I figured I would give an update on my back, I went to the Doctor a second time last Wednesday, the first time he diagnosed me, he worked on stretching me out, did adjustments and gave me a few pages of exercises focused on my core. The second time he basically said I was a wimp.
Ok maybe not directly but here is how I remember it, I went in, he asked how it was doing, I said ok, then I told him I dropped from Afton at 25k as it was bugging me too much. After I told him that he said the back issue I have is something I can choose to run through if I want to. He said it is a muscular strain (possibly from overuse along with) and/or weakness (not exercising my core properly along with) and/or tightness (stretching or should I say lack of stretching) issue with the multifidus muscle and it is this issue that causes me pain along with it causing other muscles to spasm when they try to pick up the slack, hence the shoulder blade pain and other back pains. The bottom line is I will not do any additional damage. Hence I took it as I wimped out.
He says my problem is with:
The multifidus (multifidus spinae : pl. multifidi ) muscle consists of a number of fleshy and tendinous fasciculi, which fill up the groove on either side of the spinous processes of the vertebrae, from the sacrum to the axis. The multifidus is a very thin muscle. (This definition and picture from wikipedia probably makes sense to Dr. Nic and Steve but didn't mean much to me)
What I need to do is lots of stretching and strengthening exercises and he said I needed to do all of the dozen or exercises he gave me every day (now that will take some work). The exercises range from crunches (on the ball), to hamstring stretches (multiple ones) to leg raises (multiples again), bridges, etc.... you probably get the picture. On Wednesday, he added in one more exercise, using the exercise ball, he had me lay on the ball, feet against the wall, bending up from the waste and he kept having me tilt my chin down. He said the tightness in my back was forcing my head up. I did feel the stretching and after just a few I was sweating. He also showed me the stretches I could have done at Afton, he thought they might have ended my spasms. I showed him some of the ones I did he said nope, wouldn't have helped me but wouldn't have done any harm either.
So time to get to work.
2 comments:
Funny you should mention the multifidis and me - two months ago I hadn't heard of it and it wasn't on my chart of muscles, so when I first heard of it (I had problems with mine as well), I had to do the standard computer search.
Nic certainly knows it well.
Always hard to do that ‘extra’ stuff, though you now have more motivation. Maybe we could incorporate into our Thur runs? Would have to do it in the middle of the woods somewhere out of sight… though you might look kinda funny carrying a big exercise ball on the run. :)
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