I have, as some people may already know, piriformis syndrome which causes, among other things (until it heals) numbness down my left leg.
I was wondering today...could this be affecting my kicking ability? I was never that strong of a kicker before the injury occured, but now I'm so weak at kicking...it feels like I'm swimming every set on a pull basis. I don't know if I suddenly got really out of shape in my legs, or if it's injury related. Just wondering what people on here (if you ever had any experience with something like this) think...
I'll probably bring this up with the athletic trainers / sports medicine doctors when I see them this week, but until then (since it's a weekend) I just wanted to solicit some informal opinions....
Most definately this is causing this. If your leg is numb, you cannot feel how strong you are kicking, and you will naturally kick less. I could not keep my breaststroke kick working together when I was at my worse, and my coach definately noticed my left leg kick on free was working oddly.
Your first step has to be to get rid of the numbness. You know what finally got rid of it for me was acupunture. The chiropractor had me where I needed to be, and he could not get me any better and I was still having problems. I was open to anything because after 4 weeks of no feeling in that leg, it was strange. I had read acupunture could help, did the first treatment and got immediate help. However, insurance does not cover this, and it can be expensive.
Another however, if you don't correct what is initially causing the numbness, something like accupunture can only help temporarily.
After my numbness gradually went away, my left side still had some weakness left from the time that I could not exercise it as well as the right. When I did weight lifting or any type of land exercise, I made sure I always started with the left side when I was fresh on an exercise, to get it working to its maximum. In the water, I did breaststroke kick, only focusing on the left leg, working really hard to get it to conform to the kick.
But this was after the problem was corrected and I was on my way to healing. So you have a sense of timeframe. I fell of a starting block, at the end of July 2004, was completely disabled for about 3 weeks, with the numbness remaining until mid-september. I did accupunture along with the chiro treatments until mid-October, until we determined that the accupunture had done its job and I no longer needed it. I continued with weekly chiropractice through January, and then dropped back to twice a month. By February, I finally felt like I was where I was pre-falling off the back. That was visiting the chiro every other week for maintenance, occasional back twinges if I sat wrong at work, or did not maintain daily stretching and exercises. Almost normal, but not quite. I have maintained this level since February, without any set-backs, and was able to ramp up execise in August to a very high level, without any bad flair-ups. Both the chiro and I were quite pleased with that.
Most definately this is causing this. If your leg is numb, you cannot feel how strong you are kicking, and you will naturally kick less. I could not keep my breaststroke kick working together when I was at my worse, and my coach definately noticed my left leg kick on free was working oddly.
Your first step has to be to get rid of the numbness. You know what finally got rid of it for me was acupunture. The chiropractor had me where I needed to be, and he could not get me any better and I was still having problems. I was open to anything because after 4 weeks of no feeling in that leg, it was strange. I had read acupunture could help, did the first treatment and got immediate help. However, insurance does not cover this, and it can be expensive.
Another however, if you don't correct what is initially causing the numbness, something like accupunture can only help temporarily.
After my numbness gradually went away, my left side still had some weakness left from the time that I could not exercise it as well as the right. When I did weight lifting or any type of land exercise, I made sure I always started with the left side when I was fresh on an exercise, to get it working to its maximum. In the water, I did breaststroke kick, only focusing on the left leg, working really hard to get it to conform to the kick.
But this was after the problem was corrected and I was on my way to healing. So you have a sense of timeframe. I fell of a starting block, at the end of July 2004, was completely disabled for about 3 weeks, with the numbness remaining until mid-september. I did accupunture along with the chiro treatments until mid-October, until we determined that the accupunture had done its job and I no longer needed it. I continued with weekly chiropractice through January, and then dropped back to twice a month. By February, I finally felt like I was where I was pre-falling off the back. That was visiting the chiro every other week for maintenance, occasional back twinges if I sat wrong at work, or did not maintain daily stretching and exercises. Almost normal, but not quite. I have maintained this level since February, without any set-backs, and was able to ramp up execise in August to a very high level, without any bad flair-ups. Both the chiro and I were quite pleased with that.
