hundredpushups.com

The training program at hundredpushups.com caught my attention, and I chose it as a way to reintroduce myself to strength training after a long hiatus.

I took the initial exhaustion test on Saturday. The 6 pushups I managed to eke out were a little disappointing, but not unexpected. I’ve been completely sedentary for months.

The program prescribes one rest day before beginning the program after the test. I was still pretty sore on Monday, so I didn’t start until Tuesday. It really strikes me how noticeably my very sore and short pectoral muscles oppose my attempts at good posture when I walk around. I had read that the forward head, slumped shoulder posture creates — and is perpetuated by — short pectoral muscles and long scapular retractors, and now I have the uncomfortable proof.

GetBodySmart represents my attempt to create a fully animated and interactive eBook about human anatomy and physiology. The contents and design of this long-term project are based on my 21 years of teaching this material at the university level.

Over the last week I’ve been deeply massaging the tissue around the lateral area of my right knee and trying to work restrictions out of the muscles that attach near the knee: TFL/IT band, vastus lateralis, biceps femoris, gastrocnemius, peroneals.  That had gradually improved the pain a bit, but today I think I finally found the source of the pain: the popliteus.

The popliteus is a small muscle that originates with a tendon at the lateral distal end of the femur and attaches to the medial side of the tibia.  It’s the muscle that rotates the tibia around the femur to “unlock” the knee from a straight position when you flex the knee.  While I was digging around among the various tendons in the posterior lateral area, I found some tight fibers that seemed to be running diagonally, closer to perpendicular to the tibia rather than parallel as most of the muscles are.  I remembered reading about the popliteus, and a quick glance at the Trigger Point Therapy Workbook and Gray’s Anatomy confirmed that it was probably responsible for the pain.

You have to dig pretty deeply to massage the popliteus, but I found some painful spots and worked to release them.  Instant relief.  It’s still a little bit sore, probably because I haven’t completely eradicated the trigger point(s) and the tissue to which the popliteal tendon attaches might be inflamed from the tension, but at least now I know how to treat it.  This pain had been steadily getting worse for months, and I was worried that I might have damaged the cartilage within my knee and might need some kind of surgery.  Nope.  Soft tissue was responsible, and soft tissue work will fix it.  This boosts my resolve to always try soft tissue work first, since I can do it myself and it costs only a few minutes every once in a while.

My best guess is that movement patterns caused by strength imbalances and lack of ankle and hip mobility had overworked or overstretched the popliteus over time.  There have been occasions where I’ve put my feet up without the back of the knee being supported, and the hyperextension made my knees pretty sore by the time I took my feet down… that could have also played a part.

I tried out the Beginner class at the Madison Yoga Co-Op back in Oct. or Nov. 2005. The teacher asked me what I was hoping to accomplish with yoga, and I told her that I wanted to increase my lower body flexibility — that my tight hamstrings were a major annoyance for me. The first class or two were about what I had expected: basic yoga poses, some strenuous, some gentle. Then, on what became my last class there, she hurt me.

We were doing a pose facing a wall with the left leg extended in front, right leg extended in back, both knees straight, bending at the hips toward the wall with the torso. I have barely any hip flexion when my knee is straight, and without asking my permission, this teacher “assisted” me by pulling my pelvis away from the wall. My left hamstring was already uncomfortably overstretched, and when she pulled, I felt pain and a popping sensation near the ischial tuberosity. It was the sound and sensation of my left medial hamstring tearing.

My hamstring has never fully recovered. I had persistent pain and reduced ROM for weeks. I finally undertook some physical therapy for it about 9 months later, when it was obvious that the problem wasn’t going to go away on its own. Thankfully, I now know more about soft tissue restrictions as well as my current flexibility limitations… I know how not to overstretch, and I know that stretching with myofascial adhesions present is unproductive and can even be harmful.

It’s too bad the yoga teacher didn’t know that. Too bad for me.

Too bad she didn’t know that it is not appropriate to touch someone in a yoga class without the student’s consent. And it is certainly not appropriate to apply a manipulation like that so quickly that the student doesn’t even have time to react and make it obvious that they are already stretched to their limit. This irresponsible behavior, combined with the fact that I had heard her authoritatively state, during a hamstring stretch, that this particular pose was good for stretching both the back and front of the thigh. A physiological impossibility. I knew that continuing on with this teacher would be neither productive nor safe.

“In my practice, I’ve seen a significant increase in yoga injuries in the past five years,” says orthopedic surgeon Jeffrey Halbrecht, M.D., medical director for the Institute for Arthroscopy and Sports Medicine in San Francisco and a specialist in knee and hip problems. And it’s not only those in the recent wave of newbies who are getting hurt, Dr. Halbrecht says: “I’ve treated more experienced yogis than rookies.”

[...]

No certification or specific training is required before a person is allowed to teach yoga. Yoga Alliance recommends teachers get a bare minimum of 200 hours of training and has built a registry of teachers and schools that meet its standards. But participation is voluntary; teachers can just as easily get certified in weekend or online courses. “If you are a Spinning teacher and you want to tack on yoga, then you can take a two-day training,” Kennedy says. “You may think you are qualified, but that has its challenges.”

These quickie courses teach poses but not necessarily the nuances of proper alignment nor the ideal, noncompetitive mind-set. And they likely won’t train teachers how to suss out previous injuries and medical problems that yoga could worsen. A preexisting arterial tear, often signaled by dizziness and neck pain, puts you at risk for a stroke; leg pain could warn that a bulging disk in the back is putting pressure on your sciatic nerve. If you have undiagnosed glaucoma, you can go blind doing headstands or shoulder stands.

Like the cases in the article above, I was definitely an overzealous student. I was pushing myself. But I never became injured until this yoga teacher laid her hands on me. Her resume in the brochure described several years of training, some of which had been under the tutelage of BKS Iyengar, a huge name in the yoga world. I bought one of his books and was disappointed to see that it was filled with vague anatomical descriptions and pseudoscientific nonsense. It just goes to show that years of experience doesn’t necessarily make a teacher or practitioner competent; they also have to be willing to abandon the dogma within their field when modern clinical evidence refutes it. Yoga teachers ought to know anatomy backward and forward and be aware of conditions that predispose students to injury.

[MSNBC via Eric Cressey's Blog]

The ball-heel strike takes advantage of the foot’s own shock-absorbing anatomy instead of relying on the thick heel padding of the running shoe. It’s the strike that people naturally use when running barefoot — you can’t really tolerate slamming your heel into the ground repeatedly unless you’re wearing running shoes.

This kind of thing warrants baby steps. After leaving the final hill of James Madison Park behind, I was feeling so good that I decided to just keep running until I reached Ingersoll before turning around. I should have taken the new foot strike in small doses…maybe just 5 minutes here and there.

Today it’s a chore to walk. Every step is calculated, slow…I lumber along with the lazy stride of a tall man who is in no hurry whatsoever. That part isn’t half bad, actually. When I took a second to reflect, I realized that I had no reason to rush myself any faster than my complaining calves would allow. I’m just dreading finding out how much pain awaits me tomorrow.