In a two-fold answer Lindsey gives you a double tip on this episode of the Ask Coach Parry podcast. Number one, we look at spasms and how best to deal with them. Number two, we look at overcoming the pressure you place on yourself, and getting the joy back in your running!

Brad Brown: Welcome to this edition of the Ask Coach Parry podcast, Lindsey, today’s question was submitted on Facebook by Hettie Booysen. Hettie said she’s battling with, it’s actually a bit of a two-fold, but they’re very different, she says she’s battling with a bit of hip spasm.

She doesn’t give us too much background on there, but one thing I wanted to focus on, she says, how do you get the most out of your running without feeling too stressed to achieve? I think we all get sucked into that, trying to get faster, to get better and we end up forgetting why we actually do it and how much we love running. It just becomes a bit of a chore and we lose our mojo, so to speak. How do you keep that balance of wanting to get better, but not putting yourself under undue pressure?

What could be causing your hip to spasm

Lindsey Parry: Let’s quickly address the first issue. Her hip going into spasm means that something, whether it’s in the hamstring, the lower back or in the glute itself, is causing a lot of irritation. Hettie’s a client that I worked with many years ago, so if my memory serves me correctly, I think she did have a little bit of piriformis issues. So this could be a result of something in the piriformis.

She does need to get that checked out and try and figure out what the root cause is, otherwise that’s going to keep happening, because the spasm is actually a protective mechanism. Whatever is getting irritated, her body is trying to stop the movement, so that it stops irritating the lower back or wherever it is irritating. She does need to go and get that checked out and probably go through a bit of rehabilitative process, it’s something else that has gone wrong.

In terms of the achieving, look, we are as human beings programmed to strive to be better, go faster, make more money etc. There are a very few number of people that actually are just truly content to be running. Then obviously there’s another group of people that would love to run faster, but they know that they will never run faster.

Pressure - no need to put yourself through it

So they make peace with the fact that they can just get out there and run and finish within cut off times, that’s good enough. Hettie’s had a battle with Comrades, she has managed to finish a couple. But she struggle to finish Comrades, even though her shorter distances showed that she should have been able to finish Comrades quite comfortably.

I can only think that part of where Hettie’s at now is that the faster she can get at the lower stuff, the better her Comrades are going to be. It’s probably gone into a cycle where she’s putting a lot of pressure on herself to improve all the time and there should be fun in that and fun in the achievement.

If you don’t enjoy that pressure to always be working hard and then in the build up to the race, you feel awful and nervous. Then you need to find a way to just enjoy running for the sake of running and you probably need to stay away from races, except for those handful that you need to achieve, like a qualifier for Two Oceans or Comrades, for example.

Then you would really restrict your races to the qualifier and probably the race itself that you’re training for and that will at least take away the anxiety that you’re feeling on a week to week or a month to month basis.

BB: Awesome stuff, Hettie, thank you for being in touch. Lindsey, thank you very much for that as well. We look forward to catching up again soon here on the Ask Coach Parry podcast. Until next time, from the two of us, it’s cheers.