Running – A Real Pain in the Butt

Running is my soulmate workout! It was the original workout that had me fall in love with fitness. I first fell in love with it in high school, when I was actually forced into the sport. My older brother was on the boys cross country team and I remember a specific moment when I watched one of his cross country meets. The boys were sprinting into the finish then immediately hunched over, having difficulty breathing and looking like death. During that moment I turned to my Mom and said, “Why would anyone ever want to do that to themselves? I will never become a runner.” A few short months later guess who joined the cross country team? THIS GIRL! All it took was one coach who told me he thought I had good endurance during basketball practice and thought I’d be great at cross country. Funny how coaches can influence you like that. I was okay at basketball and soccer, but I sure wasn’t a star. Then my parents told me that I could quit band if I joined cross country and track. Score, done deal!

A few practices into the cross country season I found out that I was actually pretty good at running and I was enjoying it! I discovered the “runners high”; which makes the difficulty to breath part and looking like death all worth it!

Like I’ve said before, running was what got me into fitness. And I enjoyed it so much that I continued to do it on my own after high school. I did little strength training and never really had issues with injuries until last spring. I’ve done every distance from a 5k to a full marathon and never had any injuries that bothered me more than a couple of weeks. After doing longer distances for a while, I decided that 5k’s were my absolute favorite. The last few years I’ve really focused on running a killer 5k and beating my personal records. When I started focusing on speed workouts and pairing it with strength training that’s when I really started to get good at 5k’s. But after a couple of years of that I started to notice tighter hip flexors. I foam rolled my way through it and would ignore it. Well apparently that wasn’t good enough. Last Fall I really hit a wall. My running times were no longer getting better, and my hips were really starting to bother me and held me back. I continued to run through the pain. My last 5k last Fall is what really did me in. I completed the race, but experienced the worst pain ever in my glute which traveled all the way down the back of my leg to my calf. The next day I was limping and could barley walk. This is when I knew I had to do something to get better. I was not about to give up running completely! There are people older than me who were kicking my butt!

So I did my research and soon discovered that I was experiencing Piriformis Muscle Syndrome. Here’s my best shot at explaining this without confusing you. The Piriformis Muscle is a small muscle in your glutes that is covered by larger muscles and is hard to get to. It also covers the sciatic nerve, which travels from the lower back down into the legs (that explained the pain I was experiencing all the way down the back of my leg). The piriformis is important for hip and leg movement; an extremely important function for runners and many other activities! When the piriformis muscle puts pressure on the sciatic nerve you will experience tingling, numbness and pain in the lower back, hips, butt and legs. How do you solve this? Strengthen the piriformis muscle! My piriformis muscles were weak and trying to keep up with the surrounding muscles, hence all the pain I was experiencing. It was time to do something about it!

Road to Recovery: I stopped running for a good 1-2 months. It was KILLING ME, but I knew running wasn’t making things better. Through the winter I focused on just strength training and other forms of cardio conditioning. I was still struggling through some pain during those workouts, but I was not about to stop. Aside from my regular lifting and cardio conditioning I came up with a routine that would strengthen the smaller muscles in my glutes and hips. I do these exercises at least 2-3x’s a week after a run. Trust me, the tedious exercises make a big difference! Exercise is no fun when your body doesn’t work properly. Later on in the winter I started to add in one 3 mile run a week. Slowly but surely I’ve become just about 100% pain free! I finally had the urge to sign up for the IL 5k to start off Spring2017– I ran a minute slower than my PR, but I still placed in the top 10 out of 4,145 females, and 1st in my age group out of 436 females. I will take it for the first race of the year after a long road to recovery! I’m also happy to report that I ran it pain free and experienced no pain in the butt!

Are your weak hips and glutes holding you back from having a good, pain free run? Perform these hip and glute strengthening exercises shown in my latest YouTube video after each run to stay injury free and to improve your performance! Also add in 5-10 minutes of foam rolling before and after your run.

Happy Running! 🙂

#Running