I recently went to see the folks at Seton Medical Outpatient Rehabilitation Center about my gimpy knee. It all started when Cyndi and I were at the Austin Marathon Expo last February and she made me listen to a presentation from the Seton sports medicine team. They described how they used video gait analysis and core strength training and stretching to help injured runners recover and return to successful running. All of the treatments they talked about were the sorts of things that had helped my knee the most, and their featured case studies all sounded just like me. I decided it might be worth following up on and mentioned it to Cyndi, but she was already way ahead of me. She gave me a business card she found laying on a table in the Seton Medical expo booth. Once we got back to Midland, I emailed Drew, the physical therapists whose name was on the card, and asked if he could set up an appointment. And I went, and it was a great visit.
First, I met with Dr. Smith who looked at my shoes, and at my feet, and pushed on secret pressure points known only to CIA interrogators, asking, “Does that hurt?” She kept moving her fingers and pushing until she found the right spots. She made lots of notes about my feet and my knees, and I’m sure I have a lot of work to do. It was fun, actually. I could tell that her main goal was to get me back to running as soon as possible.
After that, I had an appointment with three physical therapists, all at the same time: Drew, Bob, and Gladys. All three of them were holding clipboards and asking questions and making notes and comparing observations. Ordinarily I would’ve felt too exposed and vulnerable standing alone in my running shorts with no shirt while they analyzed all my shortcomings. In fact, in general, I don’t usually enjoy that much hands-on attention. I don’t like to be fussed over or pampered with or tucked in.
But this experience was more than comfortable, it was enjoyable. They pushed on my joints and bent my legs, had me lean right and left, told me raise one leg then the other, twist one way and lean another way, bend my knees, straighten my legs, try to stand up using only one leg, and like that. They spent a lot more time on me than I expected even one therapist to spend, much less three therapists. It must have been a slow day in the clinic, is what I thought. Or they were looking forward to the challenge of fixing me.
They sent me home with two pages of exercises, and the expectations of a follow-up visit in a month. What is more, they were joking about making me their poster-child runner at next year’s Marathon Expo. They said most runners aren’t comfortable standing up in front of a crowd to tell their story. “Well, I don’t have a problem doing that,” I said. “But first, I have to get better.”
I left Austin that day with hope. The therapists and the doctor gave me lots of hope … and not just hope for a sustainable life, but hope for a better future. Not just a pain free existence, but hope for a new and improved and a faster life.
Who knows how all of this will work out? The human body is not as predictable as we’d like, and I know that anything can happen. But still, hope is a mighty thing. Because of the hope the Seton team gave me, I haven’t missed a single day doing my exercises, and I’ve become hyper-conscious to how I run and how my feet land and how my hips move.
One of the things they pointed out to me was how un-symmetrical I was. Apparently I am so unsymmetrical I have muscles that never have to work at all. In fact, they said I have only one butt that works, and my inner abs don’t work, and only one hamstring works as hard as it should. But my quads and outer abs are so strong they’ve learned to overpower those other slacker muscles. I get by using the muscles that work best. Because I am so unbalanced, my pelvis gets out of square and my knees go wobbly and my right foot slaps the pavement too hard, and … well, you get the picture.
So this morning, as I was brushing my teeth, I thought about being unbalanced. I’ve been teaching my guys that we should learn to rely on our strengths and don’t waste all our energy trying to improve weaknesses. But, at least in the case of muscle groups, there is a danger of relying exclusively on our strengths. We can get so good at compensating for our weaknesses that we end up walking with a limp. That’s what happened to me.
Now that I’m approaching my 52nd birthday (which is only 11 in Celsius), I am hoping that maybe I can finally become a balanced guy. Maybe with a little more therapy.
