Posted on

Improving your ability to squat

Squatting is about as natural a movement as you can get but it is a skill that we in Western Europe and the US/Canada rarely practise. As such, as with any skill, not practising it means we lose it. Our lifestyles mean we do not need to squat in order to do anything then combined with a sedentary lifestyle has resulted in many of us losing the ability to do it well. As young children we have the ability to do it but often find that by the time we are adults, at least in the Europe/America, that we have lost the ability simply, I suspect, because we do not make use of it on a daily basis.

 

Fit young man doing squats on track

Continue reading “Improving your ability to squat”

Posted on

Breathing – it is kind of important

We take about 20,000 breaths a day so breathing well can help us in a lot of different ways. We see many people in the clinic and a common thread would be an inability to breathe with full, deep, slow and relaxing manner and  yet they never attribute this in any way to why they may be in pain.

dreamstime_m_63245498

So what does breathing have to do with knee pain, back pain, shoulder pain or pain in any other area of your body?
First and foremost if you aren’t breathing well, lets assume this to be having the ability to take nice slow, deep breaths in and out through the nose, then the chances are you don’t totally relax. If you aren’t relaxing properly then the chances are you aren’t sleeping as well and if you aren’t sleeping well you could your recovery ability is impaired. The relates to your ability to recover from your workout, your day at work or an injury.

Continue reading “Breathing – it is kind of important”

Posted on

Improving hip mobility

The role of hip mobility comes up regularly in the clinic but how much movement you need depends on what your goals are. If you want to be a gymnast the the  quantity and quality of movement needs to be high but if you have less lofty goals of maintaining good hip health for running then we still want quality movement but the amount we need is significantly less.  Having said this regardless of our goal maintaining a normal range of movement in the hip can help reduce the chances of creating problems in our backs, knees and ankles. Continue reading “Improving hip mobility”

Posted on

Hamstring tears

Injury to soft tissues/muscles account for something like 10-30% of all injuries in sport and hamstring tears are the most common of these. The hamstring acts as both a knee flexor and a hip extensor as well as contributing, to a lesser extent, to external rotation of both the hip and knee. Most common injury to the hamstrings, approximately 70% of all injuries, occur to the biceps femoris, the lateral of the 3 hamstrings, and usually during high speed running where the muscle is required to lengthen and contract at the same time to slow down the leg. The tear is normally in the long head of biceps femoris around the tendinous junction where the muscle is at it weakest. Continue reading “Hamstring tears”