to be clear...

There have been a lot of learnings going on in this corner of the woods recently. Mainly revolving around...WHAT is going on in my hip. It spasms...it does crazy stuff...it's weird...net result...i get frusterated.

So...am in injured? Not really but i'm not 100% healthy either...ok...i'm not 100% of where I WANT to be to start something like IM training. If I were training for a half? Oh...i'd say I was totally FINE. But IM training...that's a different monster that i am sure would prey upon any imbalance that is latent in my body.

When I fell in June my acupuncturist discovered that i'm internally rotatated on my right side. In Aug I saw another guy about this and i'm rotated about 4 mm past where I should be. The best way to describe it...I have lower crossed syndrome. And in reality...i probably also have upper crossed syndrome too. For the life of me, i can't figure out how a person could have one and NOT have the other. But that's not the point.

So my conclusions to my anterior-ly rotated hip....

this didn't start in June (it was just discovered)...

and it didn't start in Nov 2007 when I fell....

nor back when I had runner's knee

Or piriformis pain

or IT band issues

But aside from the injuries caused by falling...this rotation probably CAUSED the other ones and aggressively aggravated the ones that were induced by falling and hence were so hard to overcome.

And the reality...this probably only was actually OBSERVED because i am an endurance athlete. Maybe there is something to be said for being a couch potato?

Here is my slightly wackadoodle theory (although I think i'm right)...the fact that my hip has too much of a tilt to the forward is most likely related to the fact I have played the violin since I was five....

and have TMJ...

and have back issues...

but first to understand how my wacky jaw is related to my HIP... you have to believe in fascia

and then you have to believe that the fascia are all connected together in interesting patterns and an dysfunction in a shoulder can influence the opposite hip

And once that understanding is embraced then it starts to make sense that all of the gnarly issues in my fascia from TMJ and years of playing the violin might actually be the root cause of inducing the anterior tilt in my hip. How you say? By tightening some of the back muscles, my QL got too short, which probably weakened my glutes, my hip flexors got tight (aided by cycling and running i'm sure) and it leaves me with an imbalanced weird situation.

So how does one FIX this?

Me and my foam roller are friends...ok...we are much MORE than friends.

My acupuncturist continues to work on releasing many muscles and balance them out

i stretch

i strengthen the glutes

i strengthen the core....the guy working to balance me out has me pretty convinced i'm going to have abs of steel at the end of this. I'm starting to see the separation between my obliques and rectus abdominis muscles (ie those six pack muscles) on the sides of my stomach and oh yea and the separation between the ab muscles is starting at the top. Hopefully i'm not just imagining this. ;-)

But much of this (the foam roller and acupuncture)...leaves me a little worse for wear as well as doing the things that continue to shorten the wrong muscles, like cycling and running, makes it tough to strengthen and release the right ones.

So...i took some time off over the past 2 weeks. I have barely been on my bike in the past 3 weeks...running has been minimal. But hey i think i grew gills and i'm a fish now. Never mind the fact that i'm getting defined deltoids because me and the pull bouy and paddles are becoming fast friends. Hmmm...good thing i always thought deltoids were the coolest muscle group anyway. (and probably one of the most attractive on a guy...yes I do have a thing for guys with defined delts. ) But i think this means that i need to say 'bye-bye' to cap sleeved shirts that button on the arm. I have one shirt that is like that and now it is tight in the arms and too lose in the waist. I think pretty soon i won't be able to button the sleeves. Sigh...