After back pain that I felt while bowling at the tail-end of last season carried forward into this season's pre-season nets, I decided I would go and get it checked out at a back physiatrist clinic. I took some notes of what he told me in my initial session as I found it very interesting. Don't know if it's of interest to anyone else, but it really opened my eyes to what I was doing with my body.
First of all we spoke about my pain while playing cricket, right back to when I first felt twinges at 15/16. Then began the battery of tests: He put me on scales, one for each foot, and I put 45kg of weight on my left leg, but just 30kg through my right. I also push my right shoulder forward and my left back and do the inverse with my pelvis in a relaxed stance, which causes a curve in my spine. There's a bias towards my left side that has led to a rib bulge, so when I bend over, one of my ribs pops out of my back and creates a lump. He took a photo and showed me and it's bizarre. I think I'm bending over normally trying to touch my toes, but you can see all of my left side, but the right just drops away, like it's barely doing anything. It was slightly disconcerting to bend over in front of another man as he stood behind me taking a photo, but needs must, ey? This also means the muscles in the right side of my back have over developed to compensate and the ones in the left side (where the pain is) are weak, though the inverse is true for my glutes and thighs.
I also have too little rotation in my ankle (I have 80 degrees and most people will have around 110), which also causes my knee to buckle slightly when I stride because it's trying to counter the problem. He asked me to do it with straight feet and I couldn't, I automatically splay my back foot and drop my knee. That's what it's like when I'm gently taking a long stride, so you can imagine what that process – at pace and with less control when I'm bowling – is doing to my joints. My left leg is also about 2cm longer than my right, which may be where the bias comes from. But all that is contributing to my lower back pain - he said the ankle part was key to sorting a lot of it out. I'm back next Monday to discuss my case and talk about managing it. He seemed hopeful that I could eliminate the causes of the pain and he isolated the muscle that was causing me the problem. He just went jabbing around my back asking if it was hurting and then hit it dead on, I nearly jumped off the bed. It was brilliant.
Sorry about the wall of text, but it was so good to see someone who didn't just say 'well you need to rest it', but tried to discover the underlying causes to the pain.
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Topic: Lower back pain (Read 2242 times)