My last year of bobsled I had recurring groin pain that was mostly felt with any high speed sprinting, nothing else. I could squat, lunge and do resistance runs without pain. But with any type of high speed sprinting, I felt close to pulling my Pectineus muscle. I got adjusted, ART on the hip flexors, adductors but never received any relief, luckily because of the mechanics of pushing, I never had any problems. Testing a 60 meter sprint, was another problem entirely though.
Fast forward four years and I had an athlete with a very similar problem, but not quite to the extent as myself. After playing with different things I finally found an ahah moment. I have been moving away from static analysis, instead I'm watching people move, squat, bend forward, lunge. One movement I like is high knee raises. For this athlete I was watching him raise his knees and watched as his knee above 90 degrees didn't track as well midline as I thought it should. I found a culprit. The Glute max/IT band tie in with a bit of the biceps femoris fascia tied in was completely adhered. But in a very fine fashion. I was unable to feel it through spandex.
If you follow the sweep of the glute max fascia there is a meeting point that I found to be extremely leathery. We worked three sessions and cleared up both sides. He said it was the biggest change in movement he'd felt in years. Walking up stairs felt effortless. Checking others that have a history of either adductor tension or heavy doses of back squats, I found pretty similar results. No amount of foam rolling or stretching would have been able to correct this. I'm actually looking forward to having someone do this on me and see what I feel afterwards.
So I hope this information helps someone out there get rid of some nagging adductor problems. I wish someone had figured this out 4 years earlier for myself. Good luck and let me know if this helps.
7 comments:
Hi,
This was awesome. I stumbled across this blog by accident. It's tragic, but, so few of us (strength and conditioning professionals, PT's, AT's, D.C.'s and even M.D.'s pay attention to true alignment and symmetry). It's good to see someone with some integrity in their work. If you haven't already, you should check out the Egoscue stuff for these types of applications. It's been a tremendous help for me with my clients.
I'm really interested in what you've described as it sounds like what I'm experiencing. I'm hoping you'll clarify a couple of things for me. It sounds like you did ART on the fascia. Is this accurate? I thought ART could only be used on muscles since they contract and fascia doesn't.
Thanks.
Jake
Thanks for the comment, I've looked into Egoscue...some pretty cool ideas.
Janet,
It is ART concepts of what I'm doing. I guess with just a little bit of spin from my part on the motion. You can definitely use ART for fascia, the tension will be different, but the results will be pretty good.
I think most ART guys will tell you that it starts with ART and you may say you do ART, but after years, it somewhat becomes your own thing with the motion. Feeling for tension, for release and watching the motion improve. Hope that helps.
Thanks, Jason. I'll pass that on to my physio.
Just wanted to suggest you also look at M.A.T., muscular activation therapy. ART did not help me much here in suburban Chicago. I found a MAT practioner downtown and she worked on me for almost 1.5 hours just to show me what its all about. I had relief, and more importantly it stayed....fixed. I HIGHLY recommend seeking out a MAT practioner.
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