The Egoscue Method
Why The Egoscue Method Is Worth It
How do you usually handle an injury? What if the Egoscue method was the answer to eliminate chronic pains?
Are you honest enough to yourself to recognise the early signs of a minor pain that will eventually develop into a severe injury if you resist seeking proper treatment?
Isn't it often easy to convince yourself that the pain will dissolve if only you throw down plenty of ibuprofen to numb the symptoms just to get through the next running session? Or are you in the midst of preparing yourself for your next ultrarunning challenge and simply cannot afford to rest?
It's a real mind game and it works for a while until you hit that threshold when, all of a sudden, the pain becomes intolerable. The Egoscue Method was designed to help you at exactly this point. Once you've overstepped your pain threshold, you're no longer in a state of denial. You're forced to take a step back, take a very close look at the cause of your pain and accept that the body is trying to tell you something.
Pain is also telling us something is not happening that should be happening. The site of the pain is also rarely the site of the problem!
The Egoscue Method is a tried-and-tested breakthrough system for eliminating chronic pain without surgery, drugs or expensive physical therapy. Pete Egoscue is a renowned physiologist and sports injury consultant to some of today's top athletes. The method has an astounding 95% success rate.
The key to reaping the benefits from this method is to do a series of gentle exercises and carefully constructed stretches.
As ultrarunners, we are somewhat used to dealing with physical pains throughout our 'careers' and have accepted that it's almost impossible to go about absolutely pain-free. An injury is the body's reaction to stress it can no longer handle and can indeed help you to identify better what type of training and races your body can best tolerate. It teaches us to re-define our training principles , taking a closer look at our running gear, precisely running shoes, and also view an injury as a sign to make relaxation an integral part of your training.
With the Egoscue method you'll learn that the first step to heal the body is to accept the injury and secondly, look at the cause and ignore the symptoms.
How do I best cure a foot problem?
I'm currently treating my heel injury and religiously follow the exercises provided in Pete Egoscue's book 'Pain Free'. In there is so much useful information and whenever I feel a little niggle or more severe pains deriving from running I turn to the book and dedicate as much time as necessary to the exercises.
For about one week I've been doing four exercises each day, often twice. The routine only takes me ten minutes and with no additional treatment other than homeopathy, I was able to run pain-free for an hour today. I will keep on doing the stretches for a while longer.
In addition to the two stretches on the photographs, add the Sitting-against-the-wall exercise to this routine, too.
All of these exercises are geared to counteract dysfunctional loading of the foot.
Now explore the Egoscue Method in detail and follow a similar routine if you're currently dealing with foot pains.
This e-cise restores ankle flexibility and strengthens the flexion and extension muscles. Circle the foot clockwise 30 times and reverse the direction of the circling foot afterward. Change sides and repeat.
For Point Flexes, stay in the same position and bring the toes back toward the shin to flex, then reverse the direction to point the foot. Switch legs and repeat 20 times.
For this calf stretch, lie on your back , with knees bent and feet flat on the floor hip-width apart. For the calf stretch, encircle the ball of the foot with a rope. Tighten your thigh while pulling toes back with the strap and hold for 30 seconds. Repeat on the other side.
For the hamstring stretch, use the same postition but strap the rope around the arch of the foot. Pull the entire leg toward your body, keeping it straight and the thigh tight. Hold for 30 seconds.
This exercise reintegrates all the muscles from the hip to the foot.
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