Do you have a dumb butt?

“Has anyone ever told you that you have a dumb butt?”

“No but I’m pretty sure I've been called a dumb@ss before!”

That’s the first conversation I ever had with my sports doc the night I hit up the Playmakers Injury Clinic about my soon to be discovered, stress fracture. Many moons have passed since then but last week when we dsicussed PT I reminded him of it and he made a note on my script. See I have what is known as “dumb butt syndrome” simply put, my upper legs are slackers. When I’m running rather than using the power combo of my glutes/quads/hammies to do all the work, they let my lower legs do all the work. Although we already know I had a recipe for disaster brewing which caused (and subsequently delayed the recovery) of my stress fracture, this lack of muscle power from my upper legs put significant stress on my lower legs and directly affected the location of said stress fracture. It also explains why, for all the running and xtraining I do, I never got that tight, firm butt I always coveted.

Foiled by my own dumb @ss!

Day 1 of PT consisted of being put through a series of resistance and flexibility tests that left me shaking like a leaf, red faced, and frustrated. I run marathons for crying out loud, why can’t I do this stuff?!?!? Like I said, it was definitely a slice of humble pie. He also pointed out that I am completely out of alignment due to the combo of my scoliosis and extended time in the boot hobbling around like Quasimodo. He showed me how to do a self alignment and I now have to do this twice a day so my right leg isn’t shorter than my left side. Have I mentioned lately that I’m a freak of nature?

He then set me up with a few targeted exercises that would focus on strengthening my dumb butt until he could work me up a targeted plan based on my assessment results. I thought I’d share the wealth as we could all use a tight firm booty that actually improves our running right?

This was the only exercise I was any good at since I've been doing bridges a lot at the advice of my friend who is an occupational therapist. Doing them on one leg makes it significantly more challenging than the classic version (which I also have to continue to do but while squeezing a child's kick ball between my knees) but highly effective in building up strength.

There's a trick to this one, in the pic it shows him flat on his side but you really need to be rolled forward just off your hip so your knee is pointing towards the ground but not actually on the ground. The lifted leg should be pulled just slightly back to create a concave between your hip/butt. Hurts so good.

I hate this one. It looks so simple and yet, for me, it's SOOO hard.

Tomorrow I'll share how Day 2 of PT went and all the fun torture they added to my regime. Let's just say I felt like Gumby by the time I left...