Friday Five - Physical Therapy

This was another week that seemed to drag by.  I'm not sure why when it was also super busy.  I would have thought that it would have made it seem to go by faster.  But it may be because we've got a lot of fun plans for the weekend.  But before that, it's time for the Friday Five link up hosted by Running on Happy & Fairytales and Fitness.



I went to see a physical therapist on Monday so I figure I'd take the Friday Five to talk about that experience.

1.  So the paperwork says I have "Somatic Dysfunction."  But according to the internet, that's not really something specific and seems to just mean that things aren't working well together.  The main thing the PT commented on was how tight everything was on my right leg.  Much tighter then my left leg.  She touched my achilles on the right side and exclaimed about the tightness right away.  And it was the same problem the whole way up the knee with the calf and the hips.  The good news is that the meniscus and knee itself are fine.  She definitely said I have to warm up before running and isn't surprised that cold races without warming up resulted in everything just continuing to tighten until I couldn't bend my knee well.  She gave me some exercises to work on and I'm scheduled to go back in March.

2.  The first one deals with the achilles.  This one hurts!  I've done it every evening since Tuesday and it's still resulting in pain.  The PT did warn me about that and said it's part of the process.

3.  Then calf stretches.  I've done calf stretches after running but they're always kind of perfunctory.  And I foam roll but apparently that's not enough.  I was surprised at how long I'm supposed to hold these stretches for!

4.  Hip rotator stretch.And this is the last one I'm supposed to work on for now.  I'm surprised at how tough this one is too since it doesn't actually look like I'm doing anything.  But it's an isometric and I'm always breathing heavy by the time I'm done with this one.  I set a timer so I do it for the full amount of time and it seems like forever.

You can see that left foot is turned out but it's always been like that as far as I can remember.

5.  Weirdly, before she actually started the examination and when she had just looked at my legs, she thought it would have been the left side giving me problems.  But no, that side is fine.  That foot and leg have always turned out, I'm not sure why.  It just feels natural but she said the knee doesn't track properly over the foot, it goes toward the inside and that we'll probably have to work on that later too or it could cause me problems in the future.

So that was my experience with the PT.  Overall it was a good experience and hopefully the exercises help.  She said they'll probably get me on the treadmill at the next appointment so we'll see how that goes.