Let’s talk about traveling again… I’m Allyson, Physical Therapist here at CORE… I wanted to talk to you about establishing some routines in your life. I’m kind of disorganized at home but I’ve established some morning routines and some bedtime routines that help keep the house picked up. I applied that same principle to physical fitness and just staying injury free, especially while you’re traveling. I talked in the last vlog about three essential things to bring on your trip.

Now, lets talk about a morning and evening routine…Part of your morning routine is going to be just breathing and you can do this in sitting or lying down. Take some breaths into the bottom part of your lungs here… (there’s another blog that Brandi did on how to breathe), breathe in and exhale just like you would in Pilates class. With every inhale, exhale think about some part of your body, pay attention to it…

Ask yourself:

• Do I need to lengthen my spine?
• Are my ribs flaring?
• Am I stable?
• Am I engaging my lower abs and my pelvic floor?

Do five breaths and then check in with your core… reach your arms down, you breathe in, curl up a little bit, hold this… don’t do anything to aggressive on your trip, you don’t want to get hurt. So you can do a little bit of that…

You can also do a roll up and keep those legs down and then stretch over… that’s a simple morning routine, do as many of those as you like.

Then at bedtime, go ahead and pick some kind of release work to do… If your neck and shoulders get tight or are tight, you can do your release work up in your shoulder area. If you’re doing your breathing and it doesn’t feel like you’re getting a full breath or it feels tight or restricted in your diaphragm, hip flexor, you know your release work from being here at CORE… Pick one and do it and then take some more breaths. You can do this in sitting or standing wherever you are, laying down like we did before and then if you’re sitting take your deep breath and just twist your spine a little bit one way, the other way… if there’s a tight side or restricted side go to the easy way and hold it for a few minutes and see if that tight side doesn’t loosen up a little bit…

Last but not least if you can get some kind of resistance work done and I like to do rotator cuff. You just take a band and pull out while squeezing your arms by your sides. This helps keep that scapula down…

So that can be an easy way to loosen up, move a little and enjoy your vacation more… it’s the whole point!

Do you need help establishing an exercise program for home or the road?

Are you having pain that is limiting your ability to travel?

Or, are you traveling regardless of pain, just pushing through?

If you answered yes, We Can Help!

Call 512.215.4227 to tell us your story…

The post Try This Morning and Bedtime Routine… Travel Series #5 appeared first on CORE Therapy & Pilates.

Hey CORE family… it’s Allyson, I wanted to tell you some things you need to pack on your next trip. The first thing I was gonna talk about is a resistance band, it can be this kind (thera-tube) or the the thicker thera-band type. This is great to do lots of different exercises and movement while you’re on a trip and it packs really small. You can you can step on it and do bicep curls or work on shoulder abduction. You can do a lot of the things you do on the reformer with your hands in straps. Do some stretches like this overhead, we did that on a different blog. You can use this for core work if you attach it to a something that will not move, around a leg of a table or in between a door and the doorframe and you can use it to pull down with your obliques, get really creative with that… but that’s a great way to exercise when you’re on a trip.

If you like the craniosacral work and the reboot of your nervous system helps, this is how I make my own still point inducer… it’s two tennis balls in a sock and usually you use a longer sock and tie it off in a knot. You put this right about the level with your ear on the back of your head and just lay down on it for five minutes and that will help reboot your nervous system, calm things down… traveling’s kind of stressful …

The last thing you want to take is your gold ball that you got and do for rolling out, self myofascial release work that you’ve learned here at CORE to help decrease the tension in your back and your neck and your shoulders.

Those are the three essentials for your next trip and they all pack pretty small and light, so… still point inducer, gold ball and then some kind of resistance band for working out…

To Summarize: Your body will not be happy after multiple hours sitting in a car or on a plane. Accept that, do what you can to minimize the impact, then unpack your tools to fix yourself.

1. The gold ball – roll out your hip flexors, diaphragm, pectorals, piriformis. Spend more time on what is tight and less on what is not. Give yourself up to 5 minutes at each area.
2. Resistance band – Recreate Pilates exercises and moves that you like with the resistance band. You can do arm movements or leg circles with resistance band.
3. Still point inducer (two tennis balls in a sock) if the craniosacral work is helpful.

See you guys…

Click Here to apply for your Free Discovery Session with our Expert Physical Therapist to get a specific plan of care and your own individualized home exercise routine »

The post 3 Tools To Pack For Your Next Trip… Travel Series #4 appeared first on CORE Therapy & Pilates.

Hey, it’s Allyson at CORE Therapy & Pilates and I’m doing another blog on traveling. Spring Break is coming up and I want to talk about luggage… I just have this tiny little backpack but normally when I travel I carry a bigger Patagonia backpack that can you can either hold the strap or carry it over your shoulder… multiple ways to carry luggage helps…

When you’re carrying the luggage, if it’s a one-armed thing switch arms and try to do equal times on both sides… If you’re rolling the luggage, same thing, equal time on the right and the left. Then if you are lifting your luggage, what you’re going to do a lot of getting on conveyor belts through airports and overhead bins… before you lift anything really you want to take those legs, take a second and really get some tone and then screw them into the ground. Don’t be lazy…get your good core contraction we’ve talked about, bring those shoulder blades down…do all that prep work first and especially if you’re in pain… inhale, exhale, then lift… okay… Then you want the luggage to be as close to your body as possible, try not to reach over, bring it as close as you can and then lift.

It’s the same thing for the overhead bin, keep the luggage close to your body, push it up, keep those shoulder blades down when you lift it up… okay… let your shoulder blade sink down to push this backpack up…

Those are just a couple of tips for your traveling… I hope you have a good trip where you’re gonna go and those are good tips for just day-to-day life, picking anything up or carrying anything around…

Try to use both sides equally and keep the weight close to your body… alright, y’all have a good day.

Call 512-215-4227 to learn more about how we help people in Austin get ready for spring break every year…

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The post Tips To Handle Luggage: Travel Series #3 appeared first on CORE Therapy & Pilates.

Hey… I am back and I just want to talk to you about a question or problems that I’ve heard a lot of people talk about since the holidays. People are traveling and they’re carrying heavy luggage and going through airports or long car trips. As a result, they’re getting a lot of neck pain and back pain.

Travelling is flaring up old injuries so I just wanted to talk to you first about airplane sitting… one thing, you should go look at is Stephen’s blog on the pool noodle behind your back and you can do that in the car. He was talking about the car but it’s great for an airplane too. Of course on an airplane you’re not going to have a pool noodle, so I will take my jacket and roll it up into a long roll and put that behind my spine and do the same things he talks about in that blog… That’s a great way to do that if you don’t have a pool noodle.

Another thing that I want to talk about is Cheryl’s blog on sitting in the bleachers and she does some different routines with sitting in the bleachers that you can also translate to being in an airplane or being in a car with the same movements. Also I have done as far as the car goes some blogs on scapular movement that you can do… scapular circles and then using their steering wheel as an exercise tool for some isometrics (https://therapyandpilates.com/sitting-tips-to-improve-your-posture-and-lengthen-your-spine/) (https://therapyandpilates.com/a-simple-tip-to-relax-your-neck-while-driving/) … those are great but I wanted to start with these…

I’m going to push this down so you can see my feet… alright when you’re on an airplane go ahead and take your shoes off and practice putting your big toe up and the four toes down or the big toe down and the four toes up. You can practice trying to make an arch you can see my arch come up as I try to pull up on my arch both the medial arch here and then this transverse arch. You can get a small golf ball and roll out your foot while you’re on an airplane.

Now moving up to your legs… if you’re sitting in an airplane seat you can do a double knee stretch and basically take one leg and straighten it out, pull the other leg up towards your chest and give yourself some resistance on the inside of that knee and the outside… Now switch… resist here and here and keep this straight leg active. You’re really pushing through the straight leg. It’s not going to be perfect in an airplane but it’ll be better than sitting still…

The next thing I want to show you that you could do in an airplane seat, hold on a second let me adjust, alright is like you’re doing a roll down in a Pilates class. Roll your pelvis and back into your seat and then roll down one piece of your spine at a time to your to your neck and then roll back up and sit up straight…

You can do that also for your spine just twist in your seat both directions and when you twist you can twist one direction, take a breath in and let that spine lengthen a bit…

Last thing I will give you for today is push down with your hand and lean one ear to your shoulder… switch and push down with this hand and lean the other ear towards your shoulder…

Hopefully you’ll get off the plane feeling a lot looser… good luck with these tips.

Call 512-215-4227 or text us at 512-902-8794 to learn more…

Do you travel frequently and have neck or back pain after? Do you get restless sitting in the airplane seat for long periods? Try these tips and make the time to get healthy! We can help… Click HERE to apply for your Free Discovery Session with one of our expert Physical Therapists »

Have a great day and remember, you do not have to be on an airplane to try these tips…

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The post 7 Tips To Try On An Airplane: Travel Series #2 appeared first on CORE Therapy & Pilates.

Hey guys… Happy Friday, it’s in the 40’s here in Austin today, so we got a warm front coming through… as it’s been in the 20’s and 30’s now for the last week.

I wanted to go over some questions that I get and today is going to be a fun blog. The view you have right now is the view that someone has when they sit down in my chair for the first time to meet and discuss their goals and go over their evaluation. Behind me is my pictures from all of me and Cheryls travels up here and then all of this bulletin board is pictures of all my kids… I have two boys and it’s pictures of them babies growing up and whatnot. The pictures above this bulletin board here is basically all of our travels before we had kids and while we lived in California and all the fun things we did out there…

So as we’re starting this travel blog we’re gonna be going over some fun things… As we listen to our clients that travel frequently, it’s a fun conversation that we have in here all the time about, oh I just went to here for a week, I went to here for a month and ya da ya da ya… So with that said I want to go over my bulletin board a little bit because that is a one of the most common questions that I get when people come in and sit and they’re looking at me and they see this stuff behind me… I also have all of my music memorabilia and my sports memorabilia as well and those are some things that I’m not going to get into today we’re just gonna stick with the travels… so the first thing I want to do is I’m gonna get up here and we’re gonna look at some of these images because I think it’s pretty funny… let’s turn this around.

As we look here at the wall I’m gonna start at the top and top left we’re looking at Yosemite, we’re looking at Yellowstone, Mammoth Mountain, Lake Tahoe that’s the view from where we got married. This is Mammoth Mountain again, this is in Sonoma County in the wine country when we lived there. This is Red Rocks as we were moving from Northern California to Austin, we stopped in Red Rocks for a nice little trip, saw some great music… Here we have Switzerland, Cheryl and I had a great time in Switzerland, Switzerland again… Cheryl dressed up as Foxy Brown. Here we are in Northern California outside of Mammoth, Paris, it’s my lovely niece, Madison. This is from when I lived in Hollywood at a party at Alyssa Milano’s house and if you grew up my age frame you loved Alyssa Milano on TV… We have Kaukenhouf, it’s the tulip farms outside of Amsterdam, my buddy James he used to work with me in Sonoma, that’s at a wine tasting at Sterling winery, Lake Tahoe, Switzerland, Sonoma, New York, Lake Tahoe, Lake Tahoe, Switzerland, Lake Tahoe, Malibu, Switzerland, Lake Tahoe, Tahiti, Scotland, wedding in Lake Tahoe, Hawaii, Lake Tahoe, Mammoth Mountain, Cheryl and I having dinner in LA that would be Paris… This was one of the best days of music of my life right here and here… Dr. John, Ray Charles and Fats Domino back to back to back on the stage of Jazz Fest…

So that’s my little memory board… it’s what I look at at times and I’m like, mmm, those are some good old fun times… So that’s the first vlog that I’m gonna offer today on my travels, Cheryl and my travels… We’ve had many more, we’ve done all kind of great trips… One of the best was the time where all of our friends were getting married in destination places so it brought us to Costa Rica, brought us to Scotland, brought us all over the place and saw some really great things…

Alright that is it for today guys, again a little fun on what is all of those pictures in the back?

Be on the lookout… we’re gonna continue the travel blog over the next couple of weeks and be on the lookout for more stuff coming your way…

Have a fantastic day… don’t forget to do your homework today, don’t forget to do your homework this weekend and be aware be conscious of your posture, don’t walk around like this (shoulders up in the ears)… don’t arch your back so think about all those things you’ve been learning in here and have a fantastic day… Take care.

Have a friend that loves to travel, share this blog with them…

Have a friend that is stubborn about getting help for their back pain, share this with them…

The post The Travel Adventures of CORE’s Co-Founders – Travel Series #1 appeared first on CORE Therapy & Pilates.