When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Random

1. Want to know something funny?? When most people do a ‘Random Thoughts” blog, they commonly called them….wait for it……Random Thoughts. I ask you, gentle reader, HOW RANDOM IS THAT???? That’s right, it’s not. FAIL

So know that you have an original here, folks. Someone who blogs a random thoughts post COMPLETE with a random title, including the word RANDOM to tell you what it’s about. Everyone else out there without an imaginative bone in their body and using the same title over and over again for their random posts, just realize one simple fact: You just got served, blog style. Step ya game up, kids. I give it a week before everyone out there in blogdom starts following suit, but remember the innovator that started the trend.

2. I hate my car. It’s in the shop to fix the power steering, which brings the running total for the past four years to 2 CV joints, one sway bar, and inner pulley, the heater fan, a gas tank malfunction, a front strut, a transmission problem, and now a power steering pump issue in all of 4 years. Seriously, I’m never buying a Dodge again. It’s cost me almost as much in stupid repairs as the car is worth, and I don’t even have 125k kilometers on it (which to those in America is about 85000 miles). What a piece of crap.

3. I’ve been kicking around an idea lately that what we know about the hip flexor group as trainers is completely wrong. Don’t send me hate mail or death threats or anything, but I think a lot of the time we feel the hip flexor is the devil, when in fact it may come down to more of a rectus femoris issue and disc issues of the lumbar spine than actually being related to the illiopsoas at all. I mean, the hip flexor is all good and happy in there doing what it has to do, but it’s more like the pec minor of the hip than a prime mover or stabilizer.

When performing leg raises, people don’t tend to feel burning in their psoas, but rather their rectus femoris, which means it’s probably doing most of the work, or that it’s stupidly weak and creating some form of compensation. Since it’s a synergist for hip flexion with the illiopsoas, if it’s not pulling its’ weight, that doubles up on the hip flexor. If it gets tight, it will limit hip extension, again an area where we single out poor little hip flexor as being the demon child that needs all the active release and graston in the world until we perforate our colon by beating the hell out of it.

One way to tell if your RF is tight or not is when you lunge forward, if you’re not able to get your femur back past neutral without tilting your pelvis. This would essentially look like you’re trying to avoid pooping everywhere, while still getting your swole on.

Or maybe I’m wrong, but like I said, it’s just an idea. I’ll do some more research and test a few processes on unsuspecting clients and see what happens.

4. Old people are right: they can feel the weather in their knees/backs/kidneys/whateverthehell hurts today. In the span of two weeks, Edmonton temperatures have gone from -20C to plus 10C, back to -40C, up to above zero today. These huge temperature fluctuations are going to bring changes in barometric pressure, which in turn changes the pressure of oxygen in the ambient air, making less or more available depending on the day, and also makes people incredibly sore, stiff, achy, and really really crabby from altered sleep patterns.

So if you’ve ever had one of those days where nothing feels good, you’re dragging your butt, you can’t stop thinking about sleepies in your warm warm bed, but you just slept for 10 hours, ate like a champ, and haven’t just beasted yourself the day before, ask yourself if the weather has changed drastically lately, and you might have your answer for your sub-par being-humanness.

5. Apparently Justin Bieber has a new movie (in 3D!!!!) called “Never Say Never,” and apparently it’s because he always says “never say never.” What a freakin hippocrit!! He says “never” twice in the same sentence, so for him to never say “never,” means this movie should actually be called _______ say ________, or else he’s just a big old liar.

6. Rick Mercer is Canada’s version of John Stewart, except he makes less money, travels to more small towns, and talks like a Newfie. Here he talks about the mythical unicorn of the school calendar, the snow day.