As I entered week seven of my recovery I was discouraged and frustrated.
I felt as if I had had a major set back and was not able to do the exercises I wanted to do each day. I started taking my anti-inflammatory medications again and increased my ice regimen. I also had to rest a lot more than I wanted. I felt like my two PT sessions were wasted on manual manipulation and remedial exercises like you see pictured here to the right. My physical therapist assured me that recovery isn’t linear and set backs were expected so as long as I took it easy for a few days I would begin to see impovements again.
I was at least still able to do my daily modified knee/elbow planks and the stationary bike for 20-40 minutes. It just didn’t feel quite right for over a week.
Below you can see one of my least favorite exercises: the Dead Bug. It’s an exercise we commonly do with beginner Pilates clients to challenge pelvic and spine stability, coordination and core strength. It also requires hip flexor strength which is the one of the things that had flared up on my hip. If you look closely, you’ll see all the cupping marks on my right thigh. My PT used this method a lot to release the tightness in my IT band and glute and to help releive pain around the hip.
I still did some footwork each day at the studio on two-and-a-half springs with both feet pushing off the footbar in parallel just to keep my strength up. I also added pushing off the stablity cushion with only two springs to see how that felt. I had to wait for the weird twinge sensation in my hip to stop before I could get back to the workouts I really wanted to do. At PT we did a little bit of flexband work for balance and strenghtening of deep intrinsic hip jointline muscles. These exercises were actually very effective and helped with balance and core strength. I’ll post additional photos of these moves after another week of rest as I start to feel the pain and tenderness subside and begin to slowly increase my work again.
