The Joint Ventures' Blog

  

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There are a lot of potential reasons that your elbow may be bothering you. Examples of causes of elbow pain include acute trauma (a fall on your arm, dislocation, fracture), nerve entrapment (cubital tunnel syndrome, radial tunnel syndrome), or arthritis (osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis). Your physical therapist will consider your mechanism of injury, behavior of your symptoms, and past medical history in conjunction with a movement assessment to help determine the root cause of your elbow pain.
 

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At the start of the new year, it’s common to want to return to exercise and going back to the gym. After taking some time off, whether it’s been years, months, weeks, or days it’s important to get back on track. Here are some tips for your most successful year yet!

Set yourself up for success: Having a general “get back to the gym” goal can be daunting. Setting smaller achievable goals can help you achieve that long term goal and stick with it. Try setting specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time based goals, or ‘SMART’ goals.

Warm it up: Before you jump in, try a 5 to 10 minute warm up to get you prepared for activity. Save the stretching for after, instead opt for an active warm up to promote dynamic stretching to start. Try to incorporate as many body parts as you can to maximize your efforts. Some examples include light biking or walking, jumping jacks, inchworms, or walking leg kicks.

Change it up: Keep it fun to keep it interesting! Not all exercise has to be boring, if you don’t like plain cardio exercises, try strength training movements. Studies show combined cardio and strength exercises are more effective than one on their own.

Be Smart: Try the tips below to prevent injuries:

-Start at an appropriate level of challenge. Whatever weight or resistance you start at should feel challenging, but not so much that you are not able to complete more than a few repetitions. The last repetitions should feel difficult. If it feels like you do not have control or are able to complete the activity without changing your form or compensate in another way, try the level or weight below and work your way up.

-Progress resistance and/or difficulty once you feel comfortable, especially if it is a new exercise or type of exercise.

-Be consistent, but don’t overdo it. Build towards mileage, repetitions, and/or time exercising.

-If you are exercising outside, wear appropriate layers and/or equipment.

-Make time to warm up before and cool down after exercise.

Rest and Recover: After exercise, it is normal to feel sore and tired. Exercise creates changes in body temperature, energy expenditure, heart rate, respiratory rate through muscular contractions. Always make sure to improve your recovery with a cool down to gradually decrease heart rate. Follow this up with stretches to improve and maintain your range of motion and muscle relaxation.

Stay Fueled: Make sure you sustain yourself with enough food and fluids. Support your loss of fluid and prevent cramping and dehydration. With your increased energy demands, it is important to make sure you are eating enough to have enough energy to sustain your output.

Blog by Stephanie Lee, PT, DPT located at our Downtown clinic.

 

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When we think of resistance or weight training, it probably means somewhat different things to each of us.Resistance training encompasses a wide range of specific effects to our neuromuscular system.You may be interested in developing explosive power, building muscle mass or strength, more endurance, or just trying to stay strong for the demands of your daily activities. Depending on what your fitness goals are, you will benefit from a specific program targeted at meeting those goals.And whether you are new to resistance training or have been doing it for a while, there are some basic principles to follow that can be helpful in maximizing the results from your training.

There are numerous factors and variables to consider with resistance training.These include an individual’s level of experience and history with resistance training, the amount of weight lifted, the speed of the movement, the number of sets and repetitions performed, the duration of the rest period between sets, and the frequency of lifting sessions.There many ways to manipulate these variables to have an impact on the training effect.The purpose of this blog post is to go over some of the basics of resistance training with an emphasis of proper weight/load and repetition selection.

One of the most important principles of resistance training is proper load selection.The number of repetitions that can be performed is inversely related to the load lifted.This means that the heavier the weight, the fewer the number of times it can be lifted.Manipulating the load is a very important consideration in resistance training and by doing this, you are able to target a specific training effect.The specific muscle adaptations to target with resistance training are muscle endurance, hypertrophy/muscle mass, strength, and power.

Whatever your desired training goal is, you want to find the load that allows to work in the targeted repetition range.This is important to fully maximize potential results from training.Since everyone is different, the proper weight selection will take some trial and error.If your goal is to build muscle endurance, you want to target a load that you can perform for 2-3 sets of 12-15+ repetitions with 30-45 seconds of rest in between.If you want to increase muscle hypertrophy or size, you should perform 3-5 sets of 8-12 repetitions with 60-90 seconds of rest in between.If the goal is to build muscle strength, 3-5 sets of 4-8 repetitions with 2-3 minutes of rest in between is recommended.Muscle power exercises are more technical and require a lot of skill and coordination. The load will be lighter due to the emphasis on the explosiveness and speed of the movement. You would perform 3-5 sets of 3-5 repetitions with 2-4 minutes of rest between sets.These are general principles and there is plenty of room for variability.

Training Goal	# of Repetitions	# of Sets	Rest Period
Muscle Endurance	12-15+	2-3	30-45 seconds
Muscle Hypertrophy	8-12	3-5	60-90 seconds
Muscle Strength	4-8	3-5	2-3 minutes
Muscle Power	3-5	3-5	2-4 minutes

Once you find the proper load to lift and begin training towards your goals, it is important to know how to progress the resistance as you are able.Whatever the training goal is, the effort level should be moderate to high and you need to consistently assess ability to meet the targeted repetition range.The neuromuscular system responds to progressive loading and without an appropriate training stimulus continued muscular adaptation will be minimized.

So, how do you know when you should increase the weight you are lifting to keep progressing towards your training goals? A good general rule to follow is that if you are able to perform 2-3 sets of an exercise at your desired repetition range for your training goal and at the end of the last set you feel that you can perform an additional few repetitions without compromising technique, you can increase the resistance and continue along with that approach.

The world of resistance training has many facets and there are many variables to manipulate to maximize the potential to meet your goals.There is a lot of information out there and it can be overwhelming.The purpose of this blog was to provide some general information and by no means does it address all potentially relevant aspects of resistance training but hopefully it gives some helpful information and guidance that will be useful to your fitness goals.If you would like to learn more, please to stop by the Downtown Office or email Dave Carleton at Dave.Carleton@JointVenturesPT.com

 

 

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With the weather finally warming up in New England it is time to transition working out in the outdoors. Soon we will see the esplanade fill up with bikers and runners. Spring and summer are a big transition for our patients at Joint Ventures. Trading the sturdy winter boots for flip flops and running shoes can take a toll on your unprepared feet. The increase in activity along with the lack of support can cause many seasonal feet diagnosis such as plantar fasciitis or achilles tendinitis. But this transition is something we should be able to carry on through granted our feet are prepared for it. One topic that is important to talk about is gait mechanics. Whether we are walking or running the biomechanics and foot strength can be critical for injury and pain prevention as we hit the pavement or sand in these upcoming months. The quality of movement during a walking or running cycle can give us a lot of information about these common feet diagnosis. Evaluation through slow motion analysis as will be further discussed below shows a glimpse of what were are looking for during a treatment session. 

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Have you ever experienced dizziness, vertigo, or loss of balance? Most people do at some point in their life, and many times, it goes undiagnosed or dissipates quickly enough that it cannot be detected at the doctor’s office. 

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The sacroiliac (SI) joint is one of the more controversial and debated joints in the PT world. Topics of debate include:  

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Many of us have been at our gyms, in our homes, or at a doctor’s office and seen advertisements for Pilates classes or private sessions. We have heard of its health benefits on television shows like Good Morning America (1) and in magazines like Time (2). Pilates seems to be everywhere…but why? 

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Every month at Joint Ventures, we focus on a different clinical topic to dive into more deeply.  We find it helps us better educate our patients regarding a certain condition or abnormal movement pattern. This month, we're talking about the temporomandibular joint (TMJ). 

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