A lot of you may have watched the commonwealth games this year and noticed a familiar location that the mountain bikers raced on. Cannock Chase has provided us with the opportunity to use this track whether to practice or cycle on for the experience. Whether you are interested in mountain biking over Cannock Chase, or road cycling and you want to do so while minimising your chances of injury, then here is some free advice given to you from our sports therapists at Nicky Snazell’s Wellness and Physiotherapy Clinic.
First, there are many ways to decrease your chance of injury and footwear is one factor you should consider.
Compared to running shoes, cycling shoes are designed with stiffer soles to help optimize your energy transfer. You should keep your foot rigid, so there’s no power lost through your feet and all the power from your legs goes directly into the pedal stroke. Additional support from clipping your shoes into your road bike will also help you to feel more secure when you are pedalling and can help prevent you from losing balance. It can also make you more aerodynamic as it has been noted that it is easier to get your torso lower toward your handlebars making you more streamlined increasing your speed.
That said, proper trainers are only part of the solution if you are struggling with any pain when cycling. Strengthening and conditioning the muscles in your legs and core region is essential for injury prevention. We can provide guidance, not only to stop and prevent pain occurring but to increase your cycling longevity and your performance.
What are the most common injury areas from Cycling?
The most common injury areas, more often due to overuse and poor technique are:
- Knee
- Lower back
- Neck
- Thigh
- Ankle
Specific diagnoses for these areas are:
- Anterior knee pain
- Lumbar or neck myofascial pain, a chronic condition affecting the muscles
- The iliotibial band running up the outside of the thigh
- Achilles tendonitis
If you are a keen cyclist, the chances are you have suffered from an injury throughout your training. Understanding how and why this is caused and taking steps to strengthen your weakness could be a game-changer for your performance.
Strength and Conditioning
The problem for many of us is that daily life can involve a lot of sitting at a computer screen all day and this can lead to poor posture and the important muscles in our trunk stiffening up and weakening. These core muscles, along with those in the buttocks and thigh are important tant in stabilising you during exercise. If these muscles become weak you are more likely to injure yourself from falls or strains.
What is Strength and conditioning?
The use of dynamic and static bodyweight and resistance exercises to improve your performance and reduce the likelihood of injury occurring. It is also used during injury recovery.
Why should I strength and condition?
- Injury prevention – helps to correct muscle imbalances and improve muscle activation, as well as increasing the efficiency of your running biomechanics which results in improved running performance.
- To be faster/ stronger
- To enjoy exercise more.
If this sounds like something you may need, book an appointment with one of our sports therapists to get the best possible guidance and treatment. As an athlete, you put so much effort into your training, it’s worth putting the effort into taking care of your body too. Prevention is just as important as recovery.
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Great event management can help your health and here's how
At Nicky Snazell Clinic Stafford, we find ourselves treating events staff, exhibitors and conference managers for stress-related issues such as back pain, neck pain, and general niggles, most of which are the result of stress caused by their jobs.
If you are involved with running an event or exhibition, it can be a high-stress situation, one which despite your best efforts is controlled by others. - That is where well-executed event management can help.
So, what should you do?
Firstly, you should carefully select your exhibition partner, someone like Exhibition Designer, custom exhibitions & live events specialists. They take your brief and run it, taking the hassle out of your event management. Event companies like this look after the managed delivery, reducing the stress involved with stand creation. This type of company also understands the best ways to provide breakout areas where event staff and visitors can sit and discuss business in comfortable surroundings.
Secondly, follow Nicky's advice allow yourself to relax emotionally, draw on your spiritual self through the mind and body meditation- It will relieve your anxiousness and negative energy. This kind of self-awareness will make a difference to your output at the event and your health and wellbeing.
Stress and negative energy are dangerous because they affect our bodies physically, upset digestion, which restricts nutrient absorption making us tired, and lethargic and can cause mood swings - all this volatility is not good for our performance.
Headaches, neck stiffness, backache, lots of common issues can be stopped sooner with knowledge and advice. We try to provide this at Nicky Snazell's Pain Relief Clinic because it modifies the causal behaviours that keep a niggle from going away. The mindset of event staff is paramount to stopping this impending stress developing into ongoing issues.
Summary
Think about what you are doing, give yourself time, work with a right exhibition company, remember your mental wellbeing and make time to relax. Stay well hydrated and smile.
We hope that you enjoyed this article and we look forward to hearing how it helped you. Thank you and bye for now.
The 4 keys to health
The 4 keys to health is all about investing in the healthiest happiest future you could wish for with sound scientific knowledge and big spoonfuls of commonsense and experience.Tonights blog is for nutrition week. The traffic lights approach to healthfor the 4 keys to health gives one point for every yes answer.
0 – 3: RED.
3 – 6: AMBER.
6 – 9: GREEN.
Scores: Now count up your scores – are you red, amber, or green for this key?
Initial score:
Once you’ve read the chapter and implemented any changes, take the
questionnaire again to see how much you’ve improved.This questionnaire is in 4 parts.
Diet and Blood Sugar Levels
• Is your weight good for your age and height?
• Do you have lots of energy and do you like to exercise?
• Are you free from joint pain?
• Do you rarely feel like dozing in the day and feel alert after eating?
• Do you hardly ever get stomach ache or bloating?
• Do you concentrate easily with a clear memory and few
headaches?
• Do you hardly ever need sweet food or caffeine fixes?
• Do you jump out of bed, raring to go?
• Do you rarely feel dizzy / irritable / have mood swings in
gaps between meals?
Water
• Do you rarely have thirst / dry mouth?
• Do you rarely get headaches?
• Is your urine a mild (not dark) yellow colour?
• Are your skin and lips moist, not dry?
• Do you have regular bowel movements most days?
• Do you have less than two glasses of alcohol a day?
• Do you have five helpings of fresh fruit and vegetables a day?
• Do you have several glasses of fruit water / juice / herbal
teas a day, even if resting?
• Do you avoid having too many salty snacks?
Healthy Low Homocysteine Levels (repairing DNA
and building nerves / cartilage)
• Is your weight satisfactory and stable?
• Are you a clear thinker with a good memory and rare
headaches?
• Do you eat healthily with green veggies, seeds, and nuts,
but aren’t vegan?
• You are not an alcoholic, smoker, or heavy coffee drinker?
• Do you have little joint pain?
• Do you have great stamina without weariness?
• Is your cardiovascular system and blood pressure normal?
• Do you sleep well?
• Are you rarely angry, irritable, or down?
Essential Fats
• Do you have healthy hair?
• Do you have flexible, pain-free joints?
• You are not taking painkillers?
• No arthritis, asthma, or eczema?
• No diagnosed cardiovascular problems?
• Do you spend more than thirty minutes a day outside in
sunlight?
• Do you eat healthily with oily fish, about four eggs a week,
seeds and nuts most days, and fewer than two alcoholic
drinks a day?
• Do you have a good memory, learning abilities, and
concentration?
• You don’t get down, anxious or unnecessarily angry?
Anti-Ageing, Anti-rot, Antioxidants
• Are you a quick healer?
• Are you younger than middle aged (40)?
• Do you have healthy skin?
• No diagnosis of cancer or cardiovascular disease?
• Don’t bruise easily?
• Do you live in quiet, clear air, healthy countryside, not
near major roads?
• Do you eat healthily with five lots of fruit and veg a day,
raw seeds / nuts, and at least two oily fish a week?
• Do you take antioxidant supplements?
• Do you exercise and raise your heart rate five times a
week?If you got a red key read my blogs or get a copy of my book,through www.thepainkiller.co.uk,www.painreliefclinic.co.uk, or amazon.