Weekend & Amazing Foam Rolling

This past weekend brought beautiful weather, and we went to an outdoor beer festival in the East Bay with friends. It's getting into the SF beer time of year...you know Kevin and I love trying new craft beers, and we are pumped for the upcoming SF Beer Week events starting with the opening gala on February 7.

I was pleasantly surprised with the Winter Brewfest in Concord. They had many more brewers than I expected, especially at the fairly cheap unlimited tastings ticket price. My Untappd feed has the whole list of beers I tried, but my favorite was The Pupil, an IPA by Societe Brewing.

An outdoor festival in January? Still seems crazy.

Drinking beer, having fun.

Now to the 'workout' part of the post. I'm still not running due to the groin/inner thigh thing, but I had my first PT appointment today after what felt like a long wait. It's my fault it took a while; I wanted to go to the person who specializes in running and gait analysis, so I had to wait a week longer to get in. After today though, I'm glad I did. She was awesome and I felt like she really understood my concerns and what I'm feeling in my leg.

The initial impression from PT is that I have an overuse injury in the adductor muscles, likely related to my hip flexors being incredibly tight. All I know is that it still hurts to lift my left leg and that it tightens up like crazy after I run or walk a lot. She watched me run for a couple of minutes on a treadmill and said my legs weren't extending back enough, again due to tight hip flexors. Basically I'm somehow compensating for hip flexor inflexibility with my adductors, worse in my left leg but also in my right.

She sent me off with a few stretches and an amazing foam rolling tip for inner thighs that I've somehow never figured out on my own. I decided I need to immediately share this on the blog for anyone else who hasn't figured this out yet. (Am I the only one?) Even after just a short time spent with the foam roller after work, my left leg feels somewhat better.

So what is this amazing foam rolling revelation? Lay the foam roller on the floor parallel to your body and straddle it. Roll to one side, leaving the leg being rolled bent over the foam roller. Moving side to side from this position lets you get all the way into the inner thigh and groin areas to roll the muscle. After what I've been dealing with, it feels absolutely divine (aka it hurts so good.) I was pretty surprised at how much the entire length of my inner thigh hurt.

Seriously, I did not know the cat was there when we took this photo. Way to photobomb buddy.

The other PT homework is focused on hip flexor stretches, adductor stretches, and one-leg bridges. She wants everything to calm down before I try running again, but we'll re-evaluate when I see her on Friday. She thinks I'll be able to start running again next week. Fingers crossed!