Time machines, classes and thoughts about ankles and how they rock.

Hello everyone,

Guilty as charged. Life is busy, and if someone would ask me what I'd prefer to do, go for a run or type my blog, well, generally I go for a run. Also, I get my best thoughts while running, and usually I come off of a run with no time to spare between cooling off, washing up, and picking my daughter up from school...So the thoughts drift away and the blog lays fallow.

But now I'm back a full year later. One of my resolutions? (Maybe my only one since, as a rule I don't tend to make them!) That I will blog more often. I will do my best.

I have just updated by web site after a long period of inactivity since it is the turning of the year and new things are happening again. I have some great new testimonials. Both of these ladies are terrific students and a joy to work with.

Firstly, the current classes happening this year are Pilates Fusion on Mondays and Wednesdays at 10am at The Bridgeway Gym in Sausalito. It's a great class and I often incorporate foot-to-core exercises as part of the warm-up. There has been great feedback from many of the folks who take the class about improvements in balance and in their ability to access their abdominals later in the class.

Secondly, there is a new Pilates Fusion class opening up at Presidio Sport And Medicine in the Presidio on Wednesday nights. Right now it looks like 7pm, although it might wind up being at 6:30. The class starts on 1/15. Stay tuned for confirmation.

Finally, the Sunday Gyro/Pilates-inspired class is on hiatus for now. I will be getting my Foundation Certification in Gyrokinesis in a month, and so it will then be back on officially as a Gyrokinesis class. More on that as it happens.

Enough of the scheduling...

So, ankles. Interesting things. I've been thinking a lot about ankles over the last year. So much depends on the balance of the talus as it glides in its groove under the tibia. If anything throws it off it simply doesn't work. Since the ankle is the body's foundational pivot joint, (something from Judith Aston's work) when an ankle doesn't work right, the dysfunction echoes throughout the body like ripples on water.

So imagine, now, that a person's talus no longer glides well and they lose their range of motion - that's most of us by the way, thanks to the 90 degree sitting position and our wacky love of tipped-up heels - then they can't clear the foot as they swing the leg through. So the knee has to be higher during the swing phase, right? That means that somehow, the body has to haul the leg through swing phase with a foot that can't get out of the way. How does their body accomplish that? Here are a few possibilities.

1. A more bent knee (to lift the foot off the ground) which means
2. More work for the quads and hip flexors and possibly
3. More work for the abdominals (except that when the hip flexors are overworking then it's likely that the abs are unaccessible) which also means that
4. There is more likelihood of an injury due to impact without abdominal support and
5. More likely to see a hard heel-strike (which, in turn, encourages a less mobile ankle, more work from the hip flexors, and more injuries, depending on other factors, of course)

This is something that was sliding around my brain during my last run. One of the enjoyable parts of minimal running to me is the accordion-pleating of the body into and out of the ground. This creates resilience and encourages a full range of motion in the joints without excess impact. I am not the most resilient person in the world thanks to hypermobility issues, so these things make a huge difference to me when I run. If my ankles freeze up I feel it immediately. My stride shortens, I have pain and I feel every impact, even with pretty good form.

When the ankle folds at the joint during a mid-foot strike the dome of the talus actually glides both inwards and around its axis, which doesn't go forward to back - it's actually at an odd and interesting angle that, if you look closely at it, makes perfect sense as the bottom joint of an accordion pleat with the very complex joints of knee and hip as part of the system (hooray Angle of Henke (don't forget to scroll around a bit to see other planes)!!!). So when a person reaches forward with their toe pulled straight up and slams the heel down, they are actually throwing the talus out of its orbit, so to speak, making it less likely to see natural joint movement there later. They are also pushing the calcaneus up into the ankle, and forcing extra length into the sole of the foot along the plantar fascia...sounds like the potential for some serious pain!

So, that's the thought for today on ankles and theories about how they work.

Thoughts on flat feet

On the bus to the studio...

The tibialis posterior has been on my mind these days, although that could be said to be an irony, considering the distance between those two parts. I mentioned before that I struggled with flat feet much of my life. Whenever I restart running after a long break I inevitably strain the tissues around the posterior arch and up deep in the calf. After berating myself for not taking my own advice, I slow down for a while to strengthen that line.  The tibialis posterior supports the posterior arch. It extends deeply up the back of the lower leg, through a notch at the calcaneus, opening into a sort of supportive hammock for the arch. It makes connections up the deep line that includes leg adductors and inner unit. When it goes on strike, so does the core. Spotting a person with weak tib posteriors is easy. Look for ankle pronation, and slack inner leg line, possibly with nocked knees. The big giveaway is the inability to access the core when standing, especially in a person who can find it when seated, kneeling or lying down.

The bus ride to the new Body Gallery is almost done. Over and out...

Returning to Running

I'm back. It feels good, but boy, what a rude awakening it is when you're able to pretty easily run for an hour or so barefoot or minimally shod and then stop running for three months, then the first time back I started to feel that telltale foot-slap after about 10 minutes or so. By foot-slap, I mean when my shock absorbers seem to fail and my feet slap down onto the ground - not a great thing to do when you're barefoot on concrete!

I've been taking it slow and gentle, resting whenever necessary and keeping it short. I actually started the week before I went to the doctor's, (yeah, I know-but I was tired of chewing the furniture,) so i've run about three times since then. My first run was about 5 minutes. For my last run I cut myself off at 30 minutes, still focusing on form and footfall, barely challenging my lungs. It's a bit frustrating, but I'll be much better off later. At least on that last run I felt a little more elastic. 

All in all, though, it's not as bad as I thought it would be. It took me about a year to get the conditioning in my legs and feet just to BE barefoot, then to walk and run. That didn't actually go away. I'm still able to run without pain, but I can sense that the strength in my legs is just not what it was. My center is stronger now that the umbilical hernia is repaired, even after only 3 months, so in some ways running is actually easier. 

Here's a picture from September 26th, pausing on one of those crosswalk inclines to get a little SFMTA-sourced reflexology. :) I love those things. 

On Walking

Today I walked again.

It's not like I've not been on my feet and getting from one place to another. I've done that, with relatively little pain, but enough to know that I shouldn't do it for too long.

Today I rediscovered how to walk without a pronounced heel strike. I went for a barefoot walk to our neighborhood library, stopping and starting occasionally when my rhythm broke or when I lost my feeling of gravity. (It's possible to do that, especially when you're small!)

Something I've noticed is that even people who run barefooted still heel-strike when walking. I think it's because we've made assumptions about what walking means, what it looks and feels like. I remember reading posts by bf runners talking about how they were trying to learn forefoot or midfoot striking for walking gait and how hard it was.

So here's something to try today:

Take off your shoes and stand with one foot slightly behind the other. Don't try to point your toes straight ahead. Shift your weight onto the front foot and see if you can drop the back knee so that the hip releases and the foot glides forward slightly. You may find that it doesn't go anywhere at all, or you may find that the free leg's foot doesn't know how to leave the ground. When I first tried this walk, I couldn't get the leg through to the front without tucking the toe off the floor, tightening the ankle flexors and then the hip flexors (which may be in very different places but have a pretty strong connection, don't they?). Don't let the foot flex. Just keep releasing that femur down from the hip joint and allow it to slide it through by responding to gravity through both sides. Let the standing ankle really soften as the body moves forward, although it's easier said than done. The key is both ground reaction force and core work, of course - not clenching, gripping, six-packy wackiness, but motion all through the center of the body from ground to head that encourages the glide of the hip joint, softening of the knee and ankle joint. When it's right, the foot is just slightly plantarflexed as it passes through, with the ankle joint blissfully relaxed, toes rising just enough to clear the ground.

It started off mentally difficult with not much forward motion. It was very hard to get my working leg through without grazing the ground with the bottom of the foot, which is generally something to avoid when barefoot. I'm sure that many a motorist was wondering what the slow-moving, tiny barefoot lady was doing with her stop-and-start progress towards some good books and a turn around the neighborhood. (Do I dare wonder what kinds of comments I'd have gotten outside of the Bay Area?) They can think what they like.