Prehab/Rehab edition

Here's this week's round up of your questions! If you want to submit your question, you can do so here:

I'm having some hip pain, what should I do?

This Q was asked anonymously, but thanks for asking! If you want your question answered, it that submit your question button at the bottom or top of the email!

First, there are many things that can impact hip pain. It can be one or a few of the hip muscles or the hip joint, but the back and hip are very closely related and the foot/ankle can also impact the knee.

Without additional info, I don't know if you are having troubles walking after a few steps, sitting for a few mins, or you may be having hip pain with running 10 miles.

The advice on what you should do in these situations is going to be individualized based on the above things and many other factors. This is why individualized guidance is needed!

As always, if you're having pain, seeking care from your local physio or physical therapist can be helpful! Or if you're released by your doc to return to exercise, my hip prehab program may be a good place to start or an individualized program may be more helpful as it can be tailored to you!

Does a stiff neck effect your posture? What exercises are most helpful for a stiff neck?

Shoutout to Lenny for asking! If you want your question answered, it that submit your question button at the bottom or top of the email!

A stiff neck can definitely impact your posture!

No specific position is inherently good or bad, but our bodies were made to move, so the issue rises when we can't get into or out of different positions.

I have a super in depth blog post going over the ideal working posture and why/if posture is important if you're interested in more details!

Again, exercises do vary and there is no one "best" exercise, but I do have a youtube video for mobility exercises for the neck and mid back for you to check out to give you some exercises!

I am a yoga practitioner that is getting into mobility and strength-training due to tendonitis in my proximal hamstring and repeated hamstring/groin muscle tears. Do you have a recommended program for preventative strength-building or recommendations about how often I should filter acute strength-building into my weekly exercise?

Shoutout to @sarahswoodward for asking! If you want your question answered, it that submit your question button at the bottom or top of the email!

First of all, that's awesome you're getting into strength training! A balance between strength and mobility/flexibility is important to reduce injury risk as with strength, we can control the movement better.

Since I don't know how much yoga you're doing, how much time you have, how your recovery is already, I'm gonna be fairly generic with my recommendations. But, I'd probably start with 3 days per week for 45-60 mins. I have a Beginner Strength Fundamentals in my program in the app that may be a good place to build strength, but it's not going to have targeted exercises for the hamstring/groin area (it has more generalized compound strength).

If you want something individualized that will take these things into account, an individualized program would be best! Or if you're wanting to learn more about tendon health, you can check out this YouTube video below!

Any recommendations for a shoulder overuse injury? I feel lost...

As always, if you're having pain, seeking care from your local physio or physical therapist can be helpful!

Generally speaking, an overuse injury happens due to repetitive stress that exceeds your body's current capacity.

If you think about the load that you place on your tissues over time, you currently have a capacity where if you exceed that capacity, you will get injured. Think when you fill a cup of water, at some point, it's going to spill over.

With training and adequate recovery from those training stimuli, you can make your glass bigger so you have a higher capacity. But after a training session, your glass gets a little smaller (with training you break down muscles and they grow back stronger after recovery).

With a repetitive injury, there wasn't enough recovery time for your current capacity and workload to allow for the volume and intensity of training. Your glass size slowly decreases to a point where it overflows as it doesn't have time to recover.

I talk about this concept a bit more in the YouTube video on how to reduce injury risk!

To address the overuse injury, it'll be reducing the load through the tissues to meet your current capacity to calm the tissues down, then slowly, over time, adding exercises to increase your capacity to exceed your previous capacity so you can tolerate the training!

I’m active but feel like my recovery has always been bad. What can I do other than the obvious?

Well, if you’re truly getting enough sleep, hydrating properly, have a balanced diet, AND your volume and load of training is appropriate for your current level and you're still having issues with recovery, then there may be another issue that's impacting sleep quality, nutritional absorption, etc so getting checked by a doc may be helpful.

More likely though is that you may be sleeping well, hydrating properly, and eating fairly well, but your volume/training load is too high for your current capacity.

Sorry, I said it 🫣

IF you’re training at a high level AND all those things are consistently on point month over month, THEN you can consider the fancier more trendy stuff depending on what you feel works for your body. Keep in mind, ice baths can slow recovery, so that trend is dumb from a recovery standpoint especially if you're working on hypertrophy.

How important is stretching after a run? Which stretches do you recommend?

Some sort of transition from running to being sedentary is important just like some transition from being sedentary to running is also important. Does it need to be passive stretching? No.

If you wanted to use passive stretching to get the HR back down, then I'd probably recommend some calf, hip, and quad/hamstring stretches and maybe even back stretching depending on where you're body typically gets a little tighter.

For example, for me, I get tighter in my calves and hips, so that's what I would focus on! But this likely tells me I need to work on my strength and/or endurance in my calves and hips to tolerate the running volume better 😉

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That's it for this week! If you have any questions to clarify my answers or found it super helpful, go ahead and hit that reply button!

Don't forget you can ask your questions below to be featured in an upcoming email!

Best, Laura Kummerle No one is perfect, and that in itself, is perfect!

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