Category Archives: Injury Prevention
Stop The Insanity
“Every day we see more extreme “fitness programs” advertised with high-intensity workouts and volumes of work that even my elite athletes would never hold up to. And every day, we see the injuries in the clinic that define these workouts as ill-designed, dangerous, and unsustainable. What most recreational athletes and fitness buffs don’t realize is that elite athletes spend more than half of their time in the gym on injury prevention, and the rest of the time on performance enhancement. Safe and effective stretching and injury prevention workouts might not be spectacular to watch, but they allow athletes to work harder at their sport and in the gym on performance enhancement.” Robert Forster – Physical Therapist to 42 Olympic Medalists, NBA and Grand Slam Champions and Member of the Governor’s Council on Physical Fitness.
Everyone knows how to work hard — it’s those who work equally hard on stretching, recovery, and injury prevention who reach their highest genetic potential in sport and in health.
24 Fit Workout
The basic premise of all well designed exercise programs is the progressive overload principle. Fitness must be “pushed” from below, i.e. starting slow and progressing to harder workouts slowly. The periodisation model used by 24Fit builds your fitness up with a stair step series of methodical, progressive challenges and recoveries that strengthen your body and keep brain and brawn fresh.
There are 3 phases each of 8 weeks:
Phase 1 – Stability.
Phase 2 – Strength.
Phase 3 – Power.
Phase 1 is about establishing stability throughout every part of your body. Thats Spine and Pelvic Stabilization, Shoulder Stabilization and Total Body Integration. By the time you’ve completed Phase 1, you’ll not only have improved posture and joint health, but your body will also be properly prepared for the strength and power workouts to come in Phases 2 and 3.
Contrast that with some high intensive workouts creating a plethora of overuse and traumatic injuries and other ill designed training programs that not even Olympians would hold up under the stress of these workouts.
Get ready! Armed with a bulletproof fitness program and solid science based nutrition you’ll get great results..
Joint Stability – Shoulder Stabilisation
Choosing a fitness programme? There are some programs out theresucha s p90x where its intensive exercise from day one, jumping through hoops by the end of the week you are visiting the physical therapist!
Too often however, the urgency to get fit quick leads to poor results and injury as we try to play catch up with overzealous workouts and ill-advised dieting.
The basic premise of all well designed exercise programs is the progressive overload principle. Fitness must be “pushed” from below, i.e. starting slow and progressing to harder workouts slowly. In addition, what recreational athletes and fitness enthusiasts don’t realize is that elite and professional athletes spend half of their workout time in the gym on injury prevention. All strength and conditioning programs must begin with a joint stability phase where the body is hardened against injury. This phase prepares the body for the more strenuous work to come later in the training cycle.
Phase 1 of the 24 Fit Workout is about establishing stability throughout every part of your body. That’s Spine and Pelvic Stabilisation, Shoulder Stabiliszation and Total Body Integration. This involves the use of light weights and other exercises to strengthen all the little “helper muscles” around the joints, which, along with a lot of stretching insures that each joint is functioning properly.
Take the shoulder which has the greatest range of movement of any joint in the body, which explains why injuries to the shoulder are common. Maybe interesting to see how the shoulder works before addressing the preventative measures. As the video shows its’ an elegant piece of machinery where hundreds of little muscles and tendons come together and attach and interact with each other.
The bottom line for those injuries is that there is only one way to prevent them – by creating the correct posture for the shoulder joint, which means strengthening and stretching the muscles around your shoulder to prevent injury to the joint. So the 24 Fit workout includes exercises such as “Shoulder Horizontal Abduction in 1/4 squat”,” Shoulder Flexion in 1/4 Squat” “Shoulder internal rotation” etc. etc
Phase 1 prepares your body for the more challenging workouts to come
Prevention Of Running Injuries
No one ever got stronger during a workout; it is only after hard work that your fitness and injury prevention capacity evolves. The stress placed on your body during running stimulates a healing reaction from the body that will result in a “shoring” up of the tissue as your body attempts to get stronger and better able to tolerate the load. If you help your body adapt to the stress by following the science of warm up and recovery you become stronger and more resilient to injury.
This article by Robert Forster provides tips on what do before, during and after a run to minmise the risks of injury. Robert has a successful history of helping motivated athletes of all abilities and ages, in all sports, attain their performance goals, and do it injury free. His programs have been utilized for 25 years to help create dozens of Olympic gold medalists, NBA champions, Ironman world record holders, Wimbledon and US Open champions. In the process numerous world records have been set.
Subjects:
Before Workouts
Hydration and Nutrition
Stretching
Warm Up
During Workouts
Form:
Hydration and Calories
Don’t Sprint
After Workouts
Cool Down
Nutrition and Hydration
Stretching
Foam Roller
Ice
Injury Prevention Clinic: The key to remaining injury free lies in scientifically sound training principles
The majority of athletic injuries result from poorly designed training programs which often lead to over training or unnecessary wear and tear on the muscles, joints, and connective tissue. The remainder are caused by pre-existing structural and muscular imbalances in the athlete’s body that are only detectable via a comprehensive Phase IV Structural Examination by an experienced Physical Therapist.
Periodization training breaks the training program into cycles (or periods) where fitness is developed in a scientifically rational sequence, helping you adapt to the stress of exercise and will shore up the areas of your body which are especially vulnerable to injury.
Learn how to correct your structural imbalances with proper strength and flexibility exercises and other interventions that will allow you to keep and lead the active lifestyle you strive to maintain.
At this clinic you will learn:
– If you feel pain in the same area of your body for 2 workouts in any seven day period you have an
injury which needs immediate attention
– How proper strength and flexibility exercises will increase resiliency to injury
– How Periodization Training programs prevent injury
– How ergonomics in the work place and home impact athletic injuries
– How to address injuries when they occur and minimize your down time
– Why rest alone does not heal sports injuries
Presenting Kent Moody, P.T., Forster Physical Therapy
WHEN: Saturday, Oct 20th at 1:00pm
WHERE: Forster Physical Therapy. 427 Wilshire Blvd. Santa Monica
Call 310.582.8212