It's a non-running day because...I induced some serious trigger points by doing exercises on Saturday. I am trying to pinpoint which of them aggravated it, and if it was due to the exercise itself or too many repititons or combination of, or order of, or, or, or...? Hip joints are super complex and mine do not play together naturally, never have and never will, so I have to learn to roll with it. Today it's a bit more frustating to me than normal.
I need to "start over" with all my strength exercises and re-add them back in, decrease my reps, depth, etc. So now I must review what WAS working, when I did decide to start doing strength exercises a couple of months ago.
1.) Wide stance squats while running. After the first 5-10 minutes of running I would do about 10 wide-stance squats, and then continue doing them throughout my run whenever I felt my hip rebelling - usually I could tell because my left leg would start turning inward and/or my left foot would start flopping back and forth instead of staying straight. THAT worked. Then I would do those squats occasionally throughout the day. My hips always liked those exercises EVERY time, and ALL the time. So that's all I'm going to do after this fiasco. Grrrrrr. I'm also quitting the gym because everything in there requires bilateral use of my legs on even ground. BAH! This is why I never do contracts -for anything.
2.) LOW-depth step-ups. I have this yoga block and every day I had been doing "step-ups" on it with each leg UNIlateral exercises. I would step up with one leg and square my hip at the top of the move. I did this forward, sideways and backwards. This REALLY helped level my hips. I did not do that many and the height of the block was only about 5 inches, AND the block is firm but has some "give" to it, so when I stepped up, I also had to balance slightly. This really helped to strengthen the small, intricate muscles that help stablilize my SI joints/hip/low back muscles.
3. ) Water exercises. I can pretty much do ANY exercises in the water without negative reprecussions because the water decreases the weight and also allows for pervasive muscle strengthening rather than targeted, which is much more useful for my particular problem. I have slacked off the water exercises for the past week or so, which I'm sure plays in to this.
4.) Trail running. It works. I had been doing some 6.5 mile runs for awhile, but just last week I decided I really need to cap them at 5 miles. When I listen to my body carefully it tells me that 5 miles is my new BASE that I really need to stay at for quite some time.