Month: July 2017

As I reflect upon my trip to Las Vegas NBA Summer League 2017, I was astounded at how this event has changed. ESPN broadcasting games, media coverage on the Internet, and the entire game schedule has been changed so that the games do not conflict with other games. The event is so much more organized and operates like a well-greased machine now.

All this change got me thinking about “Form and Function” and how the body is merely the sum of it’s individual parts. I say this because I worked on some of the most incredibly fit men’s basketball players and still found asymmetries even in their elite bodies.

Now you may ask, how can issues in tissues happen to athletes at a professional level? It’s because their nervous systems are no different than anyone else’s. Our brains and nervous systems all work the same way. Whether in their practices, strength and conditioning workouts, or games, professional athletes bodies are stressed in what they do. It’s this same body stress that takes a toll on even the most extremely fit athletes.

Over time, their brains figure out body movement compensations too. Its called the ‘Path of Least Resistance” referred to as Motor Learning Efficiency within the brain. Either way, this all boils down the way our brains figure out how to ‘cheat’ in body movement. It doesn’t just happen to you, it happens within everyone’s body. No exceptions.

Simply put, our brains actually don’t want to do much work.

When you go to pick something up or move something your brain says to itself, “Self…let’s use every joint and every muscle that can help get this task done. Let’s not stress any one particular thing in the body. Instead, let’s spread the task out throughout the body so no one muscle has to work very hard to do this job. “ And while your brain is processing this information, it’s even trying to figure out if there’s any way it can make this even easier to do…such as utilizing momentum. “Yeah, this makes it even easier to do!”

For example, your trying to strengthen your biceps and you are doing dumbbell curls for this.   You pick up some dumbbells that are a little heavier than your biceps can actually lift (after all more is better, right?). Plus, those bigger numbers on the end of those dumbbells really make you look really impressive at the gym!

Now, when you go to execute that bicep curl with this extra weight that your biceps are not capable of lifting, your brain has already realized this factoid before you. Your brain starts to figure out ways to get the curls done despite the fact that this is just a “little too heavy” for you. Your brain then begins to “cheat” by adding some momentum to your bicep curl in order to lift the dumbbell. Now instead of a bicep curl, you’re doing more of a “clean and curl” movement by incorporating a little momentum…get my drift?

Well, here’s the difference. If you do bicep curls in a somewhat slower robotic fashion you are better isolating the muscles that you want to strengthen. If your biceps can only lift a certain amount of weight and you try to lift more than you actually can (bigger numbers make you ‘feel’ like your making faster progress too), your brain is going to use other muscles to get this bicep curl done. Understand?

When your brain turns that bicep curl into a “clean and curl” movement, then some other muscles are making up the difference in the added weight. If you can only curl 20 lbs. and you add another 5 or 10 lbs., then your biceps are not going to be lifting these additional lbs. Not only that, but because your brain has now added momentum to get the job done, you’re probably not even lifting 20 lbs. with your biceps now. There’s no way to know for sure once momentum is added into the movement.

Why do you see everyone doing this in the gym? Well it’s because we have this crazy mindset that ONE: “More is Better” (instead of realizing slower curls with better form is really better). TWO: “Everyone else doing it this way, so it can’t be wrong”. In reality….it’s WAY harder to keep our brains from cheating.

Our brains are figuring out ways to do things easier and with less effort all the time. Our brains prefer NOT to work so hard and do so in everything we do in life by dispersing the load. By reducing effort and adding in momentum, your brain gets the task accomplished and you “feel” like your making great progress-WOW, I’m lifting bigger dumbbells!

Everyone’s brains work the same way…even in elite athletes. Matter of fact, their brains are some of the best cheaters I’ve ever seen when it comes to compensations. They don’t do this on purpose. It’s just that their bodies are so highly developed that their brains have so many options when it comes to dispersing the loads in their bodies. This is why professional teams training centers now use biomechanical screening software to detect asymmetries within their athletes.

AND it is why performance therapists are becoming so valuable to professional teams these days. We have the ability to quickly assess these asymmetries without the use of a camera and software hook up on a player. We have the ability to correct asymmetries within athletes so they can train harder, longer and recover faster. Together with Strength and Conditioning Coaches, PT’s and other medical staff we help reduce injuries and keep players playing WAY longer than ever before.

We are more the Liam Neesons of sports performance enhancement. We “have a very particular set of skills. Skills we have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make us a nightmare for” ….asymmetries within the body.  Yep, we are NOT your average therapists.

Cheers, drock

Want to learn more about improving your functional movement and sports  performance?  Then follow Dianne on her blog  https://dtasmblog.wordpress.com

Dianne Rockefeller is a Athletic Performance Therapist, Licensed Massage Therapist, National Academy of Sports Medicine – Certified Personal Trainer, Certified Orthopedic Manual Therapist, Certified Myoskeletal Therapist, Certified Kinesio Taping Practitioner, Certified Cupping Therapist, and Muscle Activation Techniques Practitioner. She has treated athletes of all levels, from youth to professional, from all sports. She brings a very unique perspective to manual therapy utilizing her experience with motion analysis and sport. Her blend of advanced integrated skills along with practical and rehabilitation experience deliver exceptional results. Dianne is a self-proclaimed scholar of “Applied Performance Manual Therapies”. Contact Dianne at drock@dtasm.com or 210-973-4848.

Daily Life Activities (such as texting, sitting, walking on hard surfaces, etc.) in our modern world is undermining, if not eroding everyone’s ability to maintain biomechanical integrity and correct joint and tissue function in body movement. In short, our modern lives are beating our bodies up every day. Now…to add to this situation, you’ve just had surgery or are recovering from a trauma to your body tissue.

Replacing bed rest is the concept of “early mobilization” or “active rehabilitation.” The idea is to get you moving as soon as possible — short of actually reinjuring you. A great deal of science-based evidence suggests that stimulation of movement, especially in the early stages of healing, is a big component to recovery from injuries and surgeries.

I AGREE with this philosophy. However, sometimes an active rehabilitation or training after a surgery or injury can be can be a bit “TOO ACTIVE.” I routinely see clients who find that their rehab therapy after surgery or trauma didn’t seem to work. They’d been educated that they could exercise their bodies back to health and so they relentlessly challenged their muscles at every turn only to find that it made them WORSE.

What many people are not also made aware of is that long before breaking under a strain, tissue often gets “sick” — because of a failure to keep up with maintenance and repair to match the strains of daily life.  Once this happens within the body, the tissue loses it’s ability to tolerate even minor stresses.   Regular activities that used to be just easy to perform are suddenly now a problem.

I see many people in this predicament.  They have suffered years of chronic pain simply because they never recovered adequately. (They may believe that they have, but “taking it easy” for a few days or a couple weeks is really not actually enough sometimes). Then, they wonder why they continue to have pain and discomfort.

Newsflash: Your body will most certainly go to pot if you do not allow it to heal.

A balance needs to be struck when it comes to recovery. On the one hand, it’s clear that early mobilization and general activity is valuable. On the other hand, it’s just as clear that you can aggravate and even re-injure yourself by trying to do too much, too soon. If you feel that your PT or doctor is pushing you too hard, there’s a good chance that they are.

I say this because I had two very different clients (one man and one woman) bring me a copy of their at home rehab sheets. Their theraband workouts were exactly THE SAME. Yes, they both were recovering from shoulder surgery but their individual abilities and muscle contraction integrity were entirely different because they were two different people. The woman was seeing me wondering why her shoulder had frozen after her physical therapy and the man who made a full recovery and was seeing me for maintenance for his post surgery.

I explained to my female client that her “active rehab” program was TOO active and actually re-shaped her body for the worst, and that at times lessened her body’s ability to function properly. Thankfully, I was able to address this issue for her and unfreeze her shoulder. My client learned the hard way that re-injury and collateral injuries are a REAL risks and this is why she is on a regular maintenance program with me now.

2^nd and LAST Newsflash: People get hurt trying to get over being hurt all the time.

Keep this in mind…Cheers,  drock

Want to learn more about improving your functional movement and sports  performance?  Then follow Dianne on her blog  https://dtasmblog.wordpress.com

Dianne Rockefeller is a Athletic Performance Therapist, Licensed Massage Therapist, National Academy of Sports Medicine – Certified Personal Trainer, Certified Orthopedic Manual Therapist, Certified Myoskeletal Therapist, Certified Kinesio Taping Practitioner, Certified Cupping Therapist, and Muscle Activation Techniques Practioner (MAT). She has treated athletes of all levels, from youth to professional, from all sports. She brings a very unique perspective to manual therapy utilizing her experience with motion analysis and sport. Her blend of advanced integrated skills along with practical and rehabilitation experience deliver exceptional results. Dianne is a self-proclaimed scholar of “Applied Performance Manual Therapies”. Contact Dianne at drock@dtasm.com or 210-973-4848.

Have you ever felt that your fitness or rehab program isn’t producing the results you had hoped for or that you’re not progressing as well as you should be? You do everything that your coach, physical therapist or personal trainer is telling you to do, yet you’re making very little progress or even worse…you feel more pain or are weaker than before you started your program.

Well, you are not alone.

It’s all about figuring out a person’s correct progression. In a previous blog, I mentioned that if you are unstable and are training on a Bosu ball for stability, then the end result is just more instability. Why does this happen? Well, its because you started with the end goal. You started with the toughest thing to do in stability training. It’s as if you were training to get better at bench pressing and you could only successfully bench press 150 llbs. Then, in your first session your trainer puts 300 lbs. (your goal weight) on the bar and says, “Bench press this. You’ll get to where you can do it.” Well, that’s the same kind of poor progression that happens when you start with standing one legged on a Bosu Ball.

You had to learn to crawl before you learned to walk didn’t you? Yes. That’s the point I’m making here – proper progressions. You don’t start with the hardest thing to do. Instead, you start with what you can do and then increase the challenges from there. THAT is how you reach your goals successfully.

For example, I had one of my athletes come in and complain to me of knee pain. When I asked him if he had been doing anything different lately in his training, he replied, “Yeah, we’re doing stability training this week.” When I asked him what exactly he was doing in stability training, he replied, “we’re standing on one leg on Bosu balls” (Now, you can just imagine what I was thinking).  With athletes who are continually pushing their bodies to their limits,  training like this before assessing if their muscles can handle the stress load is reckless!

A prerequisite to any training or rehab is having all of the needed muscles functioning with a degree of integrity. In other words, your body can’t use something that is not available. The brain cannot build solutions to the challenges you give it with contractions that don’t exist or muscles that cannot handle the load being placed upon them to get the job done. When you train or rehab and put demands upon your muscles that are not capable of at that particular time, then your end result is compensation. When compensation occurs, the overworked, tight muscles and inflamed joints are being subjected to the same exercise as the weak underused joints.

Unfortunately, when these changes go uncorrected or undetected, compensations and their associated movement dysfunctions can and will eventually disrupt human body movement. Even slight changes can increase injury risk and damage the body (even if the individual is unaware) and it can happen to anyone…even elite athletes.

With human movement, various patterns of compensation and their associated movement dysfunctions could be limiting your progress. Most compensation patterns are very subtle. Over time, they grow into larger scaled compensations. This ‘domino effect’ is harmful to a person’s biomechanical integrity and overall quality of movement.

Here’s a list of common Patterns of Compensation and Movement Dysfunctions:

Pronation Distortion Syndrome
Valgus Knee
Patellofemoral Tracking Syndrome
Patellofemoral Pain Syndrome
IT Band Syndrome
Posterior Pelvic Tilt
Anterior Pelvic Tilt
Lower Cross Syndrome
Sway Back – Excessive Lordosis
Upper Cross Syndrome
Rounded Shoulders
Excessive Kyphosis
Forward Head Posture
Shoulder Impingement
Winged Scapula
Elevated Shoulders
Uneven Shoulders

Tight Quads or Hamstrings

Any of these sound familiar to you?

The solution is to recognize the dysfunction in your body, not mask it with purchasing another “copper fit” or some sort other kind of compression gimmick. Instead, find a qualified performance therapist or qualified strength and conditioning coach and invest in your health. It’s way better in the long run and cheaper too than ending up on a surgeon’s table.

Can you imagine what happens to your body after surgery or an injury? You guessed it…the topic of my NEXT Blog!

Cheers, Drock

Want to learn more about improving your functional movement and sports performance? Then follow Dianne’s blog: https://dtasmblog.wordpress.com

Dianne Rockefeller is a Athletic Performance Therapist, Licensed Massage Therapist, National Academy of Sports Medicine – Certified Personal Trainer, Certified Orthopedic Manual Therapist, Certified Myoskeletal Therapist, Certified Kinesio Taping Practitioner, Certified Cupping Therapist, and Muscle Activation Techniques Practioner (MAT). She has treated athletes of all levels, from youth to professional, from all sports. She brings a very unique perspective to manual therapy utilizing her experience with motion analysis and sport. Her blend of advanced integrated skills along with practical and rehabilitation experience deliver exceptional results. Dianne is a self-proclaimed scholar of “Applied Performance Manual Therapies”. Contact Dianne at drock@dtasm.com or 210-973-4848.