How are you sitting or standing right at this moment?

If you are like most folks, your spine is compromised by poor posture. Just about everyone has poor posture these days.

What Does Poor Posture do to my Health?

Changing your posture by sitting or standing up straight will instantly take a load of stress and strain off your lower back. Your lower back supports the weight of your entire upper body. When your head is directly on your neck and shoulders in good posture, then the load is evenly distributed and supported by your neck, shoulders and lower back. Dr. Mark Barnes says, however, that if your head weighs 10lbs, for every inch it moves forward the load your on spine increases by 10lbs. Therefore, having poor posture is like forcing your spine to support a bowling ball that is constantly pulling on your spine. If you are sitting in a curved or slumped position, think of all the strain your lower back is fighting against! This can lead to a whole host of potential problems (see list below).

Poor posture adversely affects the body in a variety of ways:
Abnormal wearing of joints (leading to arthritis)
Adaptation to being fixed in abnormal position (think hunchback)
Digestive problems
Breathing problems
Circulation and blood pressure issues
Headaches
Back pain
Neck pain
Shoulder pain
Unnecessary pressure on pain sensitive nerves and tissues

Change your Posture for Life with These 5 Steps to a Healthy Back:

Good posture starts with both an awareness of your current body position and a desire to change your posture. Achieving good posture means training your body to put the least amount of strain on your supporting muscles, ligaments and joints.

Step 1: Find your back’s “happy back position” by sitting or standing upright until your spine is in neutral position. There should be a slight natural curve in your lower back.

Step 2: Contract your body’s inner core called the Transversus Abdominis (TrA) by drawing your belly button inwards toward your spine. Contract your TrA multiple times during the day.

Step 3: Lift your chest slightly by extending your mid-back.

Step 4: Squeeze your shoulder blades together and down.

Step 5: Lengthen the back of your neck by slightly tucking your chin in.

Now take a deep breath and relax your shoulders while maintaining this position. At first it may feel difficult to maintain good posture for prolonged periods of time. Fear not, it will get easier over time and is definitely worth the health benefits.

Source: http://telespine.com/posture-is-everything/

www.sportphysio.co.za

 

 Physiotherapist Andrea in action with her patient doing pilates at HPC SPORT PHYSIO.

 Pilates (or the Pilates method) is a series of about 500 exercises inspired by calisthenics, yoga and ballet. Pilates lengthens and stretches all the major muscle groups in the body in a balanced fashion. It improves flexibility, strength, balance and body awareness.

Pilates explained

In the 1920s, physical trainer Joseph Pilates introduced Pilates into America as a way to help injured athletes and dancers safely return to exercise and maintain their fitness. Since then, Pilates has been adapted to suit people in the general community.

Pilates can be an aerobic and non-aerobic form of exercise. It requires concentration and focus, because you move your body through precise ranges of motion. Pilates lengthens and stretches all the major muscle groups in your body in a balanced fashion. It requires concentration in finding a centre point to control your body through movement. Each exercise has a prescribed placement, rhythm and breathing pattern.

In Pilates, your muscles are never worked to exhaustion, so there is no sweating or straining, just intense concentration. The workout consists of a variety of exercise sequences that are performed in low repetitions, usually five to ten times, over a session of 45 to 90 minutes. Mat work and specialized equipment for resistance are used.

The Pilates method is taught to suit each person and exercises are regularly re-evaluated to ensure they are appropriate for that person. Due to the individual attention, this method can suit everybody from elite athletes to people with limited mobility, pregnant women and people with low fitness levels.

Classes are held in specialized Pilates studios, physiotherapy clinics or at your local leisure facility or community centre.

Health benefits of Pilates

The health benefits of Pilates include:

· improved flexibility

· increased muscle strength and tone, particularly of your abdominal muscles, lower back, hips and buttocks (the ‘core muscles’ of your body)

· balanced muscular strength on both sides of your body

· enhanced muscular control of your back and limbs

· improved stabilization of your spine

· improved posture

· rehabilitation or prevention of injuries related to muscle imbalances

· improved physical coordination and balance

· relaxation of your shoulders, neck and upper back

· safe rehabilitation of joint and spinal injuries

· prevention of musculoskeletal injuries

· increased lung capacity and circulation through deep breathing

· improved concentration

· increased body awareness

· stress management and relaxation

Pilates is suitable for everyone

Pilates caters for everyone, from beginner to advanced. You can perform exercises using your own body weight, or with the help of various pieces of equipment.

A typical Pilates workout includes a number of exercises and stretches. Each exercise is performed with attention to proper breathing techniques and abdominal muscle control. To gain the maximum benefit, you should do Pilates at least two or three times per week. You may notice postural improvements after 10 to 20 sessions.

Pilates and challenging your body

Pilates is partly inspired by yoga, but is different in one key respect – yoga is made up of a series of static postures, while Pilates is based on putting yourself into unstable postures and challenging your body by moving your limbs.

For instance, imagine you are lying on your back, with bent knees and both feet on the floor. A Pilates exercise may involve straightening one leg so that your toes point to the ceiling, and using the other leg to slowly raise and lower your body. You need tight abdominal and buttock muscles to keep your hips square, and focused attention to stop yourself from tipping over.

Types of Pilates

The two basic forms of Pilates are:

· Mat-based Pilates – this is a series of exercises performed on the floor using gravity and your own body weight to provide resistance. The main aim is to condition the deeper, supporting muscles of your body to improve posture, balance and coordination

· Equipment-based Pilates – this includes specific equipment that works against spring-loaded resistance, including the ‘reformer’, which is a moveable carriage that you push and pull along its tracks. Some forms of Pilates include weights (such as dumbbells) and other types of small equipment that offer resistance to the muscles.

How can we help you?

To find out more information, or to book a time to get started with your physiotherapy, call us now at 012 484 1711 (HPC) or on 012 004 0618 (Queenswood) for an expert plan, treatment, and support system. At Sport Physio, we are committed to delivering the best and most tailored designed physiotherapy solution to ensure the highest quality of life possible. We look forward to helping you and your family.

Visit our website at www.sportphysio.co.za for more information!

#LynoTherapy is a treatment that will improve your movement, balance, flexibility and help remove pain. Lyno Therapy is great way of preventing regular injuries by making sure that all your muscles are balanced and working together♻️
How can Lyno Therapy help me?
☑️Become aware of how your body moves and how to deal with muscle pain
☑️Deal with pain so that your movement will no longer be limited
☑️Restore your normal movement
☑️Go about your daily tasks without pain or restrictions
☑️Get back into shape and participate in your sporting activities
☑️Improve your posture
📱Contact us for more info:
🔺HPC: 012-484-1711
🔺QUEENSWOOD: 012-004-0618
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#lynosport #physio #physiotherapy #bunkietest #movement #muscle #musclepain #grind #sport #fitness #fitfam #fitspo

How can we help you?

To find out more information, or to book a time to get started with your physiotherapy, call us now at 012 484 1711 (HPC) or on 012 004 0618 (Queenswood) for an expert plan, treatment, and support system. At Sport Physio, we are committed to delivering the best and most tailored designed physiotherapy solution to ensure the highest quality of life possible. We look forward to helping you and your family.

Visit our website at www.sportphysio.co.za for more information! 

Women's scull (W1x) - Kirsten McCann
Men's Pair (M2-) - Jake Green & Lawrence Brittain
Lightweight women's scull (LW1x) - Nicole van Wyk and Kirsten McCann
Leightweight men's double (LM2x) - Nicholas Oberholzer and Vaughn Botes

How can we help you?

To find out more information, or to book a time to get started with your physiotherapy, call us now at 012 484 1711 (HPC) or on 012 004 0618 (Queenswood) for an expert plan, treatment, and support system. At Sport Physio, we are committed to delivering the best and most tailored designed physiotherapy solution to ensure the highest quality of life possible. We look forward to helping you and your family.

Visit our website at www.sportphysio.co.za for more information!

What is proprioception? ( PRO-pree-o-SEP-shən)

It is the body's ability to sense movement in and around our joints. Receptors within various structures basically detect things such as of stretch, compression, tension etc.
  

Some interesting proprioceptive fact:

There are more mechanoreceptors in the cervical spine (neck) than in the lumbar spine (low back)

So... What's the basic reason for proprioception?

Proprioception enables us to know where our limbs are in space without actually looking, which is important for all everyday movements that we perform. When we perform complex movements such as sporting movements, proprioception needs to be enhanced, as precise coordination is essential to improve performance and to minimise injury risk.

How does it work?

The system is subconscious and often reflex, meaning that we don’t have voluntary control over it. We can consciously utilise the proprioceptive system and therefore we can train it and improve it.

What is a good example of proprioception in day to day actions?

If our body leans to the side for any reason our proprioceptive system will work to involuntarily keep the head level.

Another example is, if we are walking on a surface that leans off to one side and it suddenly changes to the other direction then we don’t notice but our joints, such as the ankle adjust in position and certain muscles change in their activity etc.

Hamstring activity uses feed forward mechanisms around toe off & feedback mechanisms during the rest of swing phase in walking (Blanchette & Bouyer 2009).

What affects proprioception?

Following injury to joints and ligaments the receptors are also damaged, which means the information that is usually sent to the brain is impaired. As a consequence the joint feels odd or just doesn't feel right.

Swelling will reduce the proprioceptive reactions. If you think about it logically swelling stretches and compresses the structures, which will confuse the system as the information being detected won’t match the position that the joint is actually in.

Pain also has an inhibitory effect on muscle activity, which is part of the proprioceptive system.

For example:
Lumbar spine proprioceptive awareness in sitting is reduced in patients with non-specific chronic lower back pain (Verschueren et al 2012)

What is the relevance of proprioception in sport and injury?

Does it prevent injury?
Some research has found a 7 times lower incidence of ACL injury with proprioceptive training.

4 to 6 weeks of balance training enhances static & dynamic stability in Chronic ankle instability (Wortmann & Docherty 2013)

The issue is that some injuries happen too quickly to prevent:
Most sports injuries occur in less than 10 ms. For example ankle sprains occur in 17ms but the shortest spinal monosynaptic reflex response is less than 20 ms (Pope et al 1982).

But:

Knee joint proprioceptive deficits were observed in established osteoarthritis (OA) but not in early OA. This suggests the lack of proprioception is as a result of the OA rather than a cause (Isabel et al 2013).

It is important to maintain good form and technique whilst training as exercise can disturb proprioception through fatigue. This increases the risk of musculoskeletal injury (Proske & Gandevia 2012). So make sure not to over train especially with higher impacts sports. It’s quality not quantity!

Does training proprioception get you back from injury or help you while you are injured?

Consideration should be given to the lumbar spine, pelvic alignment & postural control when managing hamstring injuries (Mason et al 2008).

Non-weight-bearing proprioceptive & strength training significantly improved outcomes in OA knee (Lin et al 2009).

Significant decreases in pain levels were detected in hypermobility syndrome patients who did proprioceptive exercises (Sahin et al 2008).

Neuromuscular training alone appears effective in the short term for chronic ankle instability (de Vries et al 2011).

But:

There is lack of high-quality evidence for the effects of proprioceptive exercise & taping in ankle instability (Hughes & Rochester 2008).

Does age impact proprioception?

Proprioceptive senses, particularly that of limb position and movement, deteriorate with age and are associated with an increased risk of falls. So proprioceptive exercises as you age are important (Proske & Gandevia 2012).

What type of exercises improves your proprioception?

Balance and control orientated exercises challenge the system making it adapt and improve.
Rozzi et al (1999) found 3 sessions of single leg balance per week for 4 weeks significantly improved joint proprioception.

The aim is to start at a level that is hard but not too hard and as can do longer and it becomes easier then you need to increase the difficulty of the exercise.

Once you can do basic level exercises then you advance to sport specific exercises.

Examples of basic proprioceptive exercises:

Single leg balance while throwing and catching a ball:

Single leg Romanian dead lift:

Single Arm Mountain Climber:
Begin on all fours, then come onto the balls of your feet. Step one leg forward and the other back. Alternate switching your leg positions while you simultaneously sweep one arm up and back. After several arm sweeps, switch sides!

Examples of sport specific exercises:

Runner:
Single leg lunge with knee lift

Swimmer:
Pressup hold and rotation of body to side

 How can we help you?

To find out more information, or to book a time to get started with your physiotherapy, call us now at 012 484 1711 (HPC) or on 012 004 0618 (Queenswood) for an expert plan, treatment, and support system. At Sport Physio, we are committed to delivering the best and most tailored designed physiotherapy solution to ensure the highest quality of life possible. We look forward to helping you and your family.

Visit our website at www.sportphysio.co.za for more information!