Progress report with PT

Well the past week or so has been frustrating for both me and my PT Mike.  The groin pain seems to have gone away, but there is still that little bit of pain in the hip that is lingering.  I am having a hard time pin-pointing it.  The pain is so subtle, so vague. Also, it comes and goes.  There are periods during the day where I’m pain free, and then there are periods where it feels like there’s a tiny, tiny fire in my hip.  Then there are other times where it’s just a dull throb.  So you see, it’s very confusing and so I’m not sure which muscle is causing the pain.  …I say muscle because after Mike did some Graston work on my hip and lo and behold I wasn’t in any pain.  That, in one respect, is a huge relief.  For a while I was concerned that my pain was joint as well as muscular.

After getting my muscles to release Mike had me briskly walk on a treadmill, and some pain, and I mean the slightest, started to creep back in.  Full hip extension seems to be the movement that aggravates it, but that’s about as definite as I can get.  Mike doesn’t want me to progress to any new exercises until I am completely pain free.  I completely agree, but I worry that I’ll never get there.

There have been so few times where I’ve been pain free, like right after the wedding.  I look back and I think about how I was an idiot. A complete idiot.  Here I was, pain free, and when I went back to doing squats I did a horrible, horrible approach. I went too heavy too quickly, and when I started to be in pain I just ignored it because I thought there was nothing I could do.  Now I realize that although I got stronger than I ever have before, I was undoing all of the previous year’s work on fixing my hip.  The hip pain is different, my psoas isn’t as near as tight as it used to be, in fact it’s practically normal. It’s something else, it now seems to be the pectineus and maybe the rectus femorus.  Although, it might have always been those muscles as well, and I just couldn’t tell because the psoas was grabbing all the attention (greedy bastard).  Also, I would still be dealing with an overactive right groin/ underactive left groin if I wasn’t seeing a physical therapist.  I just have to be patient. I am so close to being pain free right now, I just need to keep doing what I’m doing and hope that everything works out. It can just be hard, after working with so many doctors/therapists, to believe that there is actually a way to become pain free.

Time to focus on the progress

1)      I am now using my abs more than ever throughout the day.  I never knew that I was in anterior pelvic tilt all the time, like just walking around the house. I’ve known for years that I tend to arch my back with overhead lifts, but now I see it everywhere.  Like when I’m doing dips, when things get tough I start to arch my back.  Now I don’t do that anymore.  Also, I would hyperextend my back when I would overhead press.  It never hurt my lower back, but now I’m much better at keeping a neutral spine when I overhead press. Actually, I’m better at keeping a neutral spine with every lift now. Probably because…

2)      I am now realizing what keeping a straight spine feels like. What I used to think was hunched forward/rounded back is actually a neutral spine.  So all of my life when I thought I was keeping a “straight” back, I was in hyperextension with Lordosis. I think part of this was back when I was young I was given the cue “Chest up” when doing things like seated row (As talked about in this article here).  “Chest up”, in turn meant letting the rib cage fly, which meant arching the back into hyperextension.  I am just a product of my environment with this one.

3)      My groin pain has been reduced dramatically.  I would have said completely, but it seems that my pectineus or another one is still tight all the time.  I’m not really sure how to turn it off other than constant foam rolling with a softball, but when I get on that sucker it burns like a hot poker until it releases.

4)      My left groin is really gaining in strength, I’m starting to be able to command it much better now.

5)      The same goes for my right glute. I did the elliptical for a warm up and walked away with sore left groin right glute. That means something is working right.

6)      I’ve been given clearance to practice bodyweight, ass to grass squats.  I’ve been doing them all the time, really trying to focus on keeping my abs tight. Who knows when I’ll start to do weight, but I imagine it will be months down the road. Sucks.

I am going to see a different PT on Tuesday, from the sound of it she is a bit more senior than Mike, and he wants a second opinion as to what to do with me. Should be interesting, and will try to keep everything on here up to date as it happens.