there's a different guy in the office who is better at gait analysis. We sat down in front of a big TV, and I got to watch my ass bounce up and down in HD at 1/10th normal speed. It was like watching a train wreck, I couldn't look away. He told me about a dozen things that were off - my knees come too close together when I run, I have too much upward motion, my knees are too straight when my foot hits the ground, my right hip is higher than my left... blah blah blah.
The fix? Nothing. It's like that Brian Regan joke where the eye doctor tells him he has one eye slightly higher than the other. "It doesn't affect your vision or anything, I just thought you'd want to be self conscious for the rest of your life."
Do yourself a favor and watch this clip (and it's totally clean! A first for my blog):
Yeah, he said my gait is good enough, but if I want, I can come in twice a week and run on a treadmill with a metronome while he charges me a million dollars an hour. As nice as that sounds, I think I'll pass.
Have you ever had a gait analysis?
Do you feel self-conscious when people watch you run?
I would feel so awkward having that done. But at the same time...totally want to have my gait analyzed.
ReplyDeleteI'm intrigued and yet I feel horrified for you. It would be worse for me to watch the play back. Yikes! So was the moral of this exercise... "Your stride is so fucked up, but you're still good enough to run"...really?
ReplyDeleteI will swear to you that half of the pictures of me while I'm running make me want to slit my throat! I have horrible form. I bounce all over the place. My hips are too wobbly. I run on the outside of my feet. Know what? I can't fix this train wreck either!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteStupid doctors.
I have never had my gait analyzed! It sounds like a good idea, athough it seems like they didn't really resolve anything.
ReplyDeleteMy major in college was Kinesiology, so we had to run on treadmills in front of people to measure our VO2max and ride bikes without eating and prick our fingers to measure our glucose... it was a little nervewracking having everyone watch me, but it's kind of fun to get the results!
My gait analysis taught me three things:
ReplyDelete1. My body mechanics are pretty darn good
2. I have a very narrow base of support (run/walk with my legs quite close together).
3. I don't ever want to be videotaped from the back ever again.
I got some hip flexor exercises because sometimes my hips ache after a long run, but the analysis was reassuring because I guess my form is fine and I won't damage myself by marathon training.
Oh, and I had to run at a mirror on an elevated treader for mine. Yeah. That was awesome.
I had a very similar experience when checking out knee pain a couple of years ago... so awkward!! Hope you can gain some helpful tips from it.
ReplyDeleteI had a very similar experience when checking out knee pain a couple of years ago... so awkward!! Hope you can gain some helpful tips from it.
ReplyDelete