Carolyn Zepf Sports Therapist and David Kittner Youth Fitness Coach at Lebert Fitness http://www.lebertfitness.com Discuss kids fitness and injury prevention
Carolyn and David want to make sure your kids are injury free as they grow.
Back pain is no new affliction to the human race. Back pain can be traced back to the ancient Greeks and even further back to cave men. In today’s society of long days of sitting, inactivity and fast food restaurants back pain has quickly become the number one most common complaint in our society today.
There are definite similarities between why we experience pain in our backs today as well in past history. Curtain things that would have caused back pain more commonly in times of the past would have been such things as; birth defects from deformed bones due to malnutrition, sickness or trauma. Also afflictions such as tuberculosis of the spine, rickets and leprosy. At the time people did not have cures or medication for treatment, unfortunately it would have caused the person with any of these diseases to suffer without relief and to have a shortened life span.
Also in past human history our predecessor as a society had more physical demands placed upon them for there survival. The amount of physical strength and athleticism it took to stay alive was of the utmost importance. Even though our predecessor would have been in better peak muscular strength and flexibility they would have still experience and suffered from aches and pains that we experience in our present today. Disc pathologies, muscle strains, compressed nerve roots, ligament sprains, arthritis and narrowing of the openings in the bone of the vertebra that the spinal core and nerve root pass.
Unfortunately through in past centuries if you had back pain you would have had to live with that pain, causing decreased quality of life and even a shorter than average life expectancy because you had to fight to survive. Today we can seek out professional help to find a solution to our pain with great success rates and relief.
Great question! Most people have experienced an episode of back pain or will at one point in time in their life. So what is back pain?
There are many things that can cause us to experience pain in the back area. Your pain can be due to a disc irritation or protrusion, an entrapped or impinged nerve, misalignments in the spine and pelvis can cause the back area to become painful, muscle imbalances and soft tissue irritation can cause back pain. Pressure or injury to ligaments, tendons and facets joints can cause back pain.
Ultimate Sports Therapy understands that a lot of people have questions in regards to experiencing or having friends or family go through back pain. As a clinic we wish to educate and help people understand where their pain is coming from and how they can help themselves over come back pain. Ultimate Sports Therapy will be doing a series of back pain related articles and videos on the history of back pain, the causes of back pain, interviewing other professionals in the medical and rehab field on their knowledge and experience on back pain, as well as we will discuss ways to overcome and remain back pain free.
There are a number of factors that can hold one back from resolving pain in their body, but many people have not been educated to understand what could be holding them back. With limited time, energy and money most people decide it is too hard or impossible to find a solution to their pain. So in many cases, people will just live with their pain and except it as “the way it will always be”!
When I see patients who have lived with their pain for years I always find numerous challenges with their alignment, walking patterns and posture. This happens because they obviously wanted to reduce their pain and compensated by moving into positions where there was no pain. Anyone who has had the “pleasure” of experiencing a painful condition can attest to this. But, we have to consider that after only a few days of compensating for a painful condition your nervous system remembers this poor compensated patterns of movement and recognizes it as “normal”. This continues even well after your pain is resolved and you have resumed your everyday activities. An example would be someone continuing to walk with a limp after a painful condition in their lower body is no longer an issue.
At Ultimate Sports Therapy our health assessment is two hours in length and includes lifestyle questions on eating, sleeping, hydration, exercise habits and recognition of physical, mental and emotional stressors. We take pictures from a front, back and side view. We assessment the inner and outer unit of the core, do flexibility index test to determine tissue type, test the range of motion at every joint as well as a primal pattern analysis i.e. squat, lunge, push, pull, twist, bend, walking, jogging, sprinting and yes in some cases when needed even a crawling movement assessment.
After the Health Assessment has been completed, we chart the information, download the pictures and make notes on what was found during the assessment and what will need further investigation and treatment. Once this is done, we have you come back in and review what we have found through your assessment. Educating you through this process with the help of your pictures and results to reference. This educational visit is called a results session. During the results session we encourage you to ask questions to gain greater insight into your condition. We also outline a program that we feel will best resolve main concerns and underline issues that are causing dysfunction. The program may include a personalized periodized exercise program, eating plan, treatment plan, life coaching …
If you are living with pain and want to find a solution to your pain, come in and receive a full assessment. If you book one now you will receive a results session for FREE
Training in boxing for numerous years has made me accustom to warming up and using a jump rope for conditioning in training. I think I have used almost every type of rope imaginable from multi-coloured beaded ropes, leather, PVC rope to 2 to 5 pound weighted ropes and enjoyed learning foot work, doubles, triples, crossovers and 180 to 360 turns. There are many benefits to taking up jumping rope. It can be used as a very cheap and easy way to train the aerobic and anaerobic energy systems or as variety to spice up any training program as well as an activity for the enhancement of any sports or athletic program. I also use it in mid to late stages of healing and into a return to sports phases of rehab.
To elicit an aerobic training response with rope jumping you must maintain a consistence speed that holds your heart rate between 70 to 85 percent of your maximum heart rate – your maximum heart rate can be calculated by taking 220 and misusing your age i.e. if you were 30 years old you take 220 – 30 which gives you a maximum heart rate of 190 beats per minute in peak exertion.
However rope jumping has its best benefits in a power phase of training when the anaerobic system is being utilized. In this phase the greatest gains are capitalized on to peak competitive advantage in speed which is quickness over a sustained period of time, agility which is one’s ability to accelerate, decelerate and make quick changes in direction as balance, speed and control is maintained and in an athletic explosiveness.
The best surface to jump rope on is a hard non-slip surface. Soft surfaces provide more give but require more energy to push off which slows down the speed and momentum much like running in sand does. This will increase muscular endurance and strength but does not capitalize the plyomentric effect of speed rope work. This works by using gravity to store potential energy in the muscles which immediately turn this stored energy into kinetic energy.
But what rope is best? Just as with choosing any other exercise equipment quality and material matter. Jump rope made from leather have been around for 90 years but waste energy on turning the rope and the rope is not adjustable making one have to turn the rope in wide circles if to big or hunch over if the rope is to short promoting poor posture and injury. Thick cord, beaded, heavy, cotton or nylon ropes are made from slow turning materials and slow the speed of each turn create drag therefore no matter how fast you try and turn the rope the rope will not turn fast enough to benefit hand and foot speed needed in sports. A speed rope like a hyperformance swivel ball bearing rope will help develop and produce lightning fast reflexes.
An easy guide to measuring your rope to ensure it is the right height for you is to stand on the center of the rope with one foot and pull the two handles to measure up with the armpit. A more experienced jumper can use a shorter rope, one that extends from the foot to the upper chest.
Happy skipping!
Book; Jump Rope Training techniques and programs for improved fitness and performance by Buddy Lee
Ever since I took action to enhance my career by studying osteopathy at Canadian College of Osteopathy my patients have been asking me what exactly it is I’m studying. Some of my patients have been adventurous and attempted to put a defining word to what it is which usual ends up being “osteo means bone right? or “oh osteopathy, you do treats on bones?” My answer is always “yes along with the rest of the body.”
The profession of osteopathy is so vast in its entirety that it is difficult to give a brief explanation as to what exactly it is, but I am going to attempt this great feat!
Let’s start by saying that osteopathy is a science and an art. Curious statement I know, but when you see that it is a science because it requires a keen and in depth knowledge of anatomy and an art because through the use of trained hands an assessment of the entirety of the patient can be gained that statement starts to make sense. Osteopathy comes from the word “osteome” which means structures of all living matter i.e. bone, soft tissue, organs, veins, arteries, etc. and “pathos” which translates into “a profound emotion” or “an emotion which needs to be expressed”. So when you put “Osteome” and “Pathos” together to form the word “Osteopathy” you have a word that implies that the whole person and how they express themselves must be taken into consideration as that person is treatment in their entirety. It is the job of the osteopathy to restore mobility to each system so the body can be balanced both in its internal and external environments.
Over the past 3 months I have been incorporation osteopathic techniques into my patient’s treatment plans with great success. I had a new patient a few weeks back that came into the clinic with a hamstring strain that normally takes 6 weeks of rehab to heal. In three treatments over a week and a half I used a few osteopathic techniques to regain balance in the lower back, hip area and balanced out the body to create homeostasis. My patient can back for their 4th treatment and had regained their normal range of motion back in their hamstring and their pain was down from 6/10 to 2/10 and I had not even touched their hamstring yet! Another patient I had not seeing in a while came in last weekend for treatment after a car accident. Their body was achy and they were visibly tired. I did an hour treatment for them. A few days later they came in and looked wonderful. Their colour was back and the dark circles under their eyes where gone along with their stooped posture.
If you have not had a change to be treated osteopathically now is the time. If you are unsure as to what an osteopath can treat just remember an osteopath is able to assess anything in the body and works with other health care professionals to ensure your greatest quality of health.
Most people have no idea what techniques their therapist uses during their treatments. Have you ever gone to your physical therapist and asked for them to use a “Myofascial technique” on you to get rid of your back pain? I would guess no you have not. That being said it is important to have some idea of treatment methods and how they work. Let us began by looking into what a Myofascial technique is and what it can do to improve your pain. First and foremost we must discuss fascia. Fascia is an expansive connective tissue that covers every muscle, blood vessel, bone, nerve, organ, the brain and spinal cord and is present at a cellular level. The function of fascia is that of support both dynamic and static, transportation system for fluids, and in healing through the laying down of scar tissue. Injury or overuse can lead into fascial restrictions which will cause poor cellular function, disease, pain, and dysfunction throughout the entire body and in some causes lead into seemingly unrelated symptoms.
So what is a Myofascial release technique? Your therapist would by using their hands exaggerate the tension in your fascia with a constant light traction and while maintaining this traction they would follow those tensions until a still point was reached – a still point is a point at which there is no movement. At this point they would assist the tissue to an improved range of motion. This technique places the tissue into a position of ease. By doing this the fascia will unwind and relax which will help normalize tension, return mobility, increased circulation in blood flow and waste removal and overall vitality to the injured area.
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