PAIN IN ABS

First of all, I would like to state that pain in low abdominals is a very unusual thing in running, if it is not related to something like flexing the body by lifting your legs or the trunk. I think that pain is the result of some improper movement, which means that a specific muscle group was involved in improper activity, which could have been wrong timing or a response to the request of more activity than they could handle.

To continue with this line of logic, we should think of why could the abdominal muscles be involved in any of such activity in running? We need to know about this in order to be able to eliminate the reasons for activating the muscles in such a strenuous fashion and therefore to eliminate the pain.

Let's take a look at the abdominal muscles. There are four major abdominal muscle groups: Rectus Abdominis, External Abdominal Oblique, Internal Abdominal Oblique and Transversus Abdominis. Their functions are: compression of abdominal contents, flexing and rotating joints of the vertebral column. So, the pain we were talking about, could have been caused by the necessity to involve these muscles in a specific activity, but with a larger range of it or in a limited time frame, etc.

On my humble opinion, there could have been at least one good reason for such an activity with overusing functions of muscles. First of all, it could have come from the necessity to keep the trunk in a vertical position above the support and then make a lean forward. This situation could have happened during several occasions.

When we run on a slippery surface and our trunk always shifts from one support to the other, the abdominals perform flexing and rotating joints of the vertebral column, but in a limited time frame, which creates a strenuous activity for them.

Similar activity could happen in running uphill during a long incline, when fatigue causes the backward lean, so the abdominal muscles start working much more to bring the body back to leaning forward position. The same thing could have happened during running with a head wind.

Any of these reasons could have caused overuse of abdominal muscles just once and then the pain could have been memorized and ignited again by any similar, even much smaller case. That's why the pain stays for some time, even when activity, that caused it, is over.

So, how to avoid this pain? First of all, we need to avoid any reason, which causes this muscle activity. This doesn't mean that you should not run uphill, against the wind and on a slippery course, but that you should learn how to deal with that. On a slippery surface it is necessary to keep the support and the stride length short, to pull the support foot from the ground on time and do not push at all. Against the wind and in uphill running it is important to keep the body geometry (Pose) and the leaning angle right according to the wind strength and inclination of the hill. And certainly, I would advise you to work on your abdominal muscle strength, but it is probably clear to you even without my mentioning it.

Dr.Romanov