Shouldering the Burden

In the ongoing effort to improve my running, during the week I visited my physio. He filmed me walking and running, and we then reviewed the footage to see where I had problems.
When I was walking, my gait was OK. The physio could see where the hip exercises I had been doing were helping, and I was generally pretty balanced. Moving into a jog though, and the issues started to become apparent. I was dropping in my hips, so that rather using momentum and swinging my legs through to run, I was forced to push up on every step, greatly increasing the effort required. I was also carrying my right arm very low. However, it was when I tried to push into a slightly faster run that the extent of how many deficits I have became clear.
Rather than using my arms to rotate and counter-rotate my torso to assist in running, my right shoulder protracts and I don't counter-rotate. This throws my whole gait out of whack, so now it looks like I've got to get back to working on my shoulder as well as my core, hip and glutes. There's a long way to go yet.

Master Splint-er

On Tuesday I returned to the hand surgeon, this visit marked 4 months since the operation. At first he was a bit worried that I'd made no progress, but on further investigation he realised that I was weaker than he'd expected, and things were working, just not at the level he expected. Apparently when undergoing tendon transfer operations the muscles usually weaken, but due to my condition they weakened more than normal. As such, what is typically a 6 month recovery is likely to take me twice as long.
He did seem to think I had some improved strength in my thumb and tricep, which are related to the same nerve path, so maybe something is healing back towards the source of the problem as well.
There was some more good news though: I don't need to go back to see him or the OT for another two months. That'll save some money. Even better news though is that I don't need to wear the splint. It was getting pretty cumbersome and annoying, so I'm glad to see the back of it. The first thing I noticed though was that without it I was having problems typing, so now I'm back to wearing my old wrist brace while I type.