Stobo Castle Lake in Winter
Yesterday my hip was still giving me some grief, so I contacted a good friend of mine Deanne Tomasino, a sports massage therapist. I’ve seen her before, particularly during my marathon training a few years ago. Not surprisingly marathon training is rather brutal on the body, and a good massage therapist can help the body with recovery and injuries.
Why would you get sports massage therapy?
It’s not something that you do for relaxation, since it’s often deep into the muscle tissue and painful.
The two main areas that massage therapists can help with are:
- Injury prevention
- Injury rehabilitation
Although it is popular there is mixed research over it’s effectiveness. However despite this, you would be hard pressed to find a professional sportsperson who does not use massage therapy. Paula Radcliffe is a prominent user of massage and cites it as one of prime factors in keeping her running.
One reason I enjoy (if ‘enjoy’ is the right word for a rather painful treatment) these treatments is that Deanne is is very knowledgeable therapist. She has a passion for learning about the body and how it works, and this is reflected in her treatments.
During the treatment she worked on my injured hip, and diagnosed a small tear in the tendon of my glutes. It could be worse – tendons take time to heal, but not as long as ligaments. Running is OK at the moment, but I’ll have to sideline heavy squats and dead-lifts for the next few weeks. I suspect that the rowing yesterday aggravated the injury, so I’ll put that to the side too.
Another interesting thing to come out of the treatment was that the right side of my back is more muscular than the left. Deanne says that difference between the two sides is obvious to the eye. Not only that but the muscles on the right are much tighter than those on the left, which may be either a cause or effect of the hip injury.
I expect to feel sore from he treatment tomorrow, but it should help me recover for the race this Saturday.
Posted in Uncategorized.
Tagged with Injuries, injury, massage.
Barony Castle by livepine
Paola and I spent the weekend in Eddleston at Barony Castle. We were able to get a very good deal through my work for £10 a night.
They have a ‘fitness room’ in the hotel which has a rather sad collection of plastic weights, a few dodgy bikes and treadmills as well as two concept 2 rowers. I wanted to get a workout in so I went down before breakfast and used the only two decent pieces of kit in the room – a concept 2 rower and two 15kg iron dumbbells.
It was a pretty tiring workout, with both the rower and the thrusters working the whole body and really stressing the anaerobic system.
Unfortunately I seem to have re-aggravated my hip during this workout and will have to be careful with it over the next few days.
Workout: 3 rounds of 500m row, 20 x 15kg DB thrusters
Posted in Uncategorized.
Tagged with holiday, Miscellaneous, rowing.
Holyrood Park by Richard Waugh
I mentioned previously that I’m training for the Great Winter Run in Edinburgh. This is a 5km run around Holyrood park in Edinburgh that I’ve entered for the last few years. This will be the third year running that I’ve entered, and I like it since it shows how much (or little) I’ve improved over the year.
The question I’m trying to answer this year is – “How little running do I need to improve my time?”
Checking over my diary I’ve only run 5km or greater 4 times over the last 3 months. There was also a period of over 5 weeks over October through to December where I didn’t run at all, but concentrated on lifting heavy weights. However my 5km times have barely changed while I have greatly improved my muscular strength and endurance.
What I have replaced most of my steady state running with over the last month is interval training and metabolic conditioning workouts (a potent combination of strength and cardiovascular training).
A typical week of training at the moment might look like:
- Intervals 6 x 400m
- Run 5km
- 20 minute metabolic conditioning workout
- Heavy lifting day
- 20 minute metcon workout
It will be interesting to see if I can beat my time from last year when I race next Saturday.
Workout: 5km run
Posted in Uncategorized.
Tagged with metcon, Running, training.
The Eyes
Eyes - by StaR DusT
A few days ago my wife had her eyes lasered. She had decided that rather than going through the daily contact lens routine she would prefer to live a hassle free life of perfect vision. There are only two downsides:
- The cost – although they advertise rates at £395 per eye, what they don’t tell you is that this is for a slightly drunk med student using a chisel and hammer. The better techniques cost considerably more.
- The fact that a person is going to cut open your eye and mess about in there using lasers. This may put some people off.
The surgery itself only takes about 10 minutes, but with paperwork, prep-work and waiting around they expect that you’ll be there about two hours, so I planned to go along to the gym and have a quick workout.
The Back
Although my specific training this month is for the Great Winter Run (a 5km run in Edinburgh) I decided to go for some heavy deadlifts to continue with my strength training, and also so that I could avoid a shower by not working up too much of a sweat.
The warm-up was fine, and I managed my first heavy set OK. However on the second set I felt something give in my back.
I just stood there for a few minutes, gauging how much damage I’d done to myself and cursing myself for my stupidity in injuring myself the week before a race.
I finished up, met my wife and we compared our pain.
I’m still not sure exactly what happened, but I think it’s a combination of the following:
- The previous day’s workout hitting the back, with kettlebell swings.
- Being a bit ambitious with the weights not having performed deadlifts for almost a month.
- Not paying enough attention to form.
Whatever it was I’ll be paying by taking easy workouts over the next few weeks with anything involving the back – which is just about everything. I’ll also be more careful about my form and weight choice in the future.
If I tread lightly over the next few weeks I should get away without suffering any long term issues.
Workout: 3×5 heavy deadlifts
Posted in Uncategorized.
Tagged with eyes, Injuries, misc, Weightlifting.