The basics of sleep, hydration, and nutrition are the low hanging fruits of performance. Easy to access, albeit hard to change at times, but extremely impactful on our overall health and wellbeing. The cognitive and physical benefits of breakfast are well established and the timing and contents of the meal has been shown to influence...
Rolling is a popular soft tissue intervention for range of motion, performance, and pain relief. Participants have a wide variety of tools to choose from including foam rollers, lacrosse balls, and sticks. Each tool is designed to target an individual sore or painful spot (trigger point) in a given muscle or a tight long muscle...
Team and individual athletes are always looking for an edge prior to their competition or race. The preceding days variable’s including rest, nutrition, training, and exercise are dialed in to create an optimal environment on game or race day. Most Physical Therapists and sports medicine professionals encourage an active dynamic warm up in the hour...
Caffeine is a well established stimulant enjoyed by many adults, in many forms, around the world each day. Users have known about its’ performance effects since the beginning with researchers confirming its’ performance benefits over the last century. It is one of the few well established performance enhancing drugs and was previously restricted and is...
Muscle strength is correlated with many important clinical outcomes including fall risk, injury risk, sports performance, functional capacity, and quality of life. These adaptations occur when a muscle is asked to repeatedly perform higher volumes of work or exercise creating positive adaptations within the nervous system and muscle. Over simplistic repetition ranges are available to...
In our Boulder Physical Therapy practice we commonly address areas of weakness in a patient or client’s body that is limiting performance, as well as, precipitated or perpetuated their current condition. Strength is an essential component of health allowing us to participate in our chosen activities at the level we desire. For example, running at...
In our Boulder Physical Therapy practice we often train the foundation of the body prior to moving to distal extremities. Physical Therapy exercises targeting the trunk musculature including the shoulder blades, core and spinal movers and stabilizers often are contributing factors to areas of pain in the extremities including the shoulder, knee, and elbow. Most...
The core is a collective group of spinal musculature critical for range of motion of the spine, stabilization of our trunk, and transmission of forces through the body. Given these functions it is not a surprise to see literature supporting Physical Therapy exercise prescription in order to improve sports performance, as well as, low back...
If you’ve been to physical therapy you may have asked yourself the question, what exercises do I do when to be the most productive with my time and effort? I often find myself having this conversation with patients in our Boulder Physical Therapy and Lafayette Physical Therapy clinics and I wanted to share a framework...
In our Boulder Physical Therapy and Lafayette Physical Therapy clinics we are often asked about supplementation by our patients. The vast majority of supplements are not supported by the literature with a few exceptions. Please see our prior blogs on supplements for more information. In the realm of athletic performance, the pursuit of safe and...
