Skateboard muscle imbalance - any advice?

Regular here, my gluteus and calf on the right side are iron, on the left side they are butter.
For some time now I have felt a slight pain in my back, just above the right gluteus and for a few days when I get up from my chair I feel a twinge in my left tensor. I do 5 km/3.10 miles a day of e-skateboarding and what I described sounds like 100% muscle imbalance to me.
Alternating stance regular-goofy / goofy-regular should intuitively rebalance my muscles, but the very idea seems crazy for my body. Has anyone on here succeeded without going to the hospital? Is it better to get into yoga/stretching? Any tips to solve this problem?

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Ride slowly?

Random but are you a back pocket wallet carrier? I was for years and noticed it was fucking up my posture and causing weird back pain. It took one long car ride for me to feel like an old man at age 25.

The obvious answer is to do the opposite workout to balance out but realistically, that’s a challenge as skating switched stance just to work out would be awkward and awful.

I think you’re right on track with the yoga idea but I’d switch it up with some strength training/cardio focused on those muscle groups on that side to complement. Balance and strength ftw!

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I’d be surprised if alternating stances worked. I’d think your dominant foot will find a way to be dominant.

I’d suggest exercising without weights at first. Gain some lower back strength with yoga is a good starting point. Push ups, pull ups, sit ups… Stay away from weights until your strength improves. My lower left back is always in worse shape at the L5 lumbar. Right hand right foot dominance.

But easier said than done - I need to take my own advice and get back into shape :smile:

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thanks for the input, yes I’am but very attentive not to sit on it while driving or working. It’s just that I skate since age 10 and even if I made a lot of sport in the past (which reasonably kept the balance between my right and left leg) now I just skate and that’s messing up my balance. I’m checking my stance since a week: while simply standing 80% of the time most of my body weight is supported by my right leg/gluteus, so that’s it. Ten minutes ago I also tried to switch stance with the result that my body was trying to steer with my front foot. I’ll follow your advice and visit some yoga center.

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Yes, exactly that happened, but in addition my left leg was bending unnaturally, compromising my upright position. This way it’s impossible to maintain the pendulum effect we use to make turns

Try to do some exercise to strengthen your body overall that should help. I have an office job and unfortunately have to sit a lot, I used to get back pain and sour muscles, but I started doing exercise (planking and lifting) on advise of my friend who is a physiotherapist. He told me to strengthen my body so I did, and it completely went away. When I stopped exercising for more than a few months as I slacked off, the issues would return, so I try to keep at it. Now I also have a standing desk though to switch between sitting and standing.

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Emtb or full bindings might help. In my experience it makes you more conscious of distributing weight because you feel all the extra pressure on one side via the binding.

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Strengthening the body worked for me. Don’t skip leg day and focus on one legged exercises like bulgarian split squats, glute kickbacks, leg extensions,calf raises. Static hanging from a bar helps with back pain

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As someone who has been to physical therapy before, switching your stance can help even out muscles, but the biggest thing to avoid is pushing yourself while on the board. (At least the therapist I went to said me riding switch was better than only riding one way on my manual long board)

My physical therapist had told me no manual skate boarding for exercise because of how many issues it can cause with muscle imbalances. Esk8 should be a little better or at the very least it was better enough that my physical therapist was okay with it/ she might have just allowed it knowing it was the lesser of two evils so long as I didn’t fall. which I did do more than once while in therapy and she was not happy with it, but at least I learned some ways to help improve mobility in my shoulders after a bad fall

The best way to start fixing the imbalances is to use the various different leg presses and other leg machines available at most gyms. Preferably not at a planet fitness since they cover up all the instructions that come printed on the machines leaving you to guess how to use them, and you can’t see the nice little diagrams showing which muscles it will work out.

Furthermore, when you use the machines use one leg at a time only, then switch to the other, and then you can do only a few sets with both. You mainly want to use one leg at once so that way you can balance things back out. When you use both, the leg with more of the muscle is still going to be doing all the work. The amount of weight you can put on the machine for each leg should help give you can idea of where the inbalances are.

Also, there are probably muscles on your left side that are stronger than the same muscles on your right. I was told that having muscle groups so uneven like that can contribute to back pain depending on how unbalanced it is. So it is worth trying to fix that just to see if it is the only cause for your back pain. If you still have pain after evening things out I’d recommend an orthopedist who will actually help you fix the issues vs a chiropractor who only focuses on temporary relief and can potentially end up doing permanent damage

The best option would be to work directly with a physical therapist in person, but that is expensive to do. I only mentioned the stuff that was more general and that anyone can follow safely so long as you don’t intentionally push yourself too hard.

I don’t think yoga will come close to solving your problem based on what you described, but I also don’t think it will cause you any harm if you want to try it out. I think you are better off spending most of your work out time building muscle and then maybe a little time with yoga if you like it.

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I work at a sk8 shop and we started carrying yoga mats to handle this issue.

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Theres no such thing as muscle imbalance xD (unless you have a very severe birth defect) Generally if you’re in pain for something that isn’t caused by trauma, you need more movement and pre-hab those parts to do what you want them to.

Its common for poeple that havn’t spent much time on a board to feel uncomfort.
If you subject your body to something its not used to this is the natural consequence.
Keep practicing, fix posture and stance and eventually it will feel alright.

Co-sign with @moon and @Creavenger. I’d start with some single leg glute bridges on the weak side against your own body weight. Slow and steady to engage as many muscle fibres as you can. Start with 4 sets of 10 and gradually progress the difficulty one (or a combo) of several different ways:

  1. More reps
  2. More sets
  3. Increasing resistance
  4. Reducing rest between sets
  5. Adding plyometric movements
  6. Adding pulse movements
  7. Adding static movements

Stick to unilateral movements until your strength and conditioning balance out and then you can incorporate bilateral compound exercises like squats. My favourite uni movement is undoubtedly the Bulgarian Split Squat.

As you get older you really can’t get away with skipping leg day and especially, training your posterior chain. All kinds of bad shit happens. Ask me how I know :expressionless:

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