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Saturday, August 9, 2014

PT that hurts

I had to take a two-week break from physical therapy thanks to the disaster that is Tulane PT (I love the PTs, but they schedule into a PAPER DAY PLANNER and when the scheduler went on vacation, nobody could schedule me with my new plan of care. I'm not sure why, since I think the day planner system must be pretty easy to learn).
Upon my return, I asked Christian to focus mostly on stretching, because in my absence I felt like my hip area tightened a lot. We did some good stretches, but I will post those later because I'm buying a strap to assist with stretches and I haven't, you know, won that Ebay auction yet.

But in the meantime, here are three moves I'm doing that surprisingly hurt!

1. Bottom leg lifts. I do this on both sides, and it gives me a good yet painful piriformis stretch on the top leg (here I'm stretching the injured side, which is why the angle is off. I have a lot of range of motion to gain back). 

2. Passive hip flexor stretch with motion in hip capsule. You pull the opposite leg to your chest, which stretches the flexor and causes the femur to readjust inside the socket. It hurts. Also note how tight: my left leg should be on the ground, not four inches in the air!

3. Cat/cow with hip capsule stretch. This part is fine, but at the end of the cat/cow cycle I sit all the way back on my heels, and that still hurts.

4. One-legged bridge. Holding the active hip tight in the socket still hurts. Notice that the lifted leg is at an angle, not straight up: that changes the position of the other hip, and is easier. I never get to do the easy stuff. 

Since these are still painful, they'll be a good barometer of progress as I heal (IF I heal), so I'm keeping them on my PT list. 
Do you do any hip PT/strengthening/stretching daily?

5 comments:

  1. Cool, those are some of the things I've been doing for my SI joint (very close to the hip). And yes, those same ones hurt me! And crazy girl, don't say "IF I heal." Of COURSE you will heal. Get that negativity out of here. You've made it too far to think like that. HUGS!

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    1. Aw, thanks, you always say the most encouraging things. I'm almost always very positive but I am trying to be realistic with myself, too, so I don't get my hopes up if I never heal! Hope your SI irritation is a little better. I think you'll be a LOT better as soon as you have your little girl!

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  2. I literally just had the most worthless PT experience ever total bummer because I do agree they have given me some great tools for staying injury free over the years! Thanks for the reminder to go do mine right now!

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    1. Oh, I have definitely had those totally worthless PT appointments. I've left wondering why I paid to have someone demonstrate the most basic exercises in the world or wasted a whole hour "discovering" weaknesses I pointed out in the first five minutes.

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  3. I have to do regular hip strengthening stuff. After the debacle with Yaz and having sub-clinical testosterone levels for two years without knowing, there's a fair bit of strength that needs to be rebuilt.

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