Wednesday, December 24, 2014

Can You Control Your Joints

Around 6 weeks ago I crashed my cyclocross bike dismounting and hitting a barrier in a glorious nonathletic move.  I went one direction while my bike flew in the opposite direction.  Somewhere in the chaos I had a shearing shot of pain in my lower back.  Luckily I could pedal mostly pain free, running was not great, but doable.  I knew I could finish the race, but that the next week was going to suck.

The following week did suck.

The 2nd week sucked a little less.

A month later, you could pretty much say I was pain free, moving, lifting traveling without any difficulty.  I was 100% correct?

This is where we stop in our rehabilitation process for most of us.  Including myself.  Once we are pain free and back to our daily activities we are good to go.  In the immortal words of Lee Corso, "Not so fast my friend."

I decided to film myself and see how my intersegmental cat/camel was doing.  It's something I learned in Functional Range Conditioning.  It's a way to evaluate if you have motor control of your spine.  Your spine should move!  I was shocked at how bad I was.  Granted I hadn't been training it well for awhile, but this was pretty bad.  (You can see the video over on my Instagram page.  DRjasonross.)

I had no motor control.  Almost a guarantee that I am just waiting on my next lower back moment even though I feel great.

It is an interesting thought process to wonder how my intersegmental motor control was pre accident.  Would I have been able to crash without creating a lower back trauma if my motor control had been better?

There really is no way to prevent injury.  But, perhaps we can definitely create a more resilient body that is more resistant to injury.


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