mark, why are you banging your head on that wall?
It’s quite simple faithful reader. It’s because I am a slow learner.
I remember a time way back when. I’d discovered the cause of some pain I was having in my right foot. The cause being that I had been excessively landing on the outside of that foot.
Well, here I am months later and I’ve been having similar pain and even a little bit of shin-splints. Yes, you heard it Jon (and everyone else), the pose dude is having a bit of shin splints. However, Dr. R will be happy to hear that the splints are not because of the pose method – they are because I have not been relaxing my foot so I can do the pose method properly.
On today’s run I decided to see if I could find a form related reason for my recent pains. And find it I did. Yup, same thing as before…
I think the important lesson here is that sometimes, a person can figure things out on their own. In this case, the most obvious alert was that I had pain only on the right side so I immediately focused on the difference between how I was running (and landing) on my right vs. left side.
It didn’t take long to pin-point the problem once I focused on that idea. I almost immediately became aware of the difference between how I was landing, and how the landing point for my right side was placing pressure on my foot and shins. It was simple. Land too much on the outside of the foot (pronate) – get pressure and pain on the inside shin. Land nearer to the ball of my foot and, viola – no pressure or pain.
Of course, there may be a reason (muscle imbalance?) I tend to revert to landing this way but at least I am onto the problem and can work at it.
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Tuesday October 11, 2005 @
I realized rather quickly that my right groin pain was the result of my trying to favor my left ITB injury (I’m just a mess, aren’t I?!!) When I go out again, I will be sure to focus on what I am doing.