You’ve started training, logging in miles and dutifully folding in cross-training opportunities into your routine that will make you stronger.
You are even trying to eat healthier and drink more water.
You wonder: Is this a good idea? Should I really be pounding the pavement for hours at a time? Are these pains telling me I’m a train wreck waiting to happen?
For most of us, the mysterious process of pain brings on a world of worry, but for physical therapists, the symptoms of a person’s physical unraveling is like a doing a Sudoku.
Angela Vap loves to solve pain’s problems. As a physical therapist at Alpine Physical Therapy, she spends her workdays locating its source and figuring out ways to make it go away for good.
This month the clinic, which is a marathon sponsor, is launching a brand-new service just in time for those who have the Missoula Marathon in mind.
It’s called “Runner’s Clinic,” in which Vap puts patients on a treadmill, fires up a video camera, captures long sequences of them running or walking, and zooms in for detail shots that show up-close how their feet hit the ground, how the knees are aligned while in motion, what the spine is doing and how the hips are engaged in the process.
When she feels she’s got the footage she needs, Vap plugs the recording into her computer where a special program allows her to slow down the speed of the images and study a particular movement, increment by increment.
“The naked eye can only pick up so much,” Vap said. “This new program allows us to really study a person’s movement and understand in more depth what is going on.”
The result?
That back pain above the left hip isn’t, say, because the left knee doesn’t have an anterior cruciate ligament - a body part that is critical for keeping the knee from bending backwards.
Nope, under Vap’s scrutiny and thanks to her computer-enhanced detective skills, the pain is due to over-rotation of the left shoulder, causing spine stiffness and other maladies for one runner.
The good news, Vap said, is that exercises can fix the problem.
For anyone who loves being active but is hampered by pain or who wants to make a pre-emptive strike against pain, the gait assessment service can be enormously helpful. It’s also a good tool for serious runners who want to have a more efficient running style or who want to become faster.
The assessment takes about 90 minutes and costs $199.
Aside from the recording and assessment, Vap will provide recommendations and give a hands-on demonstration of what you need to do to keep pain away.
The really cool thing about the service is that you have the rare opportunity to see yourself move, see what Vap sees through her trained eye, and then talk about it.
When you leave her gentle and kind care, you’ll be given a sheet of exercises to perform at home, complete with little stick figure sketches Vap deftly draws that remind you what those exercise are and what they should look like.
Knowledge is power, and you will leave feeling that perhaps you’ve got one up on pain.
And if others should pop, up, Vap is only a phone call away.
“In order to be pain-free during the training process you need to have symmetrical strength and flexibility, proper form and excellent trunk control,” Vap said. “The Runner’s Clinic at Alpine Physical Therapy will help identify asymmetries and weakness as well as teach you how to change them.”
Runner’s clinic
To learn more about the runner’s clinic offered by Alpine Physical Therapy, call the clinic at 251-2323.
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