To Heel Strike or Not to Heel Strike....Is this really a question?

The "barefoot running movement" seemed to go as quickly as it came on.  Vibram Five Finger shoes were all the rage with many companies doing anything they could to get a shoe out there that mimicked the five finger barefoot shoe and cash in on the movement.  People bought these shoes and they were used from just walking around and daily work to going and trying to put all of your weekly mileage on.  This is where people ran into trouble and injury.  But first a little back ground.

Wearing basically any shoe on a daily basis is like wearing a miniature high heel (even the guys).  There is so much elevation and cushion in the back of your shoe with the heel protection and cushion that it is raising your calcaneus significantly higher than it needs to be (we are talking mm or a cm here) and shortens the entire heel cord which results in changes in your entire posterior chain.  Now this change starts early. As Kelly Starrett has mentioned it, most kids run completely natural up until 1st grade when all the sudden it changes and they are in bigger, cushioned shoes and they begin to heel strike and walk around in these shoes.  This is the start of a long process of being in cushioned shoes for most of your life.

So what's wrong with heel striking?  If you picture running as almost low amplitude-high paced jumping you can start to see why heel striking could be so terrible for you.  Your goal with running should be to spend as little time on the ground with each step as possible and use the dynamic ability of your body (i.e. your muscles) to propel you forward.  When we heel strike we are slamming our heel/foot into the ground and increasing our ground time.  When we do this we take all the brunt of that force through the static tissue of our body (i.e. our bones) and we end up with "shin splints" and progress on to joint damage or stress fractures.  The amount of force your body must endure when running is at least 4x your body weight and if you aren't using your dynamic structures you're just asking for injury.

The good news is fixing can be easy.  All it takes is practice and re-learning to run.  Running is a skill just like anything else we learn to do so take the time to practice.  First thing is get a pair of shoes that will allow your heel cord to be at its normal length all day.  A shoe with no more than a 4mm drop (heel to toe) is ideal, the flatter the better.  These shoes will also make running on your "forefoot" feel much easier when a big cushioned heel isn't in your way.

See more below:

Hamstrings: Tight vs. Taut

This post is tag along to a couple of the more recent ones that I have put up about the sitting and out lifestyle is wrecking our hips and in turn causing a lot of problems along the way.  I want to go a little bit more in depth about how sitting in this flexed hip position can cause low back pain and also really focus on why it makes your hamstring feel like they are always "tight".

Your pelvis controls so much of the motion and is such a connection point for you body that the slightest changes in its position can cause massive impact on the rest of your body.  Due to our seated position for a lot of our lives the powerful hip flexors (psoas, illiacus, rectus femoris) adapt to become short due to their constant shortened position with sitting.  Psoas attaches to the lumbar spine and if it becomes overly short will pull the lumbar spine into a further lordotic curve causing the pelvis to follow it and rotate in the anterior direction.  Iliacus also plays a roll in this with its attachment to the pelvis.

The result of this anterior tilt to your pelvis is a chain of reactions that can cause you to have pain and problems throughout your lower back and your upper legs.  Your spinal erector muscles get put into a shortened position and haver to take the brunt of an extra load and the insertion point of your hamstrings now moves higher.  This is where the "tight" vs. "taut" argument comes into play.  Most people have heard the story of how if your hamstrings are tight it is a main cause of low back pain and that we need to get your hamstrings loosened up. While this could be a cause I argue it is rarely the issue.  We have more athletes and athletic people coming in with tight hamstrings and what is the first thing we want to do with them or they want done?  STRETCH the hamstrings.  This is all well and good but if the hamstrings are already pulled into a taught position all the stretching in the world won't help them.

When we sit or ischial tuberosity (insertion of the hamstrings) moves superior from it's natural position and pulls the hamstrings into a minor stretch.  This then translates to standing up if we are extremely tight in the anterior hip.  Nothing changes in position of the pelvis, just the position of our body.  Our body is an amazing adapter to whatever position or stress we constantly put it into.

How to help fix it below:

Marc Pro: Non Fatiguing Active Recovery

As I'm about to have the opportunity to use a couple of these Marc Pro machines I thought I would bring out a couple of videos by Gary Reinl and his thought process on active recovery and how his machine helps with a "non-fatiguing" muscle activation and it's ability to enhance recovery.


Please leave feedback and what your thoughts are on the use of this product.

I look forward to experimenting with this piece of equipment and seeing what the results and benefits might be.

-Fix it early, fix it often.

Also below please check out his information on why he thinks we shouldn't be icing and how it can negatively effect the recovery process.

Finding Flow: The Rise of Superman

Ever been in that state of mind where it seems like nothing can slow you down?  Maybe it was in a sport where everything seemed to "click".  You couldn't miss a shot, you knew what was going to happen before it happened and your reacted without a conscious thought.  It might have been at work or on any project where it didn't seem like work and thoughts and ideas flowed effortlessly from your mind and everything seemed natural.

This is called the state of "flow" or being in the "zone".  In the book Rise of Superman, Steven Kotler dives deep into this state of flow and discusses where it comes from, how it might be achieved and how some of the greatest human feats every wouldn't have been possible without achieving this flow state.

These flow states occur with a coupling of brain waves, theta and at point of "aha" gamma waves.  There are many ways you might be able to achieve these brain waves and reach a state of flow.  Mediation is one and is talked about consistently from the bio-hackers and Mr. Dave Asprey.  Mr. Asprey also discusses the use of gamma wave generating machines that you actually attach to the side of your head to help your brain achieve a flow state more easily.

In the book Rise of Superman they look at mainly action sports athletes and the amazing things they accomplish such as jumping the great wall of China on a skateboard not once but six times (5 with throwing in a 360) which is impressive enough but what is even more amazing is that the last five times were done with a broken leg, swollen ankle and a torn ACL.  The man completing these jumps felt none of that pain and was so intently focused on the task at hand that he just reacted and didn't feel the pain.


Continued Below:

Minding Your Mitochondria

Dr. Terry Wahls has one of the more incredible stories that I have seen about the power of self-research, self-testing and fixing yourself as a result of what you've done.  Dr. Wahls was diagnosed

with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) and it quickly took over control of her body and confined her to a wheel chair.  Through plenty of research and completely changing her diet over the course of about a year she was able to completely change her life and regain the ability to run and ride her bike and in essence take her life back.

The diet she talks about and prescribes is simple and I know made me want to eat better.  There are so many things we can control in our life if we are dedicated to that cause.  I took this as a great way to look at things on a preventative side and do what I can to get ahead of these things that might cause me harm in the future and doing what I can to not wait until that tipping point when things go extremely wrong.  Hope you enjoyed the video.

Reversing the Effects of Sitting and the Wrecking of Your Hips

By: Joel Luedke


I put a post out a week or so ago with a video from Kelly Starrett describing what the effects of sitting were doing to wreck your hips.  The chronic and constant shortening of your hip flexors and having your glutes "turned-off" from not needing to use them in a seated position gets you into a bad spot for trying to maintain good posture.  Here we will talk about some fixes for this problem.

First one.  If at all possible get a standing desk for where you spend a great amount of your time working.  Whether it be at home or at work do what you can to figure how to implement one of these desks.  They can get expensive or you can make one yourself for about $150 from Wal-Mart by buying a standard desk and then raising it up on a couple end tables (my preferred method for mine at home).

If the standing desk isn't feasible or within the budget then you need to get yourself up and moving as much as possible.  This needs to be done at much as every 15 minutes.  This presents a problem in getting any work done so the standing desk is your best option but this is also a decent alternative.  The third video below talks about a standing desk but also talks about how you need focus on your standing and posture.  You can use these same principles to stand up and RESET yourself and work on holding that position when you sit back down.

The first one and half suggestions are the big changes that can make a huge difference in moving towards preventing your hips from being wrecked by sitting.  Now, for the how do we go and fix and correct the issues that have been built up over the years.

The image above provides basic mobility exercises that are good for your general overall body mobility.  The ones to focus on for fixing your wrecked hips are numbers 1, 3, 6.  The second video below gives you a great explanation of how to do exercise number 6 or the "couch stretch."  These mobilizations can by done throughout the day or as Kelly talks about in the video at home during commercial breaks.

The main take home points of all this is the need to consciously work on making sure you don't get short and tight through your anterior hips and it comes from putting in the work to make these changes.  The more you can stand the less you get put into terrible positions of hip flexion to allow that shortening to occur.  If you consciously engage your glutes when you're standing it will help your posture and use those strong muscles to keep you up right.  An added benefit to the standing is the extra calories you will unknowingly burn due to just being upright all day and using muscles that you don't use throughout most of the day.

Fix it early and fix it often.

Check out Kelly Starrett's Videos Below

Get Your Skin Gliding & Fix Some Problems

This is something I hadn't ever thought of but the basics behind it make perfect sense.  Tight and tacked down tissues are a multi-faceted issue.  The idea is that your skin should be able to "glide" over your tissues underneath.  One way to address this is to focus on hydration and allowing your tissue to have enough "suppleness" to them that they are able to move freely.

What Kelly Starrett uses in the video below is trying to "tack" down the tissue and then "twist" in order to help free up those tissues and allow that ease of movement again.  He continues to describe some of the biomechanics of movements of the ankle and how something as small and simple as these tacked down tissues can continue make you movement slightly off and over the long-course of your movement cause you tremendous problems.

Fix it early and fix it often.

Mobility Monday: Sitting is Wrecking Your Hips

Since my first Active Release Technique course for the lower extremity years ago and their talking about the psoas I knew it was the root of a lot of problems around the hips.  As I learned the psoas release one of the instructors was discussing how in most of her patients with low back pain she will first release the psoas and it will relieve 80-90% of her patients back pain before she even does the evaluation.

The psoas is an amazingly strong muscle that flexes the hip.  Its attachments run from lumbar spine across the front of the pelvis and down to the front of your femur.  If it becomes short and locked-down it changes the entire mechanics of your pelvis, low back and general posture.  This can be a major contributor to hamstring injury (we'll save that for another post).

The psoas gets wrecked by sitting and having that chronic shortening from 6-10 hours a day of being immobilized.  Below is a great video by Kelly Starrett and how that can jack up your mechanics and your everyday posture.   If you have questions about how to fix those issues check out Mobility WOD or use the contact form on the right to ask and I'll pass some great ideas along.

Study(s) Spotlight: Tart Cherry Juice

People are constantly searching for different ways to increase their capacity to workout, decrease their soreness and generally take better care of their bodies.  Tart cherries have been around for awhile and their use has been used at different institutions for a variety of reasons. Tart cherries are unique in their high quantity of antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties (for the science folks: Cyclo-oxygenase inhibitory flavonoids and anthocynanins).   Consumption of about 45 cherries a day has been shown to reduce circulation concentrations of inflammatory markers in healthy men and women.

One of the studies reviewed showed that consumption of tart cherry juice had an effect in decreasing some of the symptoms of exercise induced muscle damage.  The one that was most notably beneficial to those who consumed the tart cherry juice was the amount of strength lost over the they 4 days.  Researchers found that strength loss was 22% in the placebo group but only 4% with the tart cherry juice.

The other study looked at utilizing tart cherry juice in a preventative way.  The study compared two groups who were going to compete in a long-distance race and had the experimental group ingesting tart cherry juice for 7 days prior to the race, compared to the placebo group who did not use the tart cherry juice.  What they found was that the experimental group had significantly reduced muscle pain after the race compared to the placebo group and that the experimental group was more willing to try the cherry juice due to it's benefits.

Bottom Line:
In a world of a lot of different options for both prevention and recovery from muscle soreness and/or injury tart cherry juice could be a vital addition to your nutrition/supplementation protocol.  The addition of tart cherry juice may help prevent decreases in acute exercise pain while also aiding in recovery from exercise and the preservation of muscle strength.  Hey, it's worth a shot right?


Tart Cherry Supplement Option:
Rapid Perform-Rapid Red



Sources:
Efficacy of a tart cherry juice blend in preventing the symptoms of muscle damage

D A J Connolly

Br J Sports Med 2006; 40: 679-683

Efficacy of tart cherry juice in reducing muscle pain during running A randomized controlled trial

Kerry Kuehl

JISSN 2010, 7:17

Continuum vs. Progression

This short video by Gray Cook brings up a great point that are we actually working to progress people through their workout, training, and rehab even if it means taking more time at a specific exercise until they have mastered it.  If we work on a continuum and just continue to push people through to new exercises without being proficient in the one before we will find ourselves explaining and re-explaining an exercise that the patient just wasn't ready for.

Do we often get to caught up in looking forward when getting back to the basics may be more important?  He raises a great point that I think can be applied to training, practice and rehab.

Pain is a Symptom, it is NOT Always the Cause of the Problem

By: Joel Luedke

Everyone has pain.  And whether is be from athletic related training and injuries or just general everyday life that causes it a common misconception in dealing with pain is that the pain is the only problem that needs to be fixed.  You want to resolve pain because of course it doesn't feel good and we want it gone but it is forgotten that PAIN is a symptom, not the injury and more often than not it isn't the root of the problem.

Gray Cook says "Patients with musculoskeletal problems often focus so much on pain relief, they fail to see the disparity between basic symptom management and true healing or resolution of a problem. In their distress, they mistake pain as the problem without understanding it is merely a signal, and that the problem may remain even after the signal is gone."  This is when we reach for the back of ice and pop the bottle of anti-inflammatories and give it a few days to hop it goes away.

Pain is a warning sign.  Long before pain represents a chronic problem, it can alert us to poor alignment, overuse, imbalance and inflammation.  Pain changes everything.  There is a trend of change coming across the sports medicine world about trying to address things that can cause pain before they reach that point.  When pain rears its ugly head it is getting to the tipping point of becoming to late to reverse the pattern of dysfunction or the problem without having to take time away from the activity that you are doing.

Take pain very seriously but do not be content with the just relieving it and thinking whatever problems it was related to is over.  Look to the surrounding areas of tissue that could be off or tight or overworked to relieve the tension that could be causing pain in your joints or other locations within the muscle.  Look at your position and posture.  Could it be better?  Come on we all can be better at this.

If you have headaches look at posture and the musculature around your neck and upper back.  Knee pain?  Look above and below for tight spots (especially the quads).

DON'T WAIT!!! A great analogy to getting to the root of the problem and addressing it before the point of no return is from Gary Reinl.  If it were to snow an inch an hour for twenty four hours on your deck you could go out every hour and sweep it off with a broom and put in a little effort.  Or you could wait twenty four hours and have two feet of snow to remove and risk it ruining your deck due to the weight and then you have reached a point of no return.  Moral: Take the time to work on everything you can before it accumulates.

One more analogy from Dr. Mark Hyman of the book "Ultraprevention".

His analogy was simple: "Our response to injury is like hearing the smoke detector go off and running to pull out the battery.  The pain, like the sound, is a warning of some other problem.  Icing a sore knee without examining the ankle or hip is like pulling the battery out of the smoke detector.  The relief is short-lived."

-Any questions about specific pain and maybe a couple or areas to start looking to fix yourself please use the contact box on the side and we'll pass on some starting points.

Basic Upper Body Mobility List

Another one from Kelly Starrett.  Never mind his daughter in the video (although it adds a little bit to the video) but he has a great list of the best quick and efficient upper body mobility moves to help you keep yourself upright and mobile.

Long Term Memory Loss Prevention

Preventative and personalized medicine should be (if it isn't already) the way of the future when it comes to treating not only injuries and trying to stop them in the first place but on a bigger scale.  Looking at individual risk factors for people can have a significant difference on how you are treated
and what you should be treated with.

The article linked below hits specifically on Alzheimer's and follows a young man who has a family history of the condition and is already looking at ways to try and slow down, if not prevent the possibility of him having Alzheimer's.

Quick Things to Look At:
-Reducing sugar and carbs in the body
-Playing a musical instrument
-Creatine supplementation (Tim Ferriss introduced this theory).

Very interesting read.  Enjoy.

Alzheimer's Prevention for 30-Somethings with No Symptoms

Self Fixing Low-Back Pain

Another great video by Kelly Starrett on how to look at some self fixing mobilizations for low back pain and tightness.  All the options for treatment he talks about is what is performed in most clinics by medical professionals.

Your pelvis is not a immobile set of bones and it is basically normal for rotations or shifts to occur causing the muscles in your hips and back to get put into strange positions that can cause them to spasm or cause further injury.  A simple realignment of the pelvis can often help relieve pain or get rid of it all together.

These moves are simple and worth a shot to try and self fix yourself when little things go wrong.  If you do continue to have pain please go get it looked at by a medical professional.

Study Spotlight: Cross Over Shoulder Strength

Immobilizing any body part during injury results in loss of muscle size, strength, and function.  These loses can be significant depending on the amount of time immobilization must occur.  A 2014 study looked at doing home resistance training with thera-tubing and the strength results for both the arm being trained and also the untrained arm.

What they found was that training the "trained" or uninvolved arm resulted in strength increases in the "non-trained" or involved arm with actually doing any work with that arm.  They found the greatest increases in strength occurred in both internal and external rotation.  There was also improvements in scaption (although they were not significant).

Take Home: If you are injured and have to immobilize your leg or arm or specific joint there is always something you can do or be working on to help speed your recover.  Always try and move the body part (as instructed by your medical staff) or body parts around them if it produces NO PAIN.  Secondly, train the opposite limb and specifically the muscles that will be most affected by the immobilization and you will get the benefit of this cross over training.

At Home Resistance tubing strength training increases shoulder strength in the trained and untrained limb

C.R.A. Magnus

Scan J Med Sci Sports 2014: 24: 586-593

Bulletproof Radio: Kelly Starrett-Systems Thinking, Movement Standards & Getting Ready to Run

Another great conversation with Kelly Starrett addressing issues from children standing up during class to how you can sleep better and make changes on a small scale that can have an incredibly large effect.

Check out more from Bulletproof but clicking on their name.

Dedication: Kobe Bryant

Kobe Bryant has been one of the most dominant players in the league up until this recently when injuries have plagued his career.  The article below outlines one Athletic Trainers experience with Kobe Bryant and his training and gives an example of what it takes to be the best.

I Knew Kobe Bryant was dedicated but This is Amazing

Kobe Byrant's Career Highlights