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Earlier this year, in an almost unprecedented event, I set actual fitness goals for myself. This month, I achieved one of them. I can now do glute hamstring raises without it feeling almost impossible. In case you don't know what they are, they look like this:
One of my other goals is to be able to do numerous pistol squats with relative ease. I'm not there yet, but there's a decent chance I might be, by the end of the year.
For the past two years, I've had a recurring issue with my lower back/glute area. It made me stop weight training for quite a while, because it was such a bad issue, that it was making even basic hip slides and hip circles--fundamental movement from my dance--painful and poorly executed. I discovered that deadlifts were making it worse, and even though it's one of my favourite lifts, I stopped doing it.
After several months, and many therapeutic massage treatments, I thought the problem went away. And then, two weeks ago, the stupid thing flared up again while doing deadlifts at CrossFit.
I was pretty worried by this. I went for more massage therapy, and then to visit a physiotherapist who specializes in movement analysis. After lots of range of motion experimentation, he found out the issue. Apparently, I am much stronger and much more flexible than the average person. I have a slight discrepancy, with one hip being stronger than the other, and one side more flexible. Because all the surrounding muscles are nice and strong, and because my flexibility, even on my stiff side, is still pretty darned good, my body was able to compensate and cheat without me even noticing it. The cure for this is single-legged training. So I'll be focusing on stuff like pistol squats, single-leg lunges, single-leg deadlifts, etc. on my non-CrossFit days. This is supposed to iron out the problem.
Tomorrow is my first training day with the physiotherapist. It's pretty neat that this coaching counts as physiotherapy and is therefore covered by my health insurance. I lucked out.
So yeah, my physio just might get me doing multiple pistol squats. And then I'll be two goals down....
CrossFit has been great. It's been helping me achieve goals I never even thought to set.... like doing 100 pull-ups in a day. Sure, they might be assisted pull-ups, but still. Damn. Oh yes, and I can do some pretty kick-ass burpees, now. I still think burpees suck, but at least I can make 'em look good for a while.
One of my other goals is to be able to do numerous pistol squats with relative ease. I'm not there yet, but there's a decent chance I might be, by the end of the year.
For the past two years, I've had a recurring issue with my lower back/glute area. It made me stop weight training for quite a while, because it was such a bad issue, that it was making even basic hip slides and hip circles--fundamental movement from my dance--painful and poorly executed. I discovered that deadlifts were making it worse, and even though it's one of my favourite lifts, I stopped doing it.
After several months, and many therapeutic massage treatments, I thought the problem went away. And then, two weeks ago, the stupid thing flared up again while doing deadlifts at CrossFit.
I was pretty worried by this. I went for more massage therapy, and then to visit a physiotherapist who specializes in movement analysis. After lots of range of motion experimentation, he found out the issue. Apparently, I am much stronger and much more flexible than the average person. I have a slight discrepancy, with one hip being stronger than the other, and one side more flexible. Because all the surrounding muscles are nice and strong, and because my flexibility, even on my stiff side, is still pretty darned good, my body was able to compensate and cheat without me even noticing it. The cure for this is single-legged training. So I'll be focusing on stuff like pistol squats, single-leg lunges, single-leg deadlifts, etc. on my non-CrossFit days. This is supposed to iron out the problem.
Tomorrow is my first training day with the physiotherapist. It's pretty neat that this coaching counts as physiotherapy and is therefore covered by my health insurance. I lucked out.
So yeah, my physio just might get me doing multiple pistol squats. And then I'll be two goals down....
CrossFit has been great. It's been helping me achieve goals I never even thought to set.... like doing 100 pull-ups in a day. Sure, they might be assisted pull-ups, but still. Damn. Oh yes, and I can do some pretty kick-ass burpees, now. I still think burpees suck, but at least I can make 'em look good for a while.
