The first step in preventing and alleviating upper body aches and pains is to relax tight muscles to help start correcting imbalances and restore normal muscle length-tension relationships.
That means you must foam roll.
Foam rolling can help you relax tight muscles so that you can then stretch, activate and strength to get the correct muscles working. If you don’t first loosen tight muscles, you may not be engaging the correct muscles when you workout.
And if you aren’t engaging the correct muscles, you may only be perpetuating imbalances, compensations and injury.
Below are 11 Upper Body Foam Rolling Moves to help you correct imbalances and loosen tight muscles caused by sitting hunched over a computer all day so that you can prevent and alleviate injuries.
Low back and hip pain are common problems especially for anyone with a desk job. However, some foam rolling (or a back massage) and stretching of your low back won’t be enough to really relieve your pain.
Because sometimes where you feel the pain, isn’t the place causing the problem, especially when it comes to low back pain.
Often to relieve your low back and hip pain, you need to focus on foam rolling, stretching, activating and strengthening your entire core.
Because overly tight muscles in your core (such as your hips and lats) and underactive muscles in your core (such as your glutes and deep intrinsic core stabilizers) can all be contributing to your hip and back pain.
Follow our 4 Step Program below to Relieve Your Low Back and Hip Pain.
Knee Pain can be a complicated issue to resolve because there are so many culprits that could be responsible. Since the knee is in between both the feet and ankles and the hip, dysfunction in either place could refer and lead to pain in the knee.
Dysfunction in the hip or in your feet and ankles could lead to muscular imbalances that then cause improper tracking and function of the knee joint. And if the knee then starts to move incorrectly, further problems could then occur up and down your body.
For instance, muscular imbalances could lead to knee valgus aka when your knees cave in. If your knees cave in, not only can your knees start to hurt but so can your feet, ankles, hips and low back. And pain in your lower body could then even lead to dysfunction in your upper body.
Therefore it is important to address all of the issues that could be leading to your knee pain above and below the joint so that Knee Pain doesn’t become pain everywhere.
To correct the muscular imbalances and address all the issues leading to your knee pain, you need to follow our 4 Steps to Prevent and Alleviate Aches and Pains – Foam Rolling, Stretching, Activation and Strengthening.
All 4 Steps must be included to help you prevent and alleviate your Knee Pain for good. Including only one step may help a little, but it won’t truly resolve the problem.
So correct your imbalances and start alleviating your knee pain today with the 4 Steps below.
Your body is a chain, which means that dysfunction in one area of your body can lead to pain and injury in other areas of your body.
That is why you need to take care of your feet and ankles – they are your foundation and without a strong foundation, there are going to be problems with the rest of the structure.
So if you are suffering from foot or ankle pain, or have in the past, the best way to keep your foundation strong is by following these four prehab/rehab steps – foam rolling, stretching, activation and strengthening.
Below are tips and exercises to help you implement these four steps to Prevent and Alleviate Foot and Ankle pain as well as pain and injury further up your body!
If you sit at a desk all day hunched over a computer, odds are you’ve suffered from neck pain….all too many of us have.
And you may even have gone to get massages and done stretches and gotten a new pillow and tried changing your desk set up to alleviate the pain.
All without lasting results. All without alleviating the annoying ache.
That is because often our neck, and where we actually feel the pain, isn’t where the “true” problem is.
Often there are other imbalances elsewhere that are contributing to the pain and perpetuating our compensations.
Problems that aren’t corrected by only massaging our neck and changing our desk set up.
Problems that we may actually be making worse during our workouts by continually overusing the incorrect muscles because of postural distortions caused by sitting hunched over all day.
That is why we need to focus on adjusting our overall posture and not only loosening up tight muscles but also activating underactive ones!
Below are 10 Quick Exercises to Alleviate Neck Pain.
These moves will alleviate your neck pain by loosening up tight muscles and activating the big muscles of your back. They will improve your spinal and shoulder mobility and get the correct muscles working to not only alleviate your neck pain, but also improve your posture.
And because these tips will improve your posture and get the correct muscles activated, they will also improve your strength so that you can lift more during your workouts.
Check out the 10 Tips below and start feeling better today!
If you sit all day, much of your lower body is constantly in flexion, which means that you need to roll out before your workouts to prevent injury.
If you like to run as your workout, then it is extra important that you roll out.
Runners especially need to do these moves to prevent hip, knee and ankle pain as well as shin splints, hamstring strains, plantar fasciitis among other common lower body ailments all too many runners have to deal with.
You don’t need to spend hours doing these moves to benefit from them. Spend just 5 minutes before and after you workout (or any time you feel tight!) rolling out to help you remain injury and pain-free!
However, do not rush through and just roll quickly up and down. It is better to pick just a few tight spots and spend more time on them than to roll quickly through all the muscle groups. Just rolling over the knots won’t help. You actually need to hold on any tight areas to help them release.
