Are you one of the 89% of Runners who experience pain?
Reality check, if you train as much as you can but neglect your imbalances within your muscles, you'll never reach your peak! In fact, you are at high risk of injury, if not running with pain already. By targeting dynamic movement, strengthening and stretching have been proven to eliminate knee pain, back pain, and accelerate recovery! This is a condition that most runners, PT's and even doctors, are failing to identify, but if you suffer from:
WEAK & TIGHT HIP FLEXORS
TIGHT HAMSTRINGS
SORE QUADS
KNEE PAIN
LOW BACK PAIN
...then you most likely have adaptive muscle shortening.
Our muscles are the engine by which we move, they control balance, our ability to sit, stand, twist, reach, bend, walk, and run. When our muscles become shortened, it causes problems. Unfortunately, our muscles won't naturally maintain their ideal range of motion on their own. In fact, it’s actually the opposite, shocking right? Well, our muscles will change their functional resting length to adapt to the length at which they are habitually used or positioned. This is usually when sitting, whether it be at a desk job, driving, or on the couch, this time spent in this position will eventually lead to a shortened and underdeveloped psoas muscle. Shortened muscles result in the limited range of motion in our joints which affects nearly everybody, but few will realise they impact every aspect of the whole body. We are a culture which are spending more and more time sitting, resulting in weak hamstrings and glutes, along with tight quads and hip flexors. This combination causes a rounded-forward posture with a pelvic tilt. Unfortunately, time spent running does not fix these muscle imbalances, and can make the problem worse. Not only will shortened muscles impact your efficiency as a runner, but they will eventually lead to injury.
Your not alone, I have a pelvic tilt and regularly go through my own rehab to try my best to keep it at bay. My training impacts my rehab, this has been highlighted in my recovery lately due to LOCKDOWN spending more time in a sitted position than my body is used to. It is important to be flexible but more important to stretch the right muscles at the right time.
