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Your Biggest Issue Stopping Your Body From Healing!

31st March 2017 / Robert Manning

Our busy and hectic lives

Stress!!

As we all know, stress isn’t great and everyone in the world goes through it at varying points throughout their lives.

Stress can be anything from a GCSE exam through to trying to find a job or just trying to work out where you are going with your life.

Stress can have varying impacts on your body and not least when you are trying to recover from an injury.

Multiple studies have been conducted over the years and have found that stress from various elements can dramatically slow the healing process.

For example carers who were stressed caring for dementia patients were found to take 24% longer (9days!) to heal from a biopsy.

Moving onto exams, dental students also had a biopsy taken, the students who had the biopsy taken during exams took 40% longer to heal than the students who had the same biopsy taken during holiday time.

Lastly in older men and women, when they were stressed, anxious or depressed this caused a longer healing time than the ones who weren’t the above healed at a much quick rate.

Tips to help stress – taken from the NHS website on stress- Link below

1. Look for the positives in life- be grateful for what you have and not you don’t (glass half full)

2. Accept you’ll always have jobs to do, prioritise your work load from most important to least.

3. Have a bit of me time, this is where you take time out just to do something for you, be that a hobby of yours through to a relaxing massage.

These are just a few examples to help reduce stress!

http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/stress-anxiety-depression/Pages/reduce-stress.aspx

Christian, L. M., Graham, J. E., Padgett, D. A., Glaser, R., & Kiecolt-Glaser, J. K. (2007). Stress and wound healing. Neuroimmunomodulation, 13(5-6), 337-346.

The number 1 exercise if you work in an office!

17th March 2017 / Robert Manning

If you work in an office, you spend anything from 6 hours a day through to 10 or more at a desk… being at your desk for such a long period can mean that you sit with the below posture:

Bad posture

Slumped forward, shoulders rounded, look familiar? I’m sure it does, you may even be reading this in the exact same posture!

The number 1 exercise to help this is below- this is stretching you pectoralis minor muscle and this can get very tight when you have the above posture.

Pec minor anatomy

Pec minor stretch

1. put your arm on a door frame or corner of a wall at head height

2. lunge forward until you feel s stretch (the higher up you have your arm the deeper the stretch) Hold this for 30 seconds and repeat 3 times!

This is just the start of helping adjust yourself to an optimum posture. With my sessions we can go through a step by step plan of getting you to the perfect posture at work…Remember only 2 weeks left to get 50% off a sport massage initial assessment or an injury assessment with me. This means only £22.50 for and hour and a half session! 50% off for March

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Shoulder Surgery

5th March 2017 / Robert Manning

Before going under the knife for shoulder issues have a look below and see the affect exercise can have on an array of injuries.

50% off initial assessment for March- Massage and Injury

28th February 2017 / Robert Manning

Grab yourself a bargain this month, as for the whole of March I am halving my initial assessment price from £45 for an hour and a half to just £22.50.

You might just want a relaxing massage, or you may need help with an injury. Whatever your needs I can tailor the session around you!

Sport Massage Sport Therapy

Handy tips for plantar fasciitis

19th February 2017 / Robert Manning

Props to the running physio who put this together- Some very simple and easy to follow advice to look after your feet

Hamstring Strain Protocol-

12th February 2017 / Robert Manning

Aspetar Hamstring Protocol Full video

Misleading MRI’s!

9th February 2017 / Robert Manning

Foot Orthoses and shock absorbing insoles- Do they help in injury prevention??

16th January 2017 / Robert Manning

Foot orthoses – have been found to help with preventing shin pain and lower limb stress fractures such as the Tibia and metatarsals However they have been found not to have any effect on musculoskeletal injuries such as Achilles pain, knee pain or lower back pain.

Shock absorbing insoles were not shown to be able to prevent injuries full stop and in one study were actually found to be
slightly harmful.

1 in 10 need insole to prevent a lower limb or back injury, while 1 in 20 need insoles to prevent stress fracture.

The authers of the analysis do state a lot of the studies were poorly designed so to take the above with a pinch of salt e.g. different insoles being used, different controls
and also that most participants had a military back ground and therefore don;t cover the general public

Therefore you may want to think twice about using the insoles you were potentially sold to help prevent achilles pain or Plantar Fasciitis. If you would like to have a more indepth the journal is below.

Bonanno, D. R., Landorf, K. B., Munteanu, S. E., Murley, G. S., & Menz, H. B. (2017). Effectiveness of foot orthoses and shock-absorbing insoles for the prevention of injury: a systematic review and meta-analysis. British journal of sports medicine, 51(2), 86-96.

Rolling Along On Some Foam- Foam Rolling

12th December 2016 / Robert Manning

Foam rolling is a common form of self-myofascial release which is a manual therapy. It is often used by lots of athletes prior to a workout with a view to improving flexibility or after a workout with a view to reducing muscle soreness and promoting quicker recovery.

Pre exercise foam rolling has been found to increase range of movement in the short term.

Post exercise it has been found to help with soreness and fatigue during exercise.

What needs to be expanded on however is finding the optimal duration of foam rolling as there is currently no gold standard foam rolling programme.

For further information on this you can have a look at the below articles.

Ajimsha, M. S., Al-Mudahka, N. R., & Al-Madzhar, J. A. (2015). Effectiveness of myofascial release: Systematic review of randomized controlled trials. Journal of bodywork and movement therapies, 19(1), 102-112.

Andersen, L. L., Jay, K., Andersen, C. H., Jakobsen, M. D., Sundstrup, E., Topp, R., & Behm, D. G. (2013). Acute effects of massage or active exercise in relieving muscle soreness: Randomized controlled trial. The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research, 27(12), 3352-3359.

Recovery Strategies- A BASES Statement

29th October 2016 / Robert Manning

Part of a good recovery is based on rest, due to the fact that it is central to healing-

If sufficient time is taken, the body will recover naturally the majority of the time without the need of any intervention. This would be in a perfect world, however training and matches come thick and fast with not enough time for players to recover naturally. This is where recovery strategies/ aids come into play.

Gains from using recovery procedures such as compression garments are futile, if the basics of training such as hydration, diet etc aren’t adhered to.

The best way to pick a strategy, is to firstly look at the window of time you have. Then look at what action in the game/training had the most detrimental affect.

1. If you are trying to reduce muscle soreness – use Compression garments, neuromuscular stimulation or massage

2. If you are instead trying to limit muscle damage due to inflammation, then using cold water immersion is the recommended recovery strategy

3. Assess warm up and cool down exercises to see if they are specific to the movements in your game.

4. Another example given in the journal, is to try and minimise oxidative damage within the muscle by taking antioxidant supplementations such as Cherry Juice.

As a coach, the article states that there is a balance where there is a positive effect from exercise induced adaptation and anywhere past this positive there needs to be a recovery plan in place to ensure any further stress does not cause a detrimental effect to the performance gains.

So there you go a little look into recovery strategies and how to pick them. For a look at the whole article click the link below http://www.bases.org.uk/The-BASES-Expert-Statement-on-Athletic-Recovery-Strategies

Massage & Injury Treatment- Newent, Gloucester & Cheltenham