Imagine that you are weight lifting, and all of a sudden something goes numb and you are not really expecting that. Hopefully, it does not happen when you have heavy weights above you; in my case, it happened as I was hanging suspended in the air.
I was finishing up my workout this morning and was on my 2nd or 3rd set of hanging leg raises. You put your hands on a couple hooks and your arms in some straps and hang suspended above the floor with your arms perpendicular to your body. Your forearms will then be parallel to your body as your elbows should be at about a 90°-110° angle to grasp the hooks. You lift your knees up to your chest, lower them, and repeat. As I was doing this, I felt a real quick numbness just above my left hip. If you have ever hit your funny bone on your arm, it felt a lot like that except above my hip and only lasting less than a second.
I decided to cut out the end of my workout (which was 1 set of hanging leg raises and 3 sets on the rotary torso machine) and I feel fine now, so I am not too worried. I probably just cut off circulation by not having my arm well positioned. When I swim tomorrow or lift Wednesday, I will see if I have any more problems, but I doubt it.
Have you ever had anything like that happen? It is not something I would treat lightly; while I am not particularly worried that there is any kind of pulled muscle or anything of that sort, I would not want to risk anything under the circumstances. Thankfully, I was at the end of the workout so cutting it short did not really impact it too much.
I had a numbness problem a little different than what you are describing. The day after a short run (5k) at a moderate pace for me, the top of my right foot was numb. When it didn’t clear up after a week, I went to the doc who sent me to a neurologist. He informed me I have nerve damage in that leg from running. The numbness also included loss of motion in the foot, and turned to pain after a few more weeks. That was in July. It’s now almost Dec and I’m going to physical therapy 2x weekly and I’ve gotten about 50% of the use of my ankle and toes and a prognosis from the neurologist never to run again for risk of recreating the damage (if I ever get it fixed).
Bottom line: I had NO symptoms before this. I’d use extreme caution if you get any kind of numbness and not wait for a 2nd episode to find out there might be hidden irreversable damage.
Wow, that must be awful. I can not imagine what it would be like to be told that I could not run anymore. I will definately pay particular attention to the area and make sure that everything seems to be all right. How did the running cause the nerve damage? Was it due to your training, or were your shoes pinching your ankle, or was it just a blanket “Running caused this to happen” sort of thing?
Does it hurt if you swim? Perhaps a change of sport may be called for.
Yes, I’m actually learning to swim. Took 2 months of lessons at the Y and may take a few more in the spring. I’m no where near the point where I get any joy from swimming, it’s still a chore. Stopping running has been an incredibily difficult thing for me, I feel like an addict literally in need of a fix some days. Are the ex-running support groups? 🙂
The doc’s explanation is that the peroneal nerve got damaged where it comes across the fibia at the head (by the knee). He attributes the damage to the pounding of running. The neurologist seemed to have seen this before and immediately touched the damaged spot on the knee when I said “numb foot” and “running” before I even mentioned the “oh, yeah, there’s this wierd tingle at the knee” so while he didn’t have an exact mechanical explanation, he seemed to know what he was looking at.
My physical therapist guesses that muscle tightness could have contributed, with the end of the ilio-tibial and other muscles wrapping across there rubbing too tight. If I look back any at my training for the last few years and what might have led up to this, it was probably too much focus on speed for a late 30s mid-packer. But I really did get a thrill out of running intervals, fartliks, tempo runs. I probably just overdid that. And would I trade my first (and only) sub-4:00 marathon for years more running but never hitting that singular goal? I’m glad I don’t actually get to make that decision.
I don’t think the shoes were the problem, I’d always gone to a good specialty store. But I’d tell people now unless you are winning your division, there’s no such thing as too much cushioning in a shoe. 🙂
Well, I can understand the addiction aspect, since you are getting the same addictive chemicals created by your brain that smoking does. I definately go through withdrawel symptoms when I don’t run or workout for a while.
You have already found this article, but anybody else that comes through there is a lap swimming rules article that deals with common etiquette issues for new swimmers.