Blog talk show appearance next week

Hello all,
Would like to invite everyone to join me as I am interviewed by Phoenix for a blog talk radio show.
I will be talking about how to stay fit and healthy while running your own business.
Tuesday June 24 at 7pm.
Here is the link, hope you tune in for a listen!!
Stay strong YYC!!

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/brighter-business/2014/06/25/staying-fit-and-healthy-while-running-a-business

New Massage Research.

There is some new research for helping people with neck pain solve the “how often” and “how long” questions when booking massages for yourself.
Have a quick read!
Remember, as far as research is concerned, massage is difficult to research because of how many variables are involved.
Take it how you will.
I believe that any research promoting better health and pain free living without medications is a step in the right direction.
Stay strong YYC!!

http://fitness.mercola.com/sites/fitness/archive/2014/03/28/massage-therapy-neck-pain.aspx#

Recovery

Recovery is one of the most overlooked aspects of training. If not done regularly, it will most likely lead to overtraining and injury. Of course, like all other aspects of training, recovery is not simply done. It depends on age, intensity of training being done, how often you are training, type of training, physical limitations and past injury history. Any educated, experienced trainer will give you good advice on how often and what to do.
In general, recovery should look something like this:
1. Get massages on a regular basis. How often? Depends on level of training, but at least once a month if you are training regularly at a moderate to high intensity.
2. Stretch! Ya, I know! But stretching AFTER exercise or on recovery days helps to keep the tissue ‘aligned’ and allows for full range of motion.
3. Drink lots of water. Staying hydrated is very important!
4. Rest/sleep. As I have written about before, you heal when you sleep. No sleepy, no healy!!

Some basics.
Remember, active living can be considered a recovery day. A walk, play with the kids in the park, gardening, cutting the grass, shoveling the snow and so on.
Remember to recover, it will benefit your training more than you think!!
Stay strong YYC!!

Massage and injury

If, or when you injury yourself, ie. falling on ice or snow, remember that a pulled muscle needs time to initialize the healing process and you should let the healing start by leaving them alone for the first 72 hours (approximately). Now, realizing that everyone is different, try to pay attention to how your body heals. Applying ice initially has always helped me in the past. I ice 2-3 times during the first 24 hours if injury. There should be NO massage for the first 2-3 days after a serious injury. This allows the muscle to lay down a matrix and become stable and strong enough to resist the pressure of a treatment. If you get treatment it may be detrimental to the healing process.
Now, new studies are showing that light stretching and even light movement help the muscles to align the fibers in proper direction for increased strength. Keep that in mind, light movement, don’t go to the gym and do a hamstring workout if you blow out a hammie!!!
Consult me if you need further information!!
Stay strong YYC!!

How to deal with injury

Injury is a part of sport, exercise and being active. It IS going to happen. It happens often sometimes and other times you have a long stretch of being injury free.
How you deal with injury is important for fast and complete recovery. Now I understand that injury is a large scope and this will not ring true to all, but for the general sake of helping, for basic soft tissue injuries, here are a few tips on how to best handle them.

1. If you are truly injured, or think you may be, go get diagnosed!! For goodness sake, go!! How do you know how to help yourself get better if you don’t know what is broken?

2. Don’t be macho (guys). Working through the pain can make an injury more serious. Better yet, don’t be a wimp either. Know the difference between muscle soreness and injury. If you don’t, start paying more attention to your body!

3. Get a massage!! From a qualified, professional Registered Massage Therapist. This should be a part of your injury prevention protocol already anyway, right? Massage speeds healing time, making you better, faster!

4. Ice the heck out of it! Now I know there are current studies showing that ice doesn’t work, well, from experience, it does. So, ice the heck out of it!!

5. Seek out a soft tissue specialist to help with timing of stretching, strengthening and back to training protocols. A CEP (certified exercise physiologist) or CSCS (certified strength and conditioning specialist) should be able to help.

6. Finally, don’t dwell on it. The longer you feel sorry for yourself the longer it will take to heal. This is normally due to slight depression which makes people not follow through with protocols and rehab. Stay positive, set new goals and push forward!

Remember, injuries will happen. How you deal with it will be the difference between back on track or off the track!!

Stay strong YYC!!

Massage increases performance.

In the past 18 years of being a sports massage therapist/trainer, I have seen a lot. One of the most profound things I have seen is the increase in athletic performance in ‘athletes’ who receive regular massage treatments. Now, the theory is that massage increases performance by up to 20%. And understand that it is just a theory as doing study’s on massage is extremely difficult with so many variables to consider. But, I have seen it first hand. Along with a decrease in injury time, massage helps to keep muscles functioning properly. Breaking down the ‘injured’ tissue and allowing it to be flushed out for faster recovery time and increased gains in speed, strength, power, agility and flexibility!
Be nice to your body and keep it functioning at a high level.
Massage can be done as often as 2-3 times a week or as little as (depending on your activity level and other factors) once every 4-8 weeks.
Allow yourself to reach the highest potential possible and take care of that exercised/stressed out body with some awesome massage!!
Stay strong YYC!!