Physio In Your Pocket: Medial Elbow Pain

Pain to the inside of your elbow can limit your ability to golf, climb, lift weights, swing kettlebells, and many other competitive and recreational activities. Knowing exactly how to heal this type of injury is not intuitive as the pain is located at your elbow but most of the rehab exercises involve your wrist and forearm. 

Here I talk about medial elbow pain, or medial epicondylitis, and which exercises start your rehabilitation. 

These are early stage rehab exercises for medial elbow pain, and I recommend you gauge the number of sets/reps you complete on how painful/ sensitive your injury is. There is a wide range of tolerance levels for this injury, and not everyone will be able to start with the same number of sets/reps. 

As always, when you are trying to build strength by adding load to an injury, start with a weight and rep scheme you know you can handle and slowly build from there. 

Physio In Your Pocket: TENS and NMES units

This week on Physio In Your Pocket, I talk about home electrical stimulation units, specifically TENS and NMES units.

Check out this video to learn which one is right for your injury.

Physio In Your Pocket: Home Office Stretches

Do you work at your desk, sometimes for hours, without moving? This is amount of sitting is not only detrimental to your body, it’s harmful to your health.

It’s simple to counter these negative effects with a few easy stretches. I recommend getting up from your desk hourly and completing one or two quick stretches to take your body out of the position it it is repeatedly subjected to while seated. Home offices are particularly conducive to this routine as you often have both the space and the attire to move easily. This week on Physio In Your Pocket I demonstrate some of my favotire home office stretches to complete throughout your work day.

Physio In Your Pocket: Home Office Ergonomics

I am starting to see a lot of injuries from sub-optimal home office set-ups. If you have been working from a random corner of your house over the last few weeks, chances are you are one of them.

I bet you are realizing how important office ergonomics really are :)

The good news is there are some easy changes you can make to adapt your home set up to your body. Check them out in this video. 

Video Blog: New Zealand Trip 2012

This was my first big international travel experience. I was very excited. I filmed everything. We did a little montage of the first half. This is our experience, fun, funny, and adventurous.

Physio In Your Pocket: Deadlift technique

There are several ways to injury yourself deadlifting, most of which can be avoided with proper form. In this video I have a guest, coach Shane Miller, explain proper deadlifting technique.

Shane is the owner of CrossFit 819. If you have any further questions you can reach him on Facebook or through the CrossFit 819 website.

Physio In Your Pocket: Proximal hamstring pain deadlifting

Your hamstrings are the massive group of muscles that make up the back of your thighs. They are also a major contributor to your deadlift strength. The type of deadlift you choose will dictate how much contribution your hamstrings should have to the movement. For example, a straight leg deadlift biases the hamstrings more than a regular deadlift. However with any type of deadlift, it is fairly easy to overload the hamstrings and cause an injury. Often this pain happens at the proximal hamstring tendon where it attaches to your ischial tuberosity (those little bones you sit on). If you are experiencing pain either from or during deadlifts, high up the back of your thigh near where your thigh meets your butt, this video is for you.

In the next video I will have a guest, coach Shayne Miller, discuss deadlift technique to help you fix your deadlift problems.

Physio In Your Pocket: Back Pain Deadlifting

Deadlifts are a commonly avoided exercise, but they shouldn’t be. They are an important part of your baseline fitness, and I recommend all my athletes do them, especially if strength is not a major component of their sport (think runner or yogi vs. CrossFit athletes). However, as with all injuries, if not done with good technique or proper attention to the number of reps and how much weight you are using, you will get injured. This is especially common with deadlifts because you should be able to lift the most amount of weight possible in this position. How do you think cars get lifted off people in heroic feats of strength and adrenaline? It’s a deadlift, albeit an insanely impressive one! Since this is your strongest lift, it’s not usually long until you realize how fun it is to lift heavy things. Once that realization kicks in, it can be tempting to sacrifice good form for lifting volume. Without these considerations, the most common injury you will sustain is a back injury. There are several back tissues and structures you can injure deadlifting, and unfortunately, they are all rehabilitated somewhat differently.

In this video, I explain how to properly deload your back after a deadlift injury.

Disclaimer: This does not cover ALL the considerations of things you can injury with deadlifts. In particular you should be wary of nerve injuries. If you have any: numbness, tingling, pins or needles, loss of sensation in you leg or foot, leg pain (especially if it is both sides), groin pain, or changes in your bowel, bladder, or sexual function, these are serious consideration and you need to consult a local health care practitioner.

For the rest of you, this will help you decide what to do during the deload phase after a deadlift injury.

Physio In Your Pocket: Running technique to prevent injuries

This time of year (particularly this year), there aren’t many outdoor activities going on. It’s too early to bike, and too late to ski. Plus nobody can access their gyms right now, so lots of athletes are turning to running to maintain their fitness. The problem is, a lot of people are aerobically fit to run, but the new type of high impact strain on the body makes you more susceptible to injury. Here I cover running technique to prevent injuries for the athletic enthusiasts. This technique also applies to those returning to running after an injury.

But please, practice good social distancing and follow your local health directives. If this guy can run a marathon in his backyard circling a 130-foot course 1254 times, you can make it work too.

Physio In Your Pocket: How to rehabilitate your own injuries

There are a few principles of rehab that apply across all injuries. These are important to understand and incorporate if you are trying to rehabilitate an injury on your own. Here I cover what these main principles are, and the basics of applying them when working through an injury on your own.

Physio In Your Pocket: Plantar Fasciitis from Running

Plantar Fasciitis is a very common irritation to the bottom of the foot, and if you have ever had it, you will quickly realize how much you rely on your feet to function. In this video, I cover how to differentiate plantar fasciitis from other foot pain, how to manage plantar fasciitis pain at home, and how to modify running technique to help resolve the issue.

Physio In Your Pocket: Shin splints from Running

Shin splints have become an umbrella term for any pain in the lower part of your leg or “shin pain”. This is a common running injury, and more likely if have just started running long distances, but your body isn’t conditioned to the high impact forces of running. Here, I explain some common causes of running shin splints, how to decide if you have anterior shin splints or posterior shin splints, and how to manage shin splints from running by yourself at home. I will cover necessary changes to running technique and how to get back to running in another video.