What’s Wrong With My Glutes?
I went to physical therapy yesterday. My running has been going well. I’ve been consistently working on my core. I’ve been a good girl, taking time off when I needed to. I’ve eased back into my training and it’s all good. Right?
Well, it turns out that I have a problem with turning in. My running gait analysis video revealed that my left foot toes in the last second before push off. The right side is solid with a nice normal strike that goes from supination to pronation. The left side does the weird toe in thing. It’s almost as if a string were attached to my left foot that jerks my toes towards the midline. Funky!
There is a strength imbalance between my external hip rotators (glute minimus) on the left and the right side. The interesting thing is that I’ve seen race photos of myself from the 80’s with this toe in gait. I can do some strengthening exercises to help balance out the descrepancy. However, this could be my own unique asymetry. I’ll try working on external rotation to see if this helps.
Although I got a late start, I’ve been a serious runner since 1994. I ran my first marathon in 1995 on my 30th Birthday. It’s been my goal to run the Boston Marathon since then. I missed qualifying by 12 minutes that year. I needed to run 3:40 and ran 3:52. Running in the most prestigious marathon, is the ultimate for most runners. The fact that you have to qualify, only fueled my competitive juices.
Over the next 9 years I ran 6 more marathons. I love running so much that I became a 
7 comments:
Hi. I just completed my first marathon - Yes! Thats the good news. The bad news is I’ve been dealing with a classic case of Runners Knee for about three weeks. I found your site while doing a search for ‘running gait analysis’. I am located in Seattle too — where did you have this procedure done? Thanks! Jeffrey.
ProFormance Rehab http://www.proformancerehab.com/ They are located on Eastlake in Seattle. I work with Christopher Clock. I highly recommend anyone there.
Baby, I don’t think anythings wrong with your glutes
…Your Hubby
Yeah, yeah, I’ll talk to you later!
I’m the opposite — my right foot tends to angle out when I run! But like you, I have to do a bunch of strengthening exercises. I’ll have to check out the video gait analysis.
I recently had video gait analysis done at RealRehab, RealPerformance (http://www.realrehab.com/). I found the team there to be exceptional. I’m sure that PerfomanceRehab is also quite good.
One thing I learned from the process is that if someone does gait analysis on you and they don’t video tape you and don’t watch it in slow motion, then they are probably missing any real issues in your gait.
If you have something obviously wrong, then you can see it without slow motion. But the small issues (like Lisa’s toe turn, or a hip drop, or a slightly elongated stride causing hard heel strike) these things are hard to see unless you watch the gait in slow motion from all angles.
The PT who did my video analysis said, “People who claim they can do running analysis without watching it in slow motion, clearly have never watched a running gait in slow motion!”
I agree with Brad. It was amazing to watch the video in slow motion. You can’t see subtle problems without slowing down the video. I have had people watch me run and no one really noticed the toe in problem. It’s not very obvious from the back or side angle. It’s very noticable head on.