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

I've been experiencing this for the last 6 or so years.

Re the people with torn hip sockets. I'd say this is most likely a side effect of a dysfunction in the leg rather then the root cause, repairing the tear may provide short term relief but unless the dysfunction is fixed it will come back. They don't just become damaged for no reason.

I believe both mine are torn to a degree but I haven't bothered getting any scans etc as until the dysfunction is fixed I think its a waste of time.

Doing isolated muscle exercises are a total waste of time, and are for most problem as they don't strengthen the leg in the motion of running/walking on that specific movement. I spent around 3 years working on my glutes/hip stabilizing muscles for no benefit/only making things tighter.

The only thing I see a small improvement is with rolling my hip flexors on a lacrose ball day and night, rolling the bad legs glute and IT band day and night and stretching the same muscles. You basically have to become an insane person about it, my wife thinks I'm crazy. Basically you need all the muscles loose before you do any walking/exercise for the day. If they are still tight at all you will continue to use the wrong muscles and continue to have this weak unstable leg that will continue to get worse as the weak muscles switch off more and more and the strong muscles get stronger and stronger. The only exercise I have found with some benefit other than lots of walking is the single leg pistol squat, but I warn again the muscles must be loose before you attempt this or you will continue to use the wrong muscles.

I have also found with this condition the outer pereneols get extremely tight, these must be kept loose as well or the problem will keep coming back.

As for the root cause. I believe it all stems from an injury or overuse. I personally sat way too much at work, this tightened my hip flexors, caused anterior pelvic tilt, switched off my glutes and overworked my hamstring, these things alone did not cause the problem, but they led to so many compromises in my walk/run that I eventually had several foot/leg/hip injuries which totally turned off certain key stabilizing muscles and tightened up others to protect these injured body parts.

I know a lot of you are saying it only happens after running for a certain period of time, but the fact is it will always be happening to a certain degree, the longer you deal with this the more you start to notice the very subtle differences on each side which eventually lead to the leg no longer working.

Anyway its a road im still traveling, this is all speculation so take it with a grain of salt, but after you have had this longer then 6 years you start to know more than the experts.

As many who read this thread know I have the same coordination problem many of you are experiencing. I have over the last few months finally made big strides in getting past it. My wife has started posting a series of blogs on my site about what we went through in trying to fix this thing and it's causes.

Part 1 is here

http://nateruns.blogspot.com/2015/03/fix-you-part-i-guest-blog-by-melissa.html

Wow Nate Jenkins, this is my first time checking this thread in like a year, I never knew you were affected by this. Best of luck to you sir, I would love to see more blog posts about your progress.

I have read this thread off and on for the past few years. I figured it's time to share my story.

I ran competitively in college from 2006 to 2010 and my loss of coordination started around 2008. It wasn't too bad and would only happen once every so often. So I was still able to do long runs, repeats, and all of that stuff without much problem. It seemed as though it was pretty random. The problem really started to get bad when I ramped up my mileage quite a bit in preparation for a marathon (I went to an NAIA school). It still wasn't terrible and I managed it pretty well and ended up running an OK marathon. My senior year was when everything went way down hill. I ran a preseason hill workout that was pretty intense and I have been messed up since. Mine started with lots of nerve pain. My hamstring and calf on my left leg were constantly tight. I thought at first I had tore something. I ended up taking quite a bit of time off during cross in the fall of 2009, which almost ruined my season. After cross I went and saw an orthopedist and was diagnosed with a spondylolisthesis of my L5. I was told by that nutjob to quit running. That sent me into a pretty deep depression which resulted in gaining quite a bit of weight and drinking way more than I was used to. After a couple months of that I went to see a spine specialist and he told me to continue running because it would actually help it. I was able to salvage some sort of track season for my last year. I wasn't able to even approach what I feel I was capable of. Which I hate having to think about.

Fast foreward to 2013. After a few years of 4 or 5 month breaks and injuries and just following a vicious circle. I found a PT, with the help of my spine specialist, that told me about this type of physical therapy called Postural Restoration. Basically what it does is it repositions your pelvis and evens out everything. Apparantly it is pretty common with runners to have a pelvis that is tilted all out of wack. Especially track runners because we turn left quite a bit.

So, basically, my pelvis is tilted and rotated and that probably caused my L5 to fracture and cause the spondylolisthesis. The spondy caused some nerve disfunction which messes up my left leg.

So I started seeing a chiropractor as much as possible and doing the repositioning exercises everyday. The postural repositioning PTs are also very particular with footwear because they need to have certain atributes to help the foot do what it needs to do to help the exercises work. My shoe that worked great was the Brooks Transcend. I also figured out that running on trails irritates it less. I'm imagining it has something to do with less impact.

I haven't cured it by any means but it has been affecting me less and less as of late. I hope some of you guys can find some help too. This put me in a pretty dark place for awhile.

Here's the conclusion of Nate's blog about fixing the loss of coordination problem: http://nateruns.blogspot.com/2015/03/fix-you-part-iii-guest-blog-by-melissa.html

Not sure if anyone is still dealing with this problem, but here is something for consideration.

Over the past decade or so, my stride had gone from somewhat wonky to completely disgraceful. Everyone has little form problems that they might want to address, but watching some finish line videos of myself, it was obvious that there was a huge problem of some kind. My right leg felt like it was doing most if not all of the work, while my left flared out badly. It got to the point where parts of my left side were going numb completely when running for anything over 3 miles or so. And I felt how I looked: it is hard to describe, but from the hips down, I felt "out of whack," like everything was crooked and imbalanced. I was beginning to get some fairly severe lower back pain as well.

I had tried addressing the problem with chiropractic care, which didn't really help. After this, I found an athletic trainer of some renown who was offering a functional movement assessment to help detect and address muscle weaknesses in athletes. I decided to get evaluated by this person. My own theory at this point was that years of having a very sedentary desk job had caused a lot of weakness in my hips, which was creating the issue.

In the process of the evaluation, he noticed that in fact my left leg was very noticeably weaker than my right, all the way down to my feet. For example, I could not resist my left foot being turned in no matter how hard I tried to resist, whereas I could quite easily resist with my right. I could also do things such as one legged squats, calf raises etc much more in my right leg than left. In addition he noticed what I had known about for years and ignored, that when put into certain positions my body would start experiencing fairly strong, uncontrollable tremoring/shaking.

This trainer referred my to an orthopedic doctor who also evaluated me. He was quite flummoxed by my symptoms, saying (in so many words to save time) that they didn't quite match up to the typical problems that might be associated with them. He expressed concern that the problem could be MS, and ordered an MRI of my brain and some other testing.

I was obviously saddened by this news but was relieved when the tests came back negative for MS. At the same time both the doctor and I wondered what the problem could be. He ordered an additional nerve test (EMG) to see if there was a problem on that level.

In the meanwhile a nutritionist friend of mine was talking about it with me and she said something to the effect of "I wonder if there isn't just some toxicity in your body at a very high level." I dismissed this as sounding too much like pseudoscience initially. However, as I continued to wonder about what was going on with my body, I thought about the fact that I had consumed massive amounts of aspartame for years. There was a time that I consumed about a 2 liter of diet soda per day, and although at this time I didn't get quite that much, it was still multiple cans of diet soda in the evening, as well as diet energy drinks during the day. Some internet research revealed that overconsumption of aspartame did lead people to have MS like symptoms, including weakness in one side of the body and tremors, in addition to a whole slew of other nasty symptoms.

I was still somewhat skeptical, but I decided to cut out not only aspartame but all artificial sweetners from my diet. I experienced some pretty strong withdrawal symptoms, but after about a month or so I noticed my legs feeling different. It no longer felt like my right leg was doing all the work, in fact my left leg was quite sore. I theorized that this was because for the first time, it was actually doing some work in carrying my body instead of flopping around ineffectually. In addition, the tremors greatly reduced both in frequency and strength--they do not come on as frequently and I can actually will them to go away with concentration--and the lower back problems that I had been experiencing disappeared completely.

I went through with all the tests recommended by my orthopedic doctor out of an abundance of caution, but was fairly sure I had identified the problem. And indeed, the multiple MRIs of my spine, brain, and the EMG all came back completely clear. It seemed that I was a perfectly healthy person with no medical problems that could cause my symptoms. In the end the orthopedic doctor recommended "deep breathing techniques" to control the tremoring, and going back to the athletic trainer for additional strengthening of the left leg. I didn't press the issue since in my mind, I had discovered the true cause.

It has been a bumpy road thus far, my left leg is still trying to catch up with my right. But I have felt better running than I have in years, and there are muscles being activated and worked that I can't remember the last time I felt. So if anyone who has posted on this issue in this thread has also consumed huge amounts of artificial sweeteners, I would definitely suggest looking at that as a possible cause.

I have finished my research on "loss of coordination in leg" and published my findings on my website. I appreciate the help from everyone who shared their experiences with me.

For an "executive summary" of my findings, read this article:

http://www.runningwritings.com/2015/07/loss-of-leg-coordination-while-running.html

It is fairly short and reviews my most important findings. You can also print out the PDF version of the executive summary and bring it to your doctor or therapist so he or she can read about the problem.

For the full story, read this article:

http://www.runningwritings.com/2015/07/searching-for-answers-on-loss-of-leg.html

It's rather long (21,000 words) but as this thread illustrates, loss of leg coordination is not a simple thing.

I was going to post an even shorter summary in this thread but it really can't be distilled to anything less than 1600 words or so. Read the executive summary. I'll try to answer any questions to the best of my ability.

For those of you who want to hear about my own story dealing with loss of leg coordination, I will make a blog post next week detailing my experiences and discussing how they fit into the overall narrative surrounding what causes this "injury" and how you might be able to manage or possibly recover from it.

I've posted within the last two years. Mine has been going on for 2 years now. It recently has been getting better. The best explanation I can give for this loss of coordination is overuse of the hip flexors must either compress the nerves or vascular supply around the area of the inguinal ligament causing dysfunction as I run. Interestingly enough, the first year and a half I took the advice of this thread and tried to stretch out the hip flexors and strengthen the glutes. However, I made marginal improvement. Then I started to strengthen both glutes AND the hip flexors. I started to make improvements. I am not 100% yet but at least I can run and do interval workouts again. The best exercise for the hip flexors that seems to help is lying on the floor and performing full hip and knee flexion against a resistance band attached to the foot. Take a day break between days because your leg will feel off on the run if you do it each day. Do not stretch out or roll out the hip flexors. Also, I tried Nate Jenkins advice and achieved no improvement.

If anything, I believe that this is most likely an "irritation" of the psoas, iliacs and or sartorius muscle(s). I believe it is overuse or excessive scarring/hypertrophy of the hip flexors. Not really a dysfunction but just enough going wrong in the area that the muscles are guarded and don't fire correctly, especially when fatigued. Stretching the hip flexors only reduces the quality of their activation. Strengthening them through their full range (avoid isometrics) seems to be of benefit; at least anecdotally to me. I figured I would at least contribute what I believe has helped me to this thread. Some day there will be enough research on this that we will know the exact cause and treatment. I may have stated this before on this thread but I do not believe that dystonia is a correct diagnosis and should be avoided. This is a peripheral problem, not a central or upper motor lesion problem. If it were central or upper motor we should expect that at least a few on this thread would present with at least some of the usual signs and symptoms, clonus, hyperactive reflexes, significant sensation or motor changes, etc.

After stalking this thread for a long time, I figured it was time to check in. I have been dealing with this issue since January 2014 and have tried every "conservative" treatment available, as well as surgery in September 2014 for FAI/labral tear. So far, nothing has made a bit of difference. I "can" run but only about 2:00 min slower/mile than my normal pace. Went back to the hip doc today and still no answers. The worst of it is having no idea what is going on (and having people look at you like you're crazy when trying to explain an injury with no actual pain)!

Had glute med. pain spasm on and off through my running years. Lost control of my leg entirely one day in October (2012). FINALLY diagnosed after 1.5 years wasted time (PT etc.) Had hip surgery FAI/Labral tear in April 2014. I am just now getting back to running well on paved surfaces. I had huge improvement after the 12 month mark. I also received orthotics at the 12 month mark. I doubled down on the glute exercises. I also found that it helped to do a good deal of cycling (4x a week, long rides up to 70+ miles on Saturdays).It sounds like you were diagnosed within a year of the initial onset. It also sounds like you are less than a year out from surgery. My leg was funky for the first year. Very gradual improvement. I did short runs and ran exclusively on soft surfaces for the first year, concentrating on keeping my leg straight and preventing it from torquing outward or collapsing.I think it is too soon for you to conclude that the surgery wasn't the cure. Whatever they told you about the duration of recovery, double that. If they told me six months, well, I'm still getting my mileage back up and am nowhere near base. There is no doubt, however, that I continue to improve and am beginning to run well over 4-6 miles, hard surface. Still don't quite have the mechanics to put in a full kick.

EndureRunConquer wrote:

After stalking this thread for a long time, I figured it was time to check in. I have been dealing with this issue since January 2014 and have tried every "conservative" treatment available, as well as surgery in September 2014 for FAI/labral tear. So far, nothing has made a bit of difference. I "can" run but only about 2:00 min slower/mile than my normal pace. Went back to the hip doc today and still no answers. The worst of it is having no idea what is going on (and having people look at you like you're crazy when trying to explain an injury with no actual pain)!

I've finished my writeup on my own experiences. You can read about my own story with loss of leg coordination while running here:

http://www.runningwritings.com/2015/08/my-history-with-loss-of-leg.html

Interesting writeup. The dystonia thing seemed weird to me until I remembered that one of the first things that helped with this issue was wearing compression socks, which may have mentally switched things up enough to help with the lack of coordination.

Disappointing to know that there may be no perfect solution to this problem. I am working on my piriformis and hamstring as much as possible, but I can barely run at all at this point. Very jealous of those who can get runs in while avoiding this issue.

i have sat down several times now to weigh on on this but every time i try to write up my thoughts/ experience it gets way too long and overwhelming. so rather than keeping my mouth shut entirely i thought i would at least say that the finding of this thread and JDruns' summary has been incredibly timely for me. i have been dealing with this issue (really wasnt sure what it was until i found this thread earlier in august) since the aftermath of a marathon i ran this past march (though prior to that i had what seems like all of the classic precursor injuries and issues for years: uneven hips/ shoulders, sacral stress fracture, majorly big accessory navicular bones, ongoing one-sided glute and hip pain and issues, horrible crossover gait and ankle kicking). but i was still able to run, and fairly fast and successfully at that. however the onset of the loss of coordination was acute- i tried to go for a 2 mile shake out run a couple days post marathon and felt completely hobbled and twisted. i could not run. left leg was dragging and scuffing constantly. my hips and torso felt weirdly rotated. i had no idea what was going on but assumed i had just wreaked havoc on my hips/ glutes in the marathon and that it would get better with time and recovery. well, it did not improve or heal with recovery time. ive been to our local nationally acclaimed gait lab (helpful and wish i had seen them years ago...maybe could have avoided all of this), seen chiropractors and PTs. some things have improved (the scuffing is less but still occurs) but i still have the very noticeable hitch in my stride and a complete sense of discomfort, effort, and awkwardness that running is not supposed to have and never has had for me. it is so disheartening to go from being a 3:20 marathoner to barely being able to run 3 or 4 miles at a 9 minute pace. i would probably fall flat on my face if i even attempted speedwork. ive finally decided to take an extended period of time off from running completely. im working on balance and strength and stability issues and am currently working with a local chiropractor/ PT who has some experience in neuromuscular retraining, and who had honed in on the fact that this might be a neurological disorder before i even found this thread and executive summary. from everything i have read it seems like a long road with not much hope of complete recovery. bummer. however, misery loves company and i do take comfort in the fact that there are others out there who are experiencing this too. and huge thank you to JD Runs for taking the time to write his summary and shed valuable light, insight and wisdom onto this issue.

one further clarification. i too, like many others, have no tingling, weakness, numbness or pain. the only realm in which i have noticed this occurring is running- forwards. i can run backwards, sideways, skip, etc...with no problems. i can do all other cross training athletic activities that i have tried so far. also (as seems to be a common phenomenon) hard, flat surfaces are the worst. i seem to do a bit better (though by no means normal running) on soft surfaces, trails, in barefeet, or on uphills or downhills.

Very well written, thorough and intetesting article. Thank you!

My husband was diagnosed with "Runner's Dystonia" by Dr. Jankovic a few years ago. He was in his mid-50's when the loss of coordination started in his left leg and he'd been a runner for approximately 40 years prior to this.

Unlike most runner's diagnosed with Runner's Dystonia, my husband's dystonia actually began with walking. He could run normally, however, as soon as he stopped running, his walking became clumsy (loss of coordination in his left leg). Eventually the awkward leg movements restricted him from running as well. More recently, his "dystonia" has made it nearly impossible to bike or do eliptical trainer workouts.

Are you familiar with other cases where dystonia or loss of leg coordination began with walking? Any thoughts? Thank you.

After reading this thread and having this issue for some months, I'm sharing my story:

Started having this issue in April, right when I was seeing serious improvements from the training. At first I didn't pay much attention, but a week later I had a stress fracture on my foot, which I now know was related to this issue, which screwed my training for almost 2 months.

Resumed my training, and also started training for my 2nd Marathon, in June and the issue was still there. So not doing anything running wise for almost 2 months, did absolutely nothing for this.

I then went to a chiro, who realigned my hips, spine and shoulders. The issue is still there.

I have tried to strength and stretch all muscles groups around the hip, but to no avail.

The funny thing is, in terms of stamina and endurance, I've been improving a lot. I can do easy runs, short/medium sprints (100m till 600m) and longer/faster runs on hilly terrain, without having my left leg wooble around.

But if I do a tempo or longer repeats, a race or a long run on flat ground, then a few minutes into the workout, there goes the leg.

Like yesterday, had my 3rd 10km tune-up race from my training plan, before the Marathon. 1st km went rather well, after that it was pure crap. Since the first 6km were downhill, I had to actually go slower because my left thigh didn't want to do the full stride motion, and in fear of going to the floor, I dropped the speed.

Although, for some weird reason, during the 8km and until the end, the leg went fully operational again. Managed to finish in 14th place, but I'm dead sure I could have gotten below Top 10, if the leg was ok.

One thing I've also tried was lying on my back, then pull both legs, one at a time, towards the chest above 90º and just hold there.

The difference between legs is scary. On the good leg I can hold for well over 45secs before the leg starts to wobble, but on the bad leg, before it even hits 20secs it starts to wobble around like crazy. I can't even control it.

I'm going to keep doing this exercise, and some other hip flexor stuff, to see if I can see some improvements, because I'm only 2 weeks away from the Marathon, and I'm really getting desperate.

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

Northern Star - thanks for taking the time to consolidate the responses and analyze results. I'm hoping this will be the start of something!

I haven't posted in years but check back periodically to see how everyone is doing.

I found it a very strange coincidence that I got back from my chiropractor yesterday (for regular maintenance on tight hamstrings and glutes as a result of loss of leg coordination) and he brought up dystonia as a possible cause for the loss of coordination. He is currently treating a musician and noticed similarities in the descriptions of our symptoms.

I will forward your article to him and let you know if anything comes out of that.

thanks again.