Helping yourself

I read a great Gray Cook quote courtesy of Bret Contreras and ties in well with the link I put up on Facebook the other week from Eric Cressey regarding some drills to help work on improving mobility.

“When someone’s back hurts they don’t want to blame their lifestyle, fitness level, or daily patterns. Instead, they want to blame their back pain on starting the lawn mower last week, which, in reality, is probably just the straw that broke the camel’s back. Human beings live under the philosophy of, “I have a snowball and I have to throw it at someone.” No one wants to take responsibility.” Continue reading “Helping yourself”

Flexibility and injury

Todd Hargrove had a great post on his better movement blog; I definitely recommend checking out his site, where he talks about the relationship between flexibility, sports performance and injury prevention. In it he makes some great points on the lack of correlation between flexibility and injury rates. It got me thinking about the issue of improving the range of movement of any joint and how this relates to stretching, of any form, soft tissue work, in the form of hands on and foam roller type work, and strength. Continue reading “Flexibility and injury”

Abdominal/lumbar musculature and pelvic stabilisation

It may be a bit redundant to say it but the abdominals are quite important to how we move but there you go they are. They allow for transference of force from the lower to upper body and vice versa so weak abdominal and lumbar muscles can reduce athletic performance and pain from simply carrying out normal daily activities. They keep the torso stable, try squatting with a heavy weight if you have weak abdominals or lumbar musculature and you will fold over as you try to rise out of the bottom position. Continue reading “Abdominal/lumbar musculature and pelvic stabilisation”

The Performance Matrix

Over the weekend of 11thFebruary I was in London to do Kinetic Control’s “The Performance Matrix” movement screening course. I had been meaning to write this last week when I got home on Wednesday but the rest of the week was a bit hectic and I didn’t get the chance. First off it was a great course, well run by Mark Comerford and his team, and we all left, well I certainly did, feeling very enthusiastic about what I had learned, a good sign form with regards to the quality of any course I’ve been on. Continue reading “The Performance Matrix”

Maintenance tool kit

I’ve been talking about the importance of good posture recently and figured discussing the tools that might be worth investing in in order to help maintain it. The maintenance of good posture comes down to having our skeletal structure correctly aligned. For this to happen our soft tissues must be balanced so that we aren’t getting any asymmetrical pulling from any one structure or number of different ones, think about the effects of sitting and how it affects the front and back of our bodies differently. Once we have balance in terms of the “pull” between opposing areas we need to have the strength to maintain this good position. So my list would include, though not be limited to: Continue reading “Maintenance tool kit”

Help the Heros: The long way down charity cycle

This week I have Lance Corporal Iain Moore and his fellow cyclists visiting the clinic to help them out on their charity cycle from John O’Groats to Lands End and then some as they decided that the 1200 or so km wasn’t enough and stuck in a few detours to take it up to 2000km. They are doing this for Help the Heros and The Royal British Legion charties which are the two biggest charities helping injured servicemen in the UK.

You can find their here if you would like to donate to their cause.

Improving your posture

We see a lot of talk about having good posture and what to do to achieve it but what is good posture? It’s probably easier to think of it as how you would stand if you didn’t sit at a desk for 8 hours a day or hadn’t picked up any injuries from playing your chosen sport. You’re spine has natural curves that get disrupted if you don’t pay attention to how you are sitting and the effects of long periods of doing so even with good posture and what happens to how you move when you get injured. Your hips, knees, ankles, shoulders are all affected by the sitting for long periods and obviously can all be injured playing sport. If your pelvis if not constantly pulled forward and down by overly tight tissues will sit relatively level, your shoulder girdle would sit comfortably back if it wasn’t being pulled forward by your tight pec’s etc (this is simplifying it but you get the point) . All the need for holding yourself in “good posture” would be gone because it would happen on it’s own and a what you may find difficult to do at the moment would be happening without any conscious thought on your part because the imbalances you are trying to counter wouldn’t be there. Continue reading “Improving your posture”