End of January
January 2009 has already come and nearly gone, unbelievable! I am always amazed with how quickly time passes when you keep yourself busy. The days literally seem like they are flying by. I seem to be pretty much recovered from the mysterious shin pain that showed up last week. I owe the super speedy recovery to a couple of days rest, lots and lots of stretching and some amazing training advice from a fellow PA student Leslie McGovern. Leslie was a trainer for a lot of years and she was quickly able to recognize what was going on and give some great info on what to do. For any interested, Leslie told me that runners are extremely notorious for only running, the strengthens many muscles but it does leave some of the antagonist muscles lacking. Particularly the anterior tibialis. When the AT is weak the lower leg compensates by overworking the soleus (the deep calf muscle), and this can result in an array of problems including an aggravated posterior tibialis tendon, extremely sore soleus muscles and many other common maladies that runners face. Leslie recommended, in addition to stretching, pop-ups. A pop-up is basically a calf raise where you quickly raise to your toes and then very slowly lower back down. This directly targets the eccentric motion of the anterior tibialis. Also she recommended using a theraband doing very similar motions to strengthen the anterior part of the leg. When doing the pop-ups the should be done with a straight leg and with the knee bent, this allows for better targeting of the muscle. In later discussions with Leslie she explained that lot of runners whose feet slap when they run have a weak AT muscle. So if your friends are slapping when they run they you should recommend this to them so they avoid problems down the road.