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  • 10/05/2015 at 2:12 am in reply to: Knee Pain on the way down, right before the way back up #76206
    AvatarKristian Klausen
    Participant

    Same thing I tell all my members: knee pain is usually a result a prolonged hip dysfunction. Releasing tension around the knee cap is a good start but you have to work upstream to the source: find trigger points in your quads and start doing some self massage all the way up to your hip flexor. It’s hard to “diagnose” anything without seeing how you move, but in my experience if people don’t understand proper abdominal bracing and over-extend their lumbar spines during hip flexion (bottom position of deadlifts or squats, for example) then it usually results in excessive quadriceps loading during movement. So… Analyze your movement and make yourself aware of when your quads are loaded. They should be secondary movers to the hips during hip extension movements. Usually means learning to drive the hips back (without extending lumbar) and maintaining vertical shins for as long as possible during movement.

    10/05/2015 at 2:04 am in reply to: Transversal Plane #76205
    AvatarKristian Klausen
    Participant

    Makes sense. I definitely don’t demonize rotation but I’m finding that it can take months or more to retrain proper spinal bracing and get scapular rotation and glute activation going in most people. So programming movements involving rotation are definitely risky (and pointless) if you haven’t properly trained movement in the saggital plane first. I think transverse movement is kind of a level above saggital movement. It requires much more muscular control and stability and awareness.

    10/05/2015 at 1:45 am in reply to: Pulled muscle in lower right back #76204
    AvatarKristian Klausen
    Participant

    Muscles in your back are designed to stabilize the spine. My first priority in coaching is to teach proper abdominal bracing and to learn to hip hinge. If you’re pulling muscles or cramping anywhere in your torso then it almost always means you’re using spinal stabilization muscles (designed to be static during movement) to move weight. Deadlift, for example, should involve glutes and hamstrings as primary movers and there should be ZERO change in spinal position, ESPECIALLY at the lumbar spine. I drill into my members that deadlifts, cleans, snatches, KB swings, and anything that involves hip extension should NEVER cause fatigue or dynamic stress on the back muscles. So… http://breakingmuscle.com/mobility-recovery/how-are-we-still-getting-it-wrong-abdominal-hollowing-vs-bracing; check that article out and work on stabilizing your lumbar spine and hip hinging. That’s my 2 cents anyways.

    10/05/2015 at 1:36 am in reply to: Pure hip flexion #76203
    AvatarKristian Klausen
    Participant

    So… New development. I’ve discovered some small cysts in my anterior hip that I’m guessing are paralabral cysts. Meaning I have a labral tear in my left hip, which would’ve been caused by a skiing accident over a decade ago that left me walking funny for a couple weeks. I’ve been able to improve passive flexion in my right hip and I’m retraining my hip flexors to relax while in hip flexion as they tend to fire out of habit. But this would explain the almost constant tightness and sharp pains in my left hip flexor.

    The question now is how to cope with the labral tear. I think it’s small as my overall hip function isn’t terrible and there’s not much pain. But I think I will be hard pressed to ever regain full internal rotation. Kstar has one video up I stumbled across about really focusing on using motor control to maintain as much primary joint stability as possible… But any other insights would be much appreciated… Great video by the way…

    09/22/2015 at 8:25 pm in reply to: Pure hip flexion #76196
    AvatarKristian Klausen
    Participant

    That timeline is brutal… And that video is outstanding. Makes me realize the importance of balance and stability in programming.

    Do you have any understanding of how tight movers affect joint position and translation? Like in that article he said tight hamstrings can be a cause of the femur being pushed to the anterior of the joint, so mobilizing posterior chain and pulling the femur back makes sense, but then how do tight hip flexors and adductors impact the joint? Should we distract the joint from the outside to the inside to affect tight adductors (like pull the femur towards the sacrum)? I definitely don’t expect to find results like Somerset found in the video- that lady already had decent hip range and miles of posterior chain range, but I feel I’m missing some understanding of how each mover can affect joint position and how they should be addressed… Which may be something I’ll have to pay to figure out but its worth asking/brainstorming…

    09/21/2015 at 12:50 pm in reply to: Pure hip flexion #76194
    AvatarKristian Klausen
    Participant

    Got it- and no one has tried those things on me. Some minor success over the weekend: I ended up spending about 20 minutes working IR distraction angles on my left hip and actually drastically improved left hip IR and cleared a lot of the impingement feeling, it just took way longer than I thought it would. I think I’ll run with focusing on IR and smashing hip flexor/iliacus along with couch stretch. Thanks for the help! I’d give my left eye to get out to SFCF and be around Roop, Kstar, and Paoli for a month… This region needs their insight so badly…

    Thanks again, and let me know if you make any progress!

    09/18/2015 at 9:43 pm in reply to: Pure hip flexion #76191
    AvatarKristian Klausen
    Participant

    Thanks for the response!

    And I’ve worked on ALL of that consistently for the past 3 months, and in times of desperation even spending 10-15 minutes per leg going through distractions at different angles, I’ve limited my time sitting as much as possible, dramatically changed my posture… I’ve improved hamstring range, hip external rotation, and hip extension pretty substantially, however if I go after hip flexion or adduction with any Mwod techniques I notice no change no matter the duration or intensity I mobilize with. When I go into standing hip flexion and reach 90 degrees it almost feels like my hip flexor muscles are just in the way- like they’re too tight to continue pulling my leg up (or too weak). When I spend time sitting they get so tight that it almost hurts to try and flex past 90 with no assistance and the couch stretch becomes an immediate necessity. I’ve also had 2 chiropractors and 1 PT all do 2-3 minutes psoas releases and we still can’t get results out of either leg. My internal rotation is 0 as well and my feet turn out when I squat. I’ve been able to mitigate that through improving external rotation to some degree, however being unable to claim any more adduction or flexion is about to drive me insane! We’ve got several guys at our box with similar issues. Any other ideas?? Or should we just keep at it?

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