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Capacity and Performance: How much can you do before it hurts? An example

Last week I discussed how where possible we want to keep your desired activities in your routine. This might be running, squatting, cycling this part doesn’t really matter rather it is the concept of making your rehab as relevant as possible.

Last October I was looking for a way to incorporate more movement/exercise into my week. I would generally run twice a week and lift twice so I was looking for an easy movement session and decided on GMB’s Elements program. This is a basic movement program that I felt I could do on the days I was looking after my wee boy when he went for a nap. Continue reading “Capacity and Performance: How much can you do before it hurts? An example”

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Capacity and performance: how much can you do before it hurts?

Knowing what you can and cannot do is the crux of any rehab program and pushing the envelop of this is where changes occur and, ultimately, you get back to doing the things you enjoy.

We can run tests until the cows come home but the bottom line is what can you actually do before things begin to hurt. We may be test you in a number of different exercises for our subjective and objective tests in the clinic but these really only give us a guide as to what you are capable of.

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Illiotibial band syndrome; What’s the cause and what to do about it

Illiotibial band syndrome often seems like a plague for runners. Everyone knows someone who has it or has had it themselves but it is much misunderstood as to what and where it is.

The illiotibial band is a thick, fibrous length of connective tissue that runs from the illiac crest to the lateral condyle of the tibia. It crosses both the hip and the knee joints and plays a role in the stabilisation of both of them.  As well as aiding the stabilisation of the knee and hip it is involved in the abduction and extension of the the hip through the attachment of Glute Max and Tensor Fascia Lata.

 

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Achilles tendinopathy – what can you do to keep running

Achilles tendinopathy is one of the more common running injuries and I mentioned it previously in post TOP 5 RUNNING INJURIES. As I mentioned there it is pretty much an overuse injury that can be avoided, for the most part though not always, by good programming. If you gradually increase your training load it is possible to avoid overuse injuries as you are training within your capacity to recover before the next training session. In doing this once you get to the tough part of the program the hard training in itself has a protective mechanism, as described by Tim Gabbett here.

running up hill

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Where does the use of tape and other modalities fit into treatment and injury prevention?

One of our Facebook followers asked this question last week. It is a pretty simple answer in some respects and might surprise you. They are mostly of limited value and come way down the line in terms of providing benefit in either the rehab phase or in helping injury prevention.

Broken arm

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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

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Avoiding lower back pain when deadlifting

So what can be causing lower back pain when you are deadlifting?

If you are deadlifting or other pulling movements and you aren’t creating enough tension through the body then this can create extra stress in areas that aren’t really expecting or ready for it.  When we are doing pulling movements from the floor we need to take the slack out of the upper body by first gripping the bar hard and then by pulling the bar towards us by contracting the lats.

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