How to Improve Core Strength: Foundation Exercises

The Founder is my favorite exercise for when I am feeling tight. I have been using is as my go-to drill in order to loosen up for a couple of years now. I wrote about it here with some videos from Foundation Training's  Dr. Eric Goodman and Peter Park who also wrote the book Foundation: Redefine Your Core, Conquer Back Pain, and Move with Confidence as well as the Foundation Training DVD.  According to their thinking, the core is not just your abs! Think about the core as the muscles around your back, too!  Here is a video of Dr. Matt Rabin of the UK using Foundation Training with cycling's Team Garmin. He goes through four of the Foundation Training exercises (there are more) including the Founder, the Windmill, the Lunge Stretch, and the Woodpecker. These are all explained and demonstrated quite well on the other videos, but it is sometimes good to get a fresh look at how to perform an exercise. I highly recommend the Foundation book to understand about strengthening the core  as well as trying out these exercises. I never feel sore from doing these exercises and I always feel better after doing them. These drills aren't just specific for cyclists, this video is of a cycling team. They work for anyone, even someone who rides an ElliptiGO!

Happiness is an 8 mile run

Well Charlie Brown, there are lots of things that bring happiness, but if you would ever lace up some running shoes you might just find that a good run makes you feel...happy!

This was not the best week for running. I got in a mile at the YMCA on Monday in between work on the stationary bikes. There are 9 laps to a mile and you have to dodge around walkers, joggers, and the occasional kids who is just bouncing in and out all over the track. The tight corners aren't the best for my hip, but I like that I am a bit more agressive with pace. I got it in at 6:55, but I was huffing and puffing like I was going about a minute faster as I aim so out of shape.

Thursday I got in 2 miles on my treadmill, but the next day I was feeling it. I don't think the treadmill gives me enough variety and after every treadmill run I get a bit achy in my joints the next day. It looked like it was going to be another rough week.

I have one new goal and that is not to run when I feel "off" and I was feeling "off" all week. After PT on Wednesday, when I was told what I think is muscle pain could be a pinched nerve coming from a disc problem, I decided to look that up a bit. I found a few articles pointing to McKenzie exercises that look easy enough. Here is a PDF of simple McKenzie exercises. I tried these and they seemed interesting and they made sense as the Sphinx and Cobra are a similar move to what I have been doing with the Foundations Founder and they are much easier. I also found this video that demonstrates a different take on them.



These are easy enough, but I found after doing them that my back and left leg felt a lot better. Sunday, I decided to give running a shot again as it was such a nice day. For whatever the reason, I felt looser than I have post surgery and a lot more balanced. I did my 8 miler and I felt pretty good and I even felt at times that I was floating down the road. I did not get post run tightness and it was my fastest 8 miler post-surgery by 1 1/.2 minutes and on my last two 8 milers I have dropped my time by 3 minutes without even trying. I really enjoyed the run and it left me feeling very happy! It is good to see some progress for a change and my week and outlook suddenly became much better and brighter.
Thursday, I go in for an MRI of my lower back to see if I do have a nerve and disc problem. I wouldn't doubt it and now that I read about the discs and nerves it makes sense from some of the stufff I have experienced over the past years. I know I sometimes feel a twist in the lower spine, and the pains down my leg come and go mysteriously. I would have hoped the labral tear surgery would have fixed me up good, but I created a bit more problems for myself, it seems, over the years.


Here is Dr. Eric Goodman and a co-author of Foundations talking about getting out of chronic pain and that pain is a product of poor movement patterns. He says that learning where the breakdown is, whether a herniation or bulging disk, is a road map towards learning how to change movement patterns, often brought about through sitting. He says a key movement to learn is the hip-hinge. I wish I was aware of this stuff when I jumped into triathlons in the 1980s as I am convinced that is when I started killing my hip and back. I even recall that near the end of that first summer of triathlons that I couldn’t really bend to make my bed as my lower back would hurt too much - and the was the first signal that things weren't going right. I should have learned the hip-hinge at that time. Because my left foot everts out, I locked my left pedal into that toed-out position, which still caused some pain as I kept changing the right-left orientation of my saddle trying to get comfortable. My hip then was jammed further up the chain and due to the angles it did not work right. Did I start developing the labral tear at that time? Because my hip did not rotate properly, the rotation came from my left lower back and I was in constant pain by year 2 of my triathlon racing and that pain stayed with me for the next 25+ years. I am trying to learn, what I didn’t know then, and that is how to move properly. I get worried that sometimes I have done too much damage, but then I get a nice 8 mile run in and it is pure happiness.
 

Dr. Eric Goodman - TedxAmericanRiviera 2011

And here I am doing the 112 mile bike leg of my fourth Cape Cod Endurance Triathlon (full Ironman) in 1986. I could barely sit or stand without pain at this point during a normal day when not exercising, but I knew of no way to stop the pain and insantiy except by quitting the sport.  I didn't and I did one final year. I guess movement is something that brings me happiness, if it didn't, I would have stopped trying to fix things years ago, quit, and become a couch potato, but that is something that I have not enjoyed doing this past year.

Note my race nutrition for the Ironman distance triathlon: a baggie attatched to the handlebars filled with jelly beans!

Release the piriformis and stop jamming your hips

As I am recovering from the hip labral tear surgery, I am still learning new and useful things about the way the body works and correcting poor movement patterns. The book Foundation: Redefine Your Core, Conquer Back Pain, and Move with Confidenceis quite a revelation. I had been doing the basic workouts in the book for only two days and I have already noticed some positive things. As I mentioned on the previous post, I had only done 7 miles of running in the previous 2 1/2 weeks with no run over 2 miles. My body was basically saying, "Don't run like this!" so I didn't.

Yesterday, I woke up feeling aligned and moving well again, and so off I went for a run: an 8 miler and it was the best I have felt post surgery. Here is an explanation of probably the most important of the "Foundation" exercises. It is called the "Founder".



Notice how you press the hips back and where he locates the hinge point. This and the other exercises have already started their work. On the run, my piriformis did not hurt, something it has done on my longer runs, whether during the run or post run. I also noticed my hips are much looser and not jammed tight, as well as I was getting a nice rotation in the hips. These are new experiences for me! Of course, today I am sore, but for a change most of it is muscle soreness in the quads, like you get post Boston Marathon, so maybe I was using them more.

Today, I found these other videos which demonstrate the same lessons on using the hips and freeing the piriformis. They say things in a clear way. If you are having piriformis pain and tightness, maybe it is because you are "squeezing your glutes" and if you hips aren't working right, it is because squeezing the glutes might be jamming your hips. These videos are by Dr. Evan Osar at http://www.fitnesseducationseminars.com/free-videos. There are a lot of interesting videos here worth exploring.

This one shows proper femur postition during exercise and why you shouldn't squeeze your glutes.



In this one Dr. Evan Osar demonstrates  a squat exercise to create more motion and decrease tightness in the hips. This exercise incorporates proper core function during the exercise.



Dr. Evan Osar demonstrates exercises to begin working the piriformis for strength, endurance and stabilization.



Dr. Evan Osar demonstrates exercises for tight piriformis muscl


 Dr. Evan Osar demonstrates exercises to begin working piriformis for strength, endurance and stabilization.



Oh and after 2 days of working on this, I went to my PT session (after the 8 mile run). I was doing squats on a Bosu Ball with an exercise band around my knees to push out against. I was told I was doing excellent squats! I also showed the "Foundations" book to the PT and she said it looked excellent. She liked the exercises and how well the exercises were explained. She said it looked like the book that the FMS (Functional Movement Screen) people should have written.

Losing Power

Saturday night we had a snowstorm that knocked down trees and leafy branches and the power went out. After three nights in the dark, we finally got power and heat this afternoon. Unfortunately, that didn't help my running. Total miles 2 weeks ago = 4 miles. Total one week ago = 2 miles. This week = nothing so far. There are two reasons for this: one,  I feel really tired and two, while my hip feels good and strong I do feel really imbalanced. So I went to the doctor about feeling tired and they did some tests and I was extremely low on vitamin D. They have me doing 50,000 iu once per week for 8 weeks to see if I can get the levels up. I did write about Vitamin D a while back (here and here)and was doing 2,000 iu a day for awhile, but I stopped doing that last winter when I wasn't running. If you are feeling tired, get your vitamin D levels checked.

While my hip feels fine. I was not sure running on it was the best as my muscles just don't feel in balance. I have no problem with that as I had been running for years with imbalances and didn't expect it to change overnight. Knowing what to do about it, is a problem. The PT works on my hip muscles, but the more I do of the exersises the more others things feel off. I had my 3 month checkup last week with the hip surgeon's office. The PA didn't have much to offer as she said that they look at the joint and not the whole body. So she referred me to the Spine Center at the hospital. I went yesterday and the doctor moved my leg around a little, asked a few questions, and ordered an MRI for my lower back. He said he doesn't do the legs, so if he finds nothing on the MRI he'll send me somewhere else. I wish I could find a doctor that actually looks at the whole picture and not just one specific spot on the body!

I think they need to look at my ankle and my knee as something is making my foot evert out to the side again. Some days it seems pretty straight and others days it doesn't. The doctor yesterday did remark to me, "You know your foot is twisting out!" At PT we are working on that some, so I have a lot of question for tomorrow's visit.

Anyhow, when the power was off I did some reading. I read a biography on Mickey Mantle: The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America's Childhood. He was quite a heroic figure playing through some tough injuries, but he was also quite a cad. The treatment for athletic injuries back in his day was pretty rough. I also found a book at Barnes and Noble called Foundation: Redefine Your Core, Conquer Back Pain, and Move with Confidence while I was charging my electronics and using their wifi. I had seen the book advertised before, but it had a forward by Lance Armstrong and I don't always trust what Lance signs up to support plus I thought with the word "core" it might just be another "abs" book. This one is very different and the exercises are targeted to the posterior muscles. They were new to me and the program is simplistic enough that I will give it a shot for awhile.

This video gives a peak into the type of exercises. I will write more after I try the program out. I like how it says it addresses muscular imbalances.