In the interests of trying very hard to be brief and my tendency not to be I'll bullet point the features of my injury then do a few more about what I've tried/been told about it:
  • I injured my lower back about 7 months ago. I made a very innocuous movement to throw a ball underarm and felt a sudden twinge then couldn't bend over for about 2 weeks due to sharp pain in my lower back and into my right glute. It eased off quite quickly but never got to 100% and now seems to be stuck.
  • Currently the lead symptom is a tightness in my right hip, in the vicinity of the hip flexor. I can feel this pretty much all of the time but is only light and doesn't cause me too many problems.
  • When I exercise, such as a walking a couple of miles or cycling to work this tightness increases, and if I do anything more than this such as running I get back symptoms too. These include stiffness in the morning which is relieved to a small degree by doing something like a roll down or the child's pose from yoga, a generalised aching in my lower back and some sharper pain across different points in my back from reaching to get something or just moving around generally.
  • Earlier in my recovery I was able to progress from doing running for 5 to 10 to 15 minutes without aggravating it and played one game of football but this set me back and took a couple of weeks to get back to being similarly pain free so I have not pushed it since apart from inadvertently when I've spent longer periods walking on a city break for example (which I've been able to do at the time but has aggravated the symptoms).
  • I also notice that I am more dominant on my left hand side, and am weaker on my right hand side, particularly the glutes, which predates this injury and i think is a result of having had long-term sprains of my right knee and right ankle, which were in turn a result of being a bit rubbish posturally and biomechanically, which were in turn probably a result of being tall (6'3"/190cm). I know my glutes are a bit weak generally, I'm overly dependent on my hip flexors and hamstrings for stability so both are very tight.


Actions/Diagoses:
  • I have had about 5 or 6 different physio sessions which have included dry needling on my glute to try to reactivate it more as she thought I had some pressure points in there. Something along these lines would seem to make sense as I've been trying to strengthen that glute for years and it can't just be that I've not been doing it frequently enough can it?
  • I've also been given exercises to do to strengthen and stretch my glutes and quads, plus the cobra for my back. I've been doing these about 4 times a week for 3 months and am probably worse than I was (although have done things that haven't helped in the meantime like cycling and 2 city breaks) .
  • I've also been doing a pilates class once a week for 6 months.


What more should I do?!?! I realise that a long-term solution will take months and I'm not afraid of the hard work, I just struggle to know what the right path is as I feel I've already put a lot of effort into things that haven't worked, which in turn makes it harder to keep on doing the exercises I have now every day. Should I be doing things like running more to build my strength up? Should I be cycling less? Should I be doing yoga, or more pilates?!

In an ideal world I think I'd like to work with someone regularly who could monitor my progress with exercises etc/check my form, but I know this is something that will be expensive and I have a young baby and am now the only earner so I could only afford to do this once.

Any advice anyone might have for me would be greatly appreciated. i live in Manchester, UK, if anyone has any recommendations of people.

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