Posture and Technique
Breathe Better: Use Your Nose
How strong is your nose? Have you ever considered that the function of your nose is dependent on muscles? Did you know that if you don’t nasal breathe, these muscles can become weak and imbalanced? Use it or lose it applies to your nose! Recently, I had the...
Foot and Ankle Injuries Often Lead to Chronic Pain
Have you ever sprained your ankle? It is a common injury, happening 97 times a minute, 2,328 times a day and 850,000 times a year. Actually, you have a 30% chance of spraining your ankle this year! (https://www.rightdiagnosis.com/a/ankle_sprain/stats.htm)...
Stretching Your Glutes Isn’t Enough
Recently, during a hard week of training—including climbing intervals on the bike and heavy lifting in the gym—I woke up with intense tightness in my left glute. Previously, I had overworked my my right glute, which made it tighter. Now it was the left. I saw this as...
3 Exercises for Pain Free Gardening
Please enjoy this re-print of my article that was published in the May 2019 Moab Happenings. Spring is here! Now is the time to prepare the soil for your garden! Unfortunately, this can mean spending several hours bent over with your hands in the dirt, pulling...
Posture Therapy: A Bodyworker’s Perspective
Last summer, Elizabeth Lamoureux was diagnosed with Femoroacetabular Impingement (FAI) in her right hip. FAI creates abnormal contact and wear in the hip joint, between the ball—top of the femur (thigh bone)—and the socket—acetabulum (depression in the pelvic bone)....
7 Easy Posture Tweaks
Having pain-free, aligned posture doesn’t have to be hard. The following seven tweaks will start you on your way. 1. Stand at the wall Since the wall provides a template of correct posture where all your load-bearing joints— ankles, knees, hips and shoulders—are...
Strengthen Your Back and Glutes with the Bird Dog Exercise
Although Bird Dog is an excellent exercise for strengthening the back and glutes, most people do it wrong. I counted three people performing the movement incorrectly during my short one-hour gym workout last week! Thus, I was inspired to write this blog. The Problem...
What’s your wellness breakthrough goal for 2019?
“If I [fill in the blank], my wellness would skyrocket, positively impacting several aspects of my health and life.” Breakthrough goals are common in the business world. However, I had never heard the term until working with my coach on my goals for the new year. It...
Stay Aligned to Beat Back Pain: 5 Exercises
In my last blog, The Best Position to Relieve Back Pain, you discovered that many instances of back pain are due to misalignments in the pelvis and spine. However, as the blog notes, you can correct these imbalances with the static back and constructive rest...
The Best Position to Relieve Back Pain
As you might know, back pain is often the result of excess tension in the muscles that run down either side of the spine, a twisted pelvis, and tight hip flexors. Relieving this imbalance can be as easy as lying down on your back in an aligned position and breathing....
A Better Way to Band Walk
Band walking is a good exercise to strengthen your hips. Unfortunately, many people do it wrong. The problem is that the hip is not positioned correctly when performing the exercise. Additionally, people often don’t take into consideration muscle coordination during...
Improve Your Running Form: Align Your Core
While I was on my recent book tour, I stopped at Fusion Multisport in Los Alamos, NM. There, I gave a talk on Core Running Posture. This blog re-caps some of the information that I shared. Running requires a transfer of power between your upper and lower body....
Embracing Technology to Heal
Ever since I started posture therapy, I have not had a local therapist. Yet, I have recovered. Although I would have preferred working with someone in the same room, that is not always an option when you live in a small town. Because of the limited resources, more...
Train Movements, Not Individual Muscles
Please enjoy an excerpt from my book, Winning the Injury Game, available on Amazon. Sports performance is the result of coordinated movements. Casting a fly rod, spiking a volleyball, paddling a boat, skiing moguls, and hiking up a mountain all require multiple...
Considerations for Leg Length Discrepancies
Please enjoy an excerpt from my book, Winning the Injury Game, available on Amazon. Clients often tell me their legs are different lengths. When they lay down on an examiner’s table, one leg appears longer, and the practitioner informs them that their legs are...
Meet Jessica!
I believe we are designed to move and play throughout our entire lives. I don’t buy into the idea that we should slow down with age, or that pain, injury and physical restrictions are unavoidable aspects of growing older. So, here’s my philosophy. Our mental mindset, combined with the physical position and condition of the body that we bring into any activity (from walking to skiing to everything in between), determines our chance of hurting when we move. If we have a positive mindset, and if we have proper positioning and move with correct body biomechanics, all activities should be possible.
This is the goal I have for everyone: to overcome pain and limitations so you can Stay in the Game for Life!
Visit The Pain Free Athlete website for additional resources and opportunities.
