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Best wishes to everyone, and best wishes for the New Year. Love from Liv, Kit, and Nathan, our tech guru! ×
Best wishes to everyone, and best wishes for the New Year. Love from Liv, Kit, and Nathan, our tech guru!

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Posted

Hello all,

Yesterday, I was working on some bent leg variations of hamstring stretches to improve my pike. When I did a retest of the pike, I got a strong, sharp pain on the lateral side of my left knee (think top of fibula). The best way I can describe it is by saying it was like an electrical impulse that started lateral side of knee and traveled down to the lateral side of my ankles (pain intensity decreasing the closer it got to my ankle). The pain was intense, so much so that I immediately stopped the pike and began rubbing the affected region.

Has anyone ever experienced a similar sensation before? Does anyone have any ideas on how I can prevent this from happening again in my pike stretch?

Thank you all

Posted

I will ask colleagues to comment, but this could be coming from that little loop of fascia where the sciatic nerve is attached to the tibial plateau or it could be the extension of the fascia that's part of the outer hamstring (biceps femoris). In any case, get up and walk around, then try again. Definitely sounds neural to me (as does anything that feels the way you describe). Usually, getting up and walking around is enough to 'fix' it.

Have a look at the complex knee anatomy HERE.

Fascial-neural stretches will be a major feature of the Mastering the Pike program. For example, my partner Olivia (who demonstrates the perfect pancake on the recent Youtube clip) was not able to do a pike at all until recently. When I went over to her to help one evening in class, she had her face about a foot to 18 inches away from her shins.

The secret for her was a fascial release done on her lower back (which only took me 20 or 30 seconds to do in the middle of class and which nobody even noticed me doing!) and following that she was able to put her face on her shins to the very first time in her life.

Not all improvements are as dramatic as this but, for me, this really big lesson of this experience was that a tiny and seemingly inconsequential tightness in the fascia of her lower back was the limitation in her doing a major pose like the pike.

Shooting begins in Easter.

Posted

Unusual that a pike flex would impinge a peripheral nerve, except in the sense of possibly the sciatic like kit had alluded to. I'd be concerned about L4 radicular pain as well. Is your back really stretched during this? If you try to keep a neutral lumbar spine does it improve? Not that i think it's "bad" to stretch the lumbar spine, but if you have a herniated disc as many asymptomatic people do, pronounced lumbar flexion may push that onto the nerve roots transiently.

Posted

MT Nordic; you sound like you know what you are talking about (and I agree on all of your points). I am going to add a brutal outer hamstring stretch on the Mastering the Pike program (I can't wait to see people's faces on the workshop when I trot this one out) that will allow you to decide the cause once and for all (outer Ham. stretches are the most neural of the Ham. stretches, in my experience).

Posted

I'd be concerned about L4 radicular pain as well. Is your back really stretched during this? If you try to keep a neutral lumbar spine does it improve? Not that i think it's "bad" to stretch the lumbar spine, but if you have a herniated disc as many asymptomatic people do, pronounced lumbar flexion may push that onto the nerve roots transiently.

@MT Nordic: Now that you mention it, I was having some L4 pain that day that I was stretching my pike. I'd like to say that my spine was flat/neutral, but honestly, I can't remember right now. I did end up going to the doctor to get this checked out; he really didn't tell me anything though (as far as why I felt on lateral leg, or what kind of back pain I am having, etc.) besides to just rest

I am going to add a brutal outer hamstring stretch on the Mastering the Pike program that will allow you to decide the cause once and for all (outer Ham. stretches are the most neural of the Ham. stretches, in my experience).

Can't wait!

  • 3 weeks later...
Posted

I often get pain in the posterior lateral area of my right knee. Fairly deep at the head of the fibula.

The pain is greatest during deep flexion and often only after large amounts of dynamic deep squating, low gate locomotion and other high knee flexion/end range compression activities.

Often it is more of an issue when at rest...during a workout the pain is removed during the warm-up...but without treatment will continue to get worse.

Seems to be released by soft tissue work on the gastrocnemius and soleus near the knee joint. Usually once released...I have 4+ weeks without symptoms.

  • 1 year later...
Posted

The secret for her was a fascial release done on her lower back (which only took me 20 or 30 seconds to do in the middle of class and which nobody even noticed me doing!) and following that she was able to put her face on her shins to the very first time in her life.

Hi Kit, can you please share with me how you did this release and if it's possible to do it by oneself?

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