Dr. James Andrews is one of the nations top orthopedic surgeons who has treated many of the top professional athletes in the country, but he spends a lot of his time and energy focused on how we can reduce youth sports injuries. Of the 35 million or so children involved in sports in the US about 10% of those are treated annually for sports related injuries. Dr. Andrews says there are several things that we can do to reduce the number and severity of youth sports injuries (half of which are overuse injuries). He says often the problem starts with parents who think their child is going to be the next LeBron James, Serena Williams, Tom Brady, or Lionel Messi.
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The pelvis or the hips are the foundation of the body. Your hips are the engine that drives your locomotor system: your legs. Your hips will determine how you move: how fast, how symmetrically, how smoothly. When one hip is in a different position than the other hip (elevated, rotated, tilted, twisted, or shifted) or one hip is functioning differently than the other hip (more/less stable, stronger/weaker, tighter/more mobile) this causes your legs to move differently. A small misalignment in how your hips are positioned or function can cause injuries and pain throughout your body.
Don't Believe Everything You HearHow do you tell the difference between a myth and reality? Fact and fiction? A story and the truth? Words like objective, data, authentic, science, validity, and proof come to mind. We all love stories, fairy tales, gossip, urban legends, hoaxes, and fantasy but they do a huge disservice to us, our bodies, and our health.
If you have heard any of the following things, think twice before you believe them. They are more than likely not true, even though they are commonly held beliefs. These are the 10 biggest myths about your body and health: About 1/3 of all injuries suffered by athletes are deemed "overuse" injuries. The definition of an overuse injury is: damage to a bone, muscle, ligament, or tendon caused by repetitive submaximal stress without allowing adequate time to allow for structural adaptation to take place. Examples of overuse injuries are:
As much as I love blues music, being a musician and playing music doesn't have to hurt. Studies have shown musicians experience musculoskeletal pain at a higher rate than non-musicians, but this does not mean playing a musical instrument is bad for the body. Your body is designed to play a guitar, violin, saxophone, piano, or the drums pain free. Playing an instrument can be thought about the same way as playing a sport - each instrument, just like each sport, places specific repeated stresses on the body. With repeated playing the body will adapt to the demands placed upon it and adjust. These adjustments can be adaptations in muscles, bones, connective tissues, blood vessels, nerves, etc. The body is such an amazing stimulus response organism and it will adapt to what you ask it to do. Repeatedly throwing a baseball will strengthen the muscles involved in the throwing motion and increase the range of motion of the shoulder joint. This is a normal and natural response of the body to movement/demand. But when a person throws hundreds of baseballs daily with one arm and not the other, the body starts to become imbalanced. Now not only is one arm stronger and exhibits a larger range of motion than the other arm, the rest of the body starts to compensate for this imbalance. The dominate shoulder might drop down and forward which rotates the same side hip forward and twists the knees and feet out of balance. This is a recipe for pain and injury up and down the body. The same imbalance patterns happen when someone plays an instrument repeatedly. Playing a guitar right handed will lead to the right shoulder rotating forward and up and will cause internal rotation of the right arm. The left shoulder will drop back and down. The right scapula will abduct (protract) as the left scapula adducts (retracts). Playing a violin will lead to many of the same imbalances as playing a guitar. The woman below will end up with imbalances in her neck, shoulder, and back muscles from the repeated demands of playing the violin. These imbalances can lead to neck, back, shoulder, elbow, wrist, or hand pain and injury. Being a drummer can also lead to postural imbalances and eventual pain or injury. Common imbalances created by drumming are forward head posture, thoracic flexion, lumbar flexion, and rounded shoulders. Whether you play baseball or guitar the key to becoming pain free is the same: balance the body. Restoring postural alignment and balance will both relieve pain and future prevent injuries. The first thing you need to do is identify your postural imbalances and then figure out what specific exercises/stretches will restore proper strength, flexibility, stability, and position to the muscles and joints. As function is restored, your posture will return to balance, and allow you to play pain free.
If you would like a free postural evaluation contact me today. I will help you understand the relationship between your dysfunctions (what's not working), compensations (what's taken over instead), and your pain (the resultant symptoms). Then we can formulate a plan to get your postural alignment restored and you can return to playing pain free. Related articles/videos: Sports and the blame game Functional posture warm-up for tennis How shoulder posture affects running performance 10 design perfections in the human body Tennis elbow - why tennis isn't to blame Are you an athlete? Looking for the best workout program to take your performance to the next level? Want to prevent injuries and extend your career? These athletes are doing the perfect workout for that. See if you can guess what sport they play as you watch. Didn't guess it until the end did you? They are Olympic weightlifters. Why would weightlifters waste so much time running, jumping, tumbling, and playing other sports when they could be lifting weights the entire time? To get better at lifting weights, you have to practice lifting weights right? Yes and no. Of course to be able to perform a snatch or clean and jerk with hundreds of pounds you have to practice the technique of those lifts thousands of times but that's not the only thing that is needed to perform better. Doing one thing - anything - repeatedly will lead to imbalances in the body. Some muscles get stronger as others get weaker. Gains in certain ranges of motion increase, as others decrease. One side of the body might get stronger and more capable, at the same time the non-dominate sides gets weaker. These changes throw the body out of balance, causing changes in joint position or posture along with alterations in movement patterns. These adjustments (compensations) the body has made in response to the demands put upon it will lead to decreases in efficiency and increases in stress, strain, and compression in the body. Compensation leads to decreased performance and increased chance of injury and pain. Swimmers overdevelop the arm adductors and internal rotators while the abductors, external rotators, and scapular stabilizers tend to get weak. Cyclists end up with strong quads, hip flexors, and calves and weak hamstrings, glutes, spinal extensors, and scapular retractors. Tennis, baseball, and other one sided sports lead to athletes developing large imbalances between the dominate and non-dominate sides. The types of workouts shown in the video above do several very important things for the athletes completing them.
There are several ways to get started with these workouts.
Related articles/videos: Straighten before you strengthen Sports and the blame game How shoulder posture affects running performance CrossFit: how to survive injury free and achieve success Tennis warm-up and cool-down exercises Difference between play and sports training Downhill skiing is a fun and exhilarating sport that millions of Americans (including me and my family) enjoy each winter. But traveling down a snowy and often icy mountain at speeds exceeding 25mph comes with risks. Head injuries, broken legs, twisted knees. Over the last 10 years, the introduction and increased use of ski helmets has reduced the incidence of head injuries while skiing by 25%. But the rate of knee injuries including Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) tears has remained steady over the same time period despite improvements in skis, bindings, and lessons. Researchers at the University of Vermont School of Medicine estimate that 17,500 skiers tear an ACL every year skiing, which accounts for about a third of all skiing injuries. While changes in ski technology and trends (hour-glass shaped skis which allow skiers to go faster and fat skis which increase knee torque) might play a role in knee injuries, I think the biggest factor has nothing to do with expensive ski equipment. Michael Decker, a biomechanical engineer at the University of Denver, said that asymmetry between the left and right leg may be a factor in ACL injuries. “You are seeing big differences in right and left legs,” Decker said. “What we are finding is the non-dominant leg has been injured, especially the ACL, much more than the dominant. Females have two times the rate as males of the non-dominant leg.” Postural imbalance causing knee injuries including ACL tears is something I have talked about before and think is the number one factor in why these injuries happen. Look at the image above left which shows a woman with good postural alignment and balanced leg strength. You can see that both her feet point straight ahead as do her knees and her hips and shoulders are level. This means when she repeatedly squats while skiing, her ankles, knees, and hips will work together as a team distributing workload throughout all the lower body muscles and avoiding excessive strain on any ligaments, cartilage, or other connective tissues in her body. This means she is very unlikely to tear her ACL while skiing. Now look at the image above on the right. Notice how her feet turn out at different angles. Her knees also point in different directions and her hips and shoulders are not level. Since we know that how we stand is how we move and bad posture equals bad form, there is no way her body will move or ski in a balanced and even way. She will end up overloading her dominate side while collapsing on her non-dominate side. This is a recipe for injury including an ACL tear - whether it happens while she's alpine skiing, playing soccer, returning a tennis serve, or jumping up and down during a bootcamp workout.
If you have a dominant or stronger leg or notice your feet or knees don't both point straight ahead I would highly recommend you seek professional help in correcting these imbalances from an Egoscue University certified Postural Alignment Therapist and Advanced Exercise Therapist to address your imbalances before you get in injury. As they say, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
I would be happy to offer anyone who is seriously interested in correcting their imbalances to prevent injury a free posture evaluation and consultation. I would also offer the same to anyone who has suffered a torn ACL or other skiing injury and would like help getting back to 100%. I stumbled upon an old article called “Want to run faster? Here’s how.” And thought I’d read it and see what it had to say. I’m not going to get into the beginning part of the article, but I do want to talk about the tips from David Jack, a Men’s Health adviser, on how to increase your speed and performance when running: Fix Your Posture If you spend a good portion of the day sitting at a desk, your posture is most likely taking a hit for it. Your chest gets tighter, your back weaker, and your shoulders roll forward. The result: Your sprinting becomes less efficient. “So if we concentrate on our posture, it helps us unlock everything and allows our body to move in a full range of motion,” says Jack. I love how he states that our range of motion is dependent on our posture. This is something, as a Postural Alignment Specialist and Advanced Exercise Therapist, I have always stressed to my clients. I remember one talk I was giving to a group of tennis players and one guy in his 50’s raised his hand and asked, “What can you do about tight hamstrings?” I asked him how tight they are and he proceeded to bend forward trying to touch his toes and he could only touch his knees. Pretty tight! I asked him if he stretches them and he said, "Yes several times a day for 15 minutes for years." I said, "I don’t think not stretching enough is your problem, I think it’s the position of your joints, your posture...that’s the problem." I had him do one e-cise that had nothing to do with stretching his hamstrings, but rather focuses on re-positioning his posture and then had him stand up and try to touch his toes again. He immediately touched his toes! He said it was the first time in his life he can remember ever being able to touch his toes. He was obviously blown away and immediately signed up to do 8 posture therapy sessions with me because he said, “If one e-cise that have that big in impact on me, imagine what is possible!” The article goes on to say: Think of fixing your posture as knocking the rust off, says Jack. “We can try and run as fast as we want,” says Jack. “But if we can’t get our body to get up straight and get our hips and legs to extend—we’re just paddling upstream.” Hip extension and knee extension. Very important to running. Most of us spend hours and hours sitting each day which teaches our hips and knees to be in a flexed position, and if we aren’t doing anything to remind our legs they can also extend, we are asking for injury – hamstring pulls or tears if we try to sprint, knee and low back pain if we are running long distances, foot and hip pain, the list goes on and on. (The Egoscue Tower is a great e-cise to encourage knee and hip extension while also creating thoracic extension.) The article continues: If you’re not ready to make the switch to a standup desk—which can drastically improve your posture—Jack suggests taking moments throughout the day to stretch. While in a chair, reach your hands above your head and roll your shoulders back. Or try standing up, take in some deep breaths, and hold them for a few seconds—that’ll help loosen up all the muscles attached to your ribcage and hips. Yes! Take motion breaks during your day. I suggest getting out of your chair every 30 minutes and do 1 or 2 e-cises that will break your body out of the flexed position. (Besides the above e-cises, here are some other e-cises you can do at work)
If you are interested in a free posture evaluation and gait analysis, contact me today and I'd be happy to help you understand what is limiting your running or athletic performance and what you can do to improve. Let’s start by knocking down some myths about core strength.
What is “core strength”? The ability to maintain structural integrity of the joints regardless of the position (i.e. standing, sitting, squatting, running, jumping, etc.). Isn’t that the same definition as “good posture”? Yes. They are the same thing. If your posture is compromised you do not have core strength (even if you have a six pack!). How do we measure it? By looking at your standing posture and then by watching your body in movement. If you can maintain joint position during movement, you have a functionally strong core. What muscles are part of the core? Lots. Deep and more superficial muscles. Every muscle that attaches to the pelvis, spine, ribs or scapula. Some examples are: Why do I need core strength? If you don’t have core strength and you try to pick up something heavy, you might injure your back and end up with chronic back pain. If you lack core strength and you go for a run, your knees might hurt later that day. If you are weak in the core you’ll get shoulder and neck tightness and pain from sitting at work. What are the best exercises to develop core strength? Anything that realigns your posture and teaches your joints to stay lined up while moving (running, golfing, gardening, tennis, etc. ).
I would recommend getting a free postural analysis including functional testing and gait analysis to identify where your imbalances are and then getting a program of exercises to correct your unique muscular and postural imbalances. Physical performance is a product of good posture (joint alignment), muscle strength and stability, joint range of motion, efficient cardiovascular function, and cooperation between those components. Traditional strength training can increase muscle strength but can decrease joint range of motion and have negative effects on posture. Yoga can bring improvements in joint range of motion but cause decreases in muscle strength and stability. Swimming or cycling can improve cardiovascular fitness but while causing compromised muscle stability (swimming) and joint range of motion (cycling).
This Strong and Lean Workout designed and narrated by Pete Egoscue brings improvements in physical performance by bringing together all the components of joint alignment and range of motion, muscle strength and stability, and efficient cardiovascular function. These simple movements bring immediate and tremendous benefits which you'll be able to see and feel. Try this 14 minutes of fun! Related videos/articles: East-West Breathing How posture affects lung capacity Straighten before you strengthen Cardio-core workout |
About Matt WhiteheadI'm an Egoscue Institute® certified Postural Alignment Specialist (PAS) and Advanced Exercise Therapist (AET), certified personal trainer, PatchFitness performer, ultra trail runner, mountain biker, dad, music lover, environmentalist, and wanna-be slam dunk champion. I will be providing you with the latest posture exercises to help you live, play, and be pain free. Archives
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