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June 21, 2007
Retraining my neuromuscular memory
It was again hard to get up this morning, despite the fact that it was super sunny. I even thought I overslept because it was so bright out. But I made my usual bus and got to the gym with a good chunk of time to work out. I am very happy to say that I felt better on the elliptical than I have probably in weeks. Hooray! I did not have to think about whether I was stressing my knee in a weird way because it didn't hurt. Whoo-hoo! We'll see how long this lasts, but I'm enjoying it for the moment. I also biked a little and that felt fine too. I think I took advantage of feeling pretty good and worked hard, because I was starving when I got back to the locker room.
I met with a new physical therapist today, someone at Georgetown (Univ. Hospital). The knee doctor recommended him and I decided to try it because it is so nice to just walk there from my office in 5 minutes rather than driving to Arlington and having to deal with paying for parking, moving the car every four hours, etc.
It turned out that I really liked this guy. He did a very thorough evaluation, including watching me squat (not pretty) and comparing things on my right and left legs to show me that there were some significant differences in flexibilty. He doesn't think the inner knee pain is pes pain; he thinks it is the way my knee is tracking combined with a really tight IT band and bad biomechanics. But the good news is he thinks he can do a lot to help those biomechanics and imbalances and he is a big proponent of strength training, which I love. The doctor had mentioned that taping might work for me but this guy doesn't think I need it as long as we work on correcting my biomechanics. I'm willing to try it!
I lifted tonight and while I was in the gym, I missed a huge downpour. Fortuitous because I did not bring my umbrella. I got caught in a bit of drizzle on my walk home, but it all worked out pretty well considering my lack of preparedness!
Posted by becky at June 21, 2007 8:48 PM