As mentioned before in a previous post: Since April 2022 I have been dealing with a mysterious pain close to my tailbone, one the right side only. It happened doing a badly performed squat. No one has been able to provide an answer to what can be going on. I got an x-ray that showed that everything was fine, and that was of course good news. But the doctor did not want to give me an MRI and referred me to an orthopedic (that I’m still waiting on to get an appointment). That’s the thing with free healthcare: Unless you are dying, you must wait for months to get the chance to be taken seriously. Maybe you get help, maybe not.
Enough of my ranting. And to the real topic of this post: How I helped myself get better. It was clear that help wasn’t coming. At least not anytime soon. So I knew I had to be my own doctor, physiotherapist and psychiatrist.
- I took all the exercises that gave me even a hint of pain out of my workout program and put something else there instead. Like static lunges or/and step ups replaced my squats. And incline bench rows replaced my bent over barbell rows. I also swapped up my core workouts so I wouldn’t need to put too much pressure on my tailbone area, which meant less laying on my back doing exercises like crunches etc. On top of that I added some extra exercises for my glute medius, abductors and adductors. Just in case. That was phase one. And this alone allowed the inflammation itself to calm down, but there was still something missing.
- I became aware that my hip and leg muscles were extremely tight, something my boyfriend pointed out to me. I could not touch my toes, and the downward facing dog pose felt like it was sent from hell. So I started stretching my leg muscles, especially my hamstrings and psoas. I also changed my sitting position by trying not to sit on my feet or cross my legs too much. I have been doing this for years, so it has been a hard challenge. But I’m making progress.
And then slowly the pain started to change. I could no longer feel the pain in my tailbone, it was like it had moved further up to the area of my lower back and hips. It was hard to tell where it really came from. I could however still feel a lot of sore trigger points going all the way down from my low back to the tailbone, along the spine. And as always only on the right side. If I put too much pressure on them, they get inflamed, so I have to keep that in mind at all times.
Regardless: I am feeling much stronger, stable and in less pain. The change is definitely a bit better. I can still at times feel that something is pulling on my tailbone or sacrum, but it’s not constant and not at all as bad as it used to be.
I am not yet healed, and I would still very much like to get an MRI to be certain there is nothing serious going on, even if it is very unlikely that something is badly injured. I just need to know for sure, since I can’t get it out of my head and it has become a mental terror. Even if I have to pay for it myself, I need this MRI. I have to be very careful of what I do. I have to be careful how I sit, and how long I sit. It’s hard pushing myself while working on my legs cause I’m terrified that the pain will come back. It has taken over my life!
I am, however, more optimistic than I have been in months. And I think I have started to understand why I have had this pain for so long: After sitting 10 years of my life away, without doing much of anything my muscles became very tense and tight. And then when i tried to squat too deep with bad form and mobility, my body said stop. It couldn’t keep up with it. Something got a bit too stretched, maybe a ligament or a tendon, and it got inflamed. The inflammation didn’t calm down until I had eliminated all the exercises that ever so slightly irritated the area. And I didn’t start feeling better until I had stretched for a few weeks.
I’m still not extremely flexible. But I am better. And I will keep getting better and better. If 2022 taught me anything it’s that it’s not just all up to willpower how strong you can be. If you keep pushing through pain and other warning signs that something it’s quite right in your body, you can end up injuring yourself. And therefore setting yourself back in your goals. That’s what happened to me. I ignored the tight feelings in my legs. I ignored the fact that squats felt weird and uncomfortable. And I just pushed through it as hard as I could. I wish I had been smarter and listened to my body before it came to this. But what’s done is done. I am just glad I can still workout and recover from this. But I have learned my lesson, and I hope to inspire people to think more like this: Don’t just train hard. Train smart. Listen to your body at all times and take a step back if you need to. It might save you from going through a living nightmare later. A few days, or even weeks, of rest and recovery early on, before you end up doing something bad, will set you back less than several months of rehab after you really hurt yourself.