Wrist/Hand

Apr 05 2016

Wrist And Forearm Stretching

Effective technique to improve hand, wrist and forearm flexibility. Improves wrist extension and stretches the wrist flexor muscles. A great techniques for people who work with their hands or do a lot of computer work. Can be helpful for those suffering from carpal tunnel or other nerve issues due to muscle or myofascial tightness in the forearm, wrist or hand.

Tweetables:

Stretch to Maximize Hand, Wrist, and Forearm Strength. [Click To Tweet]
Effective echnique Stretches for Wrists and Hands. [Click To Tweet]
Stretches for Wrist and Forearm Pain. [Click To Tweet]

*This information is for education purposes only. Please consult your Physician, Physical Therapist or Wellness Practitioner before starting any rehabilitation, wellness or fitness program. These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

Jul 24 2014

Core Strength Pushup Plus

Pushup plus position is a great exercise to strengthen core muscles. It’s also very effective for shoulder girdle and arm strengthening. Start off by doing the exercise isometrically and then progressing to movements to make the exercise more challenging.

Tweetables:

The Pushup that Blasts Your Core [Click To Tweet]

Push-ups Boost Core Strength To Build a Greater Body [Click To Tweet]

Core strength – Why it is so Important [Click To Tweet]

Transcript:

Hey guys, this is Manu Kalia, physical therapist and herbalist. So, today’s video, I’m going to show you the correct way to do a pushup plus position for abdominal core and trunk strengthening. And a lot of times I find people do this incorrectly. This is done as an isometric exercise for core and strengthening, and I’ll show you first what I often end up seeing as some of the incorrect ways of doing this.

So one of the things I find people do as they go into a pushup position, so as they raise up, often they’re not stable through their shoulder girdle. Pelvis tends to drop down. So even if they do isometric holds, they’re either dropping down and hanging out here or they try to hold themselves up in this position. More often, actually, it’s going to be dropping here, because they’re just not strong and stable through this region and they can’t hold themselves up. And same thing with the shoulder girdle. The shoulder girdle will pop out because, again, they’re not stable in that shoulder girdle.

So, much better way to do that would be—and I would start with isometric positions first before you get into more movement-based stuff where you’re doing kicks and all sorts of other things. So you’re going to have to build a base first. You’ve got to figure out where you are in space and whether you have good motor control to maintain that stable position.

So first thing I would do is as I come up into that position—you can do it with your hands this way or this way, whatever’s comfortable for you—I would raise up to this position and you want to engage your shoulder girdles first. So I’m going to do a pushup plus. So I kick in my scapular stabilizers, shoulder blade muscles. So if I kick those guys in, my upper body’s nice and stable. Now, if my pelvis is dropping down, I’m going to engage my lower abdominals. And you can see what I just did. So my pelvis is dropping down; now I’m going to kick in my lower abdominals and my glutes. I’m going to fire those a little bit and now I’m stable through that pelvis, and I can work at doing a slight dorsal glide or chin tuck to protect my neck. So as I’m in that position, I can do isometric holds. So you want to stay there. You work up to it – 10, 15, 20, 30 seconds.

Now, what you’re going to find is that you start to drop down or your pelvis starts to drift down or one side starts to go down, so you’re fatiguing. So if you find that you can’t maintain those positions, you want to come out of those positions. Now, you want to make sure that you have this stable position and you can really hold it for a while, let’s say 60 seconds, and you’re going to hold a good form and the form doesn’t go. Once you can start holding a good, stable form, then you can start to engage those muscles, keep your abdominals on andget yourself in good position, and then you can start to do more movement-based things, things like that with your legs or arms, or lifts and other things, only when you find that you’re nice and stable in those positions.

So I hope that helped, and please leave a comment, subscribe to the channel. Thanks.

Jul 22 2014

Low Back Pain Yoga Upward Facing Dog

Protect your low back when doing Yoga upward facing dog pose. These tips can help you if you suffer from low back pain and arching or extension causes you pain while doing yoga. Often hip joint, hip flexor tightness, upper and mid back stiffness can increase the stress on the low back. Resulting in more compression, pinching and pain. The recommendations in this video will help you protect your spine.

Tweetables:

How to Do a Safe and Proper Yoga Upward Facing Dog [Click To Tweet]
Yoga Poses for the Lower Back [Click To Tweet]
Beginners Yoga For Back Pain – How To Do Upward Facing Dog [Click To Tweet]

Transcript:

Hey guys, this is Manu Kalia, physical therapist and herbalist. So, today’s video, I’m going to show you a slight modification for the up dog position or upward facing dog position in yoga.

Some of you guys asked me that when you do the up dog position in yoga you tend to get some discomfort or pain in the low back because there is excessive compression taking place. This is often…well, you could have of course a pathology or some problem going on in the low back that you’re more flexion-biased – you don’t like extension arching which closes down to the joints and it irritates them.

But some of it can also be because you’re moving too much, hypermobility, in certain segments of the low back because you’re too stiff not moving enough in the front of the hip. Your hip flexors are tight maybe, your front hip capsule is tight, possibly lower thoracic is stiff, upper back is stiff, so you end up moving too much in that low back when you’re going in the up dog position. So I’ll show you a couple of modifications that you can do to want to protect your back, you won’t have pain, as well as to take some of the pressure off that low back so you can continue doing that pose.

So as I said, this is the upward facing dog in yoga. I’m going to do it on the table—it’s easier for you to see—and usually the position is where you come up into an arching position and you come up here. And a lot of times as people come up, they complain of pain in their low back in this region, and because they end up hinging at that spot and because they’re not moving enough or they’re too stiff in the front, they’re not getting that range from here, they’re not getting that range from their midback or upper back, so they end up hinging in their low back, causing compression of pain.

So what we’re going to do is, I recommend if that’s happening, you have a few options but one of the things you can do is you can right away tighten your glutes first. So if I tighten my glutes, it puts me in a little bit of posterior tilt, so that protects my low back, causes less compression. So I’m going to tighten my glutes lightly and I might pull in, and as I come up it takes away some of that pressure in my low back. And the second thing I can do is I can engage my lower abdominals a little bit, by pulling inand that again helps me avoid some of that compression. And then, I can work it as I arch up: I can squeeze my shoulder blades down and now I’m going to engage my upper back also. So that will really help relieve a lot of that compression in your low back.

Those are just two simple tips. There are many other things you could do also. And you can of course limit how high you go up in that position. So try engaging your glutes. Try engaging your lower abdominals, especially your glutes throughout the movement, and before you start the movement kick them on and maintain that through the movement as you’re extending it, holding that position.

So I hope you found that helpful. Make sure you subscribe to the channel. Leave a comment if you have questions. Thank you.

Nov 15 2013

Tendonitis vs Tendinosis

Tendonitis is incorrectly used to describe chronic or repetitive strain tendon injuries. In order for an injury to be called tendonitis there has to be presence of active inflammation. Anything with an “itis” means inflammation. There are very few to no inflammatory cells present in repetitive strain tendon injuries.

The correct term to describe repetitive tendon injuries to the Patellar Tendon, Achilles Tendon and Quadriceps is tendinosis or tendinopathy. Anything ending in an “osis” means degenerative changes. Tendinosis is caused primarily by chronic overuse of the tendon and by not giving the tendon enough time to rest and heal.

Tweetables:

The Difference Between Tendonitis And Tendinosis [Click To Tweet]
Symptoms and Information about Tendonitis And Tendinosis [Click To Tweet]
Tendon Injury: Topic Overview of Tendonitis and Tendinosis [Click To Tweet]

Transcript:

Hey guys, this is Manu Kalia, physical therapist and Ayurveda herbalist. So today’s video is a little bit different. It’s not an exercise or mobilization technique that I’m showing you. I wanted to go over something really important and that’s a major misunderstanding regarding tendon injuries. So the common term that most people know about repetitive tendon injuries or repetitive strength-type injuries to the tendons is tendonitis. So the term tendonitis, which is more popular, and I know even in some of my old videos, for example when I’m talking about patellar tendonitis or Achilles tendonitis, I’ve said the word tendonitis, but that’s just so it’s easier for most people to understand and because most people are familiar with that term.

But the correct term is actually, for those types of injuries, is tendinosis. So tendonitis, though it’s used more commonly, is incorrect, and the reason is because for repetitive strain injuries like patellar tendon issues for runners or athletes or quadriceps tendon issues of volleyball players or people who are doing a lot of activities that require jumping or Achilles-tendonitis-type problems, in a lot of studies I’ve seen this, when they really looked at it, there’s no actual inflammation going on at that tendon. And remember, and I mentioned this in some of my old videos, acute inflammation that takes place after an initial injury is a normal response of the body. It’s not a bad thing. It needs to happen for the tissue to heal properly. So first of all, regarding the tendon, there is no inflammation and they found that there are no inflammatory cells present in these injuries, and a lot of these injuries are very chronic problems. So remember, anything that has “itis” at the end of it means inflammation.

And now we look at tendinosis, which is actually the correct term for those types of problems, which are even caused more due to repetitive strain. Yeah, you can have a quick movement or an injury where is a forceful movement taken or load going to that tendon which causes micro-tears or ruptures or even a partial or complete tear – that’s something different. And in initial stages you might have an inflammatory process that takes place, but for chronic problems that come on over time the correct term is tendinosis. Anything that has “osis” at the end of it is degeneration, which means that it’s due to excessive wear and tear. The body basically just can’t keep up with the repair process and so the load that’s being placed on it, stress that’s being placed on that tendon, this just can’t keep up and heal that tendon.

So that’s a major distinction between these problems. And that goes for all sorts of repetitive strain tendon-type injuries, and that’s why use of anti-inflammatories or, in my view, ice and all those things, is not helpful for these injuries. It’s not going to take care of that problem.

So the normal tissue—tendons remember are made up collagen, collagen is protein—and normal tissue, normal alignment of the collagen and tissue is in a parallel fashion. They’re parallel bundles that are laid out, which give the tendon its tensile strength. So, normal fashion, they are laid out in an organized fashion, but once you start having these degenerative problems or degeneration and wear and tear of that tendon, and like we said there are no inflammatory cells present in tendon-type injuries, tendinosis, or tendinopathy is another term that’s used for that, so the collagen fibers are laid out in a disorganized manner. They’re not laid out in parallel bundles. They’re kind of jumbled and haphazardly laid out. So the normal healing process didn’t takes place properly. As the collagen was being laid down, as repair was taking place, it kind of went off and it gets laid down in a jumbled, disorganized fashion so that doesn’t give it it’s proper tensile strength to that tendon.

So you will see things like weakness and you’ll see things like swelling. You’ll see thickening of that tendon just because things are not organized and laid down properly. They don’t move properly. A lot of studies have shown there is more vascularity, so there are more blood vessels that are formed, but again they are formed in a haphazard manner, not laid down properly again. So they’re not necessarily helping the tendon in terms of the healing process.

So like I said, the cross-linking that’s taking place, which is that jumbled formation, they increase vascularity and there’s even more ground substance, which is the substance that’s surrounding the cells which supports the cells. So all these things kind of give it that thickened, swollen-type appearance to a lot of those tendons. So, one, they’re going to be thickened and swollen, they’re going to be weak, and of course you’re going to have pain and you might have some tightness along that tissue too.

So think about it from this perspective when you’re looking at treating these problems. So as I said, it’s not an inflammation type of problem. That’s incorrect. The understanding that most people have, “ice it and take anti-inflammatories, it’s going to take care of the problem,” it’s not going to take care of the problem. So it’s more of a degeneration that’s going on and so we need to do other things to get it better. So as in a lot of my other videos, you’ve seen cross friction massage techniques that I have done, heat application, and internally you’ve got to do things to help the system heal too, and of course backing off on the aggravating activity that’s taking place.

So I hope it kind of gives you an understanding of what’s going on, and we’ll keep talking more about shooting videos on treatment options. You’ve seen some of the treatments, and I’ll go more in-depth into some of the external factors and internal “within the body” factors that are taking place and causing these problems, why some people are more susceptible to those issues than others. Also, stay tuned, we’ve got our program coming up pretty soon—very excited—and it’s going to be awesome. For those of you guys who are runners and athletes, you’re going to love it, and we’re in the process, we’re building it up, and we’re going to get the editing and those things done pretty soon and it’s going to be out. And if you have any questions, leave a comment, and make sure you subscribe to the channel and click on the link below to check out the site. Thanks, guys.

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