At the start of every training year, I commit to doing one more thing to make myself fitter, stronger, faster. Last year I overhauled just about everything in a bid to get in the best shape of my life after 50, for my book Older, Faster, Stronger (coming out in October with Rodale Books).
So what was left to tackle?
Remarkably, I would never have thought of My Left Foot, a severely flat and pronating thing that I thought it could never be “fixed.” It had become so sore and inflamed after last year’s intense training, I began to fear that my biggest weakness as a runner might actually end my running career.
And then a running pal introduced me to Muscle Activation Technique (MAT), a relatively new and little known non-medical muscle therapy. See my column in the Globe and Mail: How Correcting Muscle Imbalances Can Heal Injuries and Make You a Better Runner.
My pal worked with James Cummins at the Toronto Athletic Club. He also happens to work with Canada’s lone gold medalist at the 2012 Olympic Games, Rosie MacLennan.
MacLennan, 25, is a trampolinist so her feet a beating. She starts off her personal training sessions with a MAT session, where Cummins tests for joint stability and muscle weakness. “We only twist one way so there’s imbalances and compensations,” MacLennan told me. “I use MAT as part of my training to make sure imbalances don’t turn into problems. James tests if a muscle has shut off and he does some reactivation. Some days, we just do that. Other days, things are pretty clear, and we get into the training, lifting weights and cardio.”
She says that in the year leading up to the Olympics new rules required “more time in the air” and changes to equipment made it more powerful but less stable. With little time to adjust, many trampolinists struggled with plantar fasciitis. “James really focused on a preventative routine (of MAT) and worked on my feet a lot to strengthen them,” says MacLennan. “It really helped over last few months. I didn’t need time off from training.”
Ron Marek, a 39-year-old accountant who has run 15 marathons and two Ironmans in the past five years, also started using MAT to correct muscle imbalances before they became injuries. “Running causes imbalances, and I tend to get pain whenever I was training for a marathon,” says Marek. “I was always chasing the injury versus solving the problem.” Now, he makes MAT part of his personal training routine, to make sure all his muscles are firing properly. He says the therapy has also helped him develop overall body awareness and muscle awareness. “I learned how to activate a muscle I was never aware of. It’s amazing how the body adapts.”
Frankly, I’m amazed by how My Left Foot is responding to treatment. After a few MAT sessions, I am running pain free and the foot is at least 50 percent stronger.
My MAT specialist, Brad Thorpe, who works out of Striation Six, explains the treatment this way. “Imagine a marionette weighing 100 pounds and 10 muscles are acting like strings to hold it up so each muscle holds 10 pounds. But if three muscles stop working either due to injury or because a stride pattern causes some to be underused and stop contracting, suddenly seven muscles are carrying more than 14 pounds each.
“Those overcompensating muscles get sore and chronically injured. Most treatments attack the pain and those overcompensating muscles, but those muscles aren’t the problem. It’s the underutilized muscles that are the problem, and that’s what MAT addresses. Sometimes those muscles are so underused and weak, they stop receiving a signal to fire. MAT gets those muscles firing again. And then you can train to strengthen those muscles so they’re pulling their weight.”
Now consider that the body has more than 350 pairs of muscles, and some 26 muscles in the foot alone. That’s a lot of muscles that can fall off the grid and out of balance. That’s also a lot of muscles we can fire up and strengthen to make us healthier and more balanced runners.
MAT, followed by a routine of isometrics to strengthen weak muscles and reinforce correct joint movement, corrected a tightness in my left shoulder that I didn’t even realize I had. As for my severely flat and pronating left foot, I can now activate muscles to make an arch. It’s a beautiful thing.
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