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Control ain’t the goal

When we injure ourselves we will see a reduction in our movement capacity in the area until things are back to normal. Hopefully with good rehab this will be a short period of restricted movement as we rebuild the capacity of the injured area to move. During the initial period we do see more control over the area as we do not want to re-injure it but long term this isn’t a valid option, what we require is more movement or a greater capacity/range of movement that we can move through without injuring ourselves. We need to practice as rich and varied range of movement as we can in order to fully recover from injuries and aid in helping avoid them in the future. Yes we require stability but we also need movement a graded approach to this can help ensure that we overcome the fear of movement and allow us to build our movement capacity. Our DMS rehab and the Dynamic Movement Skills work itself are both great tools to help with this.

This article by Joanne Elphinston is a nice read covering the subject.

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Forefoot or rearfoot? Where should my foot land?

There is and has been for sometime a big discussion on which part of the foot you should strike the ground with first when we are running. The rearfoot strike has been said to be the worst way possible to run and you should strike first with the fore to midfoot in order to reduce injuries, increase running economy and perhaps even bring about world peace.

This article by Tom Goom at Running Physio looks at whether or not you should switch to a more forefoot running pattern or not.

 

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Workshop on training your core

In this workshop we cover some of the basics of training the core such as correct bracing strategies/abdominal engagement through to more advanced exercises and progressions for more familiar ones such as the glute bridge, plank and side plank, bird dog. The idea behind it is to both teach you how to make your training of this area more effective and to show you it doesn’t need to be either complicated or take hours to complete.

The workshop will run on Saturday 7th Feb at 13:00 and the cost is £25.

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Injury prevention and management

This is a good article, with lots of references so you can do some further reading if you wish, on Injury prevention and management.

Two take away points were;
In summary

· SS(static stretching) does not appear to reduce injury risk and any effect on earlier return to sport is of marginal clinical significance.

· In contrast, a graduated strength training program appears to significantly reduce injury risk and significantly reduce the time to return to sport after injury.

Injury prevention and management among athletic populations

 

 

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When training is your job.

Just because your job is to play a sport at the highest level it doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the process, not that it’s fun all the time but then who’s job is? Here’s a video from British tennis pro Heather Watson who reach the final of the Hobart International yesterday by beating her American opponent, Alison Riske, 6-3, 7-5.

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How does your brain respond to pain?

This is a great little video that explains that though we all experience pain we all experience pain differently. Put together by Karen D. Davis, PhD. Karen is a Professor in the Department of Surgery and Institute of Medical Science at the University of Toronto, and heads the Division of Brain, Imaging and Behaviour – Systems Neuroscience at the Toronto Western Research Institute.

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Dynamic movement skills

I was on the Dynamic movement skills course in November and have been integrating it into the treatment of one or two clients over the last month with great success. We are getting very noticeable differences in as little as a couple of sessions so I’m really looking forward to rolling this out as a stand alone system in the January.

The course works on developing and refining neuromuscular efficiency and motor patterns. This helps improve gross motor skills, balance, rhythm, coordination, speed and agility. These ultimately help to increase movement competence and confidence during daily activities and sport. In re-educating the neuromuscular system we are able to react more quickly and dynamically and through working in all planes of motion develop more rounded movement skills. The system also aids in correcting single leg dominance and through the progressive nature of it develop dynamic balance and core engagment which in turns allows for the development of better turning ability in sport.WP_20141220_001

 

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Aerobic exercise training increases pain tolerance

The study talks about exercising 3x a week for 30 minutes in healthy individuals. If we are talking about those suffering from chronic pain we might want to increase the frequency but decrease the length of time. Even going for a very short walk of 5 minutes at a time can make a significant impact. From there we can increase the number per day and then perhaps the number of times per day but the bottom line is that easy effort aerobic exercise is good for dealing with pain.