Pilates is a form of low-impact exercise that aims to strengthen core muscles while improving postural alignment and general flexibility. Pilates movements tend to target the core, although the exercises work other areas of your body as well. You can do Pilates with or without equipment. Some classes use large specialist Pilates equipment, but the […]
Simply put – you strain a muscle and you sprain a ligament. Muscles have a large contractile function and are responsible for creating force and moving your skeleton. When a muscle is strained, most commonly, it means that you have torn a few fibres within the muscle. This means that those fibres are broken and […]
DOMS stands for Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness, and it occurs as a result of exerting your muscles. When you do an activity that is new, or you are working harder or for longer than usual, the extra stress on the tissues of your body causes micro trauma. These are microscopic tears in the fibres and […]
The biggest factor affecting anybody’s hips these days is sitting. We were not designed to sit in a chair and we certainly were not designed to stay there for long periods of time. Keeping your hip at 90 degrees and sitting on your butt holds the glutes in a lengthened position, this will cause them […]
The glutes are a group of muscles around the back and side of your hip that make up your backside. They are responsible for creating some hip movements and for controlling your pelvis on your standing leg. There are 3 different glute muscles – glute maximus, glute medius and glute minimus – their names refer […]
When you’re doing a run training program for a marathon, you will have several run sessions per week, some of which will be long and take hours out of your day, giving you less time to dedicate to strengthening. However, you need to be strong to be able to withstand the increasing demand of upping […]
A nice analogy that I have found useful when teaching someone to pace their training is to consider training load in terms of alcohol consumption…bear with me. Imagine that you have been set a weekly target of drinking 14 pints of beer (or your favourite equivalent). If you were to decide to drink all 14 […]
Your body adapts to the loads that it is put under on a regular basis. This ensures that your tissues regenerate in response to the stresses exerted on them to enable them to withstand the stress better in the future. This is how we get stronger. When this process goes wrong we end up with […]
Acupuncture is the use of fine, flexible needles inserted into specific points of the body in order to stimulate the body’s natural healing. In many western circles the terms acupuncture and dry needling are interchangeable and are talking about the same thing, but their methodology and techniques are actually different. The term acupuncture comes from […]
