Maybe I Do Hate Stretching…

Zac, why do you hate stretching?

I received this question during a physical therapy session recently, which admittedly made me chuckle. I don’t hate stretching, but we overrate its importance (physical therapists included).

Like most people, when you think of stretching, you think of static stretching. This type of stretching involves holding a stretch for an extended period.

Come to gyms like the one I train at, and you will see most people doing this form of stretching before they exercise.

Research has shown that static stretching performed before physical activity may negatively affect performance and does nothing to reduce injury risk. It temporarily decreases muscle strength and power and reduces muscle stiffness, essential for joint control and protection.

But stretching feels good. I agree, so I recommend that you perform your favorite stretches when you are done with your workout.

So, what should I do to warm up before exercise?

Dynamic stretching and drills specific to the activity you are about to perform.

This type of warmup involves moving your body through its full range of motion, mimicking the movements of the activity you are about to perform. This helps increase heart rate and body temperature and improves coordination, balance, and neuromuscular control.

Below are 2 drills I often use on my upper body days, followed by 2 more that I commonly use on lower body days with both physical therapy and personal training clients.

Upper Body

Lower Body

Interested in receiving a custom-designed warmup routine from our Doctors of Physical Therapy to help you reduce your injury risk while preparing you to perform at your best? Contact us to learn more!

Create Your BS Meter

I’m lying on the couch as I got sucked into Instagram and all of their sports physical therapy videos. While scrolling, one exercise video grabbed my attention. This wasn’t because it was good information. It was because it wasn’t and had thousands of likes.

There is so much information out there and anyone with a social media account can have a platform. You have access to the best and the worst information. It is overwhelming!

You need a BS detector so that you aren’t doing bicep curls while standing on a ball, blowing up a balloon (not far off what I saw the other day).

So how do you determine when you should ignore a social media post?

Speaking in absolutes. Most times, the best answer that a professional can give you is “it depends.” Rarely is there a correct answer for every situation. For example, stretching or mobility is often promoted as a “fix” for a given injury. Yet, many people have more important problems to solve. For more information, check out our post, Is Mobility Overrated? It is impossible to know of every possible factor that could be contributing to pain or injury. Even the best among us cannot be 100% certain, especially on social media.

It is too complicated. An expert can take a complex topic and break it down so that it makes sense to you. Complicated medical jargon is a red flag that the presenter does not understand what they are posting.

Promoting personal success stories as evidence. Personal success stories are subjective and ignore the facts and research. Many influencers post personal success stories as evidence for their approach. This ignores all the other factors that may have contributed to the results being promoted (genetics, differences in lifestyle, priority differences, etc.). Quality research requires thousands of trials before it is valid. A case study of 1 or 2 people only applies to those 1 or 2 people!

P.S. If someone is promoting a “quick fix”….run!

I felt stuck

Times have certainly changed, haven’t they? Just look at all that hair! And it seems like they couldn’t do much about the sun glare on picture day either…

“I really need to stretch more. Should I try Yoga?”

“Everyone’s talking about how Pilates strengthens your core. Maybe I should take a class?”

“I know strength training is crucial, but where do I even begin?”

If you’ve ever had thoughts like these when thinking about exercise, you’re not alone.

The world of health, fitness, sports physical therapy, and injury rehabilitation can feel massive and even a bit daunting. I remember a time when I was unsure about how to approach my own fitness journey.

After wrapping up my college football career, I no longer had coaches designing my training plans. No more structured practices, conditioning workouts, weightlifting sessions, or recovery routines that typically involved stretching, foam rolling, yoga, and light cardio.

With no clear direction, I stuck with what I knew best: lifting weights, following my old off-season routine, and adding a couple of conditioning sessions each week.

After a few weeks of this, I stopped and asked myself a simple but important question: “Why?”

Why was I training this way? What were my goals now? And what were the most effective ways to achieve them? After reflecting and writing down my thoughts, I realized that my training program no longer aligned with my new goals.

My football days were behind me, and it was time to focus on staying healthy long-term.

At the same time, I still enjoyed strength training and the feeling of being strong. Plus, I was working toward becoming a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS), so I needed to practice what I preached (this was all before I entered sports physical therapy school).

I ultimately designed a new strength training program that focused on increasing strength and muscle mass while also enhancing my mobility. The goal was to feel strong and stay healthy.

This approach worked because I took a moment to slow down and ask myself a few basic questions.

When was the last time you did that? Ask yourself these questions:

– What are the outcomes I want from my training? Do I want to be stronger? Have less discomfort? Improve my mobility? Be honest with yourself.
– What are the best methods to achieve these outcomes?
– If I don’t know the answer to the above, who can help guide me?

As question three suggests, you don’t need to figure it all out on your own. There are experts available who can help you reach your goals, but only you can determine what those goals are.

Once you have that clarity, our team of sports physical therapists in Bethesda and McLean is here to help. Along with being Doctors of Physical Therapy, our Performance Physical Therapists are also Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialists. We specialize in helping injured athletes recover and get back to doing what they love.

Does Your Metabolism Actually Slow As You Age?

As we age it is common to feel that it is increasingly difficult to prevent injury or reach our fitness goals. We have spoken to many people in Bethesda that feel the help of a physical therapist is inevitable. Many challenges that are experienced are often attributed to a slowing metabolism.

However, this may not be the case.

There has been evidence that suggests that our metabolism doesn’t slow much, if at all, during adulthood. However, even if we later discover that some of these findings are misleading, a slowing metabolism is not the only reason that it takes longer to recover from injuries or fail to reach our fitness goals as we age.

Many of the challenges associated with aging stem from lifestyle changes.

In modern times humans have become more sedentary as we age. We no longer participate in organized sports, play outdoor games with our friends, and migrate to sedentary desk jobs for much of the day. This results in a large decrease in our daily energy expenditure and increases our risk of injury. Prolonged sedentary activity causes our body to become de-conditioned and less prepared for the rigors of life. As an example, this is why we suggest partaking in a running analysis prior to training for a race.

Another factor we may not realize is that as we get older, we take on a lot more responsibility.

Think back to your teenage years or time in your 20s. Did you have a lot of worries back then? A career? Family commitments? A mortgage? As these “adult things” add up, so do our commitments, resulting in less free time. Less time for exercise, less time for self-care, and less time for sleep.

Countless studies have shown us that as sleep decreases our health is negatively impacted in several ways, including an increased risk of orthopedic injury.

While it may be easy to see all of this as a negative, the good news is that many of the seemingly negative effects of aging are not as inevitable as we may have thought! Furthermore, feeling better and healthier doesn’t require you to be perfect.

As performance physical therapists, we help our patients identify the smallest possible improvement that will make the largest possible impact to overcome an injury.

Image Information

“Tiantan Park-life: The Elderly Exercising in China’s Parks – Parallel Bars” by _chrisUK is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Exercise Snacking: A Simple Approach To Aging That Can Actually Improve Muscle Function

It’s no secret that finding time to exercise gets more difficult with age. As professional, family, and personal responsibilities stack up, it becomes more and more challenging to find time to get to the gym or exercise.

As part of the aging process, our performance physical therapy patients also tend to lose muscle mass and function. One well-known combatant of muscle loss is resistance training, though it does require access to both exercise equipment and the time to work out.

If you find yourself struggling to get to the gym as you’re getting older, there’s good news! A recent study from The Centre for Sport in Chesterfield, UK, concluded that short bouts of exercise spread throughout the day are an effective method to improve muscle function in a time-efficient manner.

“Exercise snacking,” as the study coined, is the process of breaking down exercise into short sessions throughout the day. During the 28-day study, individuals doing a twice daily home-based exercise snacking program improved their lower limb muscle function and size compared to a control group. In addition, not only did their maximum leg pressing power increase, but those who followed the exercise snacking program also improved their 60-second sit-stand scores.

Although the study is still being examined, the data suggests that “exercise snacking,” or short bouts of exercise, may be a promising strategy to improve muscle function in older adults. Something as simple as a short walk could do the trick.

If you often struggle to find time to exercise, “exercise snacking” is a super time-efficient method to combat the side effects of aging while staying in shape.

For a more personalized approach, our virtual physical therapy team in Chevy Chase can help! Contact us today for a free consultation.

Why Some Warmups Aren’t Useful

As performance physical therapists in Bethesda and Chevy Chase, we work within a very knowledgeable and active community. Our clients and patients understand the importance of warming up.

Warming up is commonly touted as essential for anyone wishing to avoid injury during exercise, performance training, or running.

We agree with this statement; however, warmup routines are often implemented in a non-productive way.

There is a time and place for everything, however this does not mean that you need to stretch, roll around on the ground, and perform “activation” drills prior to being ready for exercise.

In addition to increasing total body temperature, a warmup routine should prepare the body for the specific workout that is going to take place. For this reason, we call warming up “movement preparation.” The body is being prepared to move!

Movement preparation should include drills that train the skills necessary for the day’s workout. Many times, these drills will look similar to the exercises within that day’s work out.

If you are getting ready to run, perform activities that practice things necessary to run effectively. If you are going to lift weights, practice movements similar to the lifts you are going to perform (ie. If you are going to squat, then squat in your warmup!).

This advise applies regardless of whether you are healthy, injured, in performance physical therapy, or training for performance.

Below are 2 drills that we often use during movement preparation prior to running. Each drill practices single leg balance, the ability to shock absorb on one leg, and trunk rotation. These are all attributes necessary for running.

Single leg knee to chest
Forward lunge with cross connect

Furthermore, if you have been sitting at a desk for the majority of the day, you may need a more comprehensive warmup. On the other hand, if you have an active job requiring you to move in a variety of different ways then your warmup may not need to be as comprehensive.

Movement preparation is necessary, however it is essential to be purposeful, rather than mindlessly performing the same thing before every workout.