Doing a half-ass job

My butt fell asleep. Two months of physical therapy, $300 in orthotics, and more tape than Santa uses to wrap presents, and the source of my chronic knee pain is a weak booty.

I fell victim to patellofemoral and IT band syndromes in September, just weeks before the Chicago Marathon. Since then, I’ve done nothing but try to reverse the damage. I went straight to physical therapy, followed my PT’s directions like a scared kid in Catholic school, and spent three months stretching, strengthening and inflicting pain upon myself with a foam roller.

Three months later, I’m a giant Gumby with rock-hard abs, no money and a shattered faith in physical therapy.

I’ll start at the beginning (brace yourself, this is long). The pain under my right knee started after the monsoon-like race that was the Chicago half. Later that week, I had to stop mid-run when I felt a sharp pain on the outside of my left knee – my IT band. I was not about to mess around, so immediately I put in a call to Beaumont to find a good physical therapist. John, they assured me, worked with a lot of athletes; he would know what to do.

John was not the bodybuilding badass I expected him to be. In fact, he wasn’t even John. When the flamboyant Jonathon greeted me in his pink Polo shirt, perhaps I should have been skeptical, but I didn’t want any subconscious homophobia to interfere with my therapy, so I put my knees in Jonathon’s hands.

He was a big proponent of stretching my hamstrings and strengthening my quads – textbook solutions for patellofemoral syndrome, so I can’t really blame him for this. But one month into my therapy, I was worse than when I started. Jonathon sent me back to the doctor, where I was advised to pop pills three times a day and pay half-a-month’s rent for custom orthotics.

The pain just continued to get worse. When I couldn’t run at all, I tried biking. It hurt to bike, so I tried swimming. I swam every day for a week and tore my rotator cuff. I was falling apart.

It got the point where the only thing I could do, other than physical therapy, was Pilates. Then, one day I was in class at the Y and the teacher asked us to get into a plank position or the modified on-your-knees version. Since my shoulder and knees were both useless, I couldn’t even do either. I walked out on the class feeling like some kind of quadriplegic.

Not until my physical therapy expired (my HMO ran out) and my knees were so bad that little old ladies at church were starting to pray for me, did I take matters into my own hands.

In Googling desperation, I discovered a Web site that advocated strengthening glute muscles to resolve patellofemoral pain. The theory is this: When you run, your gluteus medius and minimus muscles provide balance and control for your femurs, which help keep your hips, knees and ankles aligned. 
But an inhibited gluteus medius can cause other muscles in your legs to overcompensate, leading to all kinds of problems.

My Eureka moment came the other night, while trying to do a bridge pose with one leg extended. I remembered reading that this pose was supposed to work your gluteus minimus. Why, then, did I feel like my hamstrings were doing all the work? I stood up and tried to flex my butt muscles, one side at a time. It sort of worked on the left side. Then I tried the right. I couldn’t do it. It was as if my right glute muscles were sleeping. Or to put it more literally, I had been doing a half-ass job.

I’ve spent the past three days doing exercises to isolate and activate my gluteus minimus. Amazingly, I FINALLY feel an improvement taking place. Let’s just hope this theory continues to work!