January is typically the time when a lot of people are ready to get back in shape. It's a fresh start, a new year, and the heavy holidays have passed. In all this excitement, we usually think we're invincible and our body's going to handle eating clean and working out 5 days a week after some time of consuming naughty foods and laying around much more than usual. Last year around this time I talked about taking little steps toward better health so that you can maintain the changes you are making instead of letting them go after a couple of weeks.
I find that when my clients start getting back in shape, it's really easy to overdo it or push themselves toward injury. The last thing you need when you're trying to make some changes for better health is to get injured. Certain movements hurt and that makes it harder to do what you set out to do.
When I injured myself while training for my first half marathon, I went to see a doctor who suggested a cortizone shot to bypass the pain in order to continue training and run the race, a chiropractor who taped me up with Kinesio Tape to help me heal faster, and a PT who said one of my hips was high and that I needed Trigger Point therapy on my IT band. The PT also told me to get an IT band brace that goes just below the knee to minimize the pain when you bend your knee. I didn't take the cortizone shot because this steroid is really only for use in worst case scenarios as it breaks down your connective tissue; it's not a bandaid. The Kinesio Tape helped with the bruising from the Trigger Point release work which looked like someone took a metal bat to my outer thigh (no joke). Kinesio Tape aids in healing because it brings blood to the area and blood is healing. One of my hips was high, but there was also a misalignment in my sacrum (the back of the pelvis) and because that remained out of alignment, I didn't get better in time to run the race which was so heavy on my heart.
I'm telling you this because when we get hurt, putting a bandaid on something is our ingrained response, but it's not going to get rid of the problem. If I had known then what I know now, I could have put myself back into alignment, strengthened the weak muscles, and save myself some tears over not achieving my goal.
For those of you that have already run into a snag in your training or don't do certain exercises because of an old knee injury or low back pain, I'm offering a workshop on January 24th that will be amazing! You will learn the connection between your feet and your pelvic floor and a whole new world will open up to you! I'll also teach you ways to realign and strengthen your pelvis, hips and feet yourself so that lower body pain is a thing of the past. If you've stopped running because you don't feel like your knees can handle it, do yourself a favor and sign up now! Our bodies are meant to support us, we just need to use them the way they were designed and let go of our bad postural habits.