Final Form Check

Since the start of the year, I've been working with Casey at Therapydia Denver. He's analyzed my running form, given me enough exercises to keep me busy, had me run keeping time with a metronome, and forced me out of my comfort zone. And I am extremely grateful for all of it.

I’ve posted about our sessions a few times - here, here, and here (if you want to catch up). After a few years dealing with a recurring and nagging shin situation - which, full disclosure, is not completely gone but is dissipating - and knowing that my natural running posture is extremely inefficient, when Therapydia offered a run assessment and a handful of follow-up sessions in return for sharing the experience, I couldn’t turn it down.

After my sessions with Casey, my form is more efficient and I’m running a bit faster. When he first watched me run and we looked at the video during the assessment, I almost wanted to hide. As he described it, I was actually leaning back a little. And clearly, backwards is not where a runner wants to go. 

Check out these before and after photos. I'm not falling forward (even though that's how I felt when I started trying this!), but there is a difference in both my upper body posture and my leg drive.

 

I still have to work on building strength in my glutes, but that does take time and it has gotten better, as you can see in the before and after photos below. For a lot of us runners, the last thing we want to spend time on is strength work, but it's incredibly important. And not just when we're in PT, but for forever and a day!

What I hadn’t expected was that by leaning forward, I’m also running a tad bit faster; it's harder to slow down and run at an easy pace. Which can make my sluggish runs feel even more difficult.

One time this didn't bother me was when I ran the Tenacious Ten 10M in Seattle in April and finished with a much faster time than I expected. Although, running at sea level also likely played a role in that finish time.

I’ve enjoyed working with Casey, and it’s been great to see improvements along the way and have a solid plan moving forward (aka: stick with the exercises!). When I told him I had registered for a 10 mile race he was fully supportive and confident that I could do it, which definitely helped me feel more confident in my decision to go after my longest race in years. And it turned out great!

There are 11 clinics around the country and based on my experience - and the feedback of my two friends who’ve now also visited Therapydia - I absolutely recommend them if you’re feeling a little twinge, need help coming back from an injury or just want to get your running form analyzed.

Thanks for coming along with me on this journey. I'd love to hear about yours or answer any questions you have about the experience! Happy running, friends!

This post is sponsored by Therapydia. All opinions are my own.

Form Check, Part 3

It's time for another check in!

I've been working on my running form since the start of the year with the help of a Physical Therapist, Casey, from Therapydia Denver, (full transparency: this is part of a series of blog posts sponsored by Therpydia) with the goal of becoming a more efficient, and less injury-prone running. What this means in real life, is that I'll be able to run more and hurt less!

What all of us runners want, right?

Over the last several weeks I've focused on exercises and relaxed running. I still have work to do, since it's never really over, but watching the video during my last session it was clear I'm making good improvements. 

Each session at Therapydia begins with a warm-up, followed by a run on the treadmill while Casey captures video to get a closer (and slower) look at my gait, and then we go through a series of exercises, typically a mix of old and new.

The mix of exercises to build core, glute, and hamstring muscles coupled with retraining my mind and body to run more relaxed, is how I'm really going to improve my form.

I have two groups of exercises to do, three times a week each: floor and standing. Depending on the day and how much time I have at home or at the gym to get them done, I may just do one group or I'll do both. If I'm being real, it also depends on how much energy I have.

Standing exercises

• Monster walks with a band around ankles
• Speed skaters with a band around ankles (make it tougher standing on a balance/cushy mat so it's not so stable)
• Single leg dead lifts with a kettlebell (if you're new to these, try the first few days without any weights, or very light ones and don't worry about reaching the ground, keep your hips parallel to the ground and back straight)

Floor exercises

• Hamstring curls with a exercise ball and band just above knees (or not)
• Bridges on a Bosu and band just above knees (to make it a bit harder: "march" by lifting one foot up - leg straight out, then the other)
• Side plank/clamshell combo with or without the band just above knees
• Alternating planks - alternate between standard forearm plank and side planks
• Kneeling band push is a bit awkward, so the photo below helps illustrate it. Tie a knot at the end of a band and secure it in a door, the pull it taught and kneel on the knee closest the door. Push the band forward so arms are straight, then pull it close to the body, and repeat. This core exercise requires some good balance.

These exercises along with some drills on the treadmill and stretching have been my routine. Oh, and a nice 30-minute yoga break we've been doing at work once a week, courtesy of a colleague who is also a yoga teacher. I cannot say enough good things about the ability to take 30 minutes out of our fast-paced, busy weeks to stretch and clear our heads.  

I have another session coming up soon where we'll do another check of my running form, see if these exercises are actually turning into something, and maybe I'll get more to add to the routine. I feel like things are improving and with my sights set on a race now, that provides extra motivation to keep doing the work. 

If you're looking for the other posts in this series, you can catch up here:

• Getting Started on the Right Foot
• Becoming a Stronger Runner, Part 2

What is one of your favorite exercises that keeps you running strong?

This post is sponsored by Therapydia. All opinions are my own.

Becoming a Stronger Runner, Part 2

This is the second in a series of posts sharing my experience working with Therapydia Denver, as we fix my running form. If you want to know how this started, I suggest you check out this post.

After a few weeks of shuffling on the treadmill at the gym, monster walking through our kitchen, and reminding myself to relax (my feet) while I run, I was back at Therapydia for another session with Casey.

Coming straight from a long day at work, I spent a few minutes on the treadmill to get my legs moving and warm up a bit. Since the point of these sessions is to improve my running form, it's important to see if I've made any progress from visit to visit, so that was first on the agenda.

Casey took some videos as I ran on the treadmill from the same angles as the first time so we could see if anything improved. Running forms don't typically change overnight, so I fully expect that this process to take a while, but I do hope to see a bit of improvement with each session.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that the new video (below right) next to the original, showed some improvement! I'm leaning forward more and while both feet are hitting the ground at a better angle, my left foot is looking better than the right.

You can see by the green lines below that my left leg was stretching out farther during the first session than this time. The more out stretched the leg, the more likely the heel is going to take the brunt of the landing. Improvement!

My hips are still dropping, which is the sign of weak glutes, but that's going to take a lot of time (and monster walks) to see a real difference, so he wasn't surprised to see this and encouraged me not to get discouraged.

This is definitely a process that requires dedication and patience. Even with all the great help, direction and exercises that I'm getting from Casey at Therapydia, I'm the only one who can actually do the work. If I don't do it, nothing will change.

I've learned I need to do my exercises at the gym or just after I get home each morning because I'm usually so mentally exhausted after work that the last thing I want to do is my exercises. Even spending 5 minutes rolling out before bed it tough enough.

After the treadmill test, I was given a few more exercises to work on. This week: core.

The first exercise he gave me works the deep core muscles, the transverse abdominus. It's not like a plank where you can tell without much trouble if you're doing it correctly or not. This one is pretty subtle so it took a few tries to get it right, and then I had to do it a few more times to try and ingrain how it felt in my memory so I could do it at home on my own.

The other exercise for the week was the standard bridge - with two feet on the floor and also lifting one foot off - with an exercise band just above my knees to provide resistance. There's a reason why some exercises are so common, because they work. The bridge is one of them - great for strengthening abs, low back and glutes.

Like monster walks, I've done bridges for years, but it's a good reminder that I need to do them regularly. In fact, Casey instructed me to do these exercises - along with the ones from the first session - three days a week, advising against doing them just before a long or hard run.

Beyond the exercises and keeping my feet relaxed while I run, he also gave me a cadence goal - 170 steps per minute. With a quicker cadence I'll keep my strides shorter and in turn, should land more mid-foot. The trouble I'm still having with this though is running a faster cadence without running faster, because my legs and lungs can't keep up with it for long.

For this, Casey recommended breaking down each mile. Start by running the faster cadence for a quarter mile, then back to my regular cadence for the rest; over time skewing more of the mile towards 170 steps for minute. This is what I've spent the least amount of time on, but I'll get there.

More work is ahead. I have another session this week so stayed tuned for more about how this is going. I'm curious, if you've successfully increased your cadence, what's the secret?

This post is sponsored by Therapydia. All opinions are my own.

Getting Started on the Right Foot

You may know that the last few months of 2017 were not great running months for me. In fact, I wasn’t running at all. First, another shin/calf “injury” popped up that made running uncomfortable, then a random and very painful back injury took me out completely. While frequent visits to my chiropractor and acupuncturist, and rest, got me back to running, I knew that for sustained health, I needed to fix the underlying problem: my running form.

Recently, I’ve been lucky enough to partner with Therapydia Denver to do just that. Never heard of them? Therapydia is a national network of physical therapy clinics, but they actually do a lot more than just physical therapy.

Over the next few months I’ll be posting about my experience working with Therapydia Denver to fix my running form and (hopefully) stave off more injuries. Since the goal is to keeping running as long as I can.

We'll start with my first session, the Run Assessment:

I met with Casey McNitt, the clinic director, for my run assessment. It's an hour long session that starts off like most first sessions with a PT or other medical practitioner - I shared my medical history, experience with running, goals, and the issues I'd recently been dealing with. If you know me, you know that'll take a while. Thankfully, he wasn't deterred. 

His goal is to help me be the best runner I can be, by identifying issues with my running form and determining a plan to get me on the right path. 

After talking through my history, we went to the treadmill. I warmed up for a few minutes walking at a brisk pace before I was instructed to bump up the pace a bit to a comfortable run. While running, he took videos of my form, from the back and side, then focused on my feet.

We then looked at the videos together and he walked me through what he saw. And what we saw, wasn't pretty.

From the Back

• The video showed - and you can see in the screenshots below - that I need to strengthen my glutes. Rather than staying even, my hips drop with each foot fall. As Casey explained, the right hip drop shows weakness in my left side gluteus medius. To compensate, I lean left with my upper body. While it takes the load off my weak glute, it can create other problems with my hips, low back, neck and more. 
• My arms swing front to back in a straight line, rather than crossing over my body. Did you know they were supposed to? I guess I didn't. By crossing in front, your core has to do more work, taking the pressure off your lower body a little. 

From the Side

• I run straight up, almost leaning backward. I think this is a holdover from my years in dance and marching band. Good for marching band, not good for running. Alternatively, by leaning forward, I can naturally propel myself forward and it'll help address how my feet land, because...
• I am a heel striker. A quiet one, but a heel striker nonetheless. The way my heel hits, all the force is going straight up the chain, which is also likely playing a big role in my injuries. 

After looking at these videos and breaking it all down, Casey put me to work. Back on the treadmill, he had me shuffle with a fast walk to get the feeling of my full foot hitting the ground. Then, leaning forward (so far that it felt like I was going to go head over heels), pick up the pace.

Immediately, we saw a little improvement. See how I'm leaning a bit forward in the image below and a bit more of my left foot is hitting the treadmill? It's not a huge difference, but it was a good start. (And isn't it so cool to be able to see the improvements in video?!)

Before wrapping up, we headed out to the gym where he showed me a few exercises to strengthen my glutes (hint: keep up those monster walks) and a drill to help me get the feeling of leaning forward and striking the floor with a flatter foot.

Since this first session, I've been incorporating the exercises into my workouts a few times a week and using the tips and drills. One thing Casey mentioned while watching a video of another runner with a similar issue, is that she kept her feet relaxed. That idea really stuck with me and has become a sort of mantra for me.

I'm excited to see how my running improves over the next sessions with Therapydia. If you found this post interesting, I hope you'll come back to hear how it goes!

This post is sponsored by Therapydia. All opinions are my own.

Spreading Holiday Joy

A few days ago the good people at Minted.com reached out to tell me about their new line of custom holiday photo cards and I didn’t hesitate to follow the link and check it out. You see, those who know me well (in real life), know that I have an obsession with greeting cards. I can easily spend 20 minutes perusing store shelves to find the right card for someone, only to come to the realization that it’s not there and I need to look somewhere else. I won’t settle for “okay.” I think it all started when I was young and I’d keep all of the cards I got in shoe boxes. Woody often doesn’t understand why he’ll find a card I received three years ago in a drawer, but each one I save means something special. In the sea of text message and Tweets, cards are a refreshing break from the norm. My spirit gets a boost when I receive a card in the mail, and I hope the same happens for those who get one from me!

While I’ll admit that I’ve never purchased anything from Minted (yet), it is one of the hottest companies around - its Founder and CEO, Miriam Naficy, landed the 25 spot on Fast Company’s  coveted “100 Most Creative People” list this year, they’ve expanded into art and home decor, and their products have reached more than 40 million homes (I guess that means I’m way behind on this).

What’s most striking about this company is that it is built on the idea of providing a platform for exceptional designers from around the world to get their products in the hands of consumers. Minted helps designers gain exposure through design challenges - each challenge has a theme, designers submit their work, the community votes and Minted then produces and sells the winning designs (and gives prize money and a percentage of sales + promotion support to the designers). It’s a pretty cool concept.

If you’re like me, you haven’t started sending out your holiday cards and by the time they go out "Happy New Years” might be the more appropriate greeting. Thankfully though, there are options. You might, for instance, want to think about enlisting the help of minted.com. Not only can you customize a card design, but you can upload your contact list and they will address the envelopes and get them in the mail! Sure, not the most personal way to go about it, but it works if you’re in a pinch. Many of the cards are available with “Merry Christmas,” “Happy Holidays,” or “Happy New Years” greetings, which is awesome for those who want to be all inclusive with their holiday cards.

While there are more holiday photo card options than I can begin to count, not to mention non-photo holiday cards and those for countless other occassions, below are just a few of the ones that caught my eye.

1. Modern Shimmer by b.Wise Papers
2. Watercolor Bunting by Wind-Up Key Press
3. Radiant Joy by Katie When
4. Winter Wonderland by Wind-Up Key Press
5. Modern Ombre Watercolor by Kaydi Bishop
6. Wrap Around Joy by Oscar & Emma
7. Banner Wings by Pandercraft

In a conversation with a colleague the other day I learned that she used Minted over the weekend to order her holiday cards and she loved the experience. She was able to try out a few options for the design she picked, and the photo, contact list and ordering process was a breeze. I saw a screenshot of the card she chose and it was super cute, featuring a photo of her dog!

Which reminds me, even though most of these cards show families or kids, you don’t have to have kids, or even be married, to send photo holiday cards! 

Have you sent out your holiday cards yet? * Do you send a year in review letter with your cards?

Disclosure: This is a sponsored post on behalf of Minted.com, however all opinions are mine.