Gear Review: Correct Toes

First of all, allow me to apologize for my sparse updates lately. Midterms hit, and then Part I of Boards, and next week is finals. Between this trimester's course load and Boards, I can see why they've dubbed fifth tri "hell tri." I also wanted to get some time with this particular product before I got a review up, since it's not one of those products where I'd expect to put them on, and within a week or so have a good opinion of them. Nope, this is something that I wanted to have a little bit more time with, and also get through the majority of this trimester's Postural Assessment course before I went and reviewed. However, I have a short breather before finals, and I've spent a couple months with playing with these now, so here we go...here's the Correct Toes review!

Seneca Falls Track Club

Friend of mine asked for some design work. I may have slipped in some Bucknell colors. Ignore the navy blue on black...the background is just a placeholder for now. Somehow it looks like I may have become co-admin for this...it popped up on my Facebook newsfeed the other day (much to my confusion), but you know, Facebook official and all. And it's not really a club, per say, at least not as of now, but in my opinion, "track club" sounded more professional than "running group," which is what the actual head honcho named it, so I took some artistic license with my logo. Anyway, on the off-chance you live near the land of women's rights and wonderful lives, hit me up if you want to run with a bunch of chiropractic students. Should be fun.

Active Release Techniques (A.R.T.)

In case you've wondered where I've disappeared to, I just finished finals and then almost immediately went to Boston for the lower extremity Active Release Techniques seminar. In case you're not familiar with A.R.T., it is a soft tissue technique that treats problems with muscles, tendons, ligaments, fascia, and nerves by applying tension and getting them moving relative to each other. Many of you have probably heard the term "scar tissue adhesion" being thrown around by your friends who have had body work done. These adherences can limit range of motion, cause muscles to shorten and weaken, cause pain, and entrap nerves. Breaking down these adhesions is a large part of A.R.T. But Dr. Leahy explains it better than I, so check the site for a full explanation.

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner

I've been a bit of an emotional mess the past couple of days for a number of reasons (non-running related), and reading Molly's post pushed me towards penning one of my own, one from the perspective of someone who was never quite good enough to actually make a career out of running, yet still feels compelled to, well, train like it's my job anyway.

Homecoming Weekend at New York Chiropractic College

This weekend (well, all of last week, really) was homecoming at New York Chiropractic College, and seeing as we have no football team, it was a week for networking, continuing education for alumni, and getting current students thinking about their professional career. So here's the deal: This is my brand-new LinkedIn account. You can also click on the picture below. I want to make a career out of treating athletes...people like you guys. I want to help you squeeze every last bit of performance possible out of your body, and I want to help you keep your body running like a fine-tuned machine so you can keep doing the things you love, whether it's competing at a high level, getting that new PR, finishing your first 5K, or getting back out there after a tough injury. I've been that person who was told that my running was done, yet I just ran 101 miles last week. I want to help you do that too. So I want to network with you.

Second order of business is a question for you. This weekend, I talked to a lot of people about different treatments available for both prehabilitation and rehabilitation for patients (athletes in particular!). Many of them are working off of similar principles, though obviously there are small differences to differentiate each of them. I want to know how important a name is to you. For example, I use both Graston Technique and Active Release Technique (A.R.T.) as part of my prehab. Are you loyal towards a specific technique, or are you eager and willing to try new treatments that are based off of similar principles? Put another way, if you've had Graston work for you in the past, are you more likely to search for Graston providers in your area, or are you more likely to get recommendations for good healthcare providers, and then utilize whatever their treatment of choice (assuming it does the same job, like ConnecTX or FAKTR?). Please let me know in the comments. Thank you!

One final order of business: my friend Brendan maintains a blog that actually talks about what goes on in chiropractic school, if this post piqued your interest and you're curious about that aspect of my life (since this blog tends to focus mainly on running and running gear).