Case history: journal
Herb, a New York journalist, was also a longdistance runner. From ages 28 to 34, he completed seven marathons; his only pain was from sore legs and a chafed toe. But during a vacation when he was 44, he ran one rigorous but short (1.7-mile) race in California’s Sierra Nevada. He was pain-free during the event, but was so exhausted by running hard at high altitude that, right after the race, he bent over for about two minutes, his hands on his knees. While doing this, he suddenly had severe pain in the middle of the lower back, pain that did not go away even when he resumed a normal standing posture.
Herb could not walk a step without sharp pain and needed a ride back to the start of the race (he had planned to walk). He naturally assumed that running had caused the pain, and he was afraid he would have to give up this form of exercise. A cousin told Herb about the McKenzie exercises and that the McKenzie Method says that when one has no pain while exercising but has pain directly thereafter, the culprit is almost always poor posture after exercise rather than the exercise itself: the exercise merely makes the athlete more vulnerable to the problems that can be caused by poor posture.
After his first set of McKenzie exercises, Herb’s pain became much better; he was helped especially by Exercise 3, Extension in Lying, and Exercise 5, Flexion in Lying. He also learned the importance of maintaining good posture in standing or sitting after hard exercise. He soon was able to return to running. With attention to post-running posture, Herb never again had back pain following training runs or races.
