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By Dr. J 0 Comments Learn, Markham

Move Your Body!

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Our body is meant to move, not sitting behind a desk for 8 hours a day. When your body doesn’t move, the muscles are kept at one static length, and slowly looses their elastic property.  Years of this can contribute to many muscle aches and pains, and also increasing the risk of injuries as the muscles are more susceptable to bring sprained. One great example is the lower back sprain when moving furniture.

While sitting is unavoidable, you can still do something about it. Try to get up and move your body, from neck to shoulder to back to legs and arms so your muscles maintain their elasticity.

By Dr. J 0 Comments Health Tips, Learn, Markham

Balance!

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Foam Rolling is an amazing self help tool that helps alleviate stiffness, muscle tightness, and pain. Some people make the excuse about not having enough time for anything additional in their daily routines, but this will take 5-10 minutes. You can target your problem areas only or do a whole body routine.
Foam Rolling for beginners: Get a foam roller that is firm and smooth – NO knobby parts on it. It will hurt if you have not foam roller before, but the knobby ones REALLY hurt if you haven’t done it before. You’ll utilize your arms/hands and legs to customize how much pressure you’re putting on each body part you’re foam rolling. You can graduate to using less assistance which means more pressure on the foam roll as the foam rolling gets easier and less painful.
Now, why am I suggesting you put yourself through pain when you’re in pain?! The body gets stressed from injury or just every day activities, the muscles tighten, the joints stiffen, you’re in pain. Foam rolling works on the muscles and fascia to loosen the muscles, get knots out, which leads to the joints having less stress on them, and in turn less pain.
One key point to foam rolling your back: do NOT position your lower back on the foam roller without tilting your body to the side. The pressure should be coming from the side, not directly on your spine!! On the rest of your spine that attaches to ribs, you can have the foam roller directly on the spine because the ribs support that pressure.
By Dr. J 0 Comments Health Tips, Learn, Markham

Stretch your hamstrings!

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Don’t forget to stretch your hamstrings! Oftentimes low back pain is caused by increased tension in the hamstrings. This in turn shifts the pelvis into ‘posterior pelvic tilt’, placing the low back into a vulnerable position. To do the hamstring stretch, find a surface at roughly knee level, and with your leg straight, place your heel on the surface and hold that position for 45 seconds at a time. To feel a greater stretch, stand upright, maintaining all the curves in your spine.

By Dr. J 0 Comments Health Tips, Learn, Markham

Resolutions

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With New Year’s just passing, many of us have resolutions to better ourselves. If you have a resolution to exercise more, you may want to follow some of these tips:

  • Start slow: Rome wasn’t built in a day. Take exercising at a slow pace and ease yourself into any new routines. Once you are comfortable with that, then push yourself harder.
  • Be realistic: Change takes time. Don’t get down on yourself when you don’t see immediate responses to exercise. Think more on the scale of weeks with meaningful change starting in 6 weeks.
  • Positive reinforcement: Focus on how you feel rather than pure numbers (like a scale). If you feel more energetic, stronger, faster, better then feed off that feeling. If you feel more tired, sluggish, painful then you should consult a professional to take a look at your symptoms.
  • Consult a pro: Talk to a professional for help on exercise selection. There’s different levels of exercises and you may be hopping too many levels without proper guidance leading to increase risk of injury.

The professionals at Form and Function can always help your meet any health and exercise goals. Come in and let us help you get to where you want to go.

Manni Wong, Physiotherapist