Stop Hurting Yourself

This is Daniel.

Chelsea is at yoga, so I'm taking over posting duties for today.  I want to talk about injuries.

From 2006 to 2008, I trained like a madman.  I got stronger, yes, but the price was pain, burnout, insanity, and death.  During those years, I trained hard for 8 months, made a lot of gains, then crashed and spent the last four months of the year recovering from the mental and physical burnout of doing more than I could handle.

In 2009, I decided I needed to revamp my training, with a focus on consistency and health.  The result was my most productive year ever.

First, I decided to focus on deadlifting as my main lower body exercise and only use squats as assistance.  I don't compete in powerlifting, so I don't have to squat heavy every week.  This saves a lot of wear on the hips, kness, and low back.

Second, I cut down to two days per week.  I can do all the hard weight lifting I need in two days, then spend my other training days on running or rowing.  My lifts went up, I got huger, but I stayed in condition.

Third, I became very conservative when dealing with pain.  If I have an unusual pain, I back off, try to figure out why and address the problem before it becomes a serious injury.  Being conservative with injuries has three benefits:

• Consistency.  You can't focus on goals if you're constantly injured.
• Keeps the program minimal, since I don't have to add extra work to address dysfunction*.
• Pain sucks.

It's true, professional athletes do sometimes train through pain, but they're doing it for money or medals.  That's basically the job description: Destroy your body for profit.  

In reality, most pros, regardless of sport, wave their training loads, peak at the right time for competitions, then take an off-season period for recovery.  Pretty much the opposite of the typical amateur, who trains as hard as possible all the time, with no goals, no plan, and breaks**.

* As a side point, it's common to deal with injuries by adding more.  More stretching, more corrective exercises, more volume.  This rarely works.  You have to do less to let the body heal itself.

** CrossFit hate goes here.

Easily Amazed and Amused

Hi all,

I'm not very good at keeping this thing updated, am I? It's hard because work has been busy, and I really don't like using the computer after work because I'm on it all day. So I'm thinking I might make it a goal to post on Wednesdays and Saturdays. I still want to use the blog because it's kind of fun, but realistically I just can't/won't post as much as many of you do.

So what's been going on...

Fitness
Wow, my leg and hip have been feeling really good. I've had zero pain and tightness for the last few runs. Zero. I read an interesting article in my latest Runner's World that discussed the connection between physical and mental pain. Yeah, it's a little bit weird, but after I read it, I was thinking that sometimes my pain level can go hand in hand with my anxiety level at work. Last week was not a good week and I had some stiffness in my IT band. This week things have been good (or no worse than usual) and I have no problems. I'm not absolutely connecting the two- there could be so many other things involved- but I'm not totally discounting the idea either.

Food

New from the garden, we have broccoli!



This is how it grows on the plant. I had no idea up until a few weeks ago. I thought it grew under the ground, haha.



The other thing I didn't realize is that those bumpy things turn into flowers.



Crazy, right?!?

Fun
D and I took Monday off as a mental health day and went to The House on the Rock. I did not take pictures, and, honestly, words cannot describe it. Okay- there is one word- bizarre. Mostly I just enjoyed spending time with D because he'd been so busy for the past 3 weeks.

That's it. Stay tuned for some Lazy Gourmet in a few minutes unless I end up doing a work thing.

Grocery Shopping Adventure

So these things aren't exactly daily, but whatever ;).

Fitness
Got in an upper body workout yesterday and a 4mi run with 2mi tempo this morning plus a little yoga here and there. Tomorrow will be lower body after work. I'm going to be really glad when the gym is open in the morning again. I love to have my workout done first thing.

I think I may have some insight into what's bugging my hip, too. I think it's doing the stairs. Monday I felt a twinge right in my trouble spot when I was on my second round of stairs. I did a double round today, but I think I should stick with just one set from now on to see if that improves the problem.

Food
I'm not sure if I've posted about it before, but I have a conversation partner who I meet with each week so she can practice English ask questions about American culture. She also tells me a lot about China and Chinese culture, which I think is really cool. Yesterday she was asking about the English word for some foods so we took a trip to the grocery store. It was neat walking up and down the aisles and talking about all the different foods and seeing a grocery store from a completely different perspective. Actually, it was kind of strange for me because we usually shop at Trader Joe's so I'm not used to that much variety. There's some pretty crazy stuff in grocery stores these days.

Fun
It's been neat to see all these RW forumite blogs. I'm going to do my best to add all of you to my Blogroll and Sage feed reader. Feel free to add me and make comments!

Up and running

I've started running again! YAY! I'm mostly, but not completely, pain free. Doing some serious dynamic stretching like sun salutations before I start seems to help a lot. I'm going out of town for a conference tomorrow, but hopefully I'll still be able to do some running in the mornings.

I'm still struggling somewhat with the decision to back off running so I registered for the Madison Quarter Marathon (about 6.5 mi) so I could still feel at least a little like a "real runner". But I'm committed to trying this plan for 3 months. If, at the end of it, I don't like it, I can always build back up and start serious running training next year.

This is it

Well, after a slow, ultimately painful 6 miles this morning, I've decided to stop running for the next two and a half weeks. It makes me sad, but I know it's for the best. I want to improve my endurance and be in good shape to start marathon training over the summer, but I just can't do it battling pain and tightness the whole time. That means no race this weekend either, which stinks because that's two races in a row I've skipped. Once I get back from my work conference I'll experiment with adding running back slowly. Hopefully I'll be able to do the Madison Half in May, but if not, I'm just going to continue working toward being ready to start training for Lakefront in June. Planning to do a bike ride tomorrow.

Just had to share

I'm taking some time off running- that's the topic of this afternoon's post- but I wanted to do some research to make sure what I'm feeling is muscular and not possibly a stress fracture in my pelvis. Anyway, here's the description of symptoms of a pelvic stress fracture from The American Journal of Sports Medicine. It sounds- well- pretty awful:

We suggest that a diagnosis of pelvic stress fracture or stress fracture syndrome can be made with confi dence, even in the absence of radiographic evidence, if the following three features are present in a long dis tance runner presenting with groin pain: First, activity causes such severe discomfort in the groin that running is impossible. Second, the athlete develops discomfort in the groin when standing unsupported on the leg corresponding to the injured side (positive standing test). In some cases the pain is so severe that standing on one leg is impossible. Third, deep palpation reveals extreme, exquisite nauseating tenderness localized to the pubic ramus and not to the overlying soft tissues.

Fortunately I'm not experiencing any "exquisite nauseating tenderness" so I think it's safe to say I'm just dealing with some soft tissue stuff.

Taking a break

Whew. I've been working on writing the introduction for my paper pretty much all day, and I have my first draft finished. All three paragraphs of it. I don't feel like I have much more brain power for work today. Good think I'm leaving in a half hour to go to the gym. I really need a break before I try to get back into it tomorrow when I start the discussion section. I don't know if that will be harder or easier.

Ran yesterday again. Still having a lot of tightness in my hamstring and hip. The ART therapist worked on me again and recommended I do a lot more hamstring/hip strength exercises and work on stretching both my hamstrings and my quads and hip flexors. I'm actually thinking about changing up my strength training routine to only do hamstring and hip exercises rather than quad stuff. I already get a lot of quad strengthening from running uphill, spinning, and stair climbing. I don't want to keep keep pushing my muscle imbalance in that way.

On a sad note, I only have one more episode of season 3 of The Office left to watch tonight. Although I did hear that they play re-runs of the previous season on Tuesdays, so I'll have to look into that. The Office has been like Harry Potter for me. I simultaneously wanted to get through it as fast as I could to know what happens and savor it forever. Unfortunately I won't see my The Office freebie source for a few more weeks so I guess I'll have to rely on re-runs of Good Eats to get me through it.

ART

So I went for my first ART appointment yesterday. It was pretty interesting. It's kind of like a massage except way more intense and involves lengthening the muscle being worked on.

The "diagnosis" was that my hamstring, hip, and low back are all really tight and pulling on each other, which makes my whole right side hurt. Sounds about right. She did ask if I'd ever been formally diagnosed with scoliosis because the right side of my back is so overdeveloped (I haven't- No MD has ever thought there was reason to do the X-rays), and because I said no, she said we'd work on getting some of the tightness out of that area. I also got a new pair of shoes in case that was contributing to the problem.

Like I said before, the actual "treatment" is intense. I have a pretty high pain tolerance, and she actually stopped to ask me if I was okay once because I wasn't complaining that it hurt. Yesterday evening I was pretty sore, but this morning I felt a lot better. My back is bugging me a little bit, but my IT band feels much more relaxed. I'm supposed to try running again tomorrow and report back on how everything was doing. I'm excited to run again, and I hope I'm in shape to run my 10k on Saturday.

Today's workout was actually really good. I've had great power output during my last few spinning classes, and today I hit a major average watts PR of 197. I'm thrilled to get them so high, but I was disappointed to miss breaking 200 by such a tiny bit. I also lifted weights before spinning and did some push-ups and abs before I left the apartment this morning.

Looking forward to my shows tonight. I'm turning into a major TV-holic.

Eeek

Time for an update!

My 14-miler Saturday went pretty well despite dropping both my gels somewhere. I finished in 2:08- I think I'd have finished faster if I'd been able to refuel during the run- but my endurance felt like it was where it needed to be. It was a beautiful day, too. The sun was shining, just a slight breeze, and I didn't get (very) lost. I can't wait to run through the arboretum when things are actually blooming

Unfortunately my right hamstring/ IT band is not cooperating. I've had some weird aches and pains in this area since maybe January??? Nothing that made my change my stride or even really hurt, but it was something I definitely felt as my runs were getting longer, especially running uphill.

Well, I felt it a lot on Saturday. Again, it wasn't a pain/injury kind of feeling, but an irritated/tight kind of feeling. I've tried to be proactive about icing and stretching, but after I felt it a lot on my Sunday easy run with no hills, I knew I needed to do something about it.

So first I'm taking time off running. I'm not sure how much good that's going to do because I've taken time off before (like when we went to St. Louis), and it didn't seem to change anything. I'm also stretching, icing, rolling, but I'm considering trying something new...

I've heard a lot of runners talk about active release therapy (ART) for running aches and pains. It's kind of a hybrid chiropractic/ massage kind of thing. Anyway, after doing some investigative work, I found out that our insurance covers it because it's considered chiropractic treatment. I'm on the fence because I'm leery about the whole chiropractor thing, but on the other hand I've heard great things about ART, and I'm kind of concerned that this thing isn't going to get better on its own. I thought about looking into physical therapy, but again, I don't think it's an injury.

Anyone have experience with ART? Anything I should know before I start down that road?

Ow! My hip!

So the bad news is that my hip hurts. Rewind back to Saturday when I did 12 miles wearing YakTrax, a lot of it on a very slick bike path. My hip hurt A LOT by the end of that run, but I blamed it on the YakTrax and ice throwing off my gate. I figured I'd take my regularly scheduled two days off from running and be back in business today. Well, it didn't work that way.

I got up this morning, and my hip was aching. It didn't really hurt Sunday or Monday so I'm not sure what is up with that. The air temp was -6 so I wasn't into running outside, and evidently our neighbors have started doing Bikram yoga at night so it was too hot to run inside on the treadmill. I threw everything I needed for the day together and went to the gym to do the arc trainer. I like this machine a bit better than the ellipticals they have (it takes longer for my toes to go totally numb), but I'm afraid maybe it's irritating my hip area. I've been taking Advil, and I'll definitely foam roll it once I get home. I'm supposed to do strength training tonight, but we'll see how doing squats and lunges feels. Ugh!

At least I'm not trying to train for anything. It honestly doesn't matter if I run or not this week. And the next two weeks will be on and off with exercise anyway because we'll be traveling. It would probably be better for me to ride the exercise bike or swim rather than keep elliptical-ing, but I feel anxious about not being able to work out very much over the break, and I don't want to turn 2 weeks of reduced activity into 3.

I actually haven't even tried to run on it since Saturday. Maybe tomorrow it will feel better enough that I'll try running on the treadmill at the gym. I can always switch off if it starts hurting.