Jump Back to Exercise…Safely!
Casey Holt • May 7, 2020
Back in Action 💪
The sun is shining, spring is in the air, and the stay at home order (fingers crossed) may be lifted soon! Gyms and golf courses will be opening, spring projects begin, and you become more active…this is a good thing! BUT. Before we start jumping back into our normal routines like we never left, it may be a good time to review some key things to help reduce the risk of injury and stay on our A game.
- The first, and maybe most important thing you can do is understanding proper Load Management. Load can be defined simply as the amount of physical stress you’re putting on your body. Whether that’s the mileage you run, weight you lift, or eve the time you spend working in the yard. A 2015 study indicated athletes are 4x more likely to sustain an injury if their workload was increased by over 1.5x on a week to week basis. An easy way to understand this is if you were to run 1 mile every day for a week, and decided to up it to 1.6 miles in week 2 of training, you are statistically more likely to be injured. In no way is this some sort of scare tactic, quite the opposite as we always encourage pushing yourself and progressing…just be careful on how much and how fast.
- We’ve already talked about how important sleep is for your immune health, but it is largely important for musculoskeletal health as well. A 2017 research study on 340 athletes found that those who slept less than 8 hours per night were 61% more likely to be injured in their sport compared to those sleeping over 8 hours! Although many of these referenced studies are athletes, I would be willing to put money the same would apply to recreational exercisers like many of us!
- A common question I get asked is “What type of exercise is best?”. Although I support any type of exercise or activity, the research has shown time and time again that strength training is superior for injury prevention than any other exercise. One study I commonly reference from the British Journal of Sports Medicine compared 3 different groups. 1 group stretched, a second who worked on proprioceptive (balance) exercises, and the last being strength training. Of those 3, the strength training group showed a 66% percent less likelihood of being injured compared to the other 2. This may be something to consider trying once the gyms open up! If you have any questions or need guidance on what workouts would be best for you, please don’t hesitate to get ahold of me, I’d love to work with you.
- Although this next tip coincides with load management, it’s worth mentioning. And that is less can equal more. A 2014 study of over 400 top level athletes in Finland saw athletes that took at least two rest days, or days with little to no exercise, were over 5x less likely to be injured. Some of us may feel guilty about not being to exercise due to gym closure, and eager to jump back in full swing. Just remember to once again, take it slow and take days off. Let you body rest, recover, and grow strong.
I hope you all had a great weekend and enjoyed that sunshine. Be sure to follow us on Facebook (Advanced Chiropractic Wichita) and Instagram (@advancedchiroict) for weekly posts on exercises, nutrition, and possibly a fun give-a-way this week!
Stay active, stay healthy, stay positive.
Best regards,
Dr. Casey Holt
When it comes to pain, most people can relate to this: After about 2-3 weeks of progressively worsening pain, you begin to wonder if it’s something that you need to get checked out. Once you finally fold and head to your Primary Care or a physical medicine practitioner like a chiropractor or physical therapist the thing you want most is to find out WHY that pain is there… WHAT is causing it? To help get your answers imaging may be done: X-Ray, MRI Etc. or orthopedic testing to narrow down where the pain is coming from. Let’s say imaging is done and a report comes back stating you have “disk degeneration.” According to a study by Brinjikji et al., 2015, when assessing pain free populations with MRI’s 52% of 30 year olds and 88% of 60 year olds came back with this finding. Even more so, 30% of 20 year olds and about 40% of pain free 60 year olds showed disc herniations on MRI’s. In other words, while these do cause pain, they may not exactly be causing the pain you’re experiencing, and even if they are there are many other factors to pain that must be considered.
What’s the difference??
With a lot of patients, or clients interested in strength programming, I frequently get asked what the best exercise(s) is for losing fat at X, Y, or Z is. Take stubborn belly fat for example… the answer has to be crunches right?? No? No. Planks then?? Ehhh, nope.
TMJD (temporomandibular joint dysfunction), or jaw pain is increasingly common in America. It is estimated that 10 million Americans experience jaw pain in their lifetime. Dentists even report that 8/10 patients report jaw pain or bruxism (night grinding).
Having sufficient mobility in your thoracic spine (midback) is key, for a lot of reasons. If you lose mobility in this region of the spine, the joints around it (shoulders and neck) have to work extra hard to make up for this loss of motion
Maintenance care is a term that can be defined as healthcare directed towards maintaining optimal body function. In chiropractic, this would include following a regularly scheduled adjustment once every 2-4 weeks. Maintenance care is a type of preventative care that is recommended so that recurrences of painful episodes are lessened. Just a few benefits of maintenance care are as followed:
Dry needling is a soft tissue therapy developed by physical therapists, and recently has entered the chiropractic realm. If you’ve been in the office, you’ve probably heard me talk about it, or even have had it done. In the eyes of many healthcare professionals, this IS the gold standard of soft tissue therapy. Let’s break it down on what exactly dry needling is, how it works, and how it may help you!
For our first blog of the summer, we’re talking back pain and golf! This is a very common thing I see in my clinic. Today we’ll address why back pain occurs when golfing, and the body-swing connection—how the different parts of the body are related to each part of the swing.
It’s time! In this week’s newsletter, we’re going 3rd and final round of our immune boosting series. So far we have covered some awesome tips on creating a diet built for success in the midst of COVID-19. However, your diet isn’t the only thing that can help create a healthy immune system. Incorporating the following health habits of exercising, adequate sleep, and dropping the cigarettes are three great ways to help your immune system function at its best!
Good morning and happy Monday! I hope you all have had continued health, are stocked up on toilet paper, and that you were able to get outside and enjoy that beautiful spring weather!
