Recovering from injury

In the middle of last year Rick and I started Badminton and during the course of the games we played my back started to hurt quite a bit which also aggravated the muscles at the top of my legs (in my bottom basically!).

When I started running this year and increasing my exercise I badly aggravated this injury and during a spinning class basically caused some damage. For the days after (when I was on a break!) I started to have back spasms which were not pleasant. All of this was during my training for the BUPA Great Manchester run where I posted the terrible 1:09 10K. I had to stop running and pretty much all training for about 8 weeks :(

Thankfully I am getting *much* better now. I rarely have any back ache at all now - just some slight twinges. I still have problems with the muscles in my leg, mainly, I think, the piriformis which causes me some sciatic pain but that is also much better. I can now manage to run at least 20k a week with little to no problem.

I wanted to write this post to encourage others who are having injury problems and to point out my solution - I got an amazing osteopath - Cyril Irvine from the Soothe Clinic in Manchester. Cyril is amazingly knowledgeable and despite being a total b**tard when he pounds the hell out me during treatment he has really helped me to get past the injury and to understand how to prevent it from coming back.

What's nice about the approach Cyril took is that he focuses heavily on stretching and strengthening the affected muscles and muscles around the outside. I have some excellent leg stretches that I do throughout the day to stretch out the ITB and piriformis to really loosen me up. Cyril's co-worker Coby Langford is also one hell of a yoga tutor and her back pain CD is invaluable - I did it for about 8 weeks and I have visibly different muscle tone in my back now and it really got rid of my aches.

I recommend anyone who is suffering from injuries of back, neck or legs to get out and see an osteopath - if you're in Manchester look no further than Soothe - they really are the business.