Health blog Category: stretching
How to Prevent Injuries When Running
Whether you are pounding the pavement for a short jog or you’re a routine racer, running is great cardiovascular training. It is a gratifying way to maintain overall fitness. Although the act of running itself may initially seem daunting if you’re not an avid runner, you will reap the physical benefits within a few weeks.
The key is to start slowly and add distance incrementally to decrease the risk of injury.
Here are the top 10 health benefits of running:
- Improve Longevity
- Burn Fat
- Reduce Your Cancer Risk
- Strengthen Your Core
- Improve Your Sleep
- Reduce Your Risk of Osteoporosis
- Boost Your Mood
- Reduce Your Risk of Diabetes
- Reduce Your Risk of Blood Pressure and Heart Disease
- Boost Your Immunity
Preventing Injury: Running Ritual Musts and the Importance of Stretching
These tips are essential for optimizing your running dexterity, whether you’re an indoor treadmill devotee, an outdoor roadrunner or a trail running enthusiast.
Identifying Hamstring Injuries
The most common form of hamstring injury is a muscle strain. This is a stretching and sometimes even tearing of your muscle or tendon. Symptoms you could experience with a muscle strain include pain, swelling, muscle spasms, tenderness, and restricted range of motion. The length of time for your muscle to heal is dependent on the severity of the strain and the treatment process. As with any injury, the sooner treatment starts, the better the results will be.
Read full blogWhy are Strength and Balance so Important?
Why is Strength and Balance so important?
Strength is directly correlated to balance because of the benefits it has on body mechanics and joint strength. As you age, you want to continue to build muscle mass to reduce the stress on your bones and joints. The more strength you have surrounding the joints, the more support they will have in your daily activities and the less you will feel the wear and tear you put on your body.
5 Ways Stretching Can Improve Your Overall Health
One of the most important parts of a physical therapy treatment plan is stretching. A physical therapist will incorporate targeted stretches into each treatment plan they design, in order to target problem areas for their patients. While strength and endurance exercises are also incredibly important, stretching can be especially helpful in helping a patient manage their aches and pains. There are several benefits to stretching, including pain relief, increased flexibility, and functional improvement.
5 important benefits of stretching:
Stretching has a lot of benefits that we don’t always think about.
Read full blogHow Stretching can Improve Our Health
There are several benefits to stretching, including; pain relief, increased flexibility, and functional improvement. Our bodies are incredibly interconnected. While some stretches may seem obvious (for example, stretching your back to relieve back pain), sometimes stretching certain parts of your body can provide relief in areas you may not have expected.
5 important benefits of stretching:
Stretching has a lot of benefits that we don’t always think about. The top 5 include:
- Relieving pain through targeted stretches.
Does Getting Older Mean We Can’t Exercise…
Statistics show that roughly about one third of people 65-years-old are physically active. That’s in contrast to the roughly 80 percent of the general population. As you age you may begin to think that your body won’t be able to handle exercising, and you may just stop exercising all together. The reality is, folks over the age of 65 should be doing 150 minutes of exercise each week, per the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
Read full blogWhat Type of Stretching Should I do ‘Before’ Playing Sports?
You should know what type of stretching you should do both before and after playing sports or any other physical activity. Stretching is an important part of an athletes daily exercise routine, however, it should not be the only exercise they are doing. Most people think that when we stretch we are elongating our muscles. This is a misconception. Unless we are stretching for many hours every day consistently for at least 6 weeks, than we are not actually lengthening the muscles. It is more likely that you are changing the neural tone. You can think of neural tone as the input to the muscle from the brain to contract. When you stretch you are temporarily changing the neural input and the muscle relaxes. This means that rather than lengthening the muscle you are decreasing the input from the brain to contract the muscle which, in turn, leads to the muscle being more relaxed or loose.
Read full blogTrouble reaching into a cabinet to put away groceries?
“My shoulder is killing me! I can’t even reach my arm up to wash my hair!” Shoulder pain is one of the most common complaints we hear in the physical therapy world from patients. Whether the pain is sharp and stabbing, or full and achy, it causes the person a significant amount of discomfort and inability to perform their everyday activities. So what causes shoulder pain in the first place?
The shoulder joint, also known as the glenohumeral joint, is the most mobile joint in the body, which unfortunately makes it the most prone to injury.
What happens when your muscles don’t have proper strength?
By: Mike Bills, MS PT
Typically there will be no immediate effect to not having the proper strength in a particular muscle in your body. The effects are usually more long term in the sense that “weakness” or lack of proper strength in an area results in excess friction on the bones in the joint, excessive wear and tear on tendons and cartilage around a joint, and more. This is why things like tendonitis get started.
Want to get rid of that nagging muscle tightness?
The benefits of routine stretching reach far beyond rehabilitation. Whether you’re an athlete, sedentary, a weekend warrior, young or old, active or inactive, you will reap the value of a regular stretching routine.
In general, stretching is the elongation of a muscle and is used to help prevent injury and discomfort. However, there are different types of stretching that are important to distinguish. One is best implemented as a warm-up to prepare your body for exercise and the other is best used as a cool-down to reduce post-activity muscle soreness.