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Showing posts from November, 2016

The P word

Everyone bangs on about posture, guilty! But thinking about it, the lifestyle we all lead now with comfy sofas, computers & mobile phones means 'good' posture is pretty hard to obtain when we are sedentary. But you know what it's ok - and i'll tell you why... Our tissues adapt in nature to the stresses we place upon them including adapting to postures we assume during our working day/chilling with Netflix at home! Still try and get up/move regularly but we shouldn't be so harsh on the postures we adopt whilst sitting.The loads that we are placing on the tissues whilst sitting at a desk or reading something on your phone really aren't that demanding and load is really important when we are thinking of tissue damage. You don't need to panic that when we slip into 'bad' postures we are doing lasting damage. If you can get up from your desk and move around at intervals then great but if you can't don't stress about it, simple movements can b

Flexibility vs Mobility

Flexibility: enables you to reach the end ranges of motion of some movements, it doesn't necessarily mean you have core strength, balance or co-ordination at these ranges to control the movement i.e. some external force is required e .g. gravity or leaning against an object. Mobility: the ability to perform and control movement patterns through their full range of motion. While flexibility is important and being 'flexible' is something many people aspire to be, issues can arise from over training. As discussed previously, flexibility differs from mobility in that external assistance can be provided to reach the end position. This in turn means that at the end position the ability for the involved muscles to produce force and safely control movement can be greatly reduced. Training flexibility through prolonged stretching (and ignoring mobility) only provides a temporary increase in muscle length that will quickly revert to its previous state. Forcing a stretch u