How long will it take?

October 11, 2015 by
How long will it take?

How long will it take?

How long will it take…That is the question.

How long will it take to lose weight? To fit into my favourite pair of jeans?

How long will it take to build muscle? To get lean and ripped? To see a six pack?

How long will it take for my injury to heal? To get back to sports? To doing the things I love to do?

How long will it take to get fit? To get healthy? To have more energy and stamina?

While the end results of all of these questions may be a little different from each other, with some focusing on changing physiques, other dealing with injury rehabilitation and some primarily focused on general health and wellbeing, all of these questions are really asking one thing:

“How long will it take before I see changes?”

If we were to base our expectations on the headlines often seen on the covers of any of the health, fitness or fashion magazines that we’re constantly bombarded with, the answer lies somewhere between 10 days and 12 weeks.

We read about celebrities and their fad diets and intensive training regimens dropping 10 lbs in 10 days, or bulking up and adding massive slabs of muscles to their frames for their upcoming superhero roles in just 12 short weeks.

We see athletes with seemingly unsurmountable injuries return to play in what appears to be just mere weeks or months after major surgical repairs and broken bones.

And then we believe that’s what the norm is. We believe that those types of results are typical. That those types of results are the expectation.

We use those media published stories as the foundation of our own barometer of success.

Have I lost weight fast enough?

Have I put on muscle fast enough?

Have I come back to sport soon enough?

And then sadly, we are disappointed when our reality sets in and we haven’t achieved those lofty goals in the desired timeframe.

The scale has hardly budged. Our injury hasn’t healed.

So what’s missing?

Why didn’t our reality match the other reality?

Why weren’t we able to do what “they” did?

One thing: context.

For those actors and celebrities transforming their bodies, their work opportunities (and corresponding paycheques) often depend on their physical appearance. The roles they’re cast in may require a certain look or physique such as Christian Bale’s extreme and drastic transformations from The Machinist to The Dark Knight.

The same broad scenario applies to the high performance and professional athletes, whose finely-tuned bodies are the tools of their trade. The performance of their bodies dictates their salaries and endorsements. It has very real and tangible impacts on their livelihoods.

For them, they now have the drivers (both internal and external) to push them to allocate the resources (or find the resources) to achieve these targets.

They have teams of highly skilled and trained people at their disposal.

They can hire the elite physiotherapists, personal chefs, sports nutritionists, and specialized personal trainers to craft structured programs.  They have the time and resources to allocate to go to work – in this case, changing their bodies, building their bodies or healing them.

For them, their body is their job.

For those of us not in that context, we have matters that may take greater precedence. Like young kids or aging parents. Like our jobs and careers, the means by which we pay for life. Like our housework and chores. Our day to day tasks.

By the time these pressing daily items are dealt with, we often don’t have the eight or nine hours left in the day to sleep and recover. We don’t have the two, three or more hours a day to lift weights, do cardio or rehab. Our meals are often grabbed on the go, instead of being homemade, perfectly balanced, and fully nutritious.

Our context, when put in perspective against these media marketed norms, is very, very different.

So how long will it take?

As always, the honest answer is it depends.

It depends on our context.

It depends on what resources we can invest into our results – how much time, money, effort and energy we have to spare.

What we’re willing to sacrifice.

So while these media based standards of transformation and rehab seem unattainable, that’s not to say that we can’t make change happen. We can. Our bodies are capable of incredible feats, if given the opportunities and means.

We just have to figure out what we’re willing, and able, to put in.

From there, we can then figure out how long it will take.

And looking honestly at our context, it may just take longer.

Filed Under: Human Performance, Mindset, Personal Training, physiotherapy, Strength & Conditioning, Weight Loss Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Chunking your way to fitness

September 28, 2015 by

Chunking.

Sounds like something that’s done to a piece of chocolate before it’s put into a cookie, but in this case it’s much more than that.

It’s a way to chop yourself back to fitness in small steps, each one building on the previous step.

Chunking is a tool used to solve a problem or complete a task. It’s when a bigger problem or issue is broken down into smaller more manageable pieces. As each piece is resolved, there is less of the whole to complete, making the overall task much less daunting.

To use a non-fitness example of chunking, let’s use one of everyone’s favourite pastimes…cleaning.

Let’s assume you haven’t cleaned your place in weeks.

You’ve got a kitchen counter piled full of dirty dishes because the sinks already full, you’ve amassed a collection of laundry hampers overflowing with pretty and not so pretty underthings and overthings, you’ve seen the dust bunnies replicating exponentially in every dark, hidden corner, and you’ve created your own leaning towers of papers piled up on every available horizontal surface.

Every time you open the door, that’s the scene you’re greeted with.

And every time, you push the thought of even starting the momentous cleaning task to the back of your mind because it’s just that overwhelming.

You don’t even know where to begin. So you don’t.

Instead, you add more clothes, more dishes and more papers to the ever growing piles. And then you repeat the same steps again tomorrow. And the day after that.

Now let’s imagine that one day, you read this blog post and it stuck in your mind. At that instant, you make a decision that today is the day that you’ll get your place clean and you’ll use chunking to accomplish it.

Let the chunking begin…

You take stock of what needs to get done in a global sense, but this time, you don’t let that foreboding sense of doom stop you in your tracks.

Using your newly found chunking skills, you decide that you’ll start your chunking with the laundry.

Because once you’ve started the laundry, you’ll have the washing time to work on another task, thus increasing your efficiency and decreasing the overall time you have to put into cleaning.

You sort and start the wash.

It’s not as bad as you originally thought (or maybe it is, but as piles are organized and distributed to the machine, there’s less of an affront to your eyes, and it doesn’t seem as overwhelming anymore ). You’ve got a load in the wash, and a few more piles patiently awaiting their turn in the machine.

You know you have roughly an hour for the cycle to complete, so you move on to your next task.

You decide that the stench of the dirty dishes is no longer tolerable, so that will be the next chunked task. As each dish is washed and dried, the counter space opens up and the once bare cupboards are now back to their glorious fullness and the kitchen is clean.

This is getting fun now!

Each completed task encourages you with the results you’re seeing, a deep sense of accomplishment washing over you with every square inch of your place becoming visible again, with every now fresh breath you take.

By this time, the washing machine has gone through a cycle, you flip the freshly washed clothes to the clothes dryer and add another load to the washing machine.

Chunked, which now gives you time to work on those papers. You sort the mail, file the receipts and recycle the unopened weekly flyers and advertisements.

And so on and so forth.

What started off as a huge, seemingly insurmountable task of cleaning your whole apartment just became a series of smaller, interdependent tasks that don’t paralyze you with their sheer scope.

As each task was completed, the overall problem grew smaller.

Now let’s use that same process with chunking your way to fitness.

Let’s say you’ve been mostly sedentary for quite a few years now. You’ve been dutifully paying your monthly gym fees, but you haven’t actually been going. You work a desk job and you have a busy social calendar, often involving socializing with good food and just as good drink.

With the above scenario, it’s possible that over the years you’ve put on a few extra pounds. Or maybe you’ve put on more than just a few, maybe 20 or 30 lbs extra and now you’ve noticed it’s impacting your health and vitality.

You’ve just identified the larger problem (you’re out of shape and overweight) and you’ve made the decision that you want to remedy it (you want to lean up and improve your fitness).

The major issue is that looking at a problem like the one above on its own often leads to paralysis.

Where do you even begin? What should you even do? What type of diet? What type of exercise? How much? At what intensity? How long will it take?

All these questions and all the questions the answers to these questions may bring…It’s overwhelming.

It’s probably better to just have some wine and cheesecake and think about them.

Well, that’s what the old you might have said, but this is the new, chunking you.

Whereas before, identifying the problem would have lead you to just quit before you even started, the new you takes that big problem and chops it up into small, manageable pieces.

You’ve taken the first step, you decided that you are ready to start your fitness journey, that you’re ready to trim down and shed those extra pounds and improve your fitness.

You want to feel energetic and vibrant again. Since we’re all about honesty, you know that leaning out would make you look good again, too.

Once that important decision is made (this is the same as deciding that today was the day you’re cleaning your place), let the chunking begin…

Since chunking involves taking a much larger problem and breaking it down into smaller, more manageable chunks, you realize that improving your fitness has two major, equally important components: exercise and nutrition. You recognize that both play different, but complementary roles in your overall health and fitness journey.

So you chunk both of them, making your bigger problem (being out of shape and over weight) into two smaller problems (lacking consistent exercise, lack of nutritional plan).

And then you chunk some more in each of those two areas.

In your exercise chunk, you know you need to start. But where and how? You could start with adding something as simple as 10 minutes of moderate to faster paced walking a day after dinner.

In your nutrition chunk instead of trying to overhaul your diet completely and putting yourself on some intense, highly restrictive and daunting diet-of-the-week, it can be something as simple as eating slower, or taking more lean protein at every meal. Something that’s just a little different than what you’re already doing but aligned with your end goals.

That’s it.

It doesn’t have to be more complicated than that.

Now instead of worrying about being out of shape and overweight, you just need to focus on and complete the two tasks you’ve decided on. That’s how you’ll work on resolving your chunked problem.

As these tasks push you past your inertia and you get comfortable doing them consistently, you can add more tasks, still keeping each task fairly small and manageable.

It may be as simple as adding 10 more minutes of fast walking for a total of 20 minutes or adding 2 servings of high fibre veggies to every meal.

In any case, all you’re doing is consistently and diligently completing very small tasks that work towards resolving your major issue without getting caught up in the enormity of “losing 30 lbs” or going from “unfit to fit” in one fell swoop.

For many of these chunked tasks, the time commitment is small, but over time, the effects add up.

Here’s the caveat with this type of chunking…

You will have to set your expectations appropriately.

Making these types of very small changes usually don’t lead to very rapid changes. These are not the changes that will give you the hyped up, gimmicky results that are plastered all over the supermarket impulse buy magazine racks. You won’t “lose 10 lbs in 10 days”, or “drop 4 dress sizes in a month”, or “build a six pack in six weeks”.

However, at these levels of change, these chunked habits are sustainable.

These chunks lower the barrier to resistance dramatically.

Tell me, which seems much less draconian to the average person:

Scenario 1: Full diet mode with restricted food items, no eating past certain times of the day, limited flexibility/control.  Restrictive practices may lead to later binge eating (you know that feeling when you’re told you can’t have something). Committing substantial amounts of time to exercise in the 5-10 hrs/week range at moderate to high intensity while already deprived of energy from food. You will likely be moody, tired, fatigued, and generally irritable.

It’s quite possible that you’ll see rapid drop in weight initially (N.B. this drop may not be all fat loss, but also loss of important lean tissues like muscle – the number on the scale would just be smaller) but after this initial drop, you will likely hit a plateau (if you’re eating so little already, it’s very hard to eat even less, and if you’re already exercising so much, it’s tough to add more in).

Scenario 2: Chunking both exercise and nutrition. Making one small change in each area such as eating each meal slower (20-30 minutes rather than scarfing down meal) allowing hunger cues to dictate how much you really need to ingest, eating 2 or more servings of veggies with each meal, or making sure that each meal has a lean source of protein. Adding one small element of exercise daily such as a 20-30 minute brisk walk after dinner, a short morning swim before work or a circuit-based body weight workout building up to 3-5+ hrs of moderately vigorous activity a week.

With the above, there will likely be very little initial change in weight or appearance but the new chunked habits are not drastic and would cause very minimal disruption to current habits and behaviours. Over time, these would lead to fairly significant yet sustainable changes. Your new fit, healthy lifestyle.

I think it’s pretty easy to see which one of these two choices is more comfortable, and more importantly, sustainable over the long term.

And that’s where results will be found.

Filed Under: Human Performance, Personal Training, Strength & Conditioning, Weight Loss Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Risk to Benefit. Is it worth it?

September 22, 2015 by

“Can I go back to playing [insert sport or activity] yet?”

In physiotherapy and sports medicine, this is one of the most common questions we get asked. And at it’s most fundamental, it’s a question about risk to benefit.

The athlete wants to go back the the activity she enjoys. She wants to hit the field, return to sport and get back to her team.

Unfortunately the answer to that question, as always, is: it depends.

It’s very seldom a straight yes or no. There are often many individual and situational variables to consider when assessing risk to benefit for return to sport or activity.

These include:

  • What type of injury did the athlete suffer?
  • What was the severity of the injury?
  • How long has she been injured and how is the injury progressing?
  • How long has she been doing her injury rehabilitation?
  • What type of rehab has she been doing? Is it passive? Active? Both?
  • What type of sport does she participate in?
  • What level does she play at?
  • What intensity will she be going back?
  • Is her fitness level adequate or has the layoff led to a loss of sport conditioning?
  • Can she gradually ramp back up to normal levels? Or will she be going back in all out, right away?

These are just a few of some of the questions that should be taken into consideration for safe return to sport – a return where risk to benefit is  heavily skewed towards the benefit side of the equation.

Any physiotherapist or sports medicine practitioner who has been involved in the industry for any length of time will have learned early on that many athletes will return to sport with or without our blessings. This is often more prevalent in a competitive realm where being seen or performing consistently may have an impact on future opportunities (e.g. playing in front of college or university scouts, rep team tryouts etc).

So then the important part comes down to making sure that our athlete is clearly informed about what becomes the biggest consideration for a safer return to activity: risk to benefit.

Is the risk of returning to sport early worth the potential benefit?

One of the biggest educational items we work on with our athletes is to let them know the major possible risks and let them compare those risks to the potential benefits of returning to sport.

It’s that same risk to benefit consideration that keeps popping up.

Having knowledge of her particular risk to benefit ratio will give the athlete the power to make the informed decision for herself as to whether or not the risks of returning to play (e.g. re-injury) are worth the benefits (e.g. exposure in front of scouts).

Or if it would be a better option for her to hold off for a little while longer until her risk drops and the benefit increases.

If you’ve been injured and you’re wondering if the risk to benefit in your specific case is worth it, get in touch with us. We can help you make an informed decision.

Filed Under: physiotherapy, sports injuries, Youth Sports & Athletics Tagged With: , , , , ,

Exercise as medicine: One physiotherapist’s journey

November 16, 2014 by

It’s almost always the same…time slowing to a crawl, certain sounds growing crystal clear, others fading quietly to the background. A sharp cut or twist attempted in a moment of fatigue. A mistimed step on unforgiving turf. An unfortunate collision of two bodies in accelerated motion. Or even just a simple fall. And then it’s over almost as quickly as it happened.

*****

Having been active in sports and physical activity my whole life, I am no stranger to various aches, pains and injuries.

Through my years playing competitive soccer, I have faced my share of down time from myriad sprains, strains and even broken bones and ruptured muscles. Because of these, I am also no stranger to the world of sports physiotherapy and injury rehabilitation as a patient and a client.

In the years before I would become a physiotherapist myself, after each injury I would make the hour-long trek to my physiotherapist’s clinic on the other side of town; she was the only one I trusted to get me back on the pitch in the shortest period of time, with my body ready to perform as before.

I knew she would help put me back together again.

She would run me through her complete physical assessment, gauging my injuries and devising an appropriate physiotherapy treatment plan, one that was built on the tasks that my body would be required to complete on return to sport. The running. The jumping. The sudden change of directions.

Unfortunately, as was the norm 20 years ago, and still practiced at some clinics today, each of my sessions always included hot/cold packs as well as various electromodalities: therapeutic ultrasound, interferential current, and other electrical stims.

These were used because they were always used: “for swelling, for pain, for speeding up tissue healing”.

These were the unchallenged physiotherapy traditions and at the time, I didn’t know any better.

But in addition to these thermal agents and electrical devices strapped to the various injured body parts, my physiotherapist would give me specific exercises. Empowering exercises.

Movements that started out simple enough: standing on one leg, hopping from side to side, or even just partially squatting down on one leg. With time, these would be progressed to more complex patterns, with greater challenges of speed, balance, control and precision. Eventually, I would be flying through sports specific drills at full tilt, exploding through intense plyometric jumps and pushing through challenging strength exercises.

With her encouragement, this is where I invested my time. These were the activities I took home with me, working on them consistently and diligently between math assignments and science papers.

And every time I returned for a follow-up physiotherapy session after doing my exercise-based homework, I would be stronger, faster, and more powerful.

I would be better. And more confident.

*****

While our knowledge of injury rehabilitation, pain science and motor control has grown by leaps and bounds, there still remains so much to learn and discover, especially when it comes to the nervous system and how the body heals and repairs.

Due to these new challenges, and new opportunities, the physiotherapy profession has also progressed tremendously.

These advances in better understanding the human body have led to novel treatment therapies and techniques and have opened the door for us to challenge and revise old, scientifically unsupported ways of thinking and doing.

Various professional associations, such as the American Physical Therapy Association, have adopted policies and practice guidelines eschewing traditionally used treatment modalities such as heating pads. Our research-focused colleagues have devoted their time and resources at trying to find the most efficient and effective therapies for our clients, the treatments with the lowest risk and highest returns.

This evolution has caused many of us in the physical therapy profession to move away from the traditional passive care approach which primarily used machines and into the realm of active rehabilitation using progressive exercise as the main modality of choice, our gold standard of treatment.

At least that’s where I find myself.

Looking back at what I did as a physiotherapy patient, and what I do now, as a physiotherapist, only one component remains the same…

Using exercise as a way of helping the body heal. Using appropriate movement to create a safe environment for the body to repair and fix itself.

Using graded physical activity to decrease the threat, real or perceived, to an over-excitable nervous system.

Using exercise to help my clients perform.

Using exercise as medicine.

Filed Under: physiotherapy Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

How to build a better athlete – starting in kindergarten

September 22, 2014 by

This Saturday, while drinking my morning tea and perusing the health and fitness sections of various online newspapers as I often do before a starting work, I came across a headline that caught my attention.

Yup, it’s the same one you read above.

Pretty catchy, isn’t it?

You can read the full article from the Globe and Mail here: Build A Better Athlete – Starting in Kindergarten.

The article starts with a vivid recollection of a knee injury suffered by a young man, Eric Sung, while attempting a skateboarding move, described as a bunny hop, in his driveway at home. The journalist then postulates on a potential reason for all the ligaments of his knee tearing with what was described as an odd-angle landing:

“He was 24 at the time, but Mr. Sung’s childhood phys ed teachers could be to blame. According to a growing body of research, the torn knees, twisted ankles and sore backs that plague so many active adults have their origins in the school gymnasium.”

While the fault for Mr. Sung’s knee injury on his childhood teachers is highly debatable and virtually impossible to prove (it was more likely the “odd angle” at which he landed), the idea that the movement patterns we learn as children may serve us in our adulthood is definitely an important one and an area that needs to be further explored.

With many changes in education curricula shifting focus towards pure academic subjects and increased technology use by children and youth (iPads/smartphones/online gaming), there’s been a substantial shift away from physical activity and transitioning towards increased screen time and sedentary behaviours.

Even with (dwindling) mandated physical education classes in school, many children and youth are still missing out on enough appropriate exposure to fundamental movement skills (also called physical literacy – the ability to complete basic movement patterns safely and effectively) required to create a solid movement foundation for later in life.

“Comprehensive Canadian data presented in Montreal this month shows we’re doing no better: Researchers looked at Grade 4 and 5 students in Manitoba, and whether they had acquired 18 basic movement skills – such as running, kicking and hopping – all of which are laid out in the physical education curriculum. The results were dismal. No more than 10 per cent of the kids showed proficiency in any one of the movements. (As in Australia, girls fared the worst.)”

Is that it?

As our youth age, will they be at greater risk for various aches, pains, and traumas? Do we become a nation of adults prone to injury because we didn’t learn to move well as children?

Is there anything that can save us?

Is there any way to reverse this negative trend and create a nation of agile, nimble, injury-proof* citizens?

In the article, Dr Dean Kriellaars, an associate professor in the department of physical therapy at the University of Manitoba “says that as little as two or three hours a week on basic movement skills can boost kids’ proficiency dramatically and nearly eliminate performance differences between boys and girls.”

And this doesn’t have to be accomplished with traditional competitive sports.

In fact, many of the movement training strategies suggested by Dr. Kriellars would simply be playing games where the foundational physical skills and patterns are an integral part of the game but aren’t the main focus. Think back to the days of playing hopscotch or frozen tag in the playground – those simple games helped improve certain physical skills, but those skills weren’t the focus of those games.

The main focus should be on making movement fun, for life.

And that may be the secret on how to build a better athlete.

Here at Primal Human Performance, we couldn’t agree more.

This includes making movement fun for children and youth who aren’t “athletic” in the traditional sense, who aren’t interested in organized, competitive sports.

In our youth programs and working with youth, we believe that every child, with the right guidance and coaching, has the potential to be athletic in their life. They have the potential to master the fundamental movement skills that will allow them to participate in physical activity of their choosing, to the extent that they wish. They can learn to love to move and use their bodies to their full potential.

To that end, our programs are tailored to the individual and designed on building a solid physical literacy foundation for life, minimizing injury risk, and optimizing performance potential, for every type of child.

For some of our clients, that means systematically progressing to higher performance athletic development as they mature and progress, with an end goal of successfully entering collegiate or professional athletics. This may encompass progression to sports specific training, a greater focus on strength and conditioning, or power drills to enhance explosiveness.

For others, it may simply mean learning how to use their bodies efficiently so that they can stay healthy, active and happy as they grow up. Learning to improve their body awareness, basic balance and general coordination. Often, it’s a stepping stone to get a more sedentary child to feel comfortable in their own skin, outside of a potentially daunting competitive gym class where they feel judged and compared to their more athletic peers.

In the end, we really want everyone to move more. And revel in the enjoyment of that movement.

In essence, we want you to play.

*While the term “injury-proof” was used, I’m not aware of any method to completely eliminate the risk of injury from physical activity or even life. What we aim to do is minimize the risk of injury by trying to control for the factors that we can control.

Filed Under: Human Performance, physiotherapy, Youth Sports & Athletics Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Is physiotherapy for me?

August 26, 2014 by

So who really needs physiotherapy anyway?

Is physiotherapy just for sports injuries like sprained ankles or knees? Or is it for post-surgical rehabilitation after ACL repairs or arthroscopic surgery?

Can it help someone with low back pain? Neck pain? Shoulder pain?

What if pain isn’t involved, but weakness is? What if lack of strength, or coordination, or endurance is the problem?

What if there is no pain or injury? Could physiotherapy still help improve human performance for someone who has no immediate limitations?

Ultimately, the reason most people seek out the expertise and knowledge of a registered physiotherapist is because they can’t do, or want to improve on, something that’s important to them.

This is often due to pain, loss of range of motion/flexibility, loss of strength or because of some medical intervention (e.g. surgery or bed rest). This loss of function could have an impact on so many different aspects of someone’s life from looking after their kids to playing sports, to something as simple as doing everyday chores or tasks such as driving.

However, with preventative health awareness on the rise, more and more people are looking to be more proactive.

They’re looking to do as much as they can to avoid being impacted by repetitive strain or overuse injuries before they occur. They’re looking to improve their base strength and fitness so they can minimize risk of a variety of lifestyle related diseases and disorders (diabetes, cancer, heart disease etc) as they age.

They’re looking for optimal health and ultimate performance. They want to be at their best.

So in the end, physiotherapy from a registered physiotherapist may be the right option if you’re looking to do the things you want to do, or get back to doing the things you want to do.

Filed Under: physiotherapy Tagged With: , , , , ,

The Three Worst Abdominal Exercises for People with Low Back Pain

April 30, 2012 by

The internet has reshaped our world.

It has the ability to transfer information and knowledge across the globe in real time.

You have a problem, Google your signs or symptoms, and more than likely you’ll find thousands and thousands of pages of solutions with Dr. Google coming to the rescue!

So what’s wrong with that?

As a physiotherapist in Vaughan, these are the questions I ask myself: How good is the information? What’s the source? Can it be trusted? Will it help? Or will it harm? What are the risks? The benefits?

This becomes even more important when dealing with various injuries or illness where the potential for making things worse may be higher, where the risk of aggravating already irritated tissues may compound or where delaying appropriate treatment may lengthen the course of recovery.

It’s no different with relieving low back pain. Plug in those search terms and instantly you’ll have at your disposal more information than you could possibly even use.

Often, a good portion of the information that shows up discusses strengthening your abs to fix your back problems. This may sound quite similar to the advice many people are given by their medical or fitness professionals:

“Strengthen your core to protect your back”.

Unfortunately, over the years, abdominal training has become popularized as the foundation of core training. In reality, abdominal training accounts for only a small part of the bigger core training picture.

To make matters worse, poorly designed or applied abdominal training can make you worse and keep you in pain.

So in keeping with the spirit of this post, here’s my list of the three worst abdominal exercises for people with low back pain:

  1. The traditional crunch or sit-up: These staples of most back rehab programs should be eliminated due of the incredible compressive loading forces created through the spinal discs. Dr. Stuart McGill, one of the foremost spine researchers in the world, has measured compressive forces of approximately 3300N (730 lbs) in the spine with these types of exercises. The scary part: this is equal to the amount of force listed by certain government health agencies as the amount of force needed to cause injury!
  2. Abdominal twist machines: So if crunches or sit-ups can cause as much damage to your spine, imagine what happens when you take a similar exercise, restrict movement at certain joints, isolate movement at others, twist and then add a load? By taking a flexion movement and adding a loaded rotation component on these machines, you’re well on your way to sending yourself off to the disabled list. In fact, we’ve  dubbed these types of exercises “disc herniators” and inform our clients that they should only continue to do these if they wish to help us finance our latest facility expansion.
  3. Back Extension Machines: As described by Dr. McGill, the repeated spine flexion/extension movements (forward/backward bending) used by these devices create the same conditions that were necessary in his lab to produce disc herniations in his spine models. Enough said. Why would you want to do the same to your back at the gym when you’re trying to help it heal?

So there you have it…The 3 worst core exercises for people with low back pain. If you love your back, you should probably stop doing them.

In our next post, we’ll discuss 3 spine sparing core exercises that are appropriate for people with low back pain.

Yours in movement.

Dev Chengkalath

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: , , , , ,

Rehab and Performance: Can the Two Co-Exist?

February 9, 2012 by

You were super active up until the moment you got injured.

You might have twisted your ankle stepping off a curb while out on a 10K run. Or your knee buckled underneath you while you were hitting the slopes hard. You may have tweaked your low back while playing horsie with the kids. Or maybe you pinched your shoulder reaching into the back seat of the car to grab your purse.

Whatever the body part, something bad happened. And things suddenly changed.

You know what usually happens next, right?

“I’ll take a few days to let it rest, it should clear up.”

Maybe a little ice. A couple ibuprofen. A tensor wrap here, a hot pack there. Some Tiger Balm. And a big glass of red wine.

For some, that’s all it’ll take and things will clear up. They’ll be back to their everyday activity, pushing the limits, and living life. The pain, the dysfunction, and the misery will be nothing more than a long forgotten memory.

For the unlucky few, it unfortunately doesn’t work out that way. Things stay the same, or they get worse. More pain. Less movement. Weakness. Decreased function and performance.

Out comes the Ben & Jerry’s, on goes the TV, and the moping begins.

“Why me?”

“Why won’t this heal? Why won’t it get better?”

And here begins the sad, downward spiral of the once lofty fitness goals and aspirations.

The running stops cold. They gym, heck, that could be on another planet! Even the kids will have to wait till you feel better to play with them.

Limping. Hobbling. Shuffling. Modifying how you do things.

“Exercise?! Are you kidding me, I’m injured!”

Days grow into weeks. You feel your once toned muscles soften like freshly kneaded dough. Your shape slowly shifting, growing at the paunch almost imperceptibly at first, but then quickly gaining steam.

The couch, which remarkably wasn’t made of memory foam, has developed new physical properties, and has somehow molded to your new and expanding body contours. Like a plush glove that embraces you, welcoming you, caressing you. Bidding you to stay for a while.

Your motivation levels drop. Depression creeps in. It gets harder and harder to even do little things. You’re on edge. Your mind’s not as sharp and clear as it used to be. You feel anxious without even knowing why. Restless like a caged animal that needs to let off steam.

You realize that you miss your former active self; enough is finally enough.

You’ve realized that nothing truly changes if nothing changes.

“That’s it, I’m going to get ________(insert injured body part here) fixed!”

You dutifully look up your physiotherapist/chiropractor/massage therapist (insert your injury rehab professional here) and call them up and get booked in for your treatment.

You diligently go through your rehab and at the end of it all, you are free from pain, you have your range of motion, and your strength is coming back.

You’re now just a softer and weaker, albeit pain-free, version of your old injured self.

Discharged from therapy, you start from ground zero again to build yourself back up. Step by slow step. For most people, that’s almost as daunting and depressing as being injured!

What if there were another way?

What if, during your rehab, you actually IMPROVED your fitness? What if you shed a few of those injury pounds? What if, at the end of your treatment plan, you were able to perform at, or beyond, the level you were at BEFORE you got injured?

At Primal Human Performance, we believe that the above should be part of every injury rehab treatment plan. We believe that your injury treatment should not merely cover the bases, but should empower you to attain physical peaks you didn’t think possible.

That’s why as soon as you’re body is ready, we’ll have you in our high performance gym, pushing, pulling, squatting, lunging, crawling, and throwing your way to optimal health and ultimate performance.

Who says you can’t rehab an injury while improving your performance at the same time?

Team Primal

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