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Exercises for Mobility and Functional Strength

Six Ways To Reduce Risk Of Injury

There's no question that it's healthy to engage in exercise and activities that create and maintain muscle mass. Beyond warding off osteoporosis, regular exercise that builds up and sustains muscle can significantly decrease risk of diabetes type 2, as skeletal muscle acts as a storage reservoir for excess sugar that makes its way into your bloodstream. Put another way, the more skeletal muscle mass you maintain, the greater capacity your body has to prevent diabetes and other types of cardiovascular disease. Read more

 

How to Prevent and Treat Achilles Tendonitis

As you age, all of your ligaments and tendons become more susceptible to injury. This is just a fact of life. Once you stop growing, you start degenerating; all you can control is the rate at which you degenerate.

One of the most effective ways to slow down the rate at which you experience degeneration is to regularly stretch your muscles and tendons. Stretching these tissues helps prevent scar tissue buildup and promotes healthy exchange of nutrients and waste products via steady blood circulation. Read more

 

Key Exercises To Keep Your Hips Healthy

There are many potential causes of hip pain and stiffness, and as anyone who has experienced significant trouble with a hip joint will tell you, inability to walk or even sit cross-legged without pain is a real killer of quality of life. Read more

 

Is It Harmful To Pop And Crack Joints?

That pop you sometimes hear when you stretch your joints comes from gas leaving the lubricating fluid that surrounds all of your joints. This fluid - called synovial fluid - is a thick liquid that acts as a lubricant and medium of transport for nutrients and waste products for the bone surfaces, ligaments, and tendons that make up your joints. Read more

 

Two Gentle Stretches For A Healthy Back

For over sixteen years now, I've been recommending two basic stretches to the vast majority of my clients. Stretches to help keep the soft tissues in the lower and mid back regions flexible and well supplied with healthy blood flow. In my experience, no other stretches more effectively keep the trunk and pelvis healthfully limber. Read more

 

Most Important Stretch For Preventing Low Back Pain

If I could choose just one exercise to do regularly to prevent low back pain, it would be the yoga pose that you see below. This simple pose - often called a form of "Warrior Pose" - combines two actions that I have found to be critical for preventing chronic low back pain. Read more

 

How to Prevent Groin Injuries

In showing how to use a ball and foam roller to massage the inner hip area, I neglected to illustrate static stretches for the inner thigh and groin regions. Read more

 

How to Keep Your Hip Flexors Healthy

If you have tight hip flexors, you can expect to have problems with your hip joints and lower back, if not now, then almost certainly at some point in the future.

Your hip flexors are a group of muscles that enable you to bring your knee up towards your trunk. Though several muscles contribute to this action, the two primary players are your iliacus and psoas major, which come together to form the extremely strong ilipsoas tendon, which attaches your hip flexor muscles to your thigh bone. Read more

 

Overlooked Causes of Leg Pain

Most of the problems that you can experience in your lower legs are likely to originate from posterior compartment muscles, the two main ones being your gastrocnemius and soleus. Together, these calf muscles allow you to push off the ground with every step you take. Read more

 

More Exercises for Healthy Shoulders - Part Three

In this third installment of exercises for healthy shoulders, I'll take you through a few simple stretches and one foam rolling exercise that can help keep all of the major tendons and ligaments that surround your shoulder joints functional and well perfused with healthy blood flow. These exercises are excellent for preventing and addressing common shoulder problems like impingement and adhesive capsulitis (frozen shoulder). Read more

 

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