Matt's Movement Log

[Kit_L]

Wait for tomorrow's DOMS—and then there's the next day!

[Matt Chung]

DOM! An unfamiliar and new term and thanks to ST forum search results coming up with Nathan elaborating on the acronym. And totally agree, I expect more muscle soreness over the next couple days

 

[Matt Chung]

> An excellent thought! Learn to balance on one leg while standing on the pebbles in the sandbox—while trying to keep the foot as relaxed as you can. 

Okay, thought this would be a fairly easy task since balancing on a single leg (not standing on pebbles) is fairly easy. But when you bring on the pain cave (in the feet), I'm more wobbly than ever. Also, one of tiny pebbles went rogue and was sitting on hardwood floor, all alone, when I accidentally stepped on it. Fascinating how a single pebble or stone hurts exponentially more than a ton of them spread out unevenly.

Anyways, I'm feeling more and more confident that the plantar fasciitis will be something of the past very soon; I know it's been 4-5 days but feeling hopeful. Again, I'll need to remain mindful of the sheer volume of intense exercise and dance I am putting my body under however I feel these feet/ankle/calve strengthening exercises, combined with relaxation and walking on pebbles, will sort me out. Time will tell.

[Ned]

5 hours ago, Matt Chung said:

Okay, thought this would be a fairly easy task since balancing on a single leg (not standing on pebbles) is fairly easy. But when you bring on the pain cave (in the feet), I'm more wobbly than ever.

My experience from walking on the stick (rod of correction), balancing my wobble board, skiing, and spending a fair bit of time walking on sand, gravel, snow, ice, fallen logs and branches, and balancing on stones of various sizes, degrees of sharpness, and amounts of wobbliness is that balancing tends to become much easier when you can relax everything that doesn't need to be tight.  The softness of the foot is important for comfort on the surface it's in contact with, but the relaxation elsewhere will reduce wobbliness since little changes in position can generally be absorbed by relaxed positions rather than having knock on effects that then need to be countered/accounted for.  For me it's usually most obvious in my shoulders/upper back and letting that go of that tension makes an immediate difference to the ease of the activity.  So I tend to think of balancing as a form of standing relaxation practice.  Use Kit's "breath and relax" cue if it helps.  Of course the caveat is that you have to be comfortable enough in the position already to be able to relax in the first place.  But relaxing will also make the activity more comfortable also. 

[Kit_L]

14 hours ago, Matt Chung said:

Fascinating how a single pebble or stone hurts exponentially more than a ton of them spread out unevenly.

I know you understand the reason for this, and it's something that I experience most days walking barefoot – a single pebble on a hard surface means that all of your weight is being experienced through that single point momentarily – when you're standing on a box of gravel, as you are then there are a much larger number of points. Simple force/area , but it's always still a shock when it happens!

What you'll find though as you adapt to all this is that as soon as the body senses one sharp point the knee will move the lower leg away from that immediately, unloading it in the process. In the beginning your body is slow to do this but in time it will be literally instantaneous. You won't even feel it before the knee movement has moved the weight onto another part of the foot. These are the adaptations that are inevitable when you do the kind of things that you are doing – and the body becomes much more reactive and much safer as a result.

Last suggestion is to be kind to yourself! Your body is adapting to a large number of new stimuli, and this takes time and multiple practice sessions. It's all good and your body is already different than when you began, if you think about it for a moment. Keep going! 🙂

[Kit_L]

15 hours ago, Matt Chung said:

And totally agree, I expect more muscle soreness over the next couple days

Yes: the more novel the activity you engage in, the stronger the DOMS will be. Now, you did part of one of our bodyweight sessions and you were using your muscles, though already conditioned, in a completely different way and my experience with DOMS (which is continuous and ongoing!) is that the more novel the stimulus in any given session the stronger the DOMS is likely to be. All good.

[Nathan]

On 12/28/2024 at 3:29 AM, Matt Chung said:

I love how confused the dog looks 😂

Please avoid Gymnastic Bodies. You will find many reasons if you search through the forums. Simply put, the programs are concerned solely with making money. GMB, on the other hand, is a friend of ST (Ryan, specifically, but they are all good people) and makes excellent programs. Lots of free stuff available on their YT channel to try out before investing too. Of course, continuing with the Monkey Gym circuits is great too. Have fun with the DOMS 😆

[Kit_L]

You can search on reddit, too, under the two relevant names. We have a long history. 

[Matt Chung]

> Please avoid Gymnastic Bodies. You will find many reasons if you search through the forums. Simply put, the programs are concerned solely with making money. GMB, on the other hand, is a friend of ST (Ryan, specifically, but they are all good people) and makes excellent programs. Lots of free stuff available on their YT channel to try out before investing too. Of course, continuing with the Monkey Gym circuits is great too. Have fun with the DOMS 😆

Thanks for elaborating. Since sharing that I was looking into some strength training programs, I'm currently comfortable with experimenting with following along the monkey gym training (thanks again Ned for linking), along with trying out some of GMB related work. I imagine that sometime in the future, I'll feel more confident with constructing my own programs. Also, the motivation for these strength based training is to eliminate some of the lingering body pains I have that feel different than the aches that I've been able to eliminate (or dramatically reduce in intensity) by stretching.

[Gareth O Connor]

Add in some farmers carries into your program

[Matt Chung]

> Add in some farmers carries into your program

Thanks for the suggestion. Curious — is there anything specifically about farmer carriers that makes you want to recommend them?

[Matt Chung]

Day 230 of stretching and flexibility journey

Been full on parenting mode last 2 days (Christmas break for my daughter) and going to put on a little TV of her favorite show so I can squeeze in about 45 minutes of some stretching and strengthening.

After reading on the forum about all the benefits of hanging (and single arm hangs progression), I decided to purchase a pull up bar. This is probably the 3rd pull up bar that I've purchased in the last 20 years; back then, my main focus had been on hitting the 20 consecutive pull ups, which I did reach. Presently, more pull ups is not my main focus (although I still consider it a worthwhile goal). This time around, I'm finding the pull up bar really helping with stretching my entire anterior chain (pecs and lats); just hanging there feels incredible and I don't think that I would've appreciated the sensations without dedicating the last 8 months of increasing awareness. Or perhaps I wouldn't have appreciated it as much. Nonetheless, I'm finding the pull up bar really helpful with rehabbing my left shoulder (my right rotator cuff has been healed for a couple months), the pain triggered when putting arms in a position like child's pose.

Finally, I *think* that the remaining pain in my body has less to do with restricted ROM and more to due with muscle weakness. For instance, the right knee pain that I feel during a squat can be reduced by increasing awareness to flexing the hamstring; similarly, the pain in my left hip can be felt even when I'm standing in a neutral position, although the pain increases when I sway my hip to the left.

In any case, still tweaking and experimenting and going to double down on strength training on hips and feet and shoulder over next couple months, in order to (hopefully) eliminate the remaining body pains.

 

[Gareth O Connor]

Yeah they're good for grip strength and posture

[Nathan]

22 hours ago, Matt Chung said:

I imagine that sometime in the future, I'll feel more confident with constructing my own programs.

If that's the end goal, I suggest grabbing a copy of Overcoming Gravity. It's the gymnastics strength training bible, and it will teach you everything you need to know to start your own programming.

[Matt Chung]

> If that's the end goal, I suggest grabbing a copy of Overcoming Gravity. It's the gymnastics strength training bible, and it will teach you everything you need to know to start your own programming.

Thanks for the suggestion @Nathan. I had my eye on that book last week or so and found several comments (many from you) in the forum where you recommended this book. I ended up purchasing it and it'll arrive this upcoming Tuesday and very much looking forward to digging into it. And before I post another update on DOM (4 days later, I'm feeling tenderness and soreness — the good kind — in my rhomboids. Perhaps related to the monkey gym circuit I followed; could be from the recent pull ups; likely a combination of both.

On the topic of books, I recently purchased a couple other books: "Myofascial Pain and Dysfunction" and "Rehab Science". The former is listed on the ST recommended reading list and it's been sitting in the corner of my living room for the last 3-4 months; the recent pains (e.g. plantar fasciitis) motivated me to not only better understand pain but to better understand how to diagnose (in my own body) referred pain.

For "Myfascial pain and Dysfunction", I've only gone through the first pages of the introduction. And while eye opening, I find the writing a bit terse for me. In any case, will likely refer to it here and not a book I plan to sit down and read through from front to back.

[Matt Chung]

Day 233 of stretching and flexibility journey

I plan on sitting down for the next hour with my cup of tea and writing a longer post. At the risk of over analysis, I want to a little more closely track my current body pains. If there's anything I learned, over the next couple months, these chronic pains will (hopefully) disappear and although I understand that not all techniques and solutions can be replicated — both in my own body and for other people's bodies — I'd like to come up with a set of hypotheses on what's causing my pain and then through trial and error and some tinkering, see what sicks and what doesn't.

Body Scan

• DOM (delayed onset muscle soreness) located in upper back, around traps and rhomboids - upon further reflection, could also be from the C-R from the recent exercises I added (in video clip below)
• Unrelated to stretching / muscles but I developed a cold turned into an infection, currently spitting out some phlegm
• Left hip / TFL chronic pain still present, even when standing idle, without a hip sway, but feels better over last couple weeks of rest - will start rehabbing this with some strength training but more on this in follow up post

Resisting the urge to "do more" to speed up recovery. Like so much in life, I'm finding — and constantly rediscovering — the tension between allowing my body to rest, and rehabbing. If there's anything I learned about myself throughout this journey, is that I have a tendency to do too much, not allowing enough recovery. Knowing that about myself, I find that I'm almost every day resisting the urge engage in large volumes and intensities of physical activities that are detrimental to my long term goals.

Summary of exercises

• More walking on home made gravel with an emphasis on maximizing painful sensations in the heel of the foot, shifting majority of weight on to a single point — (as mentioned in the video log) I'm not only focusing on increasing overall foot strength, but I hypothesis that by bringing on the pain in my the specific location(s) in my foot and learning to breathe and relax through them (in the video I captured, there were moments — left out — where I reached a point where I nearly cried but was able to relax and breathe through it)
• Left shoulder stretch (downward dogs pose but done against the wall) - severely limited ROM and FEELS like fascia adhesion, this sort of sticky sensation. At the same time, the pain is quite similar to the pain I had felt in my right rotator cuff (which I was able to heal and repair during summer, after a couple months of the wall stretch) and though painful right now, I'm fairly confident that this will resolve in a few months (maybe sooner, maybe later). I think that (re)learning how to relax my (left) shoulder so its not always perking up is partially a consequence of the recent relaxation practices

Shoulder Exercises

 

Video log of plantar fasciitis recovery journey

Don't anticipate anybody to watch/listen to the vlog but I'm hoping to do more of these, mainly for (my future) self.

 

[Matt Chung]

Based on what I experienced over the past 233 days, especially with confidence gained from healing my chronic (20 year plus) right shoulder rotator cuff, I'm sort of discovering (for me) that there are two necessary ingredients for healing pain in my body:

1. Leaning INTO the pain, NOT AWAY
2. Relaxing and relaxing and relaxing while in a state of pain

Although I'm sure folks have experienced this themselves and certain that experienced members of this forum understand the reasoning or WHY behind what I'm about to share, but as I put my leg in the (below) cross legged position, and while resting in that position, I feel like a pressure, painful tension build up in (what I think) is the Biceps Femoris and Vastus lateralis / Vastus medialis obliquus. Similar sensation as to what I try to squat. However, when sitting down, after I deliberately contract my hamstrings and isometrically hold for like 10-30 seconds, the pain subsides substantially. So I'm onto something here for myself. Originally, I thought this specific "knee" problem has to do with increase load (i.e. from squatting) but the fact that this pain hurts when I'm sitting leads me to believe the issue stems from both lack of flexibility and/or weakness (i.e. mobility) when put under load.

 

GIF of me contracting the hamstring

[Ned]

9 hours ago, Matt Chung said:

More walking on home made gravel with an emphasis on maximizing painful sensations in the heel of the foot, shifting majority of weight on to a single point — (as mentioned in the video log) I'm not only focusing on increasing overall foot strength, but I hypothesis that by bringing on the pain in my the specific location(s) in my foot and learning to breathe and relax through them (in the video I captured, there were moments — left out — where I reached a point where I nearly cried but was able to relax and breathe through it)

Anecdotally, when I was acclimating to walking barefoot on gravel it was relatively quick to stop being particularly painful in general (maybe two or three [edit: it might have been more and I was walking on sand and large smooth stones barefoot for a while before I decided to add gravel but once I decided to it, didn't take very long] 1-2km walks on a mix of sand, gravel, and larger stones some pointy, some smooth) with a few days of rest between.  At some point, I figured out how to soften the feet while doing it and it stopped hurting (still feels like walking on gravel though), when I'm walking on it now I more or less automatically move and place my feet in ways that aren't going to cause much discomfort.  My feet are still acclimating to it though (mostly strength I think, but probably also some fascia adaptations) and I've been doing it for a few summers, but occasionally I'll step on something in just the wrong spot that'll cause some discomfort for a day or two afterwards while the tissues there adapt.  Were it me, I'd be fairly cautious about staying on maximally painful spots for long, particularly if your feet aren't used to spending longer periods of time on gravel.

Edited January 5 by Ned
clarification of context, edit it in []

[Kit_L]

5 hours ago, Ned said:

My feet are still acclimating to it though (mostly strength I think, but probably also some fascia adaptations)

In my extensive experience in this arena, I believe that you are learning to move in such a way as to unweight as much of the bottom of your feet as possible, rather than your feet acclimating or having facial adaptations. My feet are still soft, and I've been walking barefoot for 20 years.

If you pay attention, you'll probably see that your knees are always slightly bent when you're walking on sharp things – and if you watch even more carefully you'll see that when the bottom of your foot feels something sharp, your adductors or external rotators will move the knee in or out to unload that area. This is a broadbrush perspective – all of the mini adaptations happen instantly and most of the time we don't notice what we're actually doing. Excellent work, keep going!

[Ned]

5 hours ago, Kit_L said:

In my extensive experience in this arena, I believe that you are learning to move in such a way as to unweight as much of the bottom of your feet as possible, rather than your feet acclimating or having facial adaptations. My feet are still soft, and I've been walking barefoot for 20 years.

I meant more that my feet are sometimes muscularly tired (and adapt in that sense) if I go much farther than normal like 15-20km instead of 5-8km, or if I decide to traverse the unstable tangle of driftwood logs in the steep boulders and end up balancing and half climbing for half an hour to get through it without falling.  The same kind of adaptation/feeling happens if I go for a very long hike in shoes if I haven't done it for a while.  I don't ever expect (or want) them to get hardened--I enjoy the sensations from all the different surfaces. 

[Matt Chung]

Day 235 of stretching and flexibility journey

> In a similar vein, Liv has strong resistance to doing lying meditation and, during our last conversation, I noted that, often, the practise that one needs to do is the one that one has the most resistance to

Stumbled on this comment by Kit and "the most resistance" span resonates with me. I just reset the counter and I'm back again at 2 consecutive days of lying relaxation practice, a habit I am trying to cultivate, one that's more difficult for me to sustain every day. I'm not entirely surprised. Although I am able to stretch every day — becomes there's a physical movement component — I still very much struggle with slowing down and quieting the mind due to consistent whirlwind of thoughts. Giving myself self-compassion and at the same time, continuing to develop perseverance and determination.

Summary

• Followed 17 minute lying relaxation practice (from ST relaxation wiki: 2018 ITS London Day 1)
  • Observation and tiny win: normally the back of my shoulders are lifted away from the floor (i.e. tension) but this time at the start of the practice, I noticed that they (the shoulders) started off resting and making flush contact with the floor. Though cannot point to ONE thing, if I had to guess, the uptick in lying relaxation practice and mindful practice throughout the day helps
  • Observations: struggle with rotating arm and facing palm up; very tight line for me (I believe restriction is felt in pec)
• First C-R session in 2 weeks - targeted hamstrings, hip flexors, and quads (clip below fast forwarded to appropriate place in timeline)
  • Deliberately limited dorsiflexion during hamstring stretch since toes pointed forwards (not up) felt more restricted and I wanted to target those corresponding muscles
  • Observation: hip flexor range of motion (ROM) continues to increase; I'm able to hold the lunge position longer and able to draw in a few extra deep breathes when driving the heel back towards the wall
  • Observation: in the video, I maybe stretch my back heel (during the lunch positions) maybe an 1 or so but in my body, it felt like a mile
• Limited workout to 30 minutes - proud of myself for not training to failure and easing myself back in, an unfamiliar feeling; that is, I'm accustomed — when strength training and endurance training — to push push push. Trying to move away from that and towards lower volume, lower frequency in order to avoid injury (although I imagine that at some point I'll want to crank it up to rediscover the moving limit)

 

[Matt Chung]

A happy frustration that's serving as a signal that I should hit the sack (screenshot below). After walking on my pebbles — part of treating my plantar fasciitis — I went down a rabbit hole of reading comments and threads; often I use the "like" button as breadcrumbs and just now, got throttle by the system

[Matt Chung]

Day 235 of stretching and flexibility journey

• 3rd consecutive day of lying relaxation practice - I've been performing this practice shortly (but not immediately) after waking up. I find as the day goes on, I'm more resistant to this practice so experimenting with shifting the time window to early in the mornings to see if doing so improves forming the habit
• Limbered from head to toe - normally, I prefer having some structure and following a routine but today, I felt compelled to just, go with the flow, limbering head to toe (e.g. lats, hip flexor lunge, hamstring elephant walks) and experimented GMB's 3 point bridge, ending with a a few core compression / L-Sit (a huge weakness of mine which I'm certain will be developed overtime)

Day 10 of barefoot walking on (homemade) uneven gravel (and a handful stones cheekily "borrowed" from neighbor's lawn)

Due to the right plantar fasciitis, I was feeling despair (maybe a little resignation) last week, after taking 2 weeks off of physical activity to rest. But last couple days, spirits are lifted and I'm feeling hopeful

• Major victory last night with about 30% level of pain at end of the night - over the past few weeks, by end of the day, after taking my dogs for a walk combined with (sometimes) carrying my 5 year old daughter on my shoulders, I feel like a pulsating pain in my (right only) plantar fasciitis but last night, I observed that the level of pain at the end of the day was about 30%.
• I cannot point to a single thing that's helping but think it's combination of: reducing volume and frequency of training (but still training), foot and ankle and calve strengthening exercises (i.e. calve raises, walking on toes, heel drops) and most importantly: ending the uneven gravel walking session with a single stone lodged into my heel and breathing and relaxing for several minutes

 

[Matt Chung]

Looking for some opinions on some next steps after performing some (successful) myofascial release / massaging on surrounding muscles (i.e. gracilis, vastus lateralis, vastus medialis obliquus) that ended up (temporarily) relieving (right only) knee flexion pain.

Yesterday, I decided to double down and troubleshoot my (right) knee pain that's triggered during knee flexion (same pain occurs during squat but given the pain occurs while sitting, figured that's less load and easier to position to massage) and was surprised that massaging the surrounding muscles – massaging itself felt extremely painful but tolerable — ended up bringing major relief, albeit temporary (about an hour or so), allowing me to flex the knee harder but than ever before but without pain

As mentioned in the above video, I reckon this has to do with mayofascial release (partially inspired by the video where Kit massages that woman's gracilis during her pancake, and partially inspired by some books I bought — see below) and ultimately, I'm curious as to if there are any pointers or suggestions on what I may able to play with in order to better diagnose the issue (and down the line, the root cause, but that's less of priority right now) for the temporary relief to become one that's more permanent. I think I am on the right track:

"...but most people have found that one repetition of the right stretch provides immediate relief—if this is your experience, you know you’re on the right track."

Again, this is the first time I am doing manual massage on myself and experiencing relief in this area.

For some context, after picking up briefly skimming through the two books mentioned a few days ago — "Rehab science" and "Myofascial Pain" — and after reflecting on my stretching and flexibility objectives for the next few months, I decided to experiment with addressing my (right) knee flexion pain especially since — despite what I consider considerable, for myself, gains in ROM in both hamstring and hip flexors, along with ankle and calve stretching plus strengthening over past few months — this source of pain has not improved much (if at all) over the past 230+ days. Yes — I have some (what I consider for myself) some big (perhaps a little delusional but achievable, I think) goals (e.g. forward fold, seiza position, L-Sit) but want to first eliminate major pains in the body and have annotated a diagram with the target areas (lower numbers mean higher priority).

The "Rehab Science" book in particular had suggested massaging (i.e. myofascial release) to begin with and I don't know why I haven't tried that myself 8 months ago. In any case, better late than never because ultimately, I have more information now than before, that massaging the gracilis and other surrounding muscles reduces the pain.

[Kit_L]

17 hours ago, Matt Chung said:

ending the uneven gravel walking session with a single stone lodged into my heel and breathing and relaxing for several minutes

You could try making that last one a once-a-week experiment—while I am a fan of what I call "conscious suffering" (momentary choice to experience strong sensation in pursuit of a beneficial change) you do not have to do this every day!