Progress With ASTYM!

ASTYM treatment #2 happened on Monday.  While on an absolute scale the progress was miniscule, from a significance standpoint the progress was “Epic!” as my 14-year old son would say.

For the last three months I’ve pretty much had the same routine:  Every other day go out for a 30 minute walk.  During that walk I run for – I hope you’re sitting down – 4 minutes.  That’s it.  And even that 4 minute run I’ve been breaking into tiny chunks so as to not stress the foot too much.  Even with that minor amount of running, virtually always, my foot is sore by the evening.  Frequently it is sore the next day as well.

The day after session #2 I ran 5 continuous minutes per the PT’s instructions.  This is the longest continuous block of time I’ve run in the last 7 months.  Recall that the treatment itself inflicts micro-trauma on the tissue and a significant part of the program is to use and stress the tissue while it is rebuilding.  So he wanted me to give it a reasonably good workout.

That evening following my morning run, when my foot should have been sore, it felt perfectly normal.  The next morning – perfectly normal as well.  Today was ASTYM session #3.  I’ve been told I can increase the running time by one minute if the previous run did not produce significant pain.  So tomorrow morning I’m on tap to run 6 minutes.

The treatments themselves, while certainly not pleasant, are not horrible.  They’re a bit uncomfortable.  I’ve had a tender spot right by the ball of my big toe.  I haven’t been sure why.  Today I somewhat passively mentioned it to the PT – with the intent of alerting him to be careful when he was running the instruments in that area.  He poked and prodded and concluded I have some tendon issues there as well as some range of motion issues that need to be addressed.  So in actuality that tenderness was an indicator he needed to get in there with the tools a bit.  That’s wasn’t terribly fun.

I’m shocked I increased my running time and the pain level went down.  Am I dreaming or something?

Jim