How Somatics Can Help Runners

I wanted to highlight a recent and important blog post by Martha Peterson called How Somatics Can Help  Runners. I have been on a years long search to find the best ways to recover my stride as a runner. I have found many useless ideas as well as many promising exercises that may help this aging beat-up runner get back to the form and feeling that I lost along the roads and trails of New Hampshire. I really like Somatics and Martha Peterson's book "Move Without Pain" and her  DVDs which are an integral part of helping me get the "feel" back into my legs and my whole body as I make my journey back into running. The book is clearly written and has the photographs and instructions to help you understand the movements and how to do them properly. It also presents the rational for learning Somatics. I highly recommend it to any athlete that wants to explore and restore lost movement patterns. I ordered my third DVD, Pain-Free Athletes: No Pain, All Gain last week and like the previous two DVDs, Pain Relief Through Movement: The Basics and Pain-Free Legs and Hips, that I have, I learned all sorts of new ways to move and the timing of doing the movements (go slow and don't force). Sometimes a new movement just reaches out and immediately my body says, "Ahhhh!" like it reopened up a new possibility of movement that I had been guarding against. As I am building up my running, post hip surgery last summer, I have a lot of patterns to relearn and years of compensations prior to the surgery that I have to erase.

In her new post, Martha writes about deals with the issues of sensory motor amnesia with runners. That is my story with so many years of my running. She says:

• When you’re injured, your muscles reflexively adapt and learn to move differently. This is called compensation.
  
• Long term compensation develops into sensory motor amnesia (SMA).
• Running while compensating for an injury doesn’t doesn’t change what your muscles are doing; it only creates more compensation.
• You must first eliminate the compensatory pattern (the SMA), and then you can regain your original running form.

Anyone that has run with me could probably "see" this with my form and could hear my complaints through the years as I tried to figure out what was wrong with my running. It is not long-lost cases like mine where it is so obvious that something is wrong. On the running message boards and forums, I see so much written about inactive glutes, a loss of coordination in leg while running, or many other posts asking for help about injuries. I wonder how many runners just "quit" when they lose the feel for running or can't get out of an injury pattern? I think Martha's ideas and Somatics could help a lot of athletes, injured or not. The movements are simple, painless, and powerful and the payback for doing them may keep you running for a long time.

When you read her post on running, you will discover some of the reasons that runners can start creating compensations that may eventually derail their running career: running on injuries, running on paved slanted roads, running with limited hip movement, and running with orthotics or supportive shoes. These are just a few of the things that many runners are guilty of doing on a regular basis. We are not invincible. Eventually these may lead to injuries or compensationary patterns that we can't get out of. As you can see by the credit at the end of Martha's post I tried to give her some feedback while she was writing this post, but I really want to thank her for her insights as she answers my questions and gives advice and encouragement.  Currently I am rethinking my use of orthotics while running.

Martha gives a few Somatic exercises that may help runners prior to going for a run or post run. It is just a starting point. You can search her site and find videos or descriptions of some of these and other movements. I would highly recommend trying out one of her DVDs along with her book. I would also suggest reading through her blog and website. The original book by Thomas Hanna on Somatics is called Somatics: Reawakening The Mind's Control Of Movement, Flexibility, And Health. I find Martha's book easier to read and it certainly has better and easier pictures to follow, but is it is the source book from the founder of Somatics.

Somatics: Pain Relief Through Movement

I graduated from Physical Therapy with Leigh Boyles yesterday. I celebrated with a trip to the YMCA and a treadmill run. I wanted to run harder than I had been going and eventually ended the run at 5 miles at my fastest pace yet. It felt good. Some wobbling on the left side, but things are improving. I also had 4 trigger point injections in my left glutes on Friday. I think they have loosened things up a bit. I have been feeling tightness in my adductors at times and I also feel tight at the front of the left hip. I asked Leigh about this and she said that as the front of my hip loosens up (by pushing back as I run) the adductors should feel better.


 One thing that Leigh has been mentioning all along is that I have to retrain the way my brain works through proprioceptive work. This is something the Gait Guys have mentioned as well as Dr. Michaud in the past weeks. There was the mentioning, but finding out what to do about it is hard to do. Sure, some exercises and taping have helped me, I am running noticeably straighter, but how do you get your brain to change your whole-body movement patterns?



Last summer, right before my hip surgery, I discovered something called somatics through Martha Peterson's blog Pain Relief Through Movement and webpage. Some of her movements helped my hip in the weeks prior to my surgery when I was in Kenya. I received her DVD after I returned from Kenya and started going through it again post-surgery a while back. I have been doing the movements more frequently and then I got her newly published book Move Without Pain this month which has new exercises as well as guides to those on the DVD. It also includes a good overview of somatics.

It is a very simple to understand book to both read and use. The pictures and text structure make it easy to read and follow. While the DVD guides you through the exercises and the speed as to how to do them, the book is easier to pull out and review before doing an exercise. These are not exercises that will leave you stiff and sore like yoga or stretching can often do, but they are exercises that feel good and leave you feeling changed. I am not ready to thoroughly review the book at this time, but I do want to highlight the key ideas of somatics. You can read more here from Martha's blog.

1) Sensory Motor Amnesia- This happens when muscles are so tight that they will not relax. One thing that I found very interesting is something that Martha mentions in her book: what looks like a structural abnormality can be an issue of sensory motor function -tight muscles that won't relax. The point of somatics is that because the brain and nervous system control the muscles you have to engage the brain to unlock muscle patterns.

2) Three Reflex Patterns- In somatics there are full body reflex patterns that people us in reaction to stress. The Green Light Reflex involves an arching of constantly tight back muscles. The Red Light Reflex is another stress related posture with a rounded back due to anxiety or fear or from sitting all day hunched over a computer. The Trauma Reflex is a response to an accident or injury and involves a twist or rotation as a way to avoid injury or pain. This can lead to imbalances as your body gets stuck in this pattern.

3) Pandiculation- This is the somatic alternative to stretching. It works like a reset button. It involves making a tight contraction, followed by a slow release of the contraction to lengthen the muscle, and a complete relaxation at the end.

Somatics uses these ideas to help you rebuild your movement patterns and get rid of chronic pain. I highly recommend Martha's website, DVD (more are promised to come out soon), and her book Move Without Pain. It might just be the method to get you to get out of pain, move better, and to recover your stride.

I have emailed back and forth with Martha and she graciously offered to do a Skype session with me. I won't go into too much specifics, but will write down the things I need to remember before I forget them. It was an awesome experience to have someone so knowledgeable take a look at how I move, perform exercises, and offer me ideas to pursue.

We worked on the side-bend (one of the exercises I had found before going to Kenya that helped my sore hip and back before the labral-tear surgery). I learned some tips on doing this move, but most important, I need to slow down when doing it. Here is an tutorial for the side-bend.



We also worked on the back-lift (directions here) and then she gave me a different exercise for my tight illiopsoas that I don't recall as being in the book or on the first DVD but is found right here.

I was also told to check out this post on 3 common mistakes when doing Somatic exercises and this post on Standing Tall and Walking.

I had a valuable learning time with Martha on Skype (first time I have ever Skyped) and a thank Martha for her time, knowledge, and inspiration.

Attack Mode

For the last two weeks, I have been on attack mode. I am doing all I can to get myself healed up and it's been enlightening. I have had 4 doctors visits (3 different doctors) as well as 2 PT sessions. I am very hopeful that with all the advice, knowlege, and work that things will start progressing quicker.

First, I had the visit with Dr. Michaud who measured all my angles and joints and gave me somewhat of a confirmation of things that aren't right and what to do to get stronger. A few days after that I went to Dr. Dannenburg and he did manipulations on my knee-popliteus and on a cuboid bone in my foot that was causing my foot to be stuck and not work or move correctly. I also had PT work each week where I am getting graston technique done on my popliteus and surrounding muscles as well as getting taped around my knee as a proprioceptive thing to get my body and mind used to a better positioning of my knee. Today I had 4 trigger point injections into my glute medius. I will go back every two weeks for more for 2 or 3 more times.

My goal 2 weeks ago was to run only a mile or two each day. I got in 7 straight days of running before my glute medius tied up after one run and things fell apart again. The good news this weel was the physiatrist wanted me to stress my glute medius before the injections this morning so I ran 10 miles on the treadmill last night. That was my longest run since August 2010 and if felt good to go that long.

So I have had work on my feet by the podiatrist, on my knees and popliteus through PT, and on my glutes through the trigger point injections. That should cover a lot of things and hopefully everything will play nice together. I have also been doing all my PT work to get my hips strong. I will say that when I run on the treadmill, my hips stay aligned and straight which is very different from how I ran before surgery. Everything from the knee up looks a lot better than before. It is just the left leg rotating out that looks bad. It had appeared to be pointing out about 40 degrees  last month, after seeing Dr. Dannenberg it improved to about 20 degrees, but if I pushed off more on the foot, it got down to about 10 degrees. That tells me I can improve on things.

Despite all that work, I have also written back and forth a bit with Martha Peterson this week and learning more about somatics. I found a few of her videos and postings online a few days before I went to Kenya this summer and some of her exercises helped keep my pain at bay during that trip. I got her DVD, but didn't start working on the movements until recently again as I was letting my hip heal from surgery. She also just published her book Move Without Pain which I have been reading and enjoying very much. Somatics deals with sensory motor training and reteaches the body how to move properly. I enjoy the movements and their effect and they don't "hurt" my body like yoga or stretching often can. I will have more to say on this at a later date, but her book and video are top notch.

Here is a new hip movement from Martha's soon to be released DVD "Pain-Free Legs and Hips" .