I am repeating the opening paragraph from last weeks post on Core Strengthening Part 1, in case there are those who didn’t get a chance to read it. Core strengthening is not just limited to working your abdominal muscles by doing crunches. It also includes exercising other muscles that help stabilize and strengthen your back, trunk, pelvis and hips. In this three part series I will be writing about three different muscles that I like to encourage my Seattle Treatment Massage clients to strengthen if I find they are weak. Strengthening these muscles is a great addition to any core workout program.
In the second part of this series on core strengthening we are going to look at the adductors. The adductors are another set of muscles that stabilize the core of the body. They are commonly weak amongst clients in my Seattle Treatment Massage practice. Adductor longus, adductor brevis, adductor magnus, pectineus, and gracilis make up this important muscle group. The adductors are responsible for bringing your thighs together from an open position.
I often find people with low back pain or the side of their hips and/or legs are tight and/or painful, have weak adductors. The latter of these symptoms seem to be prevalent in bicycle riders. Strengthening the adductors can bring greater stability to your hips, trunk and low back. This in turn can provide more power and stability with walking, bending, and sitting for long periods.
VERSION ONE - Adductor exercise
SIDE ADDUCTION: Remember to do both sides. To add a challange to this excersise, put a weight on the inner part of the lower leg above the knee.
VERSION TWO- Adductor exercise
SEATED ADUCTION: Don’t let the title of this adductor exercise with a ball fool you, its not just for seniors. Everyone can benefit from having strong adductors.
One must be very careful when strengthening your adductors for it is easy to overdue and strain them. Start off slow and steady, increasing only when you are sure you are ready.
Stay tuned for next week and the third and final part in this three part series. We will learn about the PC muscles. Thank you for reading, PJ Harris, LMP. http://www.pjharris.com/
Core strengthening is not just limited to working your abdominal muscles by doing crunches. It also includes exercising other muscles that help stabilize and strengthen your back, trunk, pelvis and hips. In this three part series, I will be writing about three different muscles that I like to encourage my Seattle Treatment Massage clients to strengthen if I find they are weak. Strengthening these muscles is a great addition to any core workout program.
The first core muscles we are going to talk about are the hip flexors. This muscle group consist of three muscles; the iliacus, psoas major and the rectus femoris. The responsibility of the hip flexors are to bring the thigh towards the abdomen. When these muscles are weak, the hips can tilt forward and contribute to an extreme curve in your lower back. This is commonly known as a sway back or lumbar lordosis. Someone with lumbar lordosis can have quite a bit of low back pain.
I am introducing you to two levels of exercises to help strengthen your hip flexors. Do the first level of exercises for a few weeks until you feel the front-upper part of your hips and thighs become stronger, then incorporate the level 2 exercise.
PHASE ONE Exercise - Pelvic Tilt
1. Lie on the ground with your knees bent and your feet flat on the floor.
2. Starting by flattening your low back.
3. Tighten your buttocks and lift your hips up off the floor.
4. Lift until your lower back is totally flat on the floor and your hips are totally off the floor.
5. Breathe out when you lift your hips and breath in and lower your hips.
6. Start off with 10-20 of these depending on your strength.
7. Do this twice a day.
PHASE TWO Exercise – Single Leg Pelvic Tilt
This exercise is similar to the pelvic tilt exercise above. If this exercise is difficult for you go back and just do the Phase One exercise for a week more and then try again.
1. Lie on the ground with your knees bent and your feet flat on the floor.
2. Starting by flattening your low back.
3. Raise your left foot a few inches off the ground.
4. Tighten the front of your right thigh and hip and lift your hip up off the floor.
5. Lift until your lower back is totally flat on the floor.
6. Breathe out when you lift your hips and breath in when you lower your hips.
7. Repeat with the other foot and opposite hip.
8. Alternate raising each foot, start off with 10-20 of these depending on your strength.
6. Do this twice a day along with the Phase One exercise.
The intention with strengthening these muscle is to help correct that forward pelvic tilt and bring more stability to your core so that your back gets some assistance with being upright and moving.
Stay tuned for next week and the second part in this three part series. We will learn about the adductors. Thank you for reading, PJ Harris, LMP. http://www.pjharris.com/
I am going to give you all a quick rundown of information regarding Tendinitis. This injury can be successfully treated with patience, diligence and even massage.
Tendinitis
Tendinitis is inflammation (swelling) of the tendon. A tendon is the type of tissue that connects muscle to bone.
Symptoms
* Heat and swelling
* Referred pain
* Burning and/or sharp pain
Cause
* Repetitive motion, overuse
* Tendon/muscle weakness
* Poor posture
* Sprains or strains are often accompanied by Tendinitis
Four Types of Tendinitis (symptoms) 1. Painful after activity
2. Painful at the beginning, goes away during and then returns after activity
3. Painful beginning, during and after activity and might inhibit said activity
4. Painful with all activity and is getting worse
Treatment Tips
1. Ask your doctor to give you an actual diagnosis
2. Ice after activity
3. Rest from causing activity
4. Massage
5. Painless stretches given to you from a Health Practitioner
6. Strengthening exercises given to you from a Health Practitioner
Some believe that deep friction massage helps stimulate collagen production in the damaged fibers. Others believe that using massage to break up the scar tissue is the key to healing Tendinitis. Either way, massage is most beneficial in the treatment of Tendinitis. Don’t wait, get relief. PJ Harris, LMP http://www.pjharris.com/
Have you had chronic pain for a while and are ready to do something about it? Are you fed up with ignoring your pain in hopes that it will go away? Are you fired up to take action and do what ever you can to heal your body? That is a great mindset to be in to make a change in your life. It often is what is required to help yourself light that fire and make a difference.
Often clients come to my Seattle Treatment Massage practice and they are motivated with a capital “M” to break their cycle of pain. Those clients are usually the ones who progress the fastest. They do their exercise homework. They focus on better posture. They make their health a top priority. All of this is inspiring and quite effective.
They also might start seeing many different practitioners to address all of the causes of their pain and nip this in the bud. The outcome of that approach can create, if one is not careful, what I call Treatment Overload. This happens when the client is spending so much time going to tons of appointments that they get burned out. They feel overwhelmed and possibly frustrated when they are not healing as fast as they would like. They then might swing to the other end of the spectrum and quit all kinds of treatment entirely.
Be very careful and balanced in your health approach. When dealing with an issue of chronic (long term) or acute (recent) pain it is important that you make decisions coming from a grounded space. I often will suggest that a client , unless it will be a detriment to their health, limit the amount of practitioners they are seeing to 2-3 at a time. It is also important to question the validity of a course of treatment that seems to not be providing results. Do not be afraid to ask your practitioner questions regarding their intention with their choice of treatment for you. Remember you are the leader of your health team.
Do you have pain on the tops of your shoulders? Do you find the more you feel stress the higher your shoulders climb or are you feeling like atlas with the weight of the world on them? This is a common occurrence in this high paced electronic age we are in. The more we invent gadgets to make our lives easier, the more complicated life seems to get. Today’s post is going to offer you a few simple ways to “shrug off” your stress.
When you feel tension and pain in the top of your shoulders that sometimes will run all the way up your neck, one of the main muscle reacting is your Trapezius. I believe the whole body is involved when we exhibit poor posture, but in particular, the muscle we are addressing in this post is a part of the Trapezius called the UPPER Trapezius. One of the functions of the UPPER Trapezius is shrugging or raising your shoulders. When you keep your shoulders slightly raised or as I like to say “wear them as earrings,” this causes an amazing amount of stress on them.
So here are a stretching and breathing exercise you can do to provide upper shoulder relief:
* STRETCH – To help decrease stress in your shoulders and the sides of your neck, there is a very simple stretch you can do right there in your chair. Put your feet flat on the floor, grab the underside of your chair seat, and slowly tilt your head to the side. Breathe and hold stretch for at least 20 seconds. Remember to stretch both sides.
* BREATHE - Start to bring more awareness to your shoulder posture. Are you finding that they are raised up often? When you notice they are raised, do this simple breathing exercise:
1. Take a deep breath in and raise your shoulders up as high as they can go.
2. Move your shoulders as far back as they can go.
3. Breathe out and drop your shoulders at the same time.
This should all flow in a semi-circular motion.
Both of these tips have helped many of my Seattle Treatment Massage clients decrease their shoulder and neck pain and tension. If they help you or if you have a question, leave a comment. Thanks for reading, PJ Harris, LMP. http://www.pjharris.com/
Do you ever get a muscle cramp in the middle of the night, during exercise, or other inconvenient times? You are not alone. Many of the clients at my Seattle Treatment Massage practice have a challenge with this.
I am going to teach you a trick that works like a charm for some muscle cramping. This trick works using the theory of reciprocal inhibition. What reciprocal inhibition is based on is the fact that every joint has synergistic and antagonistic muscles. Synergistic muscles perform the same action. Antagonistic muscles perform the opposite action. When a muscle is contracting the antagonistic muscles must relax. For example: When you flex your biceps, your triceps must relax. That is reciprocal inhibition.
So, keeping this fact in mind, stretch out the cramping muscle halfway and give the motion resistance with your hand or an object like the wall. For example: If your calf is getting a cramp, you would bend you ankle and bring your toes towards your head while you are creating a resistance at the top of your feet/toes. You should use gentle resistance and pressure. It doesn’t take much.
Another way to look at this is if you have a muscle cramp, do the muscle’s opposite action with resistance. For example: If you get a cramp in your hand while writing, you would put your fingers around the affected hand with the other hand and open your fingers. Opening your fingers is the opposite motion of the squeezing motion of using a pen. If the motion with resistance you are using is not working, you might be getting the theory backwards. Try doing the opposite.
Does that make sense? If not ask a question in the comment section regarding which muscle or action you are having a problem with and I will do my very best to describe how to use reciprocal inhibition to relieve your pain. Thank you for reading, PJ Harris, LMP. http://www.pjharris.com/
Do you have jaw pain and are not sure what the cause is?
You might have TMJD (temporomandibular joint disorder). TMJD cause tenderness and pain in the (TMJ) — the joint on each side of your head in front of your ears, where your lower jawbone meets your skull. This joint allows you to talk, chew and yawn.
What are some of the symptoms of TMJD?
~ Radiating pain in the face, jaw, or neck
~ Jaw muscle stiffness
~ Limited movement or locking of the jaw
~ Painful clicking, popping or grating in the jaw joint when opening or closing the mouth
~ A change in the way the upper and lower teeth fit together.
~ Swelling on the side of the face
~ Toothaches
~ Difficulty with chewing
~ Jaw misalignment
~ Headaches
~ Neck aches
~ Earaches and hearing problems.
What can I do about TMJD?
In most cases, pain and discomfort associated with TMJD can be alleviated with self-managed care or nonsurgical treatments, but more-severe cases may need to be treated with dental or surgical interventions.
Here is a list of things to try that might help:
~Acupuncture
~Massage ~ Eat soft foods
~ Applying ice packs
~ Avoiding extreme jaw movements like wide yawning and gum chewing
~ Learning techniques for relaxing and reducing stress to prevent jaw clenching or teeth grinding
~ Dental appliance (aka mouth guard) to prevent grinding your teeth while you sleep
~ Practicing gentle jaw stretching and relaxing exercises that may help increase jaw movement. Your health care provider or a physical therapist can recommend exercises if appropriate for your particular condition.
Information found on this blog is not a definitive diagnosis of any condition and as always check with your physician to receive an actual diagnosis. Thank you, PJ Harris, LMP. http://www.pjharris.com/
You can receive massage if you have a sprained ankle. I highly recommend it, just not directly on the ankle. When you have an injury like a sprained ankle, massage can help with the muscle soreness that comes from using crutches and/or limping. Massage helps with circulation which in turn promotes healing. When you provide massage on one leg, the other leg will benefit because they share the same nerve trunk. The other leg will actually relax.
The practitioner needs to make sure:
*Your injured ankle is immobile and elevated
*Be very gentle when moving your leg
*Not massage on or too near the injury.
What if you are not sure you have a sprained ankle? If you have these symptoms you should definitely see a doctor:
*Inability to walk on the ankle
*Significant swelling (swelling can make the area hot or warm to the touch)
*Symptoms that do not improve quickly or persist beyond a few days
*Pain in the foot or above the ankle
If your symptoms are not that extreme your practitioner could attempt massage directly on the ankle. They should do so with EXTREME caution, being very gentle, and stopping if the pain increases.
Trigger Point Therapy: I love it and use it often in my Seattle Treatment Massage practice. Why? Because it is quite effective in helping with immediate relief of pain in trigger points.
What is a Trigger Point?A Trigger Point is not the same as an acupuncture point. When you touch a trigger there is pain and you can feel the spot where it is with your fingers. These areas are often found in “muscle knots” or “taught muscles bands”. Trigger Points usually have blocked blood flow and often cause an entire muscle to be painful, tight, weak, and more easily fatigued. They can be caused by overworking or over stressing muscles or by a direct injury to the muscle.
There are two types of Trigger Points: active and latent. An active trigger point will send pain zinging down your body or pain in another spot on your body when you apply direct pressure. A latent trigger point will only have pain in the spot you are actually touching.
How does Trigger Point Therapy work? Trigger Point therapy works by applying direct pressure or deep strokes on the spot or stretches. During this, it is important for the client to breathe deeply and evenly. Slowly the pain and tension will melt. This creates a release in the muscle that can give you greater flexibility, a decrease in stiffness and increase in local blood flow. Massage practitioners find these points by using our skill of sensitivity in our hands or even our elbows. Trigger Point Therapy can be used in conjunction with many other types of massage including Swedish Massage, Myofascial Release, Sports Massage, Deep Tissue Massage, Lomi Lomi, and especially Treatment Massage.
Does Trigger Point Therapy hurt?It does not have to. When I apply Trigger Point Therapy on my clients we are in constant communication. I slowly increase the intensity of the work checking in with the clients comfort level. Some clients prefer that I go quite deep to that “hurts good” point. If at anytime you are not comfortable with the depth or intensity of your massage, it is important that you communicate that to your practitioner. Everyone has a different pain threshold and it is to be respected.
Trigger Point Therapy can be used to treat:
General muscle Pain
Jaw (TMJ) pain
Headaches and migraines
Whiplash/Neck pain
Tennis Elbow
Carpal Tunnel Syndrome
Frozen Shoulder
Foot pain or Plantar Fasciitis
So, if you are noticing you have spots in your muscle that are painful to the touch, I highly recommend you find a therapist that can asses if Trigger Point Therapy is going to help you find relief from that pain. Thank you, PJ Harris, LMP. http://www.pjharris.com/
I received a request from a follower on twitter to post about problems with knees. While I can’t give detailed advice on recovering from an injury without seeing someone in person, I can give some general suggestions on how to keep your knees injury free.
Like all parts of your body, your knees are not islands in your legs. Knee health is mostly depended on the health of other surrounding body structures. I have boiled down knee care to a few hints that will increase your chances to have strong and flexible knees for years to come.
1. Reduce Impact and Twisting- Are your favorite activities high impact or require lots of twisting? These activities put enormous strain on your knees. It’s hard for many who love these activities to stop doing them altogether. Maybe you could cut down. Cross training can be most beneficial. For instance instead of running 5X a week you could run 3X a week and swim or row 2X a week. Give those knees a break and still keep fit.
2. Leg Muscle Balance- Often people will develop pain on either side or the top of their knees. This can be caused by a muscle imbalance in the legs. A certain muscle or muscle group might be too weak. Make sure when you are strengthening your legs you hit all muscle groups not just quads, hamstrings and calves. The most common leg weakness I find with my Seattle massage clients are the adductors (inner thighs).
3. Pelvis Alignment and Muscle Balance- When your pelvis is out of alignment or you have a weakness in the muscles that stabilize the pelvis there is a large chance that you will become a victim to “trickle down ergonomics.” Which is a silly way of saying, what is going on structurally above the body greatly effects the lower structures. This is extra critical when the structures are as close to the knees as the pelvis.
4. Feet and Ankle Alignment and Muscle Balance- Are you landing on your feet evenly? Do you have weak ankles? Are you using comfortable and supportive shoes? These are all important things to keep mindful of and address immediately. This could be based on the “trickle up ergonomics” theory.
5. Range of Motion- If you spend more than an hour a day with your knee in one position then it is important for you to move it. Are you sitting a lot? Get up, stretch your legs and walk around for a few minutes every hour. Don’t drag your feet or shuffle when you walk. This bad habit promotes poor range of motion in the knee, hip and ankle.
6. Flexibility- Do you stand a lot? Do some leg stretches, especially for the quads and calves, every two hours. It is important that you stretch ALL OF THE LEG daily. The most common tightness I find in folks are the quads and adductors. Many runners will sacrifice stretching for added running time. This is not a good idea if you want to keep running for many years.
7. Body Support Team- If you are an active person or are currently having knee pain, it is important that you have a health practitioner that you can go to that will help you keep everything strong, flexible and aligned. My favorite type of practitioners for this are massage practitioners, physical therapists, and personal trainers.
If you have a more specific persistent issue that you are dealing with in regards to your knees, please seek medical help immediately. The sooner you start care the greater your chance for a speedy recovery and don’t underestimate the power of ice for injury recovery. PJ Harris, LMP http://www.pjharris.com/
- Pelvic Tilt
I am going to give you all a quick rundown of information regarding Tendinitis. This injury can be successfully treated with patience, diligence and even massage.
in hopes that it will go away? Are you fired up to take action and do what ever you can to heal your body? That is a great mindset to be in to make a change in your life. It often is what is required to help yourself light that fire and make a difference.
When you feel tension and pain in the top of your shoulders that sometimes will run all the way up your neck, one of the main muscle reacting is your Trapezius. I believe the whole body is involved when we exhibit poor posture, but in particular, the muscle we are addressing in this post is a part of the Trapezius called the UPPER Trapezius. One of the functions of the UPPER Trapezius is shrugging or raising your shoulders. When you keep your shoulders slightly raised or as I like to say “wear them as earrings,” this causes an amazing amount of stress on them.
relief:
Do you have jaw pain and are not sure what the cause is? 
help with the muscle soreness that comes from using crutches and/or limping. 
Trigger Point Therapy: I love it and use it often in my 
I received a request from a follower on 
