Whether you are a high school athlete or just like to exercise for fun, improving your body’s ability to exercise is a good challenge. While there are many different ways to train for your particular sport, including nutrition, we are going to focus on improving your joint performance and stability. This will allow you to run longer, cut faster, and throw better. Joint Stability: Improve your sports ability through joint stability. When a joint is more stable, muscles can function better. For knees, ankles and hips try balance exercises on uneven surfaces such as foam or a folded towel. Try standing on one leg while doing small knee bends. Joint Flexibility: Joints need to be flexible in order to move through their proper range and allow muscles to pull correctly. For many people who are runners, stretching must be done every day to maintain muscle and tissue elasticity. Dynamic stretching is often best, where the stretch is done in a moving fashion, such as in Yoga. This is different than a prolonged stretch. Joint Strength: Incorporate strengthening exercises into your sports routines. This is especially important for runners and weekend warriors. A little strengthening exercising can go a long way to prevent sports injuries and soreness. The stronger your muscles are around your joints, the better ability you have to play and avoid injury. Joint Coordination: You have an inherent sense of where your joints are in space (proprioception) and how they are moving in space (kinesthetic sense). This allows your brain to coordinate the muscle movements around your joints. By improving your balance and coordination with specific exercises, you greatly reduce the chance of injury and will enhance your sports performance. IMPROVING SPORTS PERFORMANCE
STAFF SPOTLIGHT Say hello to our canine staff Dozer! He’s been a part of the Balance family for 3 years now. Dozer travels between both offices in Windham & Goffstown so you’ve probably seen him at some point throughout your treatment. He may stay in the office during the day but outside of Balance Dozer loves to hike the trails and mountains of New Hampshire. He has hiked 45 of NH’s 4000 footers including Mt. Washington recently, and plans to complete all 48 this year! Dozer is a smart dog and knows several commands besides the basics like “high five” and “army crawl”. His favorite treats are cheese, apples, and watermelon among other healthy foods. All of us at Balance love having him there!
If you would like to enhance your ability to run, play sports and prevent injury, then talk to one of our physical therapy specialists today.
PMC KIDS RIDE
This past June two of our Balance PTs, Doc and Piercey, led the dynamic warm-up and manned the medical tent at St. A’s for the PMC kids ride for Cancer. Chris and Stephen volunteered to help with this event supporting the Pan-Mass Challenge’s mission to raise money for cancer research with all proceeds going to the Dana-Farber cancer institute. After the warmup the kids were off riding their bikes around a loop at St. Anselms’ beautiful campus. The PMC Kids ride has been an official event since 2005. One hundred percent of donations go to the Dana-Farber cancer institute for research and treatment. I think all the kids, as well as Chris and Stephen, might have had some fun along the way!
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