How long are you prepared to sit in that point of discomfort/ pain before you do something about it to get you back to balance
Elle X
Even the professionals get injured, after all we’re all human. It’s all about the bounce back time. What do I mean by ‘the bounce back’?
It’s the time it takes you to get back to your balanced state.
Remember homeostasis from your science lessons? In this case I’m talking about my muscles and joints, but it could very easily apply to your emotional, nutritional, social state – anything. How long are you prepared to sit in that point of discomfort/ pain before you do something about it to get you back to balance.
For me in this instance about as long as it took to hike down a very steep mountain!
Have you every found yourself wearing a pair of tight of shoes where you end up scrunching your toes to stop them bashing the end? Have you every felt the different compensations that toe scrunching causes throughout your body? I witnessed this very situation on the last day of our holiday!Stuart and I had hiked up a mountain to cheer the cyclists on in the final kilometres of the Vuelta e Espana (Spanish cycle race very much like the tour de France) The competitors had to cycle 15km up a tough inclines which in parts were 20%!
All great going up, the feet were fine in the walking boots. Coming down was another matter. The bashing of my toes at the end of my boots caused me to scrunch my toes and more so on the left. This meant I avoided loading my left big toe and walked on the outer edge of my foot. The foot in my boot had become the shape of a letter ‘C’. This had drawn my weight over to the left side of my body keeping my right foot stuck in a flatter position (pronation).
Now imagine a flat foot and picture what happens to the joints? They open and gap meaning the muscles on the bottom of my foot along with the leg muscles that lead into the foot were under constant stretch. My foot felt like it was burning because of this. Now flat foot will often lead to bent knee and rolling in of the thigh.
Which you guessed it, was happening to me. Now I didn’t feel any pain in my knee which you might have imagined but I did feel a burning up in the right hip. Why? Well if the thigh is stuck rolling in the muscles that attach on at the hip are being stretched long and trying to tell me to make a change. Lastly the muscles on the inside of my right calf and the outside of my left calf were also giving me a nasty shin splint pain. Again, both these sets of muscle because of the positions of the bones were in a lengthened position.
Let’s assess, lots of pain points: foot, inside and outside of calves and hip. What do they all have in common? All of these muscles were being stretched long and giving me pain. If I had rubbed them, rolled them kneaded them I would have been stretching them even more. NOT what they needed, they were already stuck lengthened! Instead I 3D moved my body with bare feet. I changed the position of the joints in my body and the muscles adapted. 5 minutes later back on track with NO pain. Now that was a fast bounce back.
Until next time …
Knowledge is absolutely power but only when ACTION is taken
Elle x