Back problems are experienced by almost everyone at some point in their life, whether you have a sedentary job, or a physical job, solving back problems doesn’t need to be complicated. Here are our 5 tip tips to avoid those back problems. #1 – Strengthen your core Now to do this you don’t need to visit a gym, the best way to strengthen your core is to sit on an unstable object. Your core muscles are designed to hold your pelvis in a straight position relative to your spine. W

Running, it’s the simplest thing on earth? So why do so many runners end up with niggles, injuries and sometimes, outright pain? There is nothing more likely to ruin running development than not being able to run at all! So what can we do to avoid getting those injuries in the first place? #1 - Avoid over striding. Over striding is easy to spot. If your foot lands in front of your body when you run, you have an over stride. Perhaps get a running friend to watch you while you

Exercise challenge.😀 It is exercise challenge time again and hopefully the weather will be ok for this one... heading out into the fresh air is not only good for your physical health but also for your mental health. It is well documented that the look, see and touch of the natural environment has a calming effect on anxiety 😀 and can help with depression and other mental health concerns. So the challenge this week is to head out into the woods. 😀 Ideally try to get mudd

Many many people put orthotics in their shoes and for the best of reasons. A weak arch, a leg length difference, to "cure" heel pain. But there is a problem here. Put your foot in an orthotic for too long and issues will arrive elsewhere in the body. 😞 Orthotics are a great short term solution to help control pain, but left in for too long they weaken the foot. Think of an arm that is supported in a cast for a while, while a broken bone heals. Once you remove the cast the mu

10, 000 steps is the number of steps everyone is supposed to achieve in a day. But how easy is this to do? During lockdown actually 10,000 steps wasn't too hard, the daily walk took about 20mins, the sun was shining and it gave a desperately needed break from the house. But now, with the challenges of working, a child to look after and the weather turning! It is much harder... so what tips can we give you. 🚶‍♂️ Well firstly, it is fairly amazing how many steps are done by ju

Hello everybody, as you may well have noticed, we often blog about back pain and that’s because its such a common issue and in most cases, actually very easy to improve. So, here we go once again, but looking at things in a slightly different way to some of our previous blogs. 😀 In the past we have talked about poor strength and poor activation of the spinal and pelvis stablisers, we have identified exercises and approaches that can help with these so you can always complime

For our older clients and especially those who normally go to the gym what do you do now they have had to close their doors🤔 Now my gyms shut what can I do for exercise? Well, on the surface it seems not too difficult. There is a lot of generic advice about how you grab a few cans and do some exercise. Whilst that's better than nothing, we really need to factor in the reality of being stuck indoors, possibly having no garden and limited opportunities to walk, either social

It's that time of year when we are heading into the 10k and half / full marathon season. Most of us are starting to increase our mileage and in particular, follow set training programmes. But it's also that time of year when the clinic goes crazy with running based injuries. So if it's not going well 😧 what do you do 🤔 I have a race in few weeks but am injured! This is an awful and all too common scenario. What should you do? Is the issue consistent for more than a week? If

In our previous blog we looked at some tips on avoiding trips and falls.This generated several questions about how do you get back up? The answer to this question depends on a variety of factors, the most important being whether you were injured in the fall. When in doubt, it’s always safest to call for help or 999 if you are obviously injured. In this blog we take a look at the extremely tricky subject of getting back up following a fall. We will take a look at the normal s

Well the skiing season is upon us again. I know this because Ski Sunday is back on T.V and very welcome it is too. If I cant go skiing then I am quite happy to watch somebody else do it and immeasurably better than myself. But soon the clinic will begin to fill with injured skiers, So what can we do to limit the chances of picking up a skiing injury: How should I prepare for skiing? The trick here is to make your ski training as close to possible as to what you are actually a

It's been a strange winter so far. Days veer wildly from unseasonably warm, to full coatings of ice with no warning. So the other day when Gina reminded me to put the Christmas tree out for recycling, I casually stepped out of the back door, straight onto ice and found myself on my back, staring up at the 6am sky, wondering if all my limbs would still function. Is there a good way to fall if I slip on ice? Well, yes there is. 😀Most slips on ice result in a backwards fall as

Well with the movie version 'Cats' out, I suppose cats are all the rage at the moment. Watching the movie makes you realise that watching humans overlaid with computer generated images that sort of look like cats and doesn't translate so well when its not on stage. I Think theres a big difference between sticking on a cat costume on stage and actually trying to look like a cat. But enough of being a film critic, what has any of this got to do with Physiotherapy, Sports Therap

"You are not 5' 7" I informed my client. "Really" said the client! I used to be 5' 9" but I am definitely 5' 7" these days. This is a conversation I have had for years and with hundreds of clients. We do shrink a little with the passage of time due to the continual compressive forces that act through the spine and the natural dehydration that occurs in the intervertebral discs, in fact this happens throughout a short a time period as a day 😱 So, here's a little fun: Measure