Running

I went to the physion whom Jamie kindly recommended today- great experience and I'll be seeing him (Paul) again shortly.

We started off with what was wrong (lots of pain in the Soleus in my left leg) then moved onto a treadmill to have a look at how I am put together.

I only got as far as a fast walk on the treadmil before Paul said "right, I can see what's wrong- you're spine is curved", which was something of a surprise.

Got off the treadmill and stood in front of a mirror and I could see what he meant- if I'm standing with both arms hanging down relaxed then there is a gap between my left arm and the left hip, but no gap on the right hand side.

This in turn means that I'm tilting my pelvis, affecting my gait.

In addition to this he said "you basically have no soleus on either side", so when I land whilst running I'm absorbing the impact with both the muscle in my shin (leading to inevitable shin-splints) and by deforming my forefoot, rather than with the under developed soleus.

I've got 300 calf raises per day per leg to do to resolve this, and some orthotics to stiffen my foot up to stop it absorbing the impact.

Finally I'm only "firing" 3 out of the 4 hip flexors, this means that when pulling up (thigh toward body) I can only raise it my leg so far and then have to arch my back- which is causing me to cycle with my back arched and arms stretched out.

The dormant hip flexor is also allowing my femur to pop out of the socket, which needs to be resolved.

I have another exercise for this.

Good news is that according to Paul I will, if I follow the exercises then I should a) rectify the problems and stop getting injured and b) get a lot faster as I'll be using all the muscle groups that I should be using, rather than relying on only a few of them.