As the summer winds to a close and the children all head back to school, it is important to maintain a regular and ongoing health regiment. The old expression: “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” comes to mind. To keep our bodies strong, and avoid those pesky injuries that can happen as we bunker down on our couches for the colder months ahead, we need to adopt some strategies to help us to be the resilient and strong selves we dream of in our minds.

Stretching, and maintaining your flexibility is a good start, but catching those minor aches and pains early and staying in shape can help your body avoid more serious injuries in the long term.

Ongoing physiotherapy treatment offers a range of benefits for individuals who have experienced injuries and who want to avoid them in the first place. Let’s take a look at some of the main advantages:

Pain relief:

Physiotherapy techniques such as manual therapy, therapeutic exercises, and modalities like heat or cold therapy can help alleviate pain associated with injuries. The therapist can assess the specific condition and develop a personalized treatment plan to target the source of pain.

Improved mobility and flexibility:

Injuries often lead to restricted movement and reduced flexibility. Physiotherapists can design exercises and stretches to restore and improve joint mobility, muscular flexibility, and overall range of motion. This helps individuals regain their ability to perform daily activities and return to their regular exercise routines.

Enhanced strength and endurance:

After an injury, muscles may weaken due to disuse or atrophy. Physiotherapy programs include strengthening exercises that focus on rebuilding muscle strength and endurance. This helps individuals regain their physical capabilities and prevent further injuries in the future.

Faster recovery and reduced risk of complications:

Physiotherapists are trained to provide appropriate treatment at different stages of the healing process. By implementing specific techniques and exercises, they can promote tissue healing, reduce scar tissue formation, and minimize the risk of complications. This accelerates the recovery process and helps individuals return to their regular activities sooner.

Prevention of future injuries:

Physiotherapy not only focuses on rehabilitation but also on injury prevention. Therapists educate individuals about proper body mechanics, ergonomics, and techniques to avoid re-injury. They may recommend specific exercises or training programs to strengthen weak areas, improve balance, and enhance overall physical fitness, thereby reducing the risk of future injuries.

Improved quality of life:

Chronic pain or physical limitations resulting from injuries can significantly impact an individual’s quality of life. Physiotherapy aims to restore optimal physical function, reduce pain, and improve overall well-being. By regaining independence and improving functional abilities, individuals can enjoy a better quality of life.

It’s important to note that the benefits of ongoing physiotherapy treatment may vary depending on the type and severity of the injury, individual factors, and adherence to the recommended treatment plan. It is always advisable to consult one of our qualified physiotherapists or chiropractors for a personalized assessment and treatment approach.

At Heathglobal Physical Therapy, our goal is to be there for you when the unexpected happens and an injury occurs, but also to help you avoid those injuries by giving you some preventative strategies and routines to keep you fit and injury free in the long run.

Drew Thorpe
Healthglobal Inc. ©2023

It’s important to note that if you experience frequent pain in your upper back and neck, you’re not alone. In fact, millions of individuals worldwide struggle with upper body discomfort.

The culprit behind this widespread issue can often be attributed to our modern-day lifestyles, which typically involve prolonged periods of sitting in chairs, hunched over laptops or mobile devices.

Even if you have an office job that requires you to stare at a computer screen all day, you can still avoid neck and upper back pain by building healthy habits in your lifestyle.

What’s more important is realizing where your bad habits start to creep in. Noticing when you begin to slouch or when you are straining your neck to look down at your phone is important to prevent these habits from being ingrained in your behaviors.

Here are some of the worst habits that can cause strain on the muscles in your upper back and neck, leading to chronic pain.

Looking Down at Your Phone

Many of us are guilty of staring down at our phone screens all day. Whether you are scrolling through social media, responding to work emails, or playing a random game, it’s easy to let the time slip away when you are preoccupied with your smartphone.

When you are tilting your head down to look at your phone, it causes excess strain to run through the upper spine and neck muscles. Just a 15° forward head tilt causes around 27lbs of pressure on your neck. To reduce this pressure, raise your phone to eye level so that you don’t have to tilt your head.

You Are Sleeping in a Suboptimal Position

You may not give much thought to the way that you sleep. However, you are in bed for around one-third of the day, so it’s important to find a comfortable and muscle-friendly position to sleep in.

The best way to sleep is on your back with a pillow just underneath your knees. Your spine should be neutral and your neck should be in line with the rest of your spine. This position relieves tension and strain through these muscles and joints in your back and neck.

You Have a Poor Desk Posture

When you are concentrating on work, it’s easy to forget about your posture. You can start to slouch, with your shoulders rolling forward and your neck tilting downwards.

Sitting in this hunched-over position for hours every single day can wreak havoc on your neck and back. You might end up with chronic pains and tension in the area.

To optimize your desk posture, elevate your computer screen to eye level so you don’t have to tilt your head downward to look at it.

Get a chair that supports your back from top to bottom and enables you to sit with your knees at a 90° angle and your feet on the floor.

Next Steps to Relieving Your Back Pain

Incorporating healthy habits into your daily routine can make a world of difference when it comes to avoiding upper back and neck pain. By recognizing and adjusting bad habits such as looking down at your phone or sitting with poor posture, you can significantly reduce the strain on your muscles and joints.

However, if you are still experiencing pain or discomfort, consider giving our office a call. We can help identify the root cause of your pain and provide effective treatments to alleviate your symptoms.

Don’t let chronic pain hold you back from enjoying your life – make the necessary changes and seek professional help to ensure a pain-free and healthy lifestyle.

Warming up before a workout is essential, no matter what type of exercise you’re doing.

It’s especially important before a run, and this applies for the casual runner to the top-level athlete.

You will notice that before a game of soccer or before an Olympic race, the sportsmen and sportswomen who are participating will be doing dynamic stretches. They will be lunging, jumping, and squatting to warm up their muscles and prepare their bodies for exercise.

When it comes to your own warm-up, you might find yourself focusing on static stretches as it may feel like the most familiar style of stretching.

Simply performing static stretches isn’t necessarily the best way to prepare for a run though. It can form part of your warm-up but it shouldn’t be the only thing that you do.

Static stretching is an amazing way to improve mobility around your joints and enhance blood circulation around your body before a run. However, you should be doing a more intensive warm-up before performing these stretches.

Performing static stretching before properly warming up your muscles increases your risk of pulling a muscle. This is because when you are stretching the muscles while they are still ’cold’.

Ideally, static stretching should be preserved as part of your cool down to help the muscles relax after your run.

So, what can you do instead? The best type of stretching to perform in the pre-workout period is dynamic stretching.

What is Dynamic Stretching?

The term dynamic just means moving. It means moving the muscles around to lengthen them before your workout. Instead of simply stretching the muscle to a fully lengthened position, you are constantly moving it in and out of this position.The term dynamic just means moving. It means moving the muscles around to lengthen them before your workout. Instead of simply stretching the muscle to a fully lengthened position, you are constantly moving it in and out of this position.

Dynamic stretching enables you to fully warm up and boost blood circulation around your body. It tells your muscles ‘hey, we’re about to work hard so let’s get prepared’!

Here are some great ways to incorporate dynamic stretching into your routine before you head out for a run:
• Leg swings
• Hip circles
• Walking lunges
• Torso twists

The idea is to keep moving at all times. You could create a small circuit of each of the above exercises, performing 10-15 reps of one before moving right into the next. Aim to stretch dynamically for around 10 minutes before going out to run. This will ensure that you can hit every muscle and prepare them all for a tough workout.

Dynamic stretching is going to prevent you from pulling a muscle and injuring yourself, so don’t forget to do it before every run!

Have you ever been walking down the road or around your house and felt your hips clicking?

Maybe you’ve also heard your hips popping or cracking a little bit. If so, this may be the sign of an underlying problem.

The muscles that are usually responsible for flexing your hips when you walk are known as the hip flexors, one of which is the Psoas.

This muscle starts at your lower spine and passes down through your pelvis. It attaches to your thigh bone (the femur), which enables it to perform its function of hip flexion.

This muscle can often get tight, especially if you are somebody who sits in an office chair all day and you don’t perform very much exercise. When this muscle is tight, it can cause a range of problems. You can experience a sore lower back, aching buttocks, and clicking hips.

Your pelvic region is very bony and when your hip flexors are tight, it can cause your tendons to rub over the bony protrusions in your pelvis. It’s this interaction between your tendons and bones that can cause the audible clicking or grinding noises that appear to come from your hips.

Over time, the tendon can become irritated and inflamed, which worsen’s the problem. Certain injuries or overuse of the tendon can also result in inflammation and excessive hip clicking. This is a condition that is informally known as dancer’s hip because many dances experience these problems due to overuse of the joints.

Pain in the hip area and constant clicking or grinding is regularly experienced by athletes and runners as well. Again, this is due to overuse of the joints and tendons.

You may not necessarily always hear an audible click in your hips but you might feel the sensation of popping or grinding. This is still something to be aware of and you should still take action to reduce the tension in your hips.

A lot of the time, the main treatment for dancer’s hip or clicking hips is rest and recovery. While you are resting, it’s a good idea to stretch out the hip flexor muscles to reduce tightness and tension in the area.

You may need to avoid high-intensity activities, such as sports, running, and dancing. Instead, it’s best to stick to low-impact exercises, such as gentle walking, swimming, or yoga. This will reduce tightness and irritation in the hip area, enabling the inflammation to go down and your hip joints to rest.

If you’re experiencing hip pain or clicking, give our office a call. We can take the time to determine the cause of your symptoms and start a treatment plan that will get you back on track.

Did you know that more than 80% of people who set New Year’s resolutions give up within just a few weeks?

How can you avoid being one of the 80%? In this article, we are going to give you some easy ways to stick to your New Year’s resolutions and achieve your health and fitness goals.

There are many reasons why the majority of people do not manage to achieve their goals in the New Year. One of the main reasons is that they set very unrealistic goals that are not sustainable in the long term.

For example, if you wish to get fit in the New Year, you might feel extra motivated within the first few weeks of January. You go to the gym every single day to work out for one or two hours.

Unless you are a top-level athlete, going to the gym every day is a recipe for disaster. You aren’t giving your body any time to rest and recover, and you will quickly get burnt out.

After a couple of weeks, you will no longer want to exercise because your body will be hurting so much! Because of this, you give up on your New Year’s resolution altogether and say that you will try again next year.

The 20% of people who managed to stick to their New Year’s resolutions and achieve all of their health and fitness goals don’t go about things this way. Instead, they choose the sustainable route.

Let’s take the example of wanting to get fit in the New Year. If you want to achieve this goal and continue your health and fitness journey for the foreseeable future, start off slowly.

Instead of going to the gym every single day, add in just one or two workouts a week. After a few weeks, add in an extra workout if you feel ready to do so.

For most people, working out 3 to 4 times a week is enough to reach any health and fitness goals. You can easily challenge your body in lots of new and exciting ways with just a few workouts each week but you won’t get burnt out.

Here are some quick tips to summarise everything that we’ve said in this article:

• Create realistic goals
• Make small, actionable changes to your lifestyle that you can continue for years and years
• Keep your ‘why’ in mind so that you stay motivated to achieve all of your goals
• Write down your goals and read them every single day
• Workout with a partner who will hold you accountable and make exercise more enjoyable

Follow these tips to make reaching your New Year’s resolutions easy, no matter what health and fitness goals you have.