I just returned from running my first marathon. It was hot and humid and I was miserable for half of it but I made it! I was prepared for muscle and joint fatigue, however I wasn’t prepared for the misery over such a protracted period of time. Phew! That was tough! I’m proud of myself and plan to do more. Looking back, I don’t think I could have done anything differently. It was really a matter of taking successively bigger runs and continuing to chomp down the miles.

The highlight of the trip, however, was spending a week with my 4 year-old son at a cabin on a lake afterwards. We fished, swam, and did all sorts of outdoor activities. It was a wonderful trip!

I’ve recently read an interesting article in the NY Times about whether abdominal training actually contributes to back pain. There was no revolutionary information offered but I was amazed at the comments to the article. Many people swore certain abdominal exercises fixed their back pain while other claimed abdominal exercises made their back pain worse. Yet another group defended abdominal exercises as a strengthening must and yet others discussed how Pilates and Yoga are really where it’s at.

In my view, everyone is right and everyone is wrong. I say this because each person is speaking about their particular experience with particular exercises whether beneficial or not. But we get into trouble when we take our personal experiences and assume they should apply to the general population. We do this when we don’t fully understand what we are discussing–in this case biomechanics and pathomechanics.

The one unifying concept that I’ve found true regarding exercising and pain is that we must understand our personal biomechanical approach to each exercise to understand whether that exercise is beneficial or not. Not everyone will perform identical exercises identically. This is due to the history of each person’s experiences and how those experiences have formed movement habits predisposing them to certain injuries.

This is exactly why I am writing my books–to help people understand how their particular habits are causing pain and the simple remedies to correct them. This article confirms my belief that there is so much mis-information out there that noone really knows what to do. I’m very successful at what I do because I have studied, observed, experimented with and practice using biomechanics to correct chronic pain. While there seem to be endless muscles, bones, nerves and ligaments involved, the solutions to common problems are made simple and effective by understanding and correcting movement function as well as strength or range of motion issues leading to movement impairments. My books have distilled this information into very digestible bites. I hope they are helpful.

A recent NY Times article discusses the alarming fact that hip injuries are on the rise. They point out that this may be due to changes in usage, early introduction into  sports causing bony changes in the hip socket, and better imaging detecting labral tears earlier.

All of these are feasable explanations but in my experience, hip pain and specifically labral tears are often caused by poor femoral head tracking in the hip socket due to poor strength of muscles responsible for the tracking as well as poor walking or running biomechanics. Labral tears are only one symptom of this problem. Others include hip bursitis (greater trochanteric bursits), ITB friction syndrome, chronic groin strain/pain, sciatic pain, and knee pain.

Poor tracking of the femoral head typically results in the head sliding forward. This impinges tissues in the front of the hip and can eventually break down the labrum causing tears. Especially in high level athletes, which the NY Times article is primarily concerned about, precise tracking becomes even more critical due to the extreme forces acting through the joint. Minor alterations in the quality of femoral tracking while walking or running become major problems for professional athletes due to the frequency and force they undergo. Others who don’t make a living playing sports typically don’t put their bodies through the same stresses and therefore can get away with minor tracking problems.

Very often these tracking problems can be resolved with proper diagnosis and training. Treatment centers around specific muscle testing combined with gait analysis to observe the person’s walking and running habits. Specific exercises to correct muscular weakness is only part of the answer. The real key is learning how to walk and run while activating the correct hip musculature.  This is simpler than it sounds. I just worked with a marathon runner with these tracking problems and consequent pain who resolved her issues within a week. Her leg would begin to drag after 15 miles of running and now she has just qualified for the Boston Marathon.