Oh my lazy, lazy ass!

Today I am pain free! My back is feeling gooooood. The reason for this is that I've developed an almost religious devotion to putting myself through a sadistic set of exercises every day designed to activate my apparently slothful glutes and stretch out my many tight bits. My rehab guy, Duncan, has taken me through a set of dynamic movement tests and pronounced my glutes slack and lazy and not doing their job to support my lower back (as with many things in life, cuteness does not excuse lack of effort.. ;) That was then, this is now - a week later and my butt does not know what has hit it!

The main exercises that I have been doing are a bit hard to describe but I'll give it a go:

* A basic quadruped (hands and knees) stance, balancing on contralateral hand and knee. The idea is to mobilise the hip in a 'kicking the ceiling' movement WITHOUT getting the lower back involved (not as easy as it sounds if your quads are short and tight and temperamental)

* A 'bridge' stance with a tight, stretchy band around just above my knees. Weight through heels and squeeze knees outward. Hold till you cry.

* A one legged bridge but holding a tennis ball to the groin with the 'free' leg (making sense?). Again, just until you scream will do.

* Bodyweight squats, paying attention to glute activation and neutral spine position.

* Reverse lunges but with the back foot sliding along the ground. I did this at the clinic using a slide board (it could be a very fun device but I restrained my urge to just let loose and slide all over the place like a demeted ice-skater). Seeing as I don't have one of those at home I improvised with one of the Sana bags - they are shiny silver. It slides on the carpet like the real thing. The thing that makes this exercise work for me is to keep the TVA (deeper abs) activated and pull through the glute to straighten up.

* A single leg abduction which targets gluteus medius. It requires a different angle, about 15 degrees to the rear. I also do a version where my legs are bent and feet stay touching. It's a 'clam' movement, very ladylike ;)

Then there is the self massage, which amounts to sitting on a tennis ball and positioning myself where it most hurts.... I use a tennis ball, but it's supposed to be done with a plastic ball that looks like a mace - covered in spikes! Must get me one of those.

Through becoming acquainted with my funky movement patterns I seem to be developing a hyper-aware sense of what is going on in my body when I train. Today I did a full body circuit and had to drop my weights right down and focus on how my movements were effecting my body as a whole. It was quite meditative to be driven to really, really focus in that way. I became aware that during the reverse flyes my back was aching because the support muscles weren't taking the strain. I dropped my weight (unheard of!) back to... it's almost embarrassing to say it... 1.5kg and suddenly, no backpain AND I was feeling it in the rhomboids, where it should hit. Same situation with bicep curls, I had to drop the weight to prevent myself 'swinging' and voila, I'm feeling it more in my biceps than with the heavier weight. How about that?

After all that deep thought I'd better finish with a picture of food. My dinner tonight - roasted lamb, mango salsa, veges, thin kumara slices, grated parmesan. Such pretty colours.....