By: Hope Whitman, PT, DPT, OCS Indoor golf is one of the best tools we have for building swing mechanics, strength, and consistency. But when golfers transition back outdoors, performance often dips—and it’s not just mental. The physical demands and environmental variability change the game in meaningful ways. From a physical therapy perspective, this transition...
By: Erica Tran, PT, DPT, OCS If you play pickleball and feel like you’re always a split-second late at the kitchen line, it’s tempting to blame your hands. “They’re just not fast enough.” But that’s usually not true. In most cases, slow reactions in pickleball have very little to do with your hands and everything...
High intensity or vigorous aerobic exercise is one of the most beneficial forms of exercise due to its’ impact on our bodies cardiovascular and metabolic systems. This is a commonly prescribed exercise for patients and clients in our Boulder Physical Therapy and Lafayette Physical Therapy clinics. One of the most common draw backs of this...
Aerobic exercise has a tremendous impact on our morbidity and mortality due to its’ ability to positively impact our emotional, mental, and physical health. In particular, the cardiovascular system undergoes dramatic improvements in response to aerobic exercise. These benefits are noted in many of the variables we track clinically including blood pressure, VO2 Max (aerobic...
In a previous post we highlighted the importance of a dynamic warm up to gradually increase cardiovascular work, improve mobility, decrease injury risk, and improve performance. Conversely, traditional static stretching has been shown to reduce run, sprint, and jump performance in athletes. Clearly, these static holds should be held until an athlete’s cool down period after...
A common question we receive from parents is “when can my child start weight training”. This is a difficult question to give a standard answer on because so many variables are at play including the maturity of the athlete (skeletal, neuromuscular, emotional, and mental), the demands of their sport, and their training experience. Our main...
Our prior posts on dynamic warm ups have highlighted the benefits of these exercises on injury prevention and sports performance. Conversely, static stretching has been associated with decreased performance due to a reduction in the ability of the stretched muscle to contract and perform dynamically during sport movements. Clearly, the best option for both pro...
Eccentric exericise, where our muscles contract and lengthen, is an essential part of any exercise program. Its benefits of strength, flexibility, and injury prevention are well known in the literature and have been discussed on our prior blog posts. Eccentric exercise as pictured above has a unique stimulus on the structure of the muscle and...
A common question we receive from young throwers and their parents is how to improve throwing velocity safely without undue stress on their arms. Our prior posts on throwing have focused on reducing arm stress through injury prevention and lower quarter strengthening. This post will focus on the research surrounding exercise programs designed to improve...
As the triathlon off season carries forward into the Spring athletes should be focused on the evaluation, treatment, and/or prevention of last season’s nagging injuries. Specifically, athletes competing in Triathlon should see a reduction in their endurance training and a corresponding increase in weight training. The additional time placed on weight training in the off...
