Injury prevention

Benefits of Lying on the Foam Roller

Fitness, foam rolling, Injury prevention, Posture

  

Proper spinal alignment:Most people work in seated position all day, destroying our posture. This affects everything including our health, our recovery, our performance and poor posture can change your appearance of your frame. 

Lying on the foam roller repositions the spine to the position it should be in and can assist with correcting forward head posture and kyphosis (too much rounding in your upper back). If you work on a computer, you likely have some of these issues. 
Spinal decompression 

This is important for the person hunched over a computer all day as well as someone who loads his/her spine with a heavy barbell. It decompresses the spine and improves functioning of the nerves that come out of the spinal column. This can improve performance. 

 By identifying the tight muscles and the weaker muscles in your body, you can develop an appropriate stretch and strengthening routine to correct your posture and reduce your risk of injury.

5 Major Fascia Trains of the Body 

Fitness, Injury prevention, Posture, Strength, Uncategorized

It’s amazing how the body works! I’ve touched on fascia and Myofascial release in early posts but here is a demonstration of how tightness in different “trains” of the body are affected. These fascial trains or lines are connected throughout the body. By releasing any blocked part along the line, you can have an affect on the whole line. I have quiet a bit of tightness through my SBL – Superficial Back Line. By releasing my plantar fascia (feet) you can see how it has released up the line into my hamstrings.

  
Video of my straight leg raise before & after spikey ball plantar fascia release: Straight leg raise video
There are 5 major fascia trains: 

1⃣Superficial Back Line (SBL): creates trunk hyperextension, knee flexion, plantar flexion. It runs from your toes, under your feet, up the back of you legs, back, neck, over your head to frontal brow ridge (eyebrows) The sit to reach test is a good way to see how tight you are through SBL. By releasing any of the fascia and muscles along this line can improve function, flexibility and decrease injury. If this area is weak and your SFL is tight, strength exercises for these muscles will be beneficial to you.
  
2⃣Superficial Front Line (SFL): this fascia line connect to the body anteriorly from the top of the feet to the skull in 2 pieces and is responsible to balance out the SBL. It creates flexion of the trunk, flexion of the hips, extension of the knee & Dorsi flexion of the foot. There needs to be balance of the SBL & SFL for the body to be in equilibrium. As for SBL, stretching and releasing the front line will create balance. If it is weak, using exercises using the muscles involved in SFL can strength it. Laying in prone (on stomach) and pushing your chest of the ground into upward facing dog is s good way to test how tight your SFL is.
  
3⃣ The Lateral Line: the lateral line traverses each side of the body from the outside of the foot, up the lateral side of the leg and thigh, passing along the trunk to the skull. It laterally bends the body (sideways), truck lateral flexion, abduction of the hip, eversion of the foot & braking sideways & rotational movements of the trunk. Since the muscles of the LL cause lateral flexion, any restrictions in the Myofascia or muscle tension will cause postural abnormalities involving lateral flexion. A side reach in standing is a good way to test your LL flexibility. LL is used often in things like golf.
  
4⃣The Spiral Line (SL): the spiral line loops around the body in s helix. It joins one side of the skull to the opposite shoulder then to the front of that hip, knee and foot arch and running up the back of the body to rejoin the fascia on the skull. Rhomboid, serratus anterior, hips are in the SL, base ball & cricket bowling have common movements of the SL. Opposition knee to elbow extensions from tabletop are a good way to see if you are weak through your SL, side reaching and rotation are a good way to test tightness with opposite leg to arm stretching away from each other.
  
5⃣The Deep Front Line (DFL): this involves all of the internal structures anterior to the spine. Organs and body structures that it surrounds include: anterior longitudinal ligament diaphragm, pericardium, scale bed (neck) this all connects the lumbar spine vertebral bodies to the cervical spine.
This line is way too deep to release with a foam roller. To affect this line, optimal head posture &  spinal posture is essential. Breathing techniques are also essential component to this train. The scalenes in the neck that pull the head forward when tight, can be released by a qualified massage therapist. If your posture is poor, this is a good indicator your front line is also affected.

Static Lunge technique

Fitness, health, Injury prevention

Static Lunges: So after a few people on my @kiz489 have asked about lunges and how to do them correctly, the most common is ‘how far should my front knee move or not move?’

So biomechanically, your whole knee should be above your ankle on the front leg. There is a small variance where you can allow it to move towards your toes but never passed them( This is safe ROM – Range Of Movement), this will overload the knee cap & knee joint. The next is that there should be a gap from your front heel to the back knee to evenly distributed the weight between both legs and not overload the front knee.
Reasons why your knee might be going passed your toes:

🔺 Hamstring tightness: like myself, in my previous video my knees move towards my toes but not passed, if you have hamstring tightness your stride will be shortened so your knee will move forward.
🔺 Forward tilt: if your torso tilts forward this will change the angle of your pelvis and result in the movement continuing forward with your knees moving over your toes.
It is important to stay on top of your stretches, I didn’t this week and resulted in increased tightening of my H/S, after a good stretch session from yesterday’s to today’s post I’ve already increased my stride length. Postural awareness and keeping your chest up and not letting your upper body tilt forward.

I hope that helps!