Is it a long way to Tipperary?

It may very be a long way to Tipperary.. but that really just depends on where you start from.

You see a journey is only as long as its start point, and the same goes for your fitness journey, your injury journey, and any other of life's journeys frankly.

I posted yesterday about a lady I helped with a hamstring tendinopathy.

Now this really isn't a newsletter about this particular hamstring case, but more the lesson to be learned from it.

When we first met she couldn't sit down, she couldn't run, she couldn't bike, and she was very uncomfortable. Added to this her back was sore from standing up all day and her hamstring was on fire all of the time.

What you'll notice about the testimonial, if you take some time to go and look at it, is that she started seeing very quick progress (2-3 weeks), and that was because we found the real problem, really quickly. Spoiler alert: it wasn't the hamstring. The real reason that her hamstring was so sore was because she didn't have any lateral movement. She couldn't load her lateral glutes, and because of that her hamstring was overworking to make up for the glute and was very annoyed.

If we hadn't have noticed that that was the case then getting her to Tipperary (pain free and back to competing), would have been a long way. In fact it would have been like starting in Timbuktu, with no money, no car, no passport, and being chased by a lion.

This fundamentally, is the problem I see every day with people who struggle to solve their niggling injury issues, you haven't actually found the problem.

In order to define the problem I have three really simple tactics.

1. 1. What is their injury history, and is there anything near the pain site that may not be functioning at 100% because of that old injury? (Think about an old ankle injury causing pain in the hip).

3. 2. Are there any movement restrictions that we can see from some basic tests that show that this body is subconsciously protecting a movement?

4. 3. How can we test our theory.

And for this particular case of hamstring tendinopathy, here are the answers to those questions

1. 1.Yes she had had a big bike injury where she was knocked off her bike and landed on her left hip two years ago. Guess why she couldn't load that lateral hip? Because she'd injured it!!

3. 2. When we tested her moving side to side, she could not move in that direction

5. 3. When we attempted to load that hip, she could not cope with it at all

And that gives us our place to start, and from there we go through a series of progressions to get her back to loading that hip, then strengthening the hamstring, then strengthening the rest of the body (this was key as she hadn't ever done any proper strength training).

1. Get her to return to cycling.

2. We returned her to treadmill running.

3. We returned her to road running.

4. We returned her to competition.

5. She PB'd her 5K and is pain-free

7. She is now preparing for the European Championships in the summer

She went from not being able to sit down to competing in Europe.

The journey wasn't too long. It just needed the right starting point.

So if your heart lies with fitness, but you feel like you're a long, long way away from it - the journey might be shorter than you think. You just need to find the right place to start.