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The Foam Roller Isn’t Doing What You Think It’s Doing
by Christopher Chilelli RTSm, MATm, Mechanics in Motion
The Foam Roller Isn’t Doing What You Think It’s Doing.
But that doesn’t mean it isn’t doing anything.
If you’ve made to a gym or dance studio, oh, anytime in the past decade you’ve probably noticed a not insignificant number of people sitting on white plastic cylinders. Perhaps you’ve done it yourself. This practice is, of course, foam rollingand involves placing your body’s weight onto specially designed, usually plastic implements and slowly rolling over ‘knots’ and ‘tight’ areas in musculature. It has become pervasive in gyms and rehabilitation clinics recently, but has been a common practice for dancers for much longer. The fancy technical name for the foam rolling is self-myofascial release (SMR) and it’s basically a form of self-applied tissue massage. Implements are not limited to the common rollers but to all manner of hard tools, some specially intended for the purpose and others like basketballs and golf balls, decidedly not.
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Are Kettlebells Safe?
Question:
Are Kettlebells safe? I’m curious to hear your thoughts.
RTS:
Kettlebells by themselves have never hurt anybody. They don’t explode and spew shrapnel. They don’t roll down the street and squash babies in their strollers. They are inanimate objects that sit on the floor/rack and have never intentionally with premeditation attacked a single soul. It’s what people DO with kettlebells that may be the benefit… or the detriment, as is often the case!
Most so-called experts that devise the exercises have no clue about the body (joint tolerances) nor the device (moment arm and inertial properties) and therefore, in an attempt to make a “rock’n workout” often sacrifice their followers along the way. Read the rest of this entry
“Isolated” vs. Integrated: Motor Learning Reality (Transfer)
“The present research was designed to investigate the mechanisms how ageing and orthopaedics disorders interact in determining and recovering from an impaired fast STS movement. Our findings verify the hypotheses that, in elders with motor impairments consequent to orthopaedic disorders (MIE), ageing and functional impairment reduce the performance in a successful fast sit-to-stand (STS) movement and that increasing knee extensor muscle strength improve this capability. On the basis of the comparison with healthy elderly subjects, we found that trunk bending momentum and knee extensor muscle strength are significant determinants of the fast STS capability in MIE as well as in healthy elders.”
M. Bernardi, et. al, 2004
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