{"id":19928,"date":"2025-01-14T09:01:22","date_gmt":"2025-01-14T10:01:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=19928"},"modified":"2025-01-14T10:24:53","modified_gmt":"2025-01-14T10:24:53","slug":"fix-your-glutes-fix-your-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=19928","title":{"rendered":"Fix Your Glutes. Fix Your Life."},"content":{"rendered":"
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I didn\u2019t appreciate their utility \u2014 and paid for it. <\/p>\n

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Two years is roughly how long it takes to achieve moderate fluency in a foreign language, to acquire an associate degree or to gestate an African elephant. This also happens to be the length of time that I recently spent pretending I could walk.<\/p>\n

My problems began during the winter of 2023, when dingy weather and a depressive fit spurred me to sign up for a half-marathon. An athlete I was not \u2014 before this point, my sporting abilities could have most kindly been described as \u201cunrealized\u201d or \u201caspirational\u201d \u2014 but so many friends, writers and LinkedIn influencers had been proselytizing running as a one-size-fits-all spiritual reprieve. Like a chess pawn or kangaroo, I biologically lack the capacity to backpedal, so once I decided to Become a Runner, I immediately binge-purchased gear in the requisite neons and crashed through a training program. On race day, mulish overconfidence fueled me through all 13 icy miles. Triumph! Exercise-endorphin nirvana!<\/p>\n

Only when the adrenaline wore off did I realize I\u2019d broken my shin bone.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou didn\u2019t notice?\u201d asked the orthopedist, who, tapping a little hammer against my tibia the next day, narrowly avoided being clubbed by my knee-jerk spasm of pain. I\u2019d only felt twinges of discomfort, I explained. \u201cBut why did you keep going after it started to hurt?\u201d my partner inquired, as he helped me hobble from bed to fridge for weeks afterward. (It was a rhetorical question. Living with me afforded him a front-row seat to my stubbornness.) The orthopedist recommended bed rest, which I largely ignored.<\/p>\n

I assumed the fracture would heal; that\u2019s what bones did. And so it did. But then one day, months later, I sprinted for the bus, and the ankle of my perfectly healthy other<\/em> leg rolled neatly inward, collapsing. Next came 18 months of odd sprains, Whac-a-Mole tendinitis, a recurring Pangea of bruises.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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So finally: the swallowing of pride, an appointment with a physical therapist. With saintly patience, my P.T. informed me that my shin bone was in great shape. Probably stronger, even, than before the break. But I was still suffering from haywire misalignment across my entire skeletal structure.<\/p>\n

At the root of all this, declared the P.T., was my \u201cweak posterior chain.\u201d Which, it turns out, was a polite way of saying, \u201cYour lack of butt muscles is ruining your life.\u201d<\/p>\n

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I didn\u2019t appreciate their utility \u2014 and paid for it. Two years is roughly how long it takes to achieve moderate fluency in a foreign language, to acquire an associate degree or to gestate an African elephant. This also happens to be the length of time that I recently spent pretending I could walk.My problems began during the winter of 2023, when dingy weather and a depressive fit spurred me to sign up for a half-marathon. An athlete I was not \u2014 before this point, my sporting abilities could have most kindly been described as \u201cunrealized\u201d or \u201caspirational\u201d \u2014 but so many friends, writers and LinkedIn influencers had been proselytizing running as a one-size-fits-all spiritual reprieve. Like a chess pawn or kangaroo, I biologically lack the capacity to backpedal, so once I decided to Become a Runner, I immediately binge-purchased gear in the requisite neons and crashed through a training program. On race day, mulish overconfidence fueled me through all 13 icy miles. Triumph! Exercise-endorphin nirvana!Only when the adrenaline wore off did I realize I\u2019d broken my shin bone.\u201cYou didn\u2019t notice?\u201d asked the orthopedist, who, tapping a little hammer against my tibia the next day, narrowly avoided being clubbed by my knee-jerk spasm of pain. I\u2019d only felt twinges of discomfort, I explained. \u201cBut why did you keep going after it started to hurt?\u201d my partner inquired, as he helped me hobble from bed to fridge for weeks afterward. (It was a rhetorical question. Living with me afforded him a front-row seat to my stubbornness.) The orthopedist recommended bed rest, which I largely ignored.I assumed the fracture would heal; that\u2019s what bones did. And so it did. But then one day, months later, I sprinted for the bus, and the ankle of my perfectly healthy other leg rolled neatly inward, collapsing. Next came 18 months of odd sprains, Whac-a-Mole tendinitis, a recurring Pangea of bruises.So finally: the swallowing of pride, an appointment with a physical therapist. With saintly patience, my P.T. informed me that my shin bone was in great shape. Probably stronger, even, than before the break. But I was still suffering from haywire misalignment across my entire skeletal structure.At the root of all this, declared the P.T., was my \u201cweak posterior chain.\u201d Which, it turns out, was a polite way of saying, \u201cYour lack of butt muscles is ruining your life.\u201dWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19930,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19928"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19928\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19931,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19928\/revisions\/19931"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}