So after a week of doing the stretching I made it back to the physio. I didn't know what to expect in terms of his assessment of my improvement. My pain was still there and I was a bit disappointed it hadn't gone straight away after some stretching. Obviously I was hugely over optimistic of what was possible in a week.
The first thing that was mentioned by the Physio was that my scoliosis was improving. It hadn't gone but he could see a difference already. Big morale boost.
He then checked how I was standing and sitting. I was still having a problem in placing my weight evenly foot to foot. Also when sitting I tend to slouch, which pulls back my legs.
He then looked at my hamstrings and his opinion was that they were incredibly tight. I needed to work on these.
So the stretch we performed was lying on the back and hand behind the knee trying to straighten the leg. This hurts, particularly in the back. It's also one which doesn't seem to make a lot of progress.
His recommendation was to first start with 5 second stretches.. and gradually build it up to 10 - 20 seconds etc.
He explained to me that the muscle/tendon doesn't get longer - but basically forgets how long it should be and therefore recallibrates itself to the shorter position. With stretching it creates a recallibration of the muscle to work to. Now I don't know if that is scientifically true or not, but as an engineer I can live with that and helps me to understand it.
So now I have got the John Travolta stretch and the hamstring stretch going - and trying to touch my toes. Roll on another week of stretching at home.
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