Read more of Flexibility and injury »
Read more of Flexibility and injury »
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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.
Read more of Flexibility and injury »  One comment - (Comments are closed)  Back pain, Deep Tissue Massage, Running techniques and tips, mobility 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. In this post we’ll be dealing with upper body issues as they relate to poor posture and as with the lower body there are again a couple of areas that can give us quick results., the thoracic spine and ribs and the big movers of the humerus the lat’s and pec’s. There are obviously other areas that need to be examined but these are a great starting point. In part one, we talked about the general idea of good or neutral posture, what may cause us to be unable to maintain this and what we can do to combat these issues. What we will look at this time is what is happening in the lower trunk and legs and what to do about it to help us maintain a more neutral 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. There are quite a few very good reasons for looking to maintain or improve your joint mobility one is having a good range of movement through all your joints will protect you from injury. Why so you may ask? Well, within reason, if you have joints that can operate through a full range of their normal un-injured or affected by years of neglect movement you can safely exert force through a much greater range of movement. This ability to exert force through a greater range of movement ultimately means you are less likely to injure yourself. The second is that that if you don’t use it you’ll lose it. Eric Creesy has a nice series of posts on his blog that relate to helping you correct/fend off poor posture. It’s well worth having a read through the 4 parts and incorporating the ideas into . . . → Read More: Correcting bad posture I picked this post up on my friend Chris’ Conditioning Research blog. You can get the whole study here but the study found the following results that would definitely be worth further investigation. The results of this case-control study reveal a positive association between weight and lumbar disc herniation as well as lumbar disc narrowing among men and . . . → Read More: Life style factors and lumbar disc disease We all know the importance of getting our 5 portions of fruit and veg every day well this is my take on the idea applied to some simple mobility/flexibilty work that we would all benefit form on a daily basis. Most people now have sedentary jobs and find themselves being in front of a computer either all day or a substantial part of it. The effects of this sedentary lifestyle on the body are often create a more kyphotic posture, flattening the lumbar curve and exaggerating both the thoracic and cervical curves. The musculature of the back, as a generalisation, gets lengthened whilst that on the front gets shortened and the joints of the spine start to stiffen and lose their mobilty. Along with this the hips also stiffen and the glutes get over stretched and switch off. The hamstrings shorten and the quads lengthen and so on it goes through the body. At the weekend I completed the CORE Myofascial Therapy certification program. The class was run by George Kousaleos, the founder of the CORE Institute in Tallahasse, Fl, and ran for 6 pretty intense days. While quite “full on” it was a lot of fun and a great learning experience with the course covering; Myofascial Spreading, Arthrokinetics, CORE Foot Specific work, CORE Release, CORE Back Specific and End work. |
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