This Time I Got it Right

Blogging from a Mac, that is. It seems that the iWeb tool provided as default on the iMac isn’t what I thought it was. Ah well, here is my blog from last night. apologies for sending a duff one out…

Hip to be Square

Huey Lewis and the news’s eighties hit sprung to mind as I was watching this video today. It is something that is overlooked very often I think. Watch the video and I’ll see you back here…

A few questions for you…

* How often do you get hip pain?
* Knee pain?
* Pain/Niggles with the lower leg, foot and/ankle?

Now, ask yourself a question: how often do you do hip abductor excercises?

If you are thinking the same as I was then it certainly is worth considering isn’t it? I never do these exercises! I have lost some dead weight recently and my wife was saying that my backside was looking skinny. When I asked her what she meant she pointed straight to my gluteus medius!

My Problem

Despite many positive changes in my running style over the last year or so, there are still some recurrent issues with regard to my feet.

* I seem to have a weakness in my 2nd metatarsal area on both feet that flares up every now and then.
* I have a slight lateral landing issue – despite doing everything I could with regard to running form in order to correct this.

From a running form perspective (or Pose if you like) the two issues are caused typically by landing with too much tension in your feet and landing slightly ahead, a so called active land. What do you do when you know that you are not active landing and you are certainly not landing too far ahead? See stills taken from a recent video of the moment I take full weight on support.

Admittedly I am Slowing Down Here for the Step

Hip Drop

Above and below , you can clearly see how my hip has dropped, my support foot knee is buckling inwards and my swing leg (lower) is rotating the foot toes outwards – another sign of weak hip muscles.

Platting Feet

I marked the foot plant previous to the one shown which is the red line on my shin. I marked in yellow at the same spot (ball of foot side medial) and it shows that my feet land slightly crossing the mid line. I saw it worse than this in places – up to two or three inches! That means of course that my lower legs and feet are not travelling straight up and down but more of a side to side oval which explains a hell of a lot for me! See below.

Intermittent knee pains on either side
Intermittent peroneal tendon pains on either side
Intermittent metatarsal pains on either side
Intermittent soft tissue problems such as Morton’s Neuroma and *interosseous muscles

The first photo shows my right foot clearly landing laterally. Admittedly I haven’t yet put any weight on there and the actual weight bearing will occur when my centre of gravity is above support but there will still be a LOT of pronation happening which will be all on the forefoot thus rubbing the metatarsal bones together whilst applying increasing force of landing up to three times my body weight. This is not so much a reaching ahead problem as a sagging hip, lego crossing over lateral centre line problem. I am running as if I’m on a tightrope and this is down to weak hips or more precisely weak gluteus minimus and medius.

If I can strengthen these muscles up then my legs won’t plat like that. Furthermore, my lateral landing will be drastically reduced if not eliminated and I will also land closer to my centre of gravity. Square hips are indeed where it’s at!

Get Square, Be Hip

How do I put this right? Well, first of all check that you indeed do have a similar problem. Look at the first video and you will see two common ways this manifests itself. If your feet go twaddle toed, you plat your legs, feel them going over the centre line, can’t stop landing on the edge of your foot or have constant metatarsal problems or any lower leg/foot/ankle issues then get yourself filmed from front and rear like I did and either send it to me or post it on YouTube and private share it with me if you want me to help that is…

For a small fee to cover my time I can show you what I think is wrong and give you a detailed explanation of how you might fix it. Naturally though this will mean some input from you. Anything worth doing is not particularly easy and it may involve embarking on a hip strengthening programme of exercises but also a look into your running form in general. If you need to change your form I can help you there but I warn you it takes time, patience and effort from the individual for in the end it is only you who can make the changes necessary; I can only show you what needs doing ultimately.

Ok so what do I do if I think I know what’s up and I need to correct my weak hips? Incidentally, there may be more than just a couple of muscles weakened here and there, I have grossly simplified the problem to help people understand the basics. If in doubt go see your doctor and or physio.

Do the exercises below. Stick at it, you will not see results instantly – it will probably take weeks and of course you have to make a conscious effort to change.

Exercises

My Favourite!