Hips, Shoulders, Knees, and Back, Knees and Back

And don't get me wrong, engaging in sports and physical activities is a great way to stay fit and healthy. However, the repetitive movements and high-impact nature of sports can put a strain on your body, in cheer? Shoulders, back, hips, and knees. To prevent injuries and maintain optimal performance, it's important we take care of these areas. So, how do we do this?

1. The obvious: Warm-Up and Stretching:

Before starting any physical activity, it is crucial to warm up your muscles and joints to prepare them for the demands of the sport. A proper warm-up increases blood flow to the muscles and synovial fluid (like oil for the human body), making them more flexible and less prone to injury. Incorporate dynamic stretches that target the shoulders, back, hips, and knees to improve mobility and range of motion.

Make sure you're thinking of a warm-up as a warm-up. You should incorporate elements that mimic the movements you'll be doing. Start from the bottom and work your way up the body. It's best to do some sort of cardio to help prime everything to move or as my old gym coach used to say: "warming up cold it like taking out a new stick of chewing gum and trying to stretch it, it will rip. You need to chew it a little first, then it will stretch as far as you want." What a guy. Don't even remember his name but his analogies were always spot on.

Rower, Ski erg, assault bike, run, jump rope, etc. 3-5 minutes is a good measure, but really you should start to break a light sweat so whatever is needed for that to happen. From there put together a list of 1 to 2 movements for lower push, lower pull, upper push, upper pull. So 8 movements total, all of which you can customize to your needs/whatever it is that you are doing that day. I always like to include movements for areas that I'm not targeting. Activating what are called the 'agonists' is beneficial for performance. The agonists are the opposing muscles so if doing bicep curls, your triceps would be the agonist.

2. Strength Training:

Surprise, surprise. People always discuss injury in sport and think "that's the nature of the beast" and yes it is... However, one of the best things we can do to prevent injury is workout. Working out, aside from the obvious benefits of getting stronger, faster, better endurance, etc. (if training properly), helps with less commonly discussed items such as increasing bone mineral density (BMD) and tendon/ligament elasticity and durability. These are the things we don't think about that come back to haunt us later in life. Working out is also great for hormonal regulation. Our hormones are crucial to maintaining homeostasis in the body which bodes well for many facets of our physical and mental well-being.

3. Proper Technique:

"Technique, technique, technique." - Spongebob squarepants

It's honestly the biggest cliche at this point, which is sad because when something becomes a cliche it can quickly lose value. The technique behind the movements you do in all facets of sport is extremely important to the impact those movements have on your body. Many, though straining, lead to positive adaptation—which is exactly what we want.

However, take those same movements and apply poor technique, you're now overloading your body in the wrong way. This will take it's toll.

4. Cross-Training:

No not CrossFit, cross-training. Engaging in a variety of sports and activities can help prevent overuse injuries and promote overall fitness. Cross-training allows you to work different muscle groups and reduce the repetitive strain on any one group. Incorporate activities like swimming (low impact), cycling, or yoga into your routine to improve strength, flexibility, balance, and the neuroplasticity acquired from doing different/new things.

5. Rest and Recovery:

"We don't overtrain, we under recover." - Some PT somewhere at some point in time who was/is smart

All jokes aside: rest and recovery is an essential component of any training program. Giving your body time to recover allows your muscles to repair and rebuild, reducing the risk of overuse injuries. Listen to your body and take breaks when needed to prevent fatigue and strain on your shoulders, back, hips, and knees. Incorporate rest days into your schedule and prioritize sleep to support recovery.

We should be focusing on training and recovery as a 1:1. I know everybody always voices the struggle of not having enough time to train, let alone recover. But the thing is, if you keep at that, you'll have nothing but time to recover because you're going to hurt yourself. It's important for us to remember that training is a catabolic process. For those unfamiliar with the term catabolic, it's the biochemical way of saying "breaking down." When we train we are breaking down various tissues in the body. If we don't allocate proper time to rebuild and recover, then we're only going to be breaking ourselves down, further and further until we reach a point where we are functioning at 75% always. It's like filling up a cup to drink water—if you never stop to drink the water, but rather just keep filling it up, then you're going to just be spilling water everywhere and you will also stay thirsty. Recovering is like stopping to drink the cup of water before start to pour water in the cup again.

Conclusion:

It's time to take recovery seriously. You don't have to go spend hundreds of dollars on a PT to recover well. Buy a foam roller, buy a lacrosse ball, go on YouTube and search "lower back recovery stretch lacrosse ball" and all those keywords in there will give you some great options of videos to follow. Our selfish plug here: we will be posting a series of videos on some simple exercises we walk our athletes through here at the gym as prehab and rehab movements. So keep an eye out.

Happy training!

~ The Team at Hybrid Jax