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 :)