In short:
Hip Muscles, the protectors of back and knees.
- Foam Rolling glutes, hamstrings & back can reduce adhesions in your back
- Stretching is not all that it claims to be in regards to back pain
- Your patella is not tracking badly, your glutes are not doing their job.
- Hip stabilization & functional movement can reduce your pain
- Don’t load up dysfunction
Foam Rolling – Your massage therapists best friend
Foam Rolling – Helping you stay healthy!
You might have heard your massage therapist talk about knots and adhesions in your back, or any other body part for that matter. What does that really mean?
Each muscle is enveloped in a fascia, a sheath. This sheath can form adhesions with underlying fasciae from different muscles. These adhesions can make it harder for your muscles to function properly. They are working as smoothly anymore and even activation patterns might change.
When you foam roll your muscles, you can help break up or prevent those adhesions and therefore help those muscles to work better. Especially hip muscles that are being sat upon the whole day are basically being squished into other muscles. Working soft tissue can really help you improve that
Don’t live in the past – Stretching the back
In fitness the back and the knees are often considered the slaves of our hips. Our hips in return are usually enslaved by our office chair which in return will mess with our back and knees.
A lot of clients coming through our door struggle with the occasional pain in their backs and ask my personal trainers what stretches they can do to alleviate their problem.
Most of us slump over at our desk for hours. The back is constantly being stretched and usually does not need more of the same.
Remember, doing the same thing again and again but expecting different results is the definition of insanity.
My patella is off track
Most of the time a knee brace does not lead to the desired effect
Some clients are being told that their patella is off track. Physical therapists and physicians for years have told us that our VMO is too weak and the patella is tracking wrong, when in reality for most folks the hips are the problems. In recent years there has been shift away from that thinking though. I am not saying that there could not be a muscle activation problem, but for most of us the problem lies one floor up, around the hip. When our hip muscles are not doing their job throughout our daily activities, knees start falling inward and the angle of muscles pulling on our patella is changed. Most of the times, instead of wearing an overpriced brace we are capable of reducing pain in the knee by improving hip activation patterns and create glutes that are insanely strong.
Don’t load dysfunction
You really don’t want to squat heavy or deadlift heavy weights when the movement pattern is off. You will risk your health. You might have to start with exercises that activate the muscles, wake them up. Then you might have t pattern the movements before loading it up. Don’t worry, you can still get insanely strong at the same time. You will just have to use less complex exercises at first.
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