Monday, April 6, 2020

PT or voodoo?

My first PT appointment for my mystery hip issue was on April 1.  Along with an intake and assessment, the PT did manual movements for my hip called manual distractions, and gave me three nerve glide exercises to do twice daily on my own.  On April 2, I had Jon do the manual distractions at home, and after just two sessions of them I was walking without a limp for the first time since February 11!  My no-more-limp situation has continued through today, April 6.

It simply blows my mind that 2 days of simple movements that take about 5-10 minutes a pop helped me more than 8 weeks off running did.  Clearly the answer to this issue was not time off running, it was this.  Although I sure wish someone had showed me this 2 months ago, I'm sure thankful to figure it out now!

The manual distractions basically push synovial fluid out of the joint and allow it to be replaced with "fresh" fluid.  They are really simple.

I feel like I could try running any time now, but my PT advised "not quite yet."  I'm going to try to get her to peg down a recommended start date at my appointment tomorrow (April 7).

In meantime I've been doing a lot of cycling.  Running is always going to be my first and strongest love, so it almost feels like cheating to say this, but I have fallen in love with cycling throughout this time.  I have become a much stronger cyclist (the bar was set pretty low to begin with) and now crave going out for rides on my road bike.  I plan to reintroduce running slowly to be smart about it, so when I resume running I expect to be doing a combination of running and cycling for awhile.  Until then, I am chasing cycling PRs!


5 comments:

  1. This is beyond awesome! It has always been amazing to me the miracles PTs can work. Makes me wish someone in my family was a PT, haha! I love that you are enjoying cycling. Maybe a triathlon some day.

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  2. This is such great news. I like the idea of cycling - you get to go twice as far in half the time - but the cost to ride as much as I run is crazy, especially the startup, since I don't have a bike.

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    1. It is fun to cover more ground, and neat that 20 miles is a really easy cycling distance (kind of like running 8 - enough to feel like you did something but not enough to be fatiguing). I purchased a nice Lemond road bike in 2005, and I have used it a lot when injured. But you're right that cycling is expensive! I told my husband he'd better hope I can run again, or I'm going to start racing bikes which costs an astronomical amount because you have to have top end equipment to contend!

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