Back Pain...Knee Pain...Two of the most common physical pain ailments that people suffer from. What are the major causes? What can I do about it?
First, the major causes.
1) Your training program - not just the one you are doing now but all of the programs you have done in your lifetime. Everything you do and have done to your body has a cause and effect relationship. Having an unbalanced training program will cause injuries over time...slowly. when you finally experience pain it may seem like it just happened out of nowhere, but that is not the case.
2) Quad Dominance - this is a term used to describe someone's lower body muscle patterns. If you are quad dominant you have learned to use your quad muscles in a way that is out of balance with the rest of the lower body. This is caused by unbalanced and/or inappropriate training programs, sitting for prolonged periods of time, and if you play or played a sport running is quad dominant! It is easy to fall into this category.
What Can I do about it?
STRETCH
1) Stretch your quads and hip flexor muscles using the stretch in the image above. The height of the rear foot at the start of the stretch will be determined by your tolerance to discomfort and how tight you are in the beginning.
Some of you may have to start with your foot on the ground rather than a bench or chair. That is ok it is just a starting point. After you are set up make sure your body is lined up (you can do this by using a mirror to check or using your fingers to determine that your legs are in a straight line with your body).
Then, Tuck your butt...Your aim is to have NO arch in the lower back and to be sitting up straight. If you lean back you will arch your back so avoid that position. I really want you to feel the stretch right in the front of the hip the most. You will also feel it in the front of the leg that you are kneeling on. Take some deep breaths and learn how to calm yourself so that you relax. When the stretch sensation has gone down or even gone away you can increase the stretch. This is done by moving the knee backwards closer to the bench or if you started with your foot on the ground, elevating the foot. Go through the same process of tucking the butt and relaxing. You can repeat this process as many times as you feel necessary.
Your goal is to achieve relaxation so that can be a different timeframe form one person to the next. Stretch for the FEEL of relaxation and time how long that takes. You can use this to measure your progress and ability to calm your body. Feel free to ask questions.
