by LYMBR | Nov 13, 2019 | Featured
As the days get colder, you may start to notice discomfort and stiffness in your body. This is a natural and very common occurrence this time of year. When our bodies start to get cold, the first thing we do is hike up our shoulders, round our back and bury our chin. Even while sleeping, we curl into a ball in hopes that we will get that satisfying warmth. And chances are, you are not moving as much as you do in warmer weather.
In colder weather, our nervous system activates changes within our bodies to help regulate body temperature. Vasoconstriction occurs, where muscles tighten to constrict blood vessels throughout the body. Less heat reaches the surface of our bodies and in turn our core temperature can remain steady for our vital organs (Homeostasis).
Our bodies adapt to the positions that they are put in and the conditions they are exposed to. Over time, our muscles will shorten and become stiff.
Having a rounded back and shoulders, along with a protruded chin places a lot of stress on the upper back and shoulders. Stretching the muscles in the neck, upper back and shoulders which all support the cervical and thoracic portion of the spine, provide a lot of relief. Muscles like the trapezius, levator scapula, sternocleidomastoid, and rhomboids. These muscles are also very important for maintaining proper posture. After having these muscles stretched, people often feel taller and more open, and feel relief from pain and stiffness.
Temperature plays an important role in the way your muscles contract. It’s a lot more difficult for muscles to contract in cold weather as opposed to warmer conditions. The temperature affects how easily oxygen is released from hemoglobin to the muscle. In colder weather, the rate that oxygen is released is slower. Which means there is less oxygen available for the muscle, causing the muscle contraction to be difficult. This is where stiffness is felt. Oxygen intake is very important, as it is what fuels the muscle.
By regularly stretching with good form, you are promoting efficient blood circulation. The circulating blood provides oxygenated rich blood and nutrients to the muscle. This fresh blood is what is needed for the muscle to have proper function, strength, and flexibility.
Another way to increase your oxygen intake is to get more exercise. Be sure to warm up with active stretches and movements first. Injuries like muscle strains happen more often while exercising with cold muscles. Active stretching helps blood circulation to the muscles and warms them up.
Let’s continue to stay active and avoid poor movement patterns in the upcoming winter months. This can be achieved by warming up before exercise and properly stretching. Stay warm and BeLYMBR!
Written by, Michael Eaton. Michael is a Stretch Therapist and Asst Manager in our Darien, CT studio.
by LYMBR | Sep 12, 2019 | Featured
We all know how stress affects the mind, but it also affects the muscles in our body. The most common areas we tend to hold stress are in the neck, shoulders, hips, hands and feet. Planning one of your stretch sessions around these areas can help calm your mind and calm your body.
NECK
When we experience stressful situations whether in a moment or over time, we tend to feel tension in the neck. Your shoulders hike up, causing tightness in the muscles along the back and side of your neck. Stress puts the neck muscles in a constant state of slight contraction, which can lead to unwanted tension. This tension leads to restricted range of motion, that feeling of having a knot in your neck, and sometimes tension or migraine headaches.
Stretching your neck will provide some relief. Not only is the experience of getting stretched relaxing, but the result is a lengthening of the muscles, allowing them to return to their natural, more relaxed state. Your neck will have greater range of motion, making your head feel lighter and your face more relaxed.
SHOULDERS / UPPER BODY
We tend to hold a lot of stress in our shoulders causing them to round or hunch forward. This postural change reduces our mobility and puts added strain on our head, neck and upper back. Rounded shoulders also affect our ability to take full and complete breaths as the space in which our rib cage wants to move is restricted.
Stretching the muscles in your shoulders helps to open up and reduce the built-up tension in the upper body. As the shoulders relax and find their proper state, you experience a more open and relaxed posture. Your rib cage has more room to expand and the strain is taken off your head and neck.
HIPS
If you study or practice yoga, you are familiar with the concept that we store a lot of stress and emotions in our hips. We’ve seen clients have an emotional reaction when we make significant improvements to their hip mobility during a session. The stress and restriction in your hips inhibit your comfort and your range of motion. Every movement we make begins with the hips, if they are not properly balanced and mobile, the effects resonate through your body – most commonly in the low back.
When you experience a proper series of stretches to open your hips, the effects can be felt on your entire lower body – you’ll feel lighter and move with more freedom. Some clients report a sense of calm, relaxation and release.
HANDS
When we are feeling stressed, the muscles in our hands begin to clench, sometimes we don’t even notice it happening. Even when you are not holding something, they will stay in that tense position. This tension causes constriction to the tendons of the hands from the palm up through the tips of the fingers. This can have a negative impact on the forearm and the elbow. A common example would be similar to carpal tunnel syndrome – as the muscles in the hands and wrists begin to constrict, the nerves become inflamed from all of the pressure.
Stretching the hands will give you a feeling of letting go, literally. The hands will begin to relax releasing the tension from your fingertips up through your forearm.
FEET
It is not commonly known that we hold a lot of stress in our feet. The result is restrictions in how the mechanics of our feet perform, especially in the arches, where we carry all of our weight. When the mechanics are not working properly, you put pressure on certain areas of the foot which are not designed to carry the load of your body on their own. The resulting tension and pain can resonate from the feet up the through your calf and behind your knee.
Having your feet and toes stretched may seem like an odd concept but the results are incredible. You’ll feel your toes open and your foot relax. Keeping your feet happy is a major factor in keeping your whole body happy. We ask a lot of our feet and they are so often overlooked.
Keep stress and its affect on your body at bay by taking time out of every day to focus on you. Put your phone down, try some deep breathing, go for a walk, and of course, focus on stretching.
by LYMBR | Jun 13, 2019 | Featured
As our Hamptons studio at the SoulCycle BARN gets busier with riders, we’re helping more and more clients get more out of every class, and participate in more rides.
Spinning has become a dominant force in the fitness industry. As its popularity increases, so does the necessity for understanding spinning’s impact on the body. These classes provide a great way to sweat, burn calories, and have fun while doing it. Yet as more time is spent on the bike, more pressure is put on the muscles tasked to complete the pedaling action. The muscles most affected by the repetitive motion, also happen to be some of the largest in the human body; your quads, glutes, and upper back musculature.
QUADS
The quads are broken up into four muscles, hence the name “quad”. The quad muscles assist with the extension of the knee and are used for activities like walking, running, and other physical activities like spinning. With the high intensity demands of spinning classes, extra strain can be placed on the quad and the various points at which they insert or attach. This increases the possibility of strain and injury in the knee, hip, and low back. As the quads become tight they are unable to extend the knee fully, placing greater strain on the knee, hip, and low back to complete the motion. Tight quads will also pull your pelvis down, creating a pelvic tilt. This will throw your low back out of alignment and produce low back pain. A great way to avoid these injuries is by getting stretched. LYMBR therapists can reset a pelvic tilt in less than 3 minutes, and our quad stretches restore mobility and function to the quadriceps. By creating greater function, we allow the muscles to better assist with the extension of the knee, thus removing stress on the knee, the pelvis and therefore the low back.
GLUTES
The glutes are made up of three muscles: The glute maximus, the glute medius, and the glute minimus. Each muscle serves an important purpose in spinning, primarily dealing with extension at the hip, or the downward “push” of your stride. The glute max is one of the primary movers in spinning and creates the “push” off the pedal. The glute medius serves as a pelvic stabilizer during dynamic movements. As the spinner lifts one foot up and drives the other down, glute medius holds the pelvis in a neutral position. This lessens the chance of a low back or pelvic injury. Glute medius can be especially tight for females due to women having anatomically wider pelvis. The glute minimus helps shift your body weight to keep you balanced while pedaling. To ensure the glutes are performing all of these tasks, it’s important to stretch and take your glutes through their full range of motion. Keeping the glutes loose will keep the pelvis stable while you ride, assist with balance, and will ensure that you are not compensating with other muscles to complete the hip extension.
UPPER BACK AND SHOULDERS
Although they’re certainly not as common, upper back and shoulder injuries can also occur from spinning classes. The upper back, specifically your traps, lats, and rear delts (shoulders), are responsible for holding your body upright as well as stabilizing the shoulder through dynamic movement. When people spin, they often get into the habit of hunching over the handlebars and tensing up their shoulders. What this does is lengthen these muscles to the point where they are no longer able to function. Since these muscles do so much to facilitate posture, as their function begins to waver, so will your posture. Your chest will begin to tighten as well as your core, your pelvis will tilt, and your shoulders will lose stability. By stretching out your chest, core, shoulders, and neck we can restore proper length to shortened muscles and therefore take pressure off your back and rear shoulders. This will help reaffirm correct posture and make your experience on the bike much more comfortable.
Spinning is a fantastic form of exercise. You can burn calories, exercise your heart, increase endurance, lower body fat, all while being a part of a larger community of people trying to improve themselves. Like any activity, however, it’s best to start slow, and always listen to your body. We all have activities we love to do. If spinning is yours, then why not make sure your body is in its most mobile, functional state so you can make the most of every class.
Written by Conner Fritchley, Stretch Therapist in our Darien studio.
by LYMBR | Jun 10, 2019 | Featured
“You’re not a rider unless you’ve fallen off seven times.” This is one of many proven mantras in the Equestrian community. Equestrians are some of the toughest and strongest athletes I have come to know during my lifetime. Over time, we riders learn numerous aids, cues, and body positions to influence and support a horse’s movement. A full day of schooling, showing, and barn chores can leave us aching and exhausted. As hopeful lifelong equestrians, we need to start thinking about how our own body’s health and flexibility affect the flexibility we strive for in our four legged partners.
How can LYMBR help improve your riding?
I have been an avid horse-lover, rider, and competitor since the age of 5. Spending hours in the saddle can really take a toll on your body, and it wasn’t until coming to LYMBR after a fall that I started to connect some dots. Equestrians tend to be creatures of habit. We mount, dismount, tack up, and connect with our horses through groundwork, always on the left side. It’s a repetitive lifestyle, and constantly performing the same movements over and over again creates muscle imbalances in our body. Imbalances lead to discomfort and often times pain. No matter their discipline, most equestrians struggle with tightness and sore muscles in the hips, adductors, glutes, calves, spine, chest, shoulders, and neck. We spend a lot of time and effort caring for our horses and honing in on our connection in the saddle;why don’t we spend as much time and effort on our own bodies?
As a therapist and a client, LYMBR has helped me understand both the individual functions of muscles and how they work together while in motion. Because each LYMBR session is completely personalized, everything is catered to reach your goals. With therapists experienced in a wide variety of sports and exercise modalities LYMBR is able target those tense muscles through an intricate series of stretches. Learning how to target and lengthen those muscles while strengthening their counterparts has enhanced my riding enormously. Remember, for every working muscle, there is anopposing muscle working in the other direction. Also because I have become more open and available through stretching my connection to my horse feels stronger.
Lets go deeper…
The pelvis and lower back are irritated in practically every rider. Riding can actually promote and enhance stiffness that leads to poor riding posture. It can block aids and movements from you to the horse creating a domino effect. Our hips are another point of interest, while riding, they are in constant flexion, leaving our hamstrings lengthened. Often when a rider is swinging their legs or cannot keep their legs in alignment, it is because our hamstrings are not as strong as our hips. We strive for symmetry in our horses and our own posture; we want to make it look like riding is easy! If we are dealing with discrepancies in our bodies, it will affect the way your horse responds while under saddle. This is why these issues can and should be addressed out of the saddle.
Whether you are a new rider who wants to help recover those newly hard-working muscles or a seasoned competitor hoping to improve for this upcoming show season, better mobility, flexibility and range of motion that comes from proper stretching will help take your riding to the next level.
Written by Samantha Fabrikant, LYMBR Stretch Therapist and Equestrian.
by LYMBR | Mar 31, 2019 | Featured
March Madness is here, so it’s time to discuss stretching for basketball. The fundamentals of basketball are simple to grasp; dribbling, the jump shot, the chest pass, the rebound. Competitive-level players have mastered these abilities on a basic level and are always looking to hone their skills to improve their game. The sport played at such a level requires quickness and agility, as angle, direction, and explosiveness of each movement is constantly changing. Effectiveness of these movements is minimized in players with limited range of motion. By implementing specific stretch protocols into a basketball player’s daily routine, performance can be enhanced.
The stop-and-go nature of the game requires both agile and explosive movements. Proper extensibility of the quadriceps, adductors, glutes, hamstrings, and calves is necessary for those fast-breaks down the court, or powerful movements to the basket. Dynamic stretching beforehand increases oxygen and blood flow to those muscles, preparing them for full range of motion through the joints. It also stimulates the nervous system to increase awareness for performance. It is this enhanced neuromuscular ability that could give a player that advantage early in the game.
Incorporating stretching into a basketball warmup can also help prevent injury. Some of the most common basketball injuries include lateral ankle sprains, patellofemoral inflammation, and hamstring strains. While injuries occurring from trauma to the area are unpredictable, others can be prevented using stretching. By stretching muscles surrounding the hips and knees, the stress of those muscles on the knee joint will decrease. For example, the pulling sensation felt on the kneecap in those with patellofemoral pain can be lessened by stretching the IT band, quadriceps, hamstrings, and calves. Decreasing the amount of stress on a joint can reduce inflammation and bring muscles to their optimal length without overlengthening them.
Although lower limb injuries make up the highest portion of basketball injuries, it is also vital for basketball players to maintain proper flexibility in their trunk and upper body. Lumbar strains and sprains are the most common after lower limb injuries and are caused by trauma or overuse. The twisting, pivoting, and bending movements a player must make to create space, combined with a rigorous schedule, predispose the muscles to overuse. Our lower back stretches emphasizing the quadratus laborum, lumbar fascia, and multifidus, will help relieve the tension carried in the lower back, bringing these muscles to their optimal length pre and post-workout.
Keeping a basketball player in good range of motion can only help to keep the body aligned and flexible to optimize performance.
Written by Ariel Scheintaub. Ariel is a Stretch Therapist in our Tribeca studio.
by LYMBR | Mar 17, 2019 | Featured
Yoga is a wonderful discipline where the mind and body interact together to take the practitioner to different levels of self-awareness. One aspect not well understood is that Yoga is not only about stretching but also about strengthening, conditioning, proper breathing and balance. The demands of a 60 to 90-minute yoga class can leave the practitioner feeling sore, tight and tired.
How can LYMBR help to improve your yoga practice?
I’ve been practicing yoga for almost ten years and have been an instructor for half that time. Even though I’ve always been very flexible, there were always postures that were more challenging to me after years of practice. The work we do at LYMBR has helped me to understand better where my restrictions are and how to address them properly. Not only do I have a better understanding of how the postures work in my body, but also how to properly stretch those restricted areas and how to strengthen unstable areas so my body is more balanced. It is very important to understand that for every tight muscle in your body there’s another muscle somewhere else (antagonist muscle) that is not working properly.
Isolation is key when it comes to LYMBR stretches. When a yoga pose is done, there are multiple muscles being stretched. Let’s take a forward bend for example: calves, back of the thighs, hips, and lower back are under elongation forces, so it can be very difficult to decipher where the restrictions are happening along the connective chains.
It is very common for yoga practitioners to be unable to fully extend the knees when doing a forward bend. Usually this is blamed on the distal hamstrings, but the calves are also responsible for lack of full range of motion in the knee. Another very common issue when dealing with forward bends is back discomfort, which is usually related to proximal hamstring tightness.
The more complex the muscle, the more stretches we must perform.
The stretches we do at LYMBR are very targeted and very specific. The more complex the muscle, the more stretches we must perform in that muscle to make sure we cover all the different aspects of those tissues: origin, insertion and diverse fiber orientations.
Let’s take the hamstrings for example: this group consists of three muscles (semitendinosus, semimembranosus and biceps femoris); with the work we do in our studios we target each one of them individually. By isolating the muscles in that way, we undo the restrictions from the areas that otherwise are inaccessible through regular stretches. The hamstrings are not only responsible for hip extension and knee flexion, but key in knee rotation, thus the health of all three hamstring muscles are key for proper knee stability when performing a warrior pose and hip mobility when doing a downward dog.
Whether you want to get your body ready to start practicing yoga, or you are a seasoned practitioner who wants to take the practice to the next level, targeted personalized stretching will help you reach your goals.
Written by Adrian Garcia. Adrian is a Manager and Stretch Therapist in our Newton Studio, as well as one of our Therapist Trainers and a Yoga Instructor.
