‘Twas the butt afterall

All those pain I was feeling in my right knee and ITB? I blamed it wrongly on my poor legs of uneven length.

After months of procrastinating and feeling poor, I decided to bite the bullet and have the legs checked out by a physio. I was just sick of feeling pain in my hips whenever I walk for too long, or during BodyPump, or when I wear my heels for too long. All I want is to walk and run normally again.

Today’s session was painful, to say the least. After assessing the way I stand and walk, the conclusion that Cindy, the physio from Core Concepts, had was that my glute muscles were weak. Huh? I thought. Apparently, the butt has a lot to do with running and walking. Because my glute muscles are weak, I am using other muscles such as the ITB to over-compensate. And the weakness is also causing my right knee to collapse inwards, which leads to added pressure on my hip. These lead to the over-working of the hips and ITB and cause the pain that I was feeling.

Ouch, ouch, ouch.

The silver lining is that the problems are all caused by weak muscles and not anatomical faults. Weak muscles can be trained and strengthened, there is nothing much you can do with anatomical flaws.

During the session, Cindy tried to massage away the tightness along my right thigh and boy, it hurt real bad (think applying pressure on a huge and painful bruise that you have). I was wincing all the time but strangely enough, it was a good kind of pain (am I masochistic or what) and it did feel nice to have the pain ease a little after a while. No bruising, thank goodness. On my part, I have to go home and do ‘homework’ everyday – exercises like the clam that would help to strengthen the glutes.

The sessions are not cheap ($80 for 30 minutes) and I would probably need about four sessions to sort out the problems. But I am hoping that I will be able to run and walk properly eventually.

Fingers crossed.