Screen yourself!

After you have a baby in Germany, the new mom gets 4 visits with the physical therapist! New Zealand also has similar care. New moms should see a PT that works with women's health or sports. Blogger Kate Hall writes the PT "can help with diastasis (abdominal separation), posture, and pelvic floor strength and suggests appropriate exercises.  These interventions often result in reduced incontinence, back pain and diastasis, and provide a faster return to normal posture and body mechanics, including sexual intercourse". There are definitely valuable tips they can give you. If you are looking for someone close to you visit the APTA site.

My biggest tip is give an injury no more than 2 weeks to heal on its own. If you can't run/exercise without pain after 2 weeks, it's time to see a medical professional. In my biased opinion, you should see your physical therapist because we are the musculoskeletal expert.

If you are not injured and  just want to screen yourself, you can test yourself. Physical therapists use tests like 'single leg squat' to see what a patient's overall strength and flexibility look like.

• Give your cell phone on video mode to someone
•  do 5 squats on just the right leg (just small baby squats- if they hurt STOP).
• Now do the same on the left. Stop reading till you have the video on-hand because if you know what it's suppose to look like, you might cheat.
  
  Look at your video, freeze the frame, and see if your hip, knee and foot are alingned. Watch for any rolling in or out (pronation/ supination) at your feet or any leaning at your trunk (shoulder in line with foot?). Basically, things should line up and if they don't, you might want to further investigate why
  

Good..shoulder, hip, knee and foot in line

Not so good..this is how your left foot lands during your run!

(knee rotating in, pronating foot, hip out, shoulder out)

Not so good..foot out, knee rotating out, hip in, shoulder in

Did the test generate more questions than answers? Is it weakness or tightness? Most women are flexible and the poor alignment happens due to weakness, especially post-baby. The posts to follow will walk you through my recommendations.

Got questions? email me ShefaliChristopher at gmail dot com :)

Who the heck are you??

In 2010 I was in the best shape of my life. As I crossed the finish line at Ironman Louisville tears filled my eyes. I had crossed an item off my bucket list. It was a painful, 15 hour ordeal, but it was done. If you are like me, it was time to look down the list and start working towards the next goal. So I picked an equally arduous sequel: having a baby.

I always thought that I would run till the day the baby was due, but as I got bigger muscles started getting loose and out of whack. I decided to be a smart athlete and I swam and biked to the best of my body's ability.

And then the ordeal began. Labor? No, labor was the easiest part!! After 15 hours of writhing in pain and no sign of the little guy I put my ego aside (more for the sake of my husband and mom, who were getting more upset with every contraction/mean thing I said to them) and I got the epidural. Then, I rested and prepared for the finish. Another 9 hours, later we started pushing and I got to hold the best thing that has ever happen to me.

I say labor was easy because the lack of sleep and the inability to exercise regularly during the year that followed was way harder for me (and my husband). On the occasional days I tried to run, I felt everything move in ways that it shouldn't (the curse of being a physical therapist!), so I decided to work on strengthening instead. TRX was my go-to sanity pill because it made me feel like I had a goal that I could conquer (I don't recommend it unless you have some understanding about form and body compensations because you can hurt yourself).

The real reason I write this blog is that in my years as a practicing physical therapist I have seen many, MANY athletes who started running after having a baby which, 2-5 years later, led to injury  All around me, good friends are having babies and "running" to get back into shape. I more than anyone understand this desire for normalcy, routine, endorphins, etc. but I urge you, YES YOU to do some strengthening, even if it's just a few exercises before and after the run to make sure you can stay injury free for a long time. Better still, look on the APTA website for a OCS or SCS PT near you and get them to look at your running form and decide if you are strong enough to run the distances you think you can handle. 

This Blog is going to take readers, step by step, through the process of getting stronger. I will keep it brief and simple and offer 1-2 tips a week (depending what the kid and work allow), which can help you identify weaknesses and work on them. I will also try and read the latest research and give you a quick, down and dirty synopsis of the article. I will provide the link so if you are nursing for the next hour you could read the article yourself. However, if you have 10 seconds to scroll through the best starter exercise for your hips, core, hamstrings, etc., you'll have them right in front of you as well.

In my perfect world every mom, soon-to-be mom or person who is new to endurance sports will have a fun, injury-free career. So lift up your glass (i'm done pumping today!!), and stay tuned for the next post!