During all of my intense training in China, I had a tiny hip problem. I say tiny because it was only a big discomfort with pain that I could treat with a bit of stretching and self-massage before training. With that, I could train as hard and as frequently that I wanted to. Every day the pain came and every day I massaged it away. Years like this passed until October 2015. Then the problem reached heights that hindered me from training as much as I wanted.
The problem is located in my left hip (back leg) and is very painful during normal activities (walking, getting in the car, etc.) and creates a huge pinching pain when I move my leg at a certain angle. This stopped me from walking normally, from being able to sleep well, and from even putting on my socks in the morning. So training wise, this was a disaster in my last sprint towards my Olympics qualification. I lost a lot of flexibility in my hip and I didn’t have a lot of it to start with.
Towards the end of 2015, I started to work with a physiotherapist at the Canadian Sport Institute of Ontario (CSIO) to release the pain and have enough flexibility in my hip to limit the deterioration of the problem. It worked pretty well. The problem stopped escalating and training was possible. Painful, but possible. During this time, I went for an X-ray and an MRI so see exactly what was going on. Basically, the hip bone (labrum) that connects to my femur is over reaching around it (pincer), thus creating a mechanical barrier in which my leg can't move as it should. So when it reaches the new limit, it becomes inflamed and the problem grows bigger -- adding pain and losing flexibility making the next safe angle of rotation even smaller.
The problem is located in my left hip (back leg) and is very painful during normal activities (walking, getting in the car, etc.) and creates a huge pinching pain when I move my leg at a certain angle. This stopped me from walking normally, from being able to sleep well, and from even putting on my socks in the morning. So training wise, this was a disaster in my last sprint towards my Olympics qualification. I lost a lot of flexibility in my hip and I didn’t have a lot of it to start with.
Towards the end of 2015, I started to work with a physiotherapist at the Canadian Sport Institute of Ontario (CSIO) to release the pain and have enough flexibility in my hip to limit the deterioration of the problem. It worked pretty well. The problem stopped escalating and training was possible. Painful, but possible. During this time, I went for an X-ray and an MRI so see exactly what was going on. Basically, the hip bone (labrum) that connects to my femur is over reaching around it (pincer), thus creating a mechanical barrier in which my leg can't move as it should. So when it reaches the new limit, it becomes inflamed and the problem grows bigger -- adding pain and losing flexibility making the next safe angle of rotation even smaller.
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It is a birth defect, that I discovered during all the medical examinations. After talking about it with my mother, I found out that she and my grandmother suffers from it. I would have had this problem at 60-70 years old but because of my high performance fencing career, I now have a 65 year-old‘s hip in my 29 year-old body... Great!
I went to a hip surgeon to talk about it and to see what were my options. I learned that I will need surgery after the Olympics Games. They would have to open my hip and grind my hip bone back to its "natural" size and shape. Then it would be a month in crutches and intense rehab afterwards. Not the kind of discovery that any athlete would like to hear. And on top of that, to be able to train like I need to, I would need cortisone shots in my hip to cancel the pain from the inflammation. I went to the doctor to inquire the details about how to proceed. It takes thirty minutes in and out followed by three of four days of rest to take effect. I wanted at this point to explore another avenue; maybe there is a another way to avoid the cortisone shots and even maybe the surgery, who knows...
I went to a hip surgeon to talk about it and to see what were my options. I learned that I will need surgery after the Olympics Games. They would have to open my hip and grind my hip bone back to its "natural" size and shape. Then it would be a month in crutches and intense rehab afterwards. Not the kind of discovery that any athlete would like to hear. And on top of that, to be able to train like I need to, I would need cortisone shots in my hip to cancel the pain from the inflammation. I went to the doctor to inquire the details about how to proceed. It takes thirty minutes in and out followed by three of four days of rest to take effect. I wanted at this point to explore another avenue; maybe there is a another way to avoid the cortisone shots and even maybe the surgery, who knows...
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