What cause a muscle to feel tight? Should I stretch?
I get asked almost daily about muscle tightness or stretching. Stretching has a certain place in our culture that’s up there with juice cleanses as a supposed elixir of life. Something tight, or hurting? Stretch it out! Need a morning routine, warm up routine, or cool down routine? Let’s throw in some stretching. Have a new injury? Must be from some tight muscles. Right?
Well… maybe. As always, the truth is complicated. The sensation of muscle tightness, or needing to stretch a muscle, is actually a complex neurological phenomenon.
EVOLVE Flagstaff Physical Therapy Manifesto
EVOLVE Flagstaff was created to help our community avoid injury and disease, and to do what they love, for life. Our team is driven to help you reach your potential, which is not possible if you are hurting, cannot move the way you want, or are not nourishing your body well with the proper foods and lifestyle habits.
EVOLVE Flagstaff physical therapy operates differently than a standard physical therapy clinic. This manifesto outlines our standards of care and thought process. We will strive to provide this level of care to every patient, every time.
Self-treatment techniques for lower back pain
One of the most common questions that I get goes something like this, “Hey, I tweaked my lower back the other day. It’s really hurting me. What stretches should I do?”
This can be a tricky question to answer, because so many things in injury rehabilitation depend: depend on your unique history (Have you had lower back pain previously?), the severity of your injury (Does hurt a little? A lot? Are there any red flags, such as muscle weakness, that need to be promptly investigated further?), your activities/hobbies (Are you a cyclist? Runner? Yogi? Not very active?), your specific anatomy and biomechanical factors (How is your muscle strength, flexibility and joint range of motion?), and so much more.
However, there are usually a few safe ways to attempt to relieve lower back pain on your own, and I often send out the general recommendations below as a response when I get asked about back pain.
Introducing EVOLVE Performance Training
“Do what you love, for life.”
Since the beginning, our goal at EVOLVE Flagstaff is to help you do what you love, for life. We want to help you feel and look great, to overcome injuries, prevent chronic disease, and live your life to the fullest.
To better fulfill that mission, we are incredibly excited to announce that EVOLVE Flagstaff will be expanding to a larger space in downtown Flagstaff. We’ll be moving from our current 350 square foot office to a 2,400 square foot clinic and training space. This move will provide the following dedicated private offices for our Registered Dietitian and Physical Therapist, allowing for more available treatment times and less distraction. We’ll also have a state of the art strength and conditioning equipment with ample space to train.
What’s most exciting about this move is that we will launching a Performance Training Program that we’ve beta tested over the past year to address all of the most common problems we see people encountering while pursuing an active lifestyle.
10 reasons to pay out of pocket for physical therapy and dietitian services
We do things a bit differently at EVOLVE. One of our goals is to deliver healthcare in the way that we would want to experience it as a patient. This means: our appointments are not rushed or behind schedule, our focus is 100% on your results, we practice according to the most up-to-date available scientific evidence, and we are transparent in our approach, thought processes, and price.
Perhaps most striking to some people, especially those who have seen other physical therapists or dietitians before, is that we are “out of network” with all insurance providers. What this means is that we charge a flat rate at the end of each appointment, payable by credit card, cash, check, or a health savings account or flexible spending account (we don’t accept bitcoin yet, sorry). We can provide appropriate receipts for our patients to submit to their insurance for out-of-network reimbursement, but do not bill insurance directly.
We chose to set up EVOLVE in this way for a number of reasons. This post will explore 10 reasons why we think it’s actually better for you, the patient, to experience your physical therapy and dietitian services in this way.
90 and Beyond: Three running volume progression programs
One of our most popular articles presented two return to running progressions. They are designed to help people who want to start or return to running, especially after an injury, progress from not running at all to running for 60 minutes continuously.
We’ve had a lot of great feedback about these programs. If you’re actively managing an injury and you follow the program, they to work brilliantly. Everyone is different, and so there might be some bumps in the road, but in general, most people respond very well to them.
Perhaps the most popular question we get is, “What should I do after the program?”
So, we’ve put together three additional programs to help you progress your running volume beyond those introductory programs