May 08
It’s not unusual to hear that a person invests decades of their life giving their all to support their career and family. Whether logging years in a physically demanding trade or being active in high school, collegiate, or recreational sports, a common bodily signal tends to surface in one’s forties, fifties, and beyond. The knees …
May 02
Injuries, joint conditions, and pain-producing areas among our personal training clients commonly occur in the lower back, knees, and shoulders. In terms of which area of the body is most affected by pain, the lower back seems to be public enemy number one, followed by the knees as the second most compromised area, and in …
Apr 24
“Who’s that handsome guy?” My grandpa remarked after looking at his reflection in the mirror after I gave him a fresh haircut. It was nothing fancy. I simply used his clippers, stashed in his bathroom drawer, to trim the back and sides of the scraggly, unevenly grown hair sprouting from his scalp in random places. …
Apr 17
As members of the general population, we engage in a wide variety of physical activities. Some of us participate in a broad range of hobbies and chores that keep us active, such as walking our pets, gardening, or completing home improvement projects. For those of us who have children or grandchildren, our physical activities become …
Apr 16
What if getting stronger and preventing injuries wasn’t about doing more exercises, but about moving better? That’s the idea behind functional movement training. Functional movement training grew out of physical therapy, rehabilitation science, and strength and conditioning. Instead of isolating single muscles, it focuses on training fundamental movement patterns your body uses every day (e.g. …
Apr 16
There are two primary forms of stretching we use with our personal training clients: dynamic and static. Dynamic stretching is performed before exercise. Dynamic stretching can be defined as the act of moving through full ranges of motion to create short, repeated stretches that prepare the body for exercise. A few examples include arm circles, …
Apr 12
Along with injuries and joint complications in the lower back and knees, shoulder injuries are among the leading causes of issues affecting everyday functional ability in the general population. Upper neck and shoulder impingement, rotator cuff strains, and frozen shoulder are among a slew of conditions that can afflict people’s shoulder health, causing pain, weakness, …
Apr 03
We’re entering the fourth month of the year, and New Year’s resolutions are in full effect. Learning new skills, progressing toward new professional goals, and refining one’s overall sense of psychological and emotional well-being are among the areas people most often seek to improve in New Year’s resolutions. Let’s not forget one of the top …
Mar 30
Commonly seen Lower-body exercises at the gym might include squats, lunges, and leg presses. However, one overlooked movement that is critical not only for refining lower-body strength but also for reinforcing the structural integrity of the stabilizing muscles of the hips, knees, and ankles is side-to-side movement. The lateral split squat targets lower-extremity muscles involved …
Mar 27
“Make sure you look forward,” I cued Tina, one of our personal training clients, as she was performing a set of “zombie squats” during one of her training sessions. Her eyes darted toward me momentarily to receive the instruction and then returned to looking straight ahead. She immediately rotated her head upward, with her chin …
