Piriformis of despair

$10 says this is the most visited post I'll have all year.  Not because it's the most interesting, but because the topic hits so many people.  So, let's jump in the wayback machine and travel begrudgingly to late January, when it was still cold (which almost sounds nice).

I hadn't been cycling much at that point, nor doing anything really.  I decided it was time to get back in some sort of shape other than round, and was doing well at that point.  The weight was coming off nicely and I was feeling good about things.  Somewhere towards the tail end of January, I felt like I had a tight left hamstring.  Not like a stage 3 separation, just tight enough I didn't want to try and run on it.  Since hamstrings are notoriously slow to heal, I gave it 6 weeks of gentle stretching, and by the end, it wasn't any better.  In fact, it was really rough at times.  Particularly when I was getting into my car the side bolster would stretch my hammy as I sat on it and then slid into position.  Sometimes that got REALLY painful.  Generally the pain was manageable, but would occasionally flare up.  I got frustrated and decided to go see my chiro.

He's a great chiro, and will adjust me as few times as possible and get me back into the swing of life.  He said my pelvis was rotated and shifted, causing a lot of tightness, with a bunch of other things going on.  I saw him for 4 visits over the course of about 3 weeks, and it wasn't getting any better.  Just a little different, but still in pain.  Further frustration led me to Brian Holdemann, who is chiro but does more soft tissue work.  He's an excellent doc who's treated quite a few Wizards/SKC players as well as working with the U. of Oklahoma.

The first visit seemed to confirm to him that I have piriformis syndrome.  I won't go into great detail, but the piriformis is a pear-shaped muscle underneath your glutes, and it helps with rotation of the leg.  It connects the femur to the tailbone.  When it gets tight/inflammed, it can push on your sciatic nerve, which can cause a myriad of issues.  It was causing my hamstring to tighten, as well as my calf, and if I sat for awhile, my butt cheek, er, glute, would squeeze tight when I stood up.  Not much fun.

Dr Holdemann worked with me for nearly two hours, and I was drenched in sweat.  Not because it was hot, but as Paul Sherwen would say "he's putting him in great difficulty now".  That was some serious pain.  He stretched my muscles in ways that you can't do by yourself.  Nor would you want to.  The majority of stretches were accomplished with him digging his thumb through my hip, holding the muscle still, and then stretching it my moving my leg in various directions.  We also did some TENS therapy, and that probably helped a bit too.

So that has been going on for awhile, and the pain is changing (which he says is good as various muscles release), but it's still there.  It's the worst in the morning right when I wake up, and it's usually pretty good during the day.  Sometimes it gets sore, but it's mostly ok pain wise.  However I still can't do athletic movements very well, as either the muscle is just completely gone or it's learned to be slow to avoid injury.  I'm really surprised it isn't all better yet.  I think I've been good about doing my stretches on my own, but it's just not there.

We did ride our bikes for a short jaunt up to First Watch, and that really compresses on the piriformis, but that didn't seem to hurt it too bad.  It was sore for about 10 minutes at the restaurant, but ok after the ride home.  That was probably the first time I had ridden a bike in 7-8 months.  Kinda sad really.

So here are some of the stretches I've been doing...



I've also been using one of these:

http://www.amazon.com/Trigger-Point-Performance-Revolutionary-Roller/dp/B0040EKZDY

That gets pretty intense, mainly because it is so easy to find the piriformis and just knead the crap out of it.  That makes for a fun Friday night!

As my treatment plan progresses, I'll post updates.  No really, I will.

Sorry, I didn't mean to do that!

Well the hiatus between posts got exponentially longer.  I have to go change a tire on my wife's car, so I figure I'd procrastinate by writing a post instead.

I think I'm going to have go about recounting the last 6 weeks in reverse chronological order, and cover them pretty sparsely.  Otherwise it'll turn into a thesis since we've all been BUSY.

First things first, I'm typing this on a new iMac.  I finally bought into the Apple ecosystem, half out of curiosity and half out of the false hope that my singular purchase would rebound AAPL into the stratosphere.  I'm only down $120 a share.  /sigh  For once I'm glad I'm not really rich and own like 10k shares.  That would be a big pucker factor, although I'd probably be a bit more active in managing my stocks.  Anyway(!), I am enjoying it pretty well, and getting used to the Mac way of life.  It's not terribly different.  Just a different ways of doing things on the keyboard and the same goes for the o/s.  It pays to be a genius.

I'm not sure what happened before that, so I'll just cover all the musical stuff.  I've been to several concerts, Gov't Mule, Tedeschi Trucks Band (my wonderful father's day present), and me and boys are going to see Tab Benoit at the end of July, and then in August, Penny and I are going to the Guitar Circus with BB King, Sonny Landreth, and Peter Frampton.  That should be pretty cool.  I wish I could have seen BB 10 years ago, I hear he doesn't play too much anymore since he's getting up there.  It's great he still tours, but it would have been great to see him closer to his prime.

The opening act for both Gov't Mule and TTB was the Revivialists out of NOLA.  I've really enjoyed discovering their music.  They got a great sound and are a very talented group.  They play a diverse range of music as well.  I'll post up a vid at the end of this post.

Also out of NOLA is Tab Benoit.  I'm learning a couple of his songs right now, and they are really fun to play.  He has a great old blues sound without being too cliche.

Let's see what else...

Ah yes, Father's Day was spent out in the woods at Bear Camp.  I was hesitant about the weather, but it ended up being a great time.  AB had a ton of fun, and I think he's enjoying his summer quite a bit.  He just finished up soccer camp at Rockhurst, where they had Seth Sinovic from SKC up to pep talk the campers (and recruit for his alma mater).  AB is a slab of muscle, and I can scarcely believe it.  We were wrestling yesterday and it's unbelieveable how strong my little 8 year old is.  Time for old dad to start power lifting and juicing otherwise I'll thrown through the wall in the next few years.  Jeesh!

K is wild as always, although he is growing up quick as well.  AB and K play together so well it kind of catches me off guard.  AB can be pretty selective about who he hangs out with, so it's surprising how much he likes his irritating little brother!  K loves to come in first thing in the morning and get some cuddle time in, so that's a nice way to start the day.

I was considering writing a op-ed on the NSA "scandal", but I'll save that for later.  For now, enjoy some tunes!

First up, getcha some Mule!



Next up, the Revivalists...



And the incomparable Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks



And last, but certainly not least, Tab Benoit!

His brilliance is a little brighter than mine

Last week I went to go see one of my favorite bands with one of my favorite guitar players in the world.  I mean Gov't Mule with Warren Haynes.  I'd like to talk about that.  But I just watched something else that I think would be more beneficial for me to share.  I don't think Mr. Haynes will mind.

Samantha Fish at Llewellyn's

Got to go see Samantha Fish two weekends ago, I've been remiss about posting about it.  Not sure why.

If you haven't heard of her, you need to check her out.  I won't recap what's easily found via Google, but she's a KC girl about ready to go big time (she's well on her way, imho).  I love her style of music, kind of swampy rock/blues.  More blues than rock.  She's accessible too, answering a few of my questions on FB, as well as chatting for a bit when we met in Dec.

She plays in KC usually a half dozen times a month, usually at Dirty Lew's, Trouser Mouse, Knuckleheads, or BB's.



She packs the house and I can't say enough about her.  If you get the chance, check her out!

Make up your own title

Things have been going pretty well, despite the rest of the country having issues.  We had two friends in Boston, but both had thankfully finished and were around the corner when the bombs exploded.  I'm thankful that they didn't have to see that kind of carnage.  That would be impossible to get out of your head.  I have varied feelings about the whole issue.  When this kind of thing happens, I wonder what ever got the terrorists to do that in the first place.  I don't agree with a lot of things this country does or how it goes about it, but why would you take that out on the innocents?  Seems a strange way to cause a change, if that's really what you want.  I realize some people just want to hurt others.  That makes me quite sad, sad for the victims, but also sad for the perpetrators.  I wonder what kind of life they would have had to lived to get them to the point that they wanted to hurt so many people.  Victims on both sides of the bomb, I suppose.

Anyway, I don't want to focus on that, and neither should anyone else.  Parts of me think a small percentage of humans are always going to hurt others, and nothing is going to change that.  It's always been that way and will continue to be that way.  Moving on (again)...

We had a busy weekend, and it was a lot of fun.  AB kicked butt all weekend long.  He took 2nd place in his age group at a 5k, then played a soccer game and had baseball practice.  He had a 2nd game on Sunday, and scored 4 goals.  What a maniac!  I'm proud of him, to say the least.  He's running a 4-mile race this weekend with his mom, and he's already raised the bar for his effort.  He ran an 8:30/mile at his 5k, which is nearly a minute faster than any race I've ever ran, and he even beat his mom by 30 sec.  That's amazing.  Especially with how big he is, I figured long-distances wouldn't be his forte, but he sure loves it.

K is talking up a storm these days, more and more with every passing day.  He's funny to talk to, and it's quite a hoot to hear him vocalize what is going through his mind.  He's still pretty wild, but I wouldn't change that for anything.  He had a bad ear infection a week or so ago.  I had him in the doctor's office when his eardrum ruptured and then he proceeded to ooze for the next 3-4 days.  It was startling how much came out of his head.  I can't imagine how much pressure that was before it popped.  Dang.  I suppose we'll need to get some tubes in his ears again. We were trying to avoid that, but I think he still needs them.

I went for a nice walk last night, and have been stretching a fair amount the last few days.  If I hammer the ibuprofen and stretch out my IT band/hip flexors/hamstrings/lower back, I can actually feel decent.  I actually ran about 5 yards with K on the soccer field, and was able to put equal efforts between each leg.  I can't remember the last time I was able to do that.  It's been long enough that it felt noticeably weird.  Hopefully I'll put this behind me soon.

That's all for now.

Non-cycling

I am pretty sure I'm going to throw a leg over my bike and immediately fall over.  That's how long it's been.  My good intentions were worth anything, I'd tell you that I've been intending to get back into shape, but my back/pelvis/hamstrings have been all sorts of jacked up.  I've been going to the chiropractor, and I'm feeling better.  If I remember my diagnosis correctly, my pelvis twisted, and some other part shifted over and then started pinching my sciatic nerve.  On top of that, my one of my 3 hamstring muscles was pulling on the pelvis trying to get it to move back.  Weak core, tight hamstrings, tight hip flexors, tight IT bands, no cardio, no lungs, no legs, no nothing.  Sounds like a recipe for disaster and I got a big dish of it.

So, today is the best it's been in awhile.  After seeing the chiro I went out with AB and played catch (can't throw very well without pivoting on your pelvis, and can't catch wild throws because I can't shift direction nor jump), and then went and played basketball when he beat me.  He came at me so hard it got me laughing and that about took me to the ground.

He is such a competitor, but so am I.  And I'm ready to get back at it.  I need to start running and getting back on the bike.  Maybe I'll try and walk/shuffle/run tonight.  It's a long road to go, but I've done it before and I'll do it again.

Giddyap!

Gary Clark Jr

Man, I love this song.



I hope the pendulum starts swinging the other way so the radio stops pushing shitty music out there, play some more Music, you know, with musicians.