Loss of coordination in leg - Official runner's dystonia / focal dystonia discussion thread

With a heel lift in my unaffected side, as well as custom orthotics, I feel much smoother and more natural on daily runs. however, when doing a prolonged quick effort on a flat surface, my leg spazzes out (I noticed this for the first time today during a light track tempo---I am base training and have been doing strictly mileage). also, at the beginning of the summer, I too tried moving to forefoot landing, but got lazy about it pretty quickly. I am also lazy on the stretching but have been keeping up with core work. I wonder if Mr. Macdougal has found a solution yet...?

Applied kinesiology. Has anyone else tried it? On the recommendation of a friend I tried it. I've tried everything else so why not. Just gotta be open minded... Here's what I was told about my injury:

Soooo apparently there was a hell of a lot of stuff going on in my body with various compensations... No doubt, since I've been having this problem since Sept. 2001. The best guy I worked with spent 3 hours on me one day. He said something about me being a 'category 17' which I think means something like 17 compensatory issues going on with the injury... Anyway, the long and short of it is my main issues are that:

(1) my L5/S1 discs are inflamed and impinging the sciatic nerve

(2) my sacrum, rather than being level, is significantly higher on the right.

(3) somehow my cranial nerve isn't functioning properly

---There were a lot of other issues that were addressed, such as identifying and treating issues in my foot caused by the problem over the years--- a tight deltoid muscle in the foot was released, as were 3 attachments in the foot of the posterior tibialis muscle.

So, issues in my pelic/hip regions were addressed with a lot of deep tissue and manipulations. Everything in the left pelvis/groin was EXTREMELY tight and painful. Because my sacrum is jacked up, my pubis ligaments were not functioning properly. From the pelvis, work was then done on my low back, and then all the way up my spine. It is described as sort of an "unraveling", which I can believe, because by the time he got to my neck after 3 hours, it was so incredibly sensitive, tight, and painful, I was holding back tears. I could see how all the tightness was just brought up and up from my back until it collected in my neck and really hurt. In fact, it hurt to even turn my head to the right. But, I was told that I would feel soreness due to the realigning/adjusting of everything. Sure enough, I woke up the next morning and my pained neck was totally fine.

Again, you've gotta do this stuff with an open mind--- I was told it would take my body at least a week "to process" all the treatments, so I listened and took a week off. I was already 2 weeks into my downtime, so just went ahead and made it 3 weeks off. I just started running again this week. One thing I noticed right away was that the catching I feel in my left midfoot was gone and still hasn't come back. My foot plant is a lot straighter on the left and I can actually get up on my toes--- usually there is something that feels like it is pulling my left foot to stay flat/slap the ground. Not so now-- it had equal flexibility as on the right. But, I won't be able to see if my loss of coordination comes back until I've done more running and get into some uptempo stuff. I can keep you all posted.

I do have to say that this was the best treatment I've had in a long time because they actually TREATED something on me. Lately it seems I've been trying to see people to figure out what the injury is, and everyone puts in their thoughts, but no one treats anything. These applied kinesiologists do a total body diagnostic and then get to work on structural issues, muscular issues, nervous system issues, myofacial issues, EVERYTHING. It remains to be seen whether my problem comes back, but at least a lot of the compensatory issues have been addressed and I feel better walking around.

your wasting your money

agreed. this is never going away.. get over it

didn't cost anything. free treatments.

im feeling great mostly because i can run at the threshold pace, where i used to lose coordination, for much longer now. pretty much all i have been doing is a progression run every week or every other week and glute med exercises daily before each run in order to activate it.

still convinced it's a muscle imbalance/strength issue since i am seeing improvement

Still struggling with this after nearly 2 years. I reread the thread yesterday. My left leg is the one that loses coordination. My right hip is noticably higher. Should I be strengthing the right side while stretching the left? The left ITB is tighter than the right.

i am the same as you arnold...exactly. hskid, can you describe your exercises?

Look at your back too for signs of imbalance. My rector spinae are noticeably larger and more developed on my right side of the spine. My left leg is my bad leg and those back muscles are much less pronounced.

if your right glute was not so weak you would not use your back muscles as much.why you are so weak in your right glute is because of the left glute med is so weak.chicken or the egg.

I am looking for another commonality between all of us, besides the loss of muscle coordination that is... ;-)

1. How many of us have what we would generally term as "flat feet"?

2. Would you say your muscle tone has increased or decreased on your problematic/injured leg?

Thanks for your responses!

I have a question

1.I loose coordination on my left leg when my left glute gets tight and i can no longer bend it.

2. i lean to the left terrible

3.I know i have a really weak right glute max.

if i stop on my runs before it gets tight like 10 minutes or so and stretch my left glute i feel my left inner thigh activate.

Could it be that when i run my left inner thigh is so weak that my glute is overactive.

then on the right my inner thigh is so over active my glute will shut down.

I've seen everyone under the sun for the issue. I am telling you right now...Face it..it isn't going to EVER completely go away. Now, I do have my good and bad days and good and bad months with it. It is muscular skeletal as an issue and also typically neurological or a hip imbalance of some kind. I am still pushing though and trying to run through it and compete with the rest of the guys on my D1 team. Its just hard because and effort with this problem is twice as hard as their effort and thus is harder to recover from and keep mentally intact. I can beast shorter reps like 400's and 800's pretty damn well without a lot of problems but the longer tempos get to me. The treadmill has been my savior...atleast sanity wise. For some reason it is easier on my leg and i have gotten to the point where I can run 8 mile tempo's on it at 5 mintue pace without the leg problem being a huge issue. The only problem is adapting to the heat when I do a session with my team outside as I have been doing tempo's inside in cooler weather. Keep up on rehab (russian stim works well), and def. do ab work, leg balance work, and muscle memory exercises. If anyone wants the program I currently doing for the issue that I have kinda pieced together with doctor's just let me know on the message board. It really has helped some and I am just looking forward to track where I can run shorter events liek the 3k steeple chase where the leg problem doesnt really kick in that much. Best of luck to everyone and keep dealing with it!!!!

Miss Osage County wrote:

I am looking for another commonality between all of us, besides the loss of muscle coordination that is... ;-)

1. How many of us have what we would generally term as "flat feet"?

2. Would you say your muscle tone has increased or decreased on your problematic/injured leg?

Thanks for your responses!

Are you still running normal after taking those 3 weeks off?

Unfortunately, no, I'm still not able to run normally.

I take 2-3 weeks of down time every year, not for my loss of muscle coordination, but for my body's general recovery from prolonged training...

On my first tempo when I resumed running after the time off, my loss of muscle coordination was definitely still there and was definitely really bad. So, assessing/reflecting on things now, I can say the kinesiology treatments perhaps helped a lot of compensatory issues, but my root problem was still there...

I'm no longer of the opinion that the sciatic nerve is the root problem.

Unfortunately, no, I'm still not able to run normally.

I take 2-3 weeks of down time every year, not for my loss of muscle coordination, but for my body's general recovery from prolonged training...

On my first tempo when I resumed running after the time off, my loss of muscle coordination was definitely still there and was definitely really bad. So, assessing/reflecting on things now, I can say the kinesiology treatments perhaps helped a lot of compensatory issues, but my root problem was still there...

I'm no longer of the opinion that the sciatic nerve is the root problem.

I hate to put up a negative post, but I gave up running 7 weeks ago. I had a couple minor injuries in May and June, and after those healed up, it was such a mental and physical struggle dealing with the coordination problems (since it got way worse for me with time off) that I didn't want to deal with it anymore. I've been lifting 3x a week and riding the stationary bike for 15 minutes 3x a week as well. My high school cross country program is putting on an alumni 2 mile race tomorrow as a matter of fact, and I'm going to run it, but I don't even know if I'll finish since I haven't run a step in 7 weeks.

Mlbfan24, Sorry to hear about your tough decision... :-(

But hey, since you've decided to try the 2-mile alumni race anyway, I have an idea for you to try. My latest discovery is that if I scrunch up/curl under my toes on my bad leg, it instantly cures my supination and knee splay. No kidding. I can look down and see my left foot striking straight on like my good leg/foot on the right, and rather than splaying, my kneecap is in direct alignment with my ankle and hip. I have been running 80mpw like this. Crazy, maybe... but I've tried so many things and the pseudo-arch I'm able to create doing this somehow acts as a fair spring to absorb shock and allow my upper leg muscles like hams and gluts to fire properly. If I scrunch the toes it forces the muscles in my foot to activate and I can control my foot strike and plant much more effectively. Somebody might say that's bad for your toes, but I could care less about my toes if it helps the loss of muscle coordination problem!

Good luck and let me know if you try it. Warning though that it might feel odd at first and it can be challenging to do it downhill...

Miss Osage County-

I didn't see your post until after the fact, so I wasn't able to try it out. Thanks for the thought though. I was able to run the race, although I felt like my leg was gonna go on me about a minute into the race, but it never got any worse. In fact, the only thing that felt worse was my absurdly heavy breathing that I'm not used to haha. I surprisingly ran 11:24, which isn't fast, but not too bad I suppose for being 15 lbs heavier. I definitely didn't feel normal though, which is unfortunate. I may attempt a comeback with running at some point in the future, but not right now. I'm interested to see what a long term layoff would do for me, although I suppose if it's a nerve problem it probably won't go away on it's own.