Here to Help You

Triathlon Forum
1

Hi,

Several athletes have asked me to visit your forum to see if I can help you to find answers to various pains. My name is Julie Donnelly and I’m a deep muscle therapist in New York. I’ve been working with athletes for two years and have a special connection with Ironman Triathletes. In fact, I began my on-line self-treatment clinics with the athletes who were posting on the IMU (Ironman Utah) forum. I’ll be teaching Julstro Self-Treatment Clinics at Ironman Lake Placid and Ironman Kona, hope to see you there.

If you have any aches and pain that you would like help with, just let me know and I’ll be happy to help. It’s really important for you to release the spasms in the muscles. Spasms cause the muscles to be tight, putting pressure on the insertion points at the joint. This can cause problems such as Achilles tendonitis, as well as hip/knee/ankle pain and a long list of conditions that can be easily corrected by self-treatment.

The most important muscle I’ve found is called the psoas. It originates at your lumbar vertebre, goes through the inside of your pelvis and inserts onto the front of your thigh bone, at the very top. When the psoas contract you either bend over (as in the aerodynamic position while cycling), lift your leg or sit down. That means that the muscle is contracted 95% of your life (you bend your legs while you sleep), and you most likely never stretch it.

The psoas is the reason why your low back hurts when you get off your bike after 112 miles and you try to stand up to run. The tightened muscle is now too short to go from the lumbar vertebre to the femur (thigh bone). So it pulls down on your lumbar vertebre, compressing on the disks, impinging the nerves, and literally pulling on the bone (like pulling your hair will hurt your scalp). You need to stretch it in order to make it long enough to stop the pain. (I’ll talk about this in a minute).

Also, a contracted psoas will rotate (slightly, but that’s all it takes) your pelvis forward, which is overstretching your hamstrings, and your quads will shorten because of the rotation. This causes pain in the gluts, as well as the front and back of the knee.

If you are interested in reading about how muscles cause joint pains, and also more about the psoas, as well as the treatment for the psoas, it’s on my website: www.julstro.com. Look in the section titled “Muscles and Pain”. Also, if you have any problems that you’d like to see if we can work together to relieve, please feel free to ask. You can either ask me here, or come to the forum on my website.

Good luck with your training, I hope I can be of help.

Wishing you well,

 Julie
2

…What exactly is ART (active reflex therapy)? And, what makes it different (assuming there is a difference) from basic concepts of Myofascial (trigger point) Therapy? Is ART simply a form Myofascial therapy going under a different name or does it truly have a different purpose and/or effect? And, when would one or the other be appropriate (again, assuming they are significantly different forms of therapy)?

Joe Moya

3

Hi Joe,

Trigger Point Therapy is a system of finding spasms that refer pain to areas sometimes far from the point of the spasm. By keeping pressure on the spasm the lactic acid is pressed out, and the fiber lengthens. You can also learn how to do trigger point therapy to yourself, which is the best of all worlds. It’s great to have a qualified therapist who can work on you, but the therapist can’t be there all the time, that’s when you need to be able to do it to yourself.

From what I’ve seen (and I will look into it further) ART is a more active approach to trigger point therapy where the therapist assists the lengthening of the fibers by moving the limb to stretch the muscle.

If I get more information, I’ll come back with it. Perhaps someone else who reads the forum will have better information on this technique. I’ll also ask the athletes who come to my forum (www.julstro.com) if they know anything about it.

Wishing you well,

 Julie
5

I just went to the site. She writes about a stretch on this page http://www.julstro.com/current_issue.html under the sub-heading “The Key to Relieving Low Back Pain.” I just tried the stretch and will keep doing it for a few days to monitor the results. I have also found that tight hip flexors can really pull on the lower lumbar region, causing additional back pain. The stretch for that is pretty basic, just holding something like a lunge position.

Best,

David in Taipei

6

Hi,

The lunge position can be used to treat the psoas and the rotators of the hip. When you are doing the lunge, just drop your trunk back toward your foot (you won’t be able to go to far, but you’ll certainly feel the stretch). Only go to the “hurts so good” point, not to where it is painful.

Wishing you well,

 Julie