by Dr. Alex Jimenez D.C.,C.C.S.T | Aug 11, 2017 | Chiropractic, Sports Injuries
Return to play describes the stage in recovery from a sports injury when an athlete is able to go back to playing sports or participate in their specific physical activity at a pre-injury level.
Nobody likes to be sidelined with an undesired injury. Among the goals of sports medicine professionals and specialists is to try to restore an athlete back to action. Returning too soon, however before restoration or healing has taken place, can put an athlete at an increased risk for re-injury and down time.
With the ideal treatment and care plan for sport accidents and injury, from early identification and proper treatment to full functional rehabilitation, you can often safely accelerate your return to perform.
Lessons from Professional Athletes
Why does it seem that professional athletes come back to play so much quicker than the normal person or athlete? Professional athletes are often, at the time of injury, in tremendously good ph
by Dr. Alex Jimenez D.C.,C.C.S.T | Aug 10, 2017 | Chiropractic, Sports Injuries
With the presence of blood flow restriction training in discussions surrounding intensity coaches and physiotherapists, people are beginning to seek out programs for the best training procedure which might help them reach new levels of athletic performance.
In arenas that were competitive; an athlete’s practice volume is often restricted by their capacity, not their desire to keep training. With elite athletes there are a handful of variables that influence recovery; sleep, nourishment, training volume, the modality of training, body work…etc.. Athletes are looking for everything they can to be able to recuperate faster so they can train harder. Blood flow restriction training is an alternative and should be included in the dialogue of methods which help you recover.
What is Blood Flow Restriction Training (BFR)?
In brief, it is when you use a tourniquet device to restrict blood flow to your extremities while exercising. Faster recovery, an
by Dr. Alex Jimenez D.C.,C.C.S.T | Aug 10, 2017 | Chiropractic, Sports Injuries
BFR or blood flow restriction therapy has been around for a long time, but recently, the evidence for its use in the world that is rehabilitation has begun to emerge. The principle is very simple: that the circulation of blood flow is confined to the area of the human body that’s being trained or undergoing rehabilitation in a certain manner to boost the impacts of the training via lower load (less stress).
Is Blood Flow Restriction Effective?
According to the American College of Sports Medicine, to achieve an increase in muscle size and strength, you want to do 8 to 10 repetitions of an exercise. A moderate to high intensity is deemed to be 65 to 80 percent of their patient’s one rep maximum (the maximum amount of weight a person can lift 1 time). However, the majority of patients that are injured can’t deal with this kind of load, consequently restricting their capacity.
So again we’re faced with the question: Just how can we achieve hypert
by Dr. Alex Jimenez D.C.,C.C.S.T | Aug 9, 2017 | Chiropractic, Sports Injuries
Imagine you trained well for a significant race, got yourself into form and cruised through the first half of the course without any issues, and were on pace for a nice PR. All of a sudden, you started to notice tightness in one of your hamstrings. In the beginning, it was a hindrance that could be ignored, but the tightness got steadily worse until your hamstring was a stiff, painful mass of tissue which cried out to cease.
You slowed down, you ceased to stretch, massaged it, but nothing helped. Realizing that this was the conclusion of your race, you limped to the end, disappointed and frustrated that after six months of attentive, time-consuming preparations, some strips of muscular tissue in the back of your thigh had prevented you from attaining your goal. Does this situation sound familiar to someone or has this happened to someone you know?
Hamstring Injury Issues
by Dr. Alex Jimenez D.C.,C.C.S.T | Aug 8, 2017 | Chiropractic, Sports Injuries
Blood Flow Restriction training (BFR) is a style of resistance training that utilizes the custom of wrapping a kind of tourniquet around a limb and training with a relatively light load. It is a practice that has gained quite a bit of popularity in the resistance coaching realm over the last few decades and is something which can benefit training protocols.
If used properly, practical blood flow restriction training (BFR) could help you through hypertrophy plateaus, pack on additional mass and even aid in growth or maintenance of muscle mass during times in which lifting heavy weight is either laborious or impossible. Let’s understand what’s actually going on in the body when it is used by you.
As mentioned prior, BFR demands using some form of tourniquet around a limb so as to inhibit blood flow. However, not all of blood flow is restricted. The purpose of the tourniquet is to prevent what’s known as ‘venous return’ . When you contract a muscle, more blood th
by Dr. Alex Jimenez D.C.,C.C.S.T | Aug 8, 2017 | Chiropractic, Sports Injuries
In order to comprehend how BFR, or blood flow restriction, functions, it is important to perform a quick debriefing on how your circulatory system, also called vascular or cardiovascular system, works. Your arteries are blood vessels that carry oxygenated blood away from your heart to your body. Your veins are blood vessels that carry blood from the body back to the heart.
The objective of blood flow restriction training would be to restrict venous return while still allowing arterial flow by strategically wrapping the lightest portion of your own limbs. Blood can keep pooling to a muscle by restricting the veins rather than the arteries and it remains trapped there. It is like filling a water balloon to max capacity (with no popping up, of course).
By gathering all of the blood to the working muscles without letting it leave, a couple key things happen: One, you receive a crazy pump and your muscles become supersized. The concept is that this contributes to
by Dr. Alex Jimenez D.C.,C.C.S.T | Aug 7, 2017 | Chiropractic, Sports Injuries
Athletes face extreme pressure to return to play when they are hurt however, the true challenge for physicians is to get them back in the game safely. Athletes should be tough and maintain a positive attitude whilst regularly going through pain. When they’re made to sit out due to an accident, they should be focused and motivated to return to play as quickly as possible. They rehabilitate and rest as they trust that their bodies will ready after a full treatment plan.
This is the idealistic perspective of injury associated with athletes in their specific sport or physical activity. However, the reality is that accidents are an unavoidable by product of being an athlete and the transition from “active athlete” to “injured athlete” and back to “active athlete” does not always happen without complications.
Injured athletes fight with anxiety, frustration, anger and sometimes depression during their time away from play, which might also keep them from following th
by Dr. Alex Jimenez D.C.,C.C.S.T | Aug 7, 2017 | Chiropractic, Sports Injuries
Injury is a common occurrence in sport participation. Ask any athlete and they’ll tell you that one of the drawbacks they can experience in their specific physical activity is injury.
Being hurt can mean a number of things to an athlete out of the pain they experience. Firstly, injury can bring a stop to training (i.e., coaching) and may indicate that what they’ve devoted lots of their time and energy and can too be removed quite suddenly (Crossman, 1997). Sport participation is a part of the identity of an athlete and so sports are a tremendous portion of their lives. When that is removed, albeit for a short time period, this can have a possible psychological effect on how an athlete views themselves.
Additionally, injury can take away the positive reinforcements sport provides where athletes undergo a feeling of mastery, autonomy and sense of control (Deutsch, 1985). Injury might be thought of as a setback because sport is used by athletes as a means of mana
by Dr. Alex Jimenez D.C.,C.C.S.T | Aug 4, 2017 | Sports Injuries
Blood is responsible for the transportation of oxygen, nutrients, and other molecules crucial for life. Most bodybuilders may also tell you that blood is important for gaining muscle, blood flow to be more particular. A whole group of nutritional supplements has surfaced in the past ten years, concentrated on boosting anabolism and so increasing circulation.
However, what if I told you that the opposite could be true? If I told you that occluding blood flow to muscles could have an anabolic effect, what would you say? Blood flow restriction (BFR) training has years of research to support its effectiveness and in this article I will explain what it is and how to use it to augment your training.
What is Blood Flow Restriction Training?
Quite simply, BFR training includes restricting the venous return of blood circulation from the muscle. The objective isn’t to restrict blood circulation to the muscle, but rather prevent blood flow from returnin
by Dr. Alex Jimenez D.C.,C.C.S.T | Aug 4, 2017 | Sports Injuries
Blood flow restriction (BFR) training is a training strategy which involves the use of cuffs or pliers placed proximally around a limb, with the intent of maintaining arterial inflow while occluding lymph flow through exercise (According to Scott et al. 2015).
BFR, or blood flow restriction training, has been utilized throughout a range of exercise modes. These include cycling, walking and strength training. When doing resistance training with blood flow restriction therapy, tight cuffs or pliers are commonly utilized. Virtually, blood flow restriction training is most frequently employed when utilizing resistance training with low loads of around 20 to 30 percent of 1RM and with wraps that are wrapped at a perceived tightness of 7 out of 10.
