Why Walking More Will Help You
There are many ways to help increase the amount you walk and to get more steps in. But normally people focus on small ways to do this for example parking further away from work so instead, we will help name some bigger-picture ways of improving your step score. Walking the Walk If you need help with your pains or just want some advice feel free to contact the clinic today on 0578678904 or book now. Yours in Health Lawlor Clinic: Spine & Sport, Portlaoise, Laois
How Will Laser Therapy Help You?
Laser therapy is a medical treatment that uses focused light to trigger a series of events in the body that leads to an increase in cellular metabolism. This can decrease pain and inflammation so the healing process can take place faster. Laser therapy is used to treat short and long term conditions as well as post-activity recovery. Acute Injuries For injuries that have just occurred it is particularly effective if it is administered as quickly as possible. Chronic Conditions With long term conditions, laser therapy is most commonly used to help persistent pain and inflammation. After Activity To aid in post-activity recovery the laser is used by 250 pro, college, and Olympic sports teams across the United States and many parts of Europe. What Does It Feel Like? Laser therapy treatments is administered directly to skin, as clothing or topical dressings interfere with delivering light to tissues beneath the skin. Patients will feel a soothing warmth feeling as the therapy is administered. Patients receiving treatments with higher-power lasers also frequently report a rapid decrease in pain. For someone suffering from chronic pain, this effect can be particularly pronounced.How long do treatments last? With LightForce lasers, treatments usually 4-7 minutes long, […]
Use Your Foam Roller Better
The foam roller is something most people have in their gym bag but is commonly used ineffectively. Soft tissue work, including foam rolling, trigger point work, and even hands-on self myofascial release needs to be a focused process on an area. If you find that you are rolling the same muscles and areas every day or before workouts it most likely is not causing any long term benefits. Also when using it if you are rolling on it without any feeling of mild discomfort then you won’t be performing it correctly. If you put yourself into some serious pain for the hope of breaking down tissue to loosen your muscles out, it is not the way to create long lasting and effective results. Do This Instead There are a few key things you can do to manage your muscles and improve your health and performance. Prioritise your foam rolling on just a few targeted areas on the days you are training or recovery days until you feel some relief. Big muscles for example the quads and lats can be worked very well with the roller, so don’t get rid of your roller quite yet. Overall the foam roller may not […]
Tips For Exercising Over Winter
As winters arrives and summer sport starts slow down it can be hard to stay motivated to keep training or exercising regularly. But continuing to do regular exercise over winter can have significant benefits for your health and will get your body prepared for when sport starts up again. Physical activity and training in the senior population on a consistent basis can have great impacts to someone’s way of life. These benefits include that people have fewer falls with injury, improved muscular strength and endurance, a decreased incidence of coronary artery disease, and a lower risk of cardiovascular related mortality for example heart attacks There are a number of sports to pick from that can be found locally including running, walking, swimming, golfing, lifting weights, cycling and tennis. Based on the activity you are training for, the training regimen should be specifically designed to produce both metabolic and physical adaptations aimed to improve health and performance. But in general here are some goals and targets you can aim for to help stay active over winter. •Train 3-5 days per week •20 to 60 minutes aerobic activity. For example walking or running. •Choose an activity that engages the large muscle groups. […]
What’s Wrong With This?
When dealing with back pain a common relief strategy people use is to stretch for the back. In this weeks blog post we are going to discuss why stretching your lower back may not be an effective long term way of dealing with your pain. For a long time it was common for people to prescribe certain stretches for example pulling your knees to your chest while lying on your back as an exercise for people suffering with lower back pain. Short term the exercise makes sense. If people had trouble standing for long periods of time or if they were in pain lying on their back then they would feel better in a flexed position. Many who complained of feeling stiff and painful in their low back had instant relief of their symptoms after performing a few of these stretches. However, this relief is only temporary for most people. When you stretch your low back, you are stimulating the stretch receptors deep inside the muscles that give the perception of pain relief and the feeling of less stiffness. But muscle pain and stiffness you may feel in your back is caused because of a chemical reaction called inflammation. Inflammation […]
Are You Squatting Right?
Squatting is one of the most common exercises to perform in the gym but often is done incorrectly. A good place to start is if we look at it as a movement rather than an exercise. If we can fix the problems in a bodyweight squat you can create a greater capability to carry the load with the barbell. The importance of the squat: Squatting is a functional movement. This is because if you look at most sports for example a tennis player waiting for the serve or a goalkeeper at a penalty. The starting stance of the squatting movement is a universal position that carries over into many other movement patterns. Toe angle: Different people have different mobility limitations and anatomical differences will impact the width of your stance. The goal is to place your feet in a position that will allow for a full depth squat while still feeling comfortable. Although overall placing your feet at shoulder width apart is a good starting position for most people. When it comes to the feet for a bodyweight squat it is best to have a near straight foot position with a very slight 5 degree outwards rotation for your feet […]
Back Pain? Ways To Manage At Work
It is likely that you or someone you know has had low back pain in the past. It is a common problem but often it can be tackled by simply changing how you are moving or changing a couple of key habits in the day. This blog will cover ways to help the office worker and people working lifting boxes and machinery. If you sit with bad posture during the day then it will put more stress on certain areas of your back. Some key movement tips: Lifting: Sometimes fixing your posture can help but often peoples jobs require lifting or moving in the day. For this a proper core brace should be implemented. Not with a physical one you can buy but rather with your abdominal muscles. But how do you do it? If you create pressure in your abdominal cavity you will help to create extra stability for your back. So as you are about to lift the object off the ground take a breath and brace your core (to brace your core if you were to cough you will feel some muscles contract. Tense these muscles as you lift). Doing both of these things will increase the […]
Ways to Manage Arthritis and Achy Joints
Osteoarthritis is a common condition that people develop and can cause issues preventing people from doing the activities they want especially at a good intensity. Often people jump to surgery or have a surgery planned for a few years down the line. But there are things you can do to help manage the condition and if you do have surgery for example your knee then you will be in a better position to recover from it. So below is a list of easy things to try to help manage your pain. Exercise is an easy option to improve symptoms and function in people with osteoarthritis. A great place to start is 5-10 minutes on a bike as this will strengthen your quadricep muscles which has been shown to greatly help with pre operation or post knee operation knee health. Also in a 20 minute cycle you will do around 1000 knee mobilisations! This means the knee will be loose and mobile to help you do the activities you want. You can also do repeated knee extensions and repeated knee flexions called knee CARs which you can see in the video below. As with the bike, sometimes warming up the knee […]
Cycling With An Achy Back?
It is common for cyclists to complain about having a sore or achy back. Commonly this can be easily avoided and is due to people rushing out on their bike or not getting the bike fitted to them correctly. Because bikes are not a one size fits all, you can get fitted for your bike cheaply and easily and it can make a big difference to back pain. But apart from poor bike fit what are some other reasons for people getting back pain cycling? The seat is too high so your knee has a less than 25% bend at the end of the stroke. This will force you to rock your pelvis from side to side to get enough power at bottom of your pedal stroke. The handlebars are too far forward causing you to overstretch which will increase tension in your lower back. Flexing the lower back and causing core abdominal muscles to be in a poor position and so won’t work effectively. This means you won’t be in a stable position when you’re cycling. Using BIG gears. You should aim for a cadence of around 90 RPM. If you are getting lower than this then it will […]
Are You Warming Up Right?
A common question we get in clinic is what to do before warming up and more importantly what not to do. Sometimes people can be doing a warm up that will last as long as their actual workout because it contains a number of different elements to it. These might be an aerobic phase, self-myofascial release, mobility drills, activation drills and movement patterning. Then by the time they workout you are tired and fatigued. But something that is always important and to always be thought of before warming up on your workout days is some days you will need certain exercises and some days others, depending if you wake up stiff or if you are feeling good. Any exercise that does not directly contribute to making your workout better is not worth doing. An overly extensive warm up can actually decrease your effectiveness to workout causing some central fatigue. Central fatigue is not to do with how you are feeling on a certain day, but rather the weakening of your central nervous system to send signals to your muscles. For example a 20 minute cycle before you start deadlifting is not the most effective way to prepare your body for […]
