Fascinating body-geek discovery

I'm still having sciatic issues, and I finally found one of the sources of it. This is kind of cool.

A lot of people are taught to run by landing on the heel, and then rolling forward. I've seen other people say that, no, heels are for standing - that big *clump* on your heel is bad for you. I started running more on the balls of my feet - the front of my foot lands first, and I let my weight come down. The heel might absorb shock, but I'm not trying to land on it. Once I did this, my knee problems vanished, and I found that it was comfortable to run in a ratty old pair of sneakers. I think this is what led to my sciatic problems - I think I finally found that my hips were too locked up to do this for too long.

My hip has released a lot; it no longer feels as seized up as it used to.

Now - now, the biggest source of pain is if I put weight on my left heel. And that's also where my leg still wants to turn out. My left foot doesn't want to point forward when my heel is on the ground.

It also hurts - toothache-y, icky pain when I do this.

Sigh.

Raise your hand if you're surprised that I keep intentionally putting weight on my left heel. Yeah. Didn't think so.

I wonder how much of this is a guy thing (or an exerciser thing) and how much is just a human thing.

(To be fair, it does feel kind of like a pain that might go away - like something might pop back into place, or whatever.)