Hey guys… it’s Stephen here from CORE Therapy and Pilates… Happy Friday folks… I hope you had a great week, I hope you’ve stayed dry and warm out there.

Today I want to present a little bit on the recovery series… So once you’ve been skiing and your quads are thrashed and your ankles are thrashed, this is a series of things to do while you’re in the mountains. Everything we’ve done so far has been in preparation for the mountains or let me say it this way, as you’re preparing for the mountains, as your muscles get sore and tight, this is a way to help loosen up the muscles.

Today we’re going to use a couple of props: a foam roller, a rolling pin and different size balls to loosen up the muscles that have been overworked while you’re preparing for your skiing trip. With that said, I want to really start talking about two spots that I get the most shredding when it comes to skiing and it’s the quads and it’s right in the inner knees. So what I’m going to show you is a couple of things to do to manage the recovery piece. Stretching is good, but I find that using balls and foam rollers and different props are a lot more effective…

I’ve got a bigger sized tennis ball, it’s from Petco and this would be something I would recommend bringing with you to the mountains. Now what we’re going to do is lay down and put that ball right here between the legs while the feet go apart a little bit. All I’m going to do is roll my legs side to side. As I’m rolling side to side, I’m giving a good amount of pressure into that ball, so that little motion right there for several minutes is very good for releasing the quads and the inner thighs. That is one option…

Another option is the rolling pin… you can use a regular rolling pin out of your kitchen or this is called ‘The Stick’ and it has a little give to it. I’m certainly going to bring this with me on my ski trip, it’ll pack up nicely. Then you just roll your quads through here and the key with this is to roll in a straight position, turn it inwards to roll on the inner thigh and then you can roll it on that outer thigh. So that’s something that really makes a big difference after you’ve been working really hard out on the mountain or if you’ve been on a jog, this isn’t just for skiing. It is a skier series, but let’s say you’ve been out jogging or exercising, you can do any of this stuff for that as well… It doesn’t take a whole lot of force… inward and then outward… That’s two ways to release the quads, with the stick or a rolling pin and the big tennis ball.

I’m going to be driving to the mountains so I am bringing a big foam roller, if you’re not driving to the mountain, the small foam roller might be effective and then there’s also the grid. I actually travel with the grid because then I put the balls and the stick in here (the hallow part) and I pack it all together that way. With a regular foam roller, or a small one we’re going to get onto the quad. Now I’m a little wide for this, but I will barely fit, a lot of my clients will fit just fine. Get down in a plank position on your elbows and lay onto both quads and roll back and forth. The key here is to keep your abdominals engaged, you don’t your back sagging down to the ground and then roll on those quads… so those are just different options to get into the quads, all of them require some kind of tool.

Now I’m going to talk about the IT band… many people, they roll their IT band on the foam roller… I’m not a fan of that, I disagree with it, I would say if you are rolling your IT band using the foam roller… I would stop because it’s probably not helping it. I wrote a blog on that about a year ago that I’ll link to this so that you can see that as well. I’m not going to go into any more detail on that. So avoid the IT band, however the lateral quads are super important to release…

Now I’m going to talk about the glutes, in particular the piriformis. With the small roller, we’re going to sit on the roller and keep all the weight on one cheek. I’ve got all the weight on my left side here (when you watch this video it’s gonna look like I’m on my right side, they flip these videos for some reason) and I’m just rolling on my left cheek here. Then I’m going to cross my left leg over my right leg (again it’s gonna look like my right over my left in the video) and then roll them back and forth… so that’s your piriformis and you’ll do that on both sides.

The next two we’re going to do are the shins and the calves. The shins and calves are getting over worked a lot with the whole process of skiing or snowboarding. For the calves, I like to use the foam roller. Put that one leg on the roller, now I then put my other leg on it, lift my rear and do a little bit of back and forth rolling on my calves. This is good because it helps you work on your core as well. Now the shin, two options. One option is gonna be on the foam roller. We want to make sure that we’re not on the bone, but just out to the side. So then we get into this position and I’ve got my toe turned in just a little bit and then roll them back and forth and that’s the anterior tibialis… alright, now you can also use the stick for option two and roll it over the shin muscle, not the bone,…

I’m giving you several options, if you bring a rolling pin and a tennis ball you can do most of everything you need to do, the grid or the small foam roller gives you a couple more options… so that’s it for today.

I wanted to give you some recovery ideas… Everything we’ve done so far has been about strength, balance, ankles, knees, hips and core…well now what do you do when you’ve worked hard and maybe those guys are sore? This is the routine to do, so I hope that helps, I hope that makes sense…

Y’all have a fantastic day… like, comment and subscribe on youtube or facebook… we’ll see y’all soon guys…Happy Friday!

Call 512-215-4227 Now to learn more about we can help…

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The post Recovery Tips After a Day On the Mountain [Skiing Series #5] appeared first on CORE Therapy & Pilates.

Hey guys, its Stephen here from CORE Therapy & Pilates… I wanted to go over the next round of our skiers series. This is number 4 and this is Reece… Dudley’s always stealing the show here and his birthday was yesterday, but this is my girl Reece, she’s the most spoiled, best boxer in the world… don’t tell Dudley… but anyway…

I want to go into the next round of the skier series and what we’re going to work on today is some outer hip strength and a little bit of some inner thigh strength as well. We will work the ABductors and ADductors…

So the first thing we’re going to go over is a simple exercise using a little thera-band or thera-tube. It’s tied into a small loop and we’re going to put it around the knees and do a little squatting motion tied in with strengthening the outer hips. What we’re going to do with the band tight around your knees there, we’re going to bend down into a mini squat, take a step to the left, take a step to the left and back up… we’re going to bend down, step to the right, step to the right and back up. That’s going to create some outer hip motion with your ABductors, but at the same time we’re strengthening the quads as well… so that’s the first one and do about 10-12 of those back and forth.

The next one we’re going to do is using this Pilates flex ring (or magic circle). This is a piece of Pilates equipment and what we’re going to do is put this around the knees and perform an abdominal contraction, then hip ABduction from there… so we’re going to inhale, belly goes up, exhale belly comes down, legs go apart… inhale release, exhale pulling apart. We’re strengthening these outer legs, you can certainly use the band as well but I’m a fan of the ring, you get a little more stability with it, a little more resistance. Alright so that’s the outer thighs…

Now while we are in this position, we’ll do an inner thigh contraction by putting the ring between the legs. Same thing, belly up on the inhale, belly down on the exhale, tightening the core and then squeezing the ball… it can be the gold ball, a volleyball or soccer ball, whatever… So that’s your inner thighs or your ADductors…

Now I’m going to show you one in standing where you use the ring at the wall, and this is one I think is very effective… You’re going to put the ring right here at your hip and at the wall. Now what’s going to happen here is I’m pushing with this hip into the wall, so I’m basically using my left ABductor to push into the floor and lean into the wall, making the ring oblong… and repeat… and then to do it the other way. I’m now using this hip, push it in to it. So we are strengthening the ABductors…

Alright, now why are the ABductors important for skiing? Because when you’re in your ski position, you’re doing a lot of this type of motion back and forth so it’s very important for those guys to be involved with the strength…

I’m going to show you one more and this last one’s going to be something you can do laying on your side on the ground… and in this position we’re going to bend the bottom knee underneath and we’re going to keep the top leg straight and lift straight up. Pretty simple but it’s also a pretty weak muscle for most people… Alright and then you would do the opposite side, this way…

We’ve focused more on the ABductors today but we also added the one squeezing in, the ADductors… We did a couple standing, laying down, a couple of different options…

Try these as you’re getting ready for your ski trip, Spring Break is right around the corner, so I hope this helps… take care, that’s it for today… bye guys.

Who is going to the mountains for Spring Break? Have you been trying these exercises from our skiers series?

Call 512.215.4227 to ask about our specials during Spring Break, for those of you who will still be in town…

Do you need to have one of our Physical Therapist perform an evaluation on your back, hip or knee beefier you head to the mountains? Click Here to apply! »

The post It’s HIP to be Strong… [Skiing Series #4] appeared first on CORE Therapy & Pilates.

Hey guys, it’s Stephen Dunn from CORE Therapy & Pilates… Today I want to go into our next blog on our skiing series. I’ve gone over a few tips so far on how to strengthen the ankles and strengthen the knees. Today I’m going to go over 9 Tips to consider when going skiing… period!

The first tip is to Prepare and so what we’ve already started talking about is how to get your legs prepared. So in preparation, you need to get those legs strong, whether it’s just two weeks before you go or preferably 6 to 8 weeks so that you have some time to work on not just strength, but the endurance as well. We’ve gone over some balance work, some ankle work, some knee work and I’m gonna go over a couple things at the end today for some more preparation…

Something else to considered is that you need to Know the Mountain when you get there… so the second tip is that when you get there, know the mountain, get a trail map, know where the ski patrol stands are and just really get to know the mountain. Don’t just go out there and take it for granted, we’re from Texas and we don’t get to ski as much as we like, so that’s the second tip…

The third tip is Wear a Helmet! When I learned to snowboard, I didn’t wear a helmet for years… It’s kind of crazy because I had a few concussions from snowboarding and it really would have been a much better thing if I had a helmet. So again wear a helmet, no matter what age you are and what your level is, just protect your head. There’s been so much out there with concussions lately with the NFL and all that stuff, so just protect your head, protect that noggin and wear a helmet…

The next tip is to Hydrate… now it’s hard to get my clients to drink water in Texas when it’s hot… so when you’re on the mountain and you’re bundled up with all this gear in the cold, it’s really a challenge to get someone to drink water. Staying hydrated is very, very important especially when you’re up in the altitude, so stay hydrated… drink lots of water…

The next tip is going to be do a Warm Up… make sure you don’t just jump on the gondola and go all the way to the top and start coming down the double black diamonds. So when you get going, don’t just start going 100 miles an hour, take it easy, do a nice couple of easy runs. I also think it would be worthwhile to do a little bit of warm up before your first run, possibly even a light jog, some of the homework that we’ve taught you in here from therapy…

The next tip is to Be Cautious on Your Last Run… Every year, right after Spring Break I see someone I know in my community, at my church, at the kids school, with a knee brace on and it’s always the same story. “I tore my ACL (not the music festival, the ligament in the knee) skiing, it was the last run of the day, I knew I shouldn’t go, I was fatigued and exhausted but I did it anyway because it was the last run of the day.” So please if it’s the last run of the day and you’re fatigued and you’re tired and you’re not up for it, don’t do it… Because guess what? That is the busiest time for the ski patrol, 3:30 in the afternoon, so be cautious out there…

Now as I talk about being cautious on the last run for skiers, now I’m a snowboarder, so it is a little different, but for skiers the next tip is when your about to fall, It’s Okay to Fall… Attempting to fight it and not fall is when you end up tearing your knee up and when you tear your ACL up and your medial meniscus and your MCL… so just fall, it’s not failure to fall, go with it and roll and fall like you learned in lessons back in the day. That’s actually going to be a lot better than trying to protect yourself and not falling… That’s my advice for that…

Now the eighth tip is to Eat, Drink and Sleep Well… Its best to eat healthy while you’re on a ski trip, you don’t want to go eat a big huge steak the night before you’re going skiing. Drinking, you want drink lots of water… we already talked about that, but alcohol in the mountains with the altitude is something you may want to be cautious of. If you’ve had alcohol, it’ll tend to make your body less resilient and a little more injury prone the next day. So get a good night’s sleep and eat well and drink well… or drink lots of water but not alcohol…

The last tip Be Cautious of the Hot Tub… Most people go straight to the hot tub to soak as soon as they get off the mountain. Well, when you have acutely inflamed muscles from overworking and overtraining, we don’t recommend heat, we recommend ice… So getting in a hot tub may be very counterproductive for what your body needs physiologically at that time… Have you ever heard of a football player taking a hot tub after a game? NO, they take an ice bath… Pitchers put on a huge sleeve of ice after a baseball game.

So those are my tips for your ski trip, now I just want to show you two more strengthening exercises to add today for your quads… so I went over some squats the other day, I went over some lunges, some different lunge angles and whatnot but this is called a ‘Wall Sit’. I used to call it leaning on the wall and I learned this back from a basketball player that played at LSU back in the day named Chris Jackson. We really just called them Chris Jacksons, so basically we’re sitting down at the wall, we’re sitting down keeping our head back, our shoulders back and bending those knees just above 90 degrees, I’m just gonna hold that for about 30 seconds… now Chris Jackson was the basketball player about six-one that could jump out of the gym. He won the dunking contest from the high school All-American camp when he was a senior, which I was at and got the see. It was pretty impressive, he was really fun to watch… So these are Chris Jacksons wall sit… that’s something to work on.

Once you’ve done 3-5 sets of 30 seconds of those, you can also do an up and down motion that’s gonna be called a ‘Wall Slide’… a wall slide is basically gonna be down and up, bend the knees and then straighten the knees, sliding your back on the wall. Do 20 reps…

These are a couple new exercises to prepare for your ski trip… alright guys that’s it for today I hope that helps and makes sense. I’ll be back in a couple days with the next tips, we’ll go into some outer hip motions and some core work… alright guys, take care, have a great day… bye now.

Do you need some help before heading to the mountains for Spring Break? Back Pain, Knee Pain and Hip Pain don’t mix well with a ski trip. Call 512-215-4227 NOW and we will listen to your story… And then help you reach your goals…

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The post 9 Tips For Your Next Ski Trip… [Skiing Series #3] appeared first on CORE Therapy & Pilates.

Hey guys… it’s Stephen here from CORE Therapy and Pilates, I hope it’s a great week for you.

I want to go into our second video for our spring break skiers series… so lets build on what we started last time where we started talking about the arches and the ankles. Today we’re gonna still think about the arches and the ankles but we’re gonna work up into the knees a little bit…

Ski Series #2… we will get into the knees when we do some squats and lunges with different varieties. I’ve taken my shoes off off because I like to do the strengthening with the shoes off… if your shoes are on you’re not going to change the position of your arch, you’re just going to feed into the position that your shoe is holding you in. I want you lifting those toes, lifting those arches with all of the strengthening… so with that said, let’s jump into a little bit of work. In this standing position we’re going to create that same lift that I talked about the other day (Ski Series #1) and then relax… the toes lift and splay, the arch lifts then as we are in that position we’re going to go into a squat and up, it’s a Mini Squat… lift the toes, lift the arches and squat and as you’re doing this you want to think of keeping the back and core engaged as well. You don’t want to be arching your low back, but instead keeping your back in a good neutral position… so there’s a mini squat….

Alright then we’re going to take our heels together and we’re gonna lift that arch we’re going to do bend those knees in an outward motion like this. Now I’m not a dancer but this is called a  Plié  in the dance world… so as we’re getting into this position we’re still strengthening our knees but yet we’re still strengthening the arches at the same time… back and forth, now this gets a little bit of some different activation in the glutes firing in this position.

Alright so we’re squatting for 20 reps in parallel and then we’re doing it turned out… Don’t forget to breathe…Inhale as you bend the knees and exhale to straighten the knees.

Now we’re going to do a  Lunge Series for 5-10 reps … for the lunge series, what I like to do is, show you lunge series (2 reps shown) with the left leg and then we’ll do it with the right leg… so I like to go forward and lunge, come up, do it at 45° and lunge, come up go lateral and lunge and back and lunge, forward and repeat… back to the front.

Now we’ll switch legs and do the same thing… forward lunge, 45° lunge and lateral lunge, 45° lunge and forward lunge and we’ll do that one more time… good and good…

Alright so that’s getting real heavy into the quads, now we will do another one for the quads that will require a step or stairs or you can take a couple of books or a yoga block to stand on to to do this. So now we’re going to stand on the step and the idea is to create that arch in the right foot and I’m lowering down to touch the left heel to the ground… It’s called a Lateral Step Up… and do it on the other side, create the lift of the arch, a little less control on this side for me, it’s a little tougher at that very end range.

Okay so that’s a lunge progression and a lateral step up, alright now what we want to do is work the hamstrings with a Bridge a little bit because they need to be strong as well. So we’re going to get into position here on your back with your feet up on the big swiss ball… now you’re going to lift your rear end in the air, firing your glutes and hamstrings, engaging your core… Lift up in the air, hold and lower down. We’re going to take an inhale without moving, exhale lift, take an inhale at the top of the bridge and then exhale to lower your pelvis and spine down. To challenge you more, we will go up into a bridge and then bend the knees and go back (straightne the knees) and then lower the hips… Good…

So those are some things to work on to strengthen the back line of the body after working on those quads, because we don’t want to just be quad dominant… The quads are going to be way over worked when it comes to skiing just based on the position you’re in…like this… so they’ve got to be ready for that…

That’s what we got for you today: the lunge progression: forward, 45°, to the side… some squats some pliés and then step ups and then some bridging on the back… Alright guys that’s it for today I hope that helps and makes sense we’ll see you around next week…

Take care…

Do you need some treatment before heading to the mountains for Spring Break? Back Pain, Knee Pain and Hip Pain make for a bad skiing trip. Call 512-215-4227 NOW and we will listen to your story… And then help you reach your goals…
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The post Strong Quads and Hamstrings = Strong Knees… [Skiing Series 2] appeared first on CORE Therapy & Pilates.

Hey guys… it’s Stephen from CORE Therapy & Pilates… I wanted to go over our new series with spring break just around the corner, we have a lot of our clients are heading to the mountains for some skiing and snowboarding, myself and my family included.

I want to start going over some basic exercises to do for your legs, we’re gonna start today at the ankles and a little balance work. I’m going to show you a few things that you can start working on because we’re about 4 weeks out from spring break. We want to start building up some of those little muscles and ankles because for those of you who don’t ski frequently, like most of us in Texas, it becomes an issue where when you do go skiing you can shred your muscles really, really fast…

So the first thing I want to go over is just a standing posture and with that said my feet really collapse in quite a bit. So what I’m gonna do is strengthen my arch… the very first exercise I am going to lift my toes and splay my toes and relax, lift my toes and splay my toes and what that actually does is it creates an arch lift right here… so we call these arch lifts. So that’s something I think about when I’m standing in line at a grocery store, when I’m standing around talking to clients or friends, it’s just something I try to think about…

So that’s the first thing then we’re gonna create that lift and we’re gonna go up on the toes… 10 times… trying to create that lift of the arch the whole time, alright that may not have been 10, I’m a poor counter. Now we’re going to rock back onto the heels and lifting the whole ankle. This engages the whole back line, we get the glutes and the hamstrings firing, it keeps your lower back in a good position… again one of my favorite exercises in standing is getting people to lean back into their heels…

Alright so then we can take that idea and go into one leg for balance work… so we’re gonna create that arch lift and we’re gonna hold that and balance… now you’ll start seeing the challenge in some of the balance training, shoot for about 10 or 15 seconds. I went into this position holding that arch up immediately and shooting for 10 or 15 seconds.

We’re starting to create a situation where we’re working all these little intrinsic muscles in our feet. It’s time to progress once you start getting pretty comfortable on the one leg. Now we take that standing on one leg and we start tapping like a clock, go on around and tap it and then you can go across your body you can’t go all the way around but each of those positions is gonna challenge your balance in a different way…

Something everyone has at home is a simple pillow, take that pillow and stand on it to challenge your balance a little differently. Try to create that lift of the arch and try to find your balance. A way to progress this would be hold this position and do a slight squat, back and forth, you’re not going very far just back and forth, switching legs… You can do this with or without the pillow, it’s a little more challenging with the pillow. If that gets really easy take that pillow fold it in half and then all of a sudden it’s a little wobbly. That’s a little more of a challenge for me…

Alright, so these are some ankle exercises and balance exercises to do to get things started… now I’m going to show you something simple with a thera-band, so with the thera-band on my foot, I’m gonna push straight away, straight away, straight away… then I’m gonna turn it to the side and pull it across this way… then I’m gonna pull it across this way and really control it, don’t let it flop back, control it back, control it back, I have a little less control this way and then the last motion is to get into it this way, Oops, I untied it… hey Dudley, I knew that was gonna happen – now the last one is to bring it into this direction, dorsiflexion and you can do this sitting in a chair or down on the floor. if you’re sitting in the chair this way here… this is better it would be this way here and this way here…

Okay, so that’s a start… there’s way more to do but that’s a starting point for getting into the ankles, getting a little balance work going and what we’ll do over the next few videos is we’ll start working up the chain… gonna start making sure you’re doing some strengthening for your knees, some strengthening for your hips and some strengthening for your core… so that’s it for todays video for getting you ready for ski season… I hope you have a safe spring break… We’ll chat with you soon… Take care

Call 512.215.4227 to tell us your story and to be heard…
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The post Skiing Over Spring Break? Get Ready With These Ankle Exercises… [Skiing Series 1] appeared first on CORE Therapy & Pilates.