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Posts Tagged ‘Pilates for Pain’

Is Core Strength a Medical Necessity?

Sunday, October 10th, 2010 by Karena

Core strength has been a buzzword in the fitness world for quite a while but now we

We accept your insurance through our partnership with SCV Therapy Services!

We accept your insurance through our partnership with SCV Therapy Services!

are hearing that same buzz from the medical field.  Clients are being referred to a Pilates program by their medical doctors who know that increased core strength can only mean decreased physical pain. So how do you know if core strengthening is for you?

Will Core Strengthening Help YOU?

  1. Have you experienced muscle spasms?
  2. Have you suffered an injury that has affected your ability to do everyday activities?
  3. Do you find it difficult to maintain excellent posture?
  4. Is it difficult to sit for long periods of time or does doing the same prolonged activity exacerbate your symptoms?

These are just some questions that are strong indicators that core strengthening could help you.  Here’s why:

  1. Muscle spasms happen in the large muscles, turning the small, core muscles off.
  2. Injuries tend to make us rely on our largest muscles because they are the strongest, again, turning the small core muscles off.
  3. If you can maintain excellent posture throughout the day then your core strength is intact.  Excellent posture uses your core muscles all day, every day.
  4. If sitting still hurts, that pain indicates that your spine is collapsing while you sit; pushing bony structure onto nerves or other bony structures instead of being lifted and supported. Pain while pursuing activities indicates that you lack core endurance.

Core strengthening, while beneficial to all, is especially beneficial to anyone who has every suffered an injury. As an interesting side note, core strength is not just about the spine and the stomach muscles.  Every joint has core muscles; all the smallest muscles in charge of the balance and control of the joint are the core muscles. So any injury throughout the body benefits from core strength.  Cool, huh?

At Pilates Teck we are able to accept your health insurance through our partnership with Santa Clarita Valley Therapy Services, a physical therapy clinic that offers the most up-to-date and thorough care in traditional therapy as well as occupational and aquatic therapy. Need to know more? Please call us! 661.260.1609.

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Posted in Cancer, For Fitness Fanatics, For Professionals, Heal Your Back Pain, Osteoporosis | No Comments »

Exercise Tips for Hip (Trochanteric) Bursitis

Sunday, August 29th, 2010 by Karena

As I was lying on the couch, acutely aware of where my trochanter protrudes on my femur. I thought: ‘I should write my little friends (you!) a note about bursitis’.  I have had some flare ups with the ol’ ‘B’ word but I can generally keep the pain pretty short-lived because I know what to stay away from.  And if you have bursitis, I think you should know, too!

Hip burisitis occurs when the cushion between the hip bone and thigh bone gets inflamed

Hip bursitis, and more specifically trochanteric bursitis, occurs when the cushion between the hip bone and muscles of the thigh becomes inflamed,

Acute episodes of bursitis need never become chronic. Just stop pushing on the bursa!  The bursa is a soft little pillow that cushions the connection between a bony point on your thigh bone (the trochanter) and the tissues of the outside of the thigh. And if your thigh bone squishes the bursa, it becomes inflamed; hence the ‘-itis’ that gets suffixed onto the backside of bursa…

How do you squish the bursa? The bursa is easily squished when you externally rotate the thigh or repeatedly rub the trochanter against the bursa once inflamed. External rotation crams the greater trochanter against the bursa squeezing the life out of it. That’s fine when the bursa is happy but when it’s not happy you need to avoid squishing, smushing and otherwise irritating the bursa.

Here are some things you can do to avoid externally rotating the thigh.

  1. Don’t cross your legs with one ankle dropped over the opposite knee.
  2. Do sit with the legs together, knees touching. If you can cross the legs and smush the inner thighs together you will still be avoiding external rotation and you could be internally rotating which will pull the thigh bone away from the bursa–aaahhhh, sweet relief…. (think piriformis stretch for the professionals out there)
  3. Walk with your feet pointed straight ahead: no duck feet. Duck feet externally rotate the hip and smush the bursa
  4. Perform exercises that internally rotate the hip.  Lie on your back, feet hip-width apart and push the knees towards each other.  You can do an isometric push here.
  5. Another exercise: Lie on your side, bottom leg bent, top leg straight. Now lift the top leg to just below hip height.  Then bring the entire inside of the foot back down to touch the floor (heel to big toe knuckle)
  6. Sleep on your back with your ankles crossed and knees rotated inward.  Okay, so you might not last the entire night that way but it is a great way to get off that bursa!
  7. Do not move the leg to the side of your body past the hip bone.  (No hip abduction for the professionals…) You will have to adopt a demur lady-like position in everything you do until the pain subsides.
  8. Do not sit cross-legged.
  9. If you are really flared up you’ll get discomfort with walking for a period of time or otherwise moving the trochanter against the bursa. If you are doing something that hurts, I would recommend not doing that.

Does this make sense? Each and every time you externally rotate the thigh or carry the thigh to the outside of the body you ’smush’ the bursa.  Since the bursa is inflamed that kind of motion is only going to tick it off further.   So…you’ll get relief extremely quickly if you can just remember to STOP SMUSHING THE BURSA.

Good luck and let me know if you have any questions! K

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Posted in Case Studies, For Fitness Fanatics, For Professionals | 6 Comments »

Understanding Pain

Sunday, May 9th, 2010 by Karena
Dysfunction can create increased nociceptors and therefore increased pain

I took a great class from Eric Cobb of Z-Health at the Pilates conference about a month ago about understanding the neuroscience behind pain.  It was a great class and I find myself referring to one point over and over again with my clients and my staff so I thought you might be interested too. So here it is.

When there is an injury, let’s use an injured back as an example, the brain starts to create change to several systems in your body to react to that injury.  Let’s focus on just the nervous system, and then just one small part of the nervous system.

There are many different types of nerve receptors but let’s talk about these two:

  1. Mechanoreceptors: in charge of mechanics. It is because of mechanoreceptors that that we are able to receive movement information.
  2. Nociceptors: in charge of sensing pain. Sensing pain is of utmost importance to survival. Nociceptors can be triggered by any stimulus that your body/brain finds noxious.
  3. In a normal, pain-free muscle there is a balance between mechanoreceptors and nociceptors. When pain exists, an unbalance is created.The unbalance is created because of a tendency to brace or not use an area that is painful.  You tend to stop moving, and in our example the backs become stiff.

The brain senses a threat (because not moving well is a dysfunction) by erring on the side of caution, not on the side of performance, by reducing mechanoreceptors and increasing nociceptors.  With more nociceptors there is more pain. So your clients that are in pain are going to generally be ‘really good’ at being in pain because there are more nociceptors.  The more nociceptors, the less movement (because of increased pain).  The less movement, the more the brain senses a dysfunction and creates more nociceptors.  Classic vicious cycle.

So how do we stop the cycle? We have to move.  If we begin moving, the brain senses the need for mechanoreceptors. If the brain is sensing more movement then that signals an end to dysfunction.  And what happens with an end to dysfunction? Less nociceptors.  No more pain.

Eric Cobb, made an important point about increasing movement.  The activity must be active not passive.  Passive movement is not something that normally happens in a Pilates environment but I thought I should throw that in there.  The number of nociceptors will not change if your client is not moving her body by herself.  Do not, in other words, move your clients body for her.  Yes, I know, not really going to happen in Pilates unless you are working in the physical therapy sector. When your client is moving the joint, find every possible pain-free range of motion. It is not possible, in most cases, to decrease pain by increasing pain; it messes up the nociceptor balance.

Good luck and let me know how it goes!

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Posted in Case Studies, For Fitness Fanatics, For Professionals, Heal Your Back Pain | 2 Comments »

Does your back hurt when going down stairs?

Saturday, April 10th, 2010 by Karena

If so, then you might be what we call in the biz ‘extension intolerant’. Simply means that it hurts to bend backwards, even slightly. Besides having pain in your spine when you are going down stairs, you are probably also uncomfortable lying on your stomach, standing for long periods of time and some of the sports you played like basketball and golf have gone by the wayside. So what do you do with this information. You don’t bend backwards ever again. I know, brilliant, huh? Here’s the issue:

Picture 33What’s happening with ‘Extension intolerance’:

More than likely you have something pinching a nerve in your spine. This pinching could be caused by a number of reasons:

  1. Arthritic changes in the vertebrae are pressing on nerves.
  2. A disc herniation is pressing on a nerve.
  3. Swelling/inflammation is pressing on a nerve.
  4. A fatty deposit or tumor is pressing on a nerve.

See the common thread? Something is pressing on a nerve. And that something is jammed into the nerve each time you extend the spine or lean backwards: that is why you get those sharp ‘zingers’ or pains. So what you need to learn to do is to hold a neutral spine throughout your daily activities. It’s not easy but you can do it. Professional football players that continue to play into their late twenties and these days into their forties learn how to tackle and fall with a neutral spine. If they can do it while getting roughed around like that then you definitely will be able to learn to do it during less arduous activities than football. Good luck and the explanation for finding your perfect neutral spine is in the previous blog. Follow this link.

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Posted in Case Studies, For Fitness Fanatics, For Professionals, Heal Your Back Pain | No Comments »

Pilates Exercise for Back Pain – Part 5 of 8

Wednesday, July 15th, 2009 by Karena

Gentle stretching. The key word is gentle. Most of us tend to over-stretch and push into the ‘grimace-range’. If you are grimacing you may be over-doing it. Don’t inflict pain on yourself. Seems obvious, doesn’t it?

The point of this stretch is to improve posture and to get the spine moving in a direction that we don’t often move: side-to-side. We spend our days bent over computers, kitchen counters and steering wheels. This exercise gets the spine moving in a way that will help remind your body that there are other options than slumping forward. By the way, little note here…don’t stretch your spine by slumping forward and hugging your knees. More forward slumping is the last thing your spine needs if you are achy.

Also, this exercise addresses the less flexible side of the spine. Most of us are not ambidextrous. What that means to our spines is that we spend most of the day leaning into the strong side: think about carrying heavy groceries and how the weight-bearing shoulder will be higher while you are holding the extra weight. Or even consider your mouse hand. Ever notice how that shoulder tries to hug your ear? This extra work consistently being done on the same side creates a slight scoliosis or curve of the spine. Muscular imbalances result.

I do want to emphasize that these imbalances are normal. Much the same way as when you look in the mirror you see a slight difference between the right and left side of your face. No one is perfectly symmetrical: not from one side of our faces to the other or from one side of our spines to the other. Now, having said that, it is still very worthwhile to work both sides of your body equally when you exercise. Become aware of the imbalances and see if you can’t create more strength on the weak side and more flexibility on the stiff side. Working on these imbalances will help prevent undue imbalance and the possible resultant muscular discomfort.

With the hips stabilized and pushing into the mat the upper back has the opportunity to move. If the hips are not anchored then the upper back stays stuck. Anchor the hips and allow the spine to move as far as it comfortably can.

Try this exercise. If you have back pain, be sure not to stretch first thing in the morning. The discs take on water at night (just like our hands can be swollen and our rings can be tight when we wake up in the morning). This extra water stresses the muscles around the spine and stretching is an additional stress they do not need first thing in the morning. Let me know if you have any questions about these exercises for pain relief.

Karena

p.s. Oh My, my hair is stunning this week…

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Posted in For Fitness Fanatics, Heal Your Back Pain | No Comments »

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