DMGStretching
Stretching is the spinnach of the excercise world. We all know we should stretch before and after excercise, we all know that it has benefits, but I know very few people that incorporate it into their daily routine.
For the record: I'm one of those few people. Whenever I get home from a run, and at the end of a night at the climbing gym, I spend 10 to 15 minutes stretching.
I'm convinced of stretching's importance, so when the opportunity to learn more popped up, I jumped. On Saturday morning, Deanne and I headed down to Phase IV in Santa Monica for a short lecture on stretching.
The lecture itself was pretty standard, and summary of the benefits of stretching. I was really impressed with our instructor, Kent Moody's depth of knowledge. He has 40 years of running, cycling, and swimming experience. He understood my ITB issues immediately, and knew exactly how to modify various stretches to be more in line with my particular issues. (Doing a quad stretch with a strap instead of my hand, for instance, alleviated some strain I was feeling on the outside of my knees.
I also talked a bit with a woman who's also dealing with an ITB injury. She's just at the onset stage, so she's lucky: if she gets good advice and follows it, she'll be back in business soon. I told her what has worked for me (stretching, massage, stability excercises), and tried to emphasize that every injury is different, and that ever person is different, so there isn't going to be one fix that works for everyone, or that works every time. When you're injured, you have to engage in the treatment process much more than you would even a training program. You can pick up a script for a fartlek session, and just do what it says. Healing after an injury doesn't work that way. You have to do a lot of your own navigating.
I'm hoping to work more with Phase VI. I'm impressed so far, so I'm hoping to do their running gait/mechanics session. As I build up my running again, this is the perfect time to kick bad habits and learn good ones.