The training camp in high altitude. Posture alignment therapy.

Almost every year I have a post with similar name "... high altitude training..." and most of the times I mention the same place, Los Alamos, a small town in high mountains in New Mexico, one of my favorite towns in North America. Beautiful nature, nice friendly people and very sports oriented town. I really enjoy to train here: hundreds of trails, different variety of roads for biking and 50 miters indoor swimming pool, a dream town of a triathlete, who doesn't like crowd and ready for the hard training, because Los Alamos is at an elevation of 7.200 ft and there is no easy course for the bike ride except maybe a spin on a bike trainer. I am training here for the first Ironman this season, Ironman St. George, which is coming up in less then 3 weeks.

My biggest goal this year was to stay injury free. Since the middle of year 2009 I wasn't 100% free of injuries and most of the time there is something's going on in my feet: planter fasciitis, achilles tendonitis, heel bursitis, stress fracture. I do, massage the calf muscles and stretch , I do ice the feet after training, I stay hydrated, but I still have some issues in that area. When I got to Los Alamos my friend told me about a method, called The Egoscue Method and that there is a girl in town who can help, using the same method, to get better with my injuries. At the beginning it sounded like some kind of magic, but listening to my friend it actually was making seance. I wont describe the whole method, there is enough information online, here is what I am doing, Aligned Play, with coach Jessica. I just want to share my experience. First of all we found out that my body is all twisted, one hip is higher and same with shoulders. It's not surprise that right and left sides of the body are not symmetrical. But sometimes when you are training hard through so many years this can cause injury related problems. And when you can find the right exercises to make the body more even it can also help to relies those problems. And that what we were doing. I got the list of 10 drills, which I need to do every morning (takes about 30 min). After a few days I could tell that my body motions have changed: I noticed on the bike ride, that my paddle stroke is more straight; I stay tall through my runs and I can maintain to run long runs without pain in my feet. This is life long commitment to the 30-40 min of exercises every day, but if it helps to stay injury free I'll stick to it :-)