Pressing the reset button.

On Friday I was fortunate enough to catch a session with Charlie Weingroff DPT.  In the past I was having some serious hip pain that was not allowing me to squat and deadlift to the level that I wanted. I had tried pretty much everything; ART/ Foam Rolling/ Corrective work etc. 2 sessions with Charlie and I was not only pain free but I was back to squatting the next week while continuing with the corrective work he gave me.

I was instantly sold and began devouring any and all books/authors he had mentioned. Sahrmann, Liebenson, Nickelston, Janda.. etc. I'm still working on this list. I also had to try to figure out what the hell he was doing to me because it was not anything like anything I had ever seen or heard of.  (Read DNS)

I'd been feeling a bit off lately with my bench  and noticed that I was having a hard time rotating my head to my right. I had no pain but I know that it's better to cut these things off when they start as they will surely escalate to pain eventually.

15-20 minutes of treatment which consisted mostly of dry needling  and my neck turned and folded right over. I know this may sound like I'm making a big deal out of something so small but until you feel such a DRASTIC difference in something like that in such a short time it's hard to understand  the almost hesitation you get to even use what you've just been given. We then proceeded to stabilize the new mobility and spent the rest of the time on some T-spine drills.

Here are a list of the unexpected outcomes of my training that followed:
Side Planks:  Normally 30 sec difference on each side.. Held 90sec each side and stopped there.
Bench: 320x1..  20lb pr at BW of 188.
Close Grip Incline:  220lbs 3 sets of 3.   Started 2 weeks ago with 220x2 for a max.

I'm not saying that all of these are directly from the manual therapy but I didn't feel uneven in any of my set ups and for sure it didnt' hurt.

So my point of this entire rant is not to just talk up Charlie but to stress the importance of finding a skilled manual therapist. My top two that I am lucky enough to have in my network are Charlie Weingroff  DPT and Perry Nickelston DC.  Sometimes you can have all the knowledge of what you need to be working on which in my case is T-Spine mobility but you can be spinning your wheels if there are specific restrictions that are keeping you from being in the right place.

For any powerlifting struggling with nagging pain and or mobility  in the NJ area I'd highly recommend making your way to one of these guys doorsteps.