Eclipse Wellness

Loaded mobility is crucial to improving flexibility‼️When I see clients who are in a ton of pain, we start with unloaded mobility. This helps decrease pain and guarding of the muscles. However, if your eventual goal is to improve your mobility, then you need to add some load. This allows the muscles to increase their movement as well as their strength to handle different positions. Simply adding a band is a great place to start with loaded mobility, so give this one a try!

🛑 Let’s cut the nonsense when it comes to exercise! If you are a casual runner training for a short race or just running for fun, IG is a terrible place. You will see incredible gatekeeping from health and fitness professionals. They will tell you not to run unless you spend 20 minutes “activating” your muscles and performing complicated exercises. The vast majority of people do not need these things if they are just running a couple of miles around the neighborhood. If you are a parent (like me) and/or someone who works long hours (guilty as charged) don’t worry about the 25 year old PT telling you to warm up with 10 simple exercises. The bigger problem I see is people not performing any sort of regular activity. The issue is not a lack of a proper warmup, it is people not being active enough. If you only have 30 minutes to run, then spend 5 minutes walking and gradually ramping up your pace. You should notice your breathing increase a bit while warming up, that means you are in a good spot. At the end of the day, it’s really boring for IG physical therapists to post something like this. The complicated mobility exercise that takes 5 minutes to set up is sexier, but it hurts people in the long term. If you want to run, you should start running. If something hurts, reach out and let’s figure it out. Otherwise enjoy the sunshine and get outside ☀️

Try this simple exercise for neck pain‼️ Our muscles in the back of our neck can often get tight from sitting for a long time. This exercise reverses that position to provide a gentle stretch and relaxation for the tight muscles. Try it for a couple of sets of 10 and see if you feel any better!

Don’t make this mistake with neck pain‼️ If your solution to neck pain is constantly stretching your neck then you may actually be making things worse. Often, I see clients with hypermobile necks who keep aggressively stretching to try and find relief. This actually makes things worse! Your neck pain may be coming from your upper back being stiff. If that area does not move well, it can cause your neck to move more to compensate. Stretching the already flexible neck can often exacerbate the pain. The exercise I show in this video is a great one to try if you have neck pain, but you should be evaluated by a good physical therapist to determine the root cause of your pain. Sometimes neck pain comes from your neck and other times it comes from your back. Find a PT who will do a thorough evaluation and give you a personalized, targeted treatment plan to help you feel better!

🗣️🗣️ Fix your lunges. Lunges are great exercises but many people struggle to actually perform them “correctly”. Each exercise will look different for each person, but there are some fundamental goals with lunges including working on mobility of the back hip. Most people struggle with hip extension and continually sliding forward in your lunges exacerbates that problem. Try to drop straight down when you lunge and you will feel some tightness in the front of your back hip. That should be the limiting factor with how deep you lunge. Good strength training exercises can help with mobility and this is a perfect example. There is nothing wrong with sliding your weight and front knee forward when you lunge, but I often see people who exclusively live in that movement pattern. They squat similarly, and their knee ends up taking all of the load. If you work on dropping straight down in conjunction with learning to load your hips and glutes you will improve your strength quickly. It’s also the quickest way to decrease knee pain with lunges in my experience! Share this with someone who is always complaining about knee pain with lunges‼️

We have been seeing some CrossFit athletes at Eclipse Wellness lately and wanted to highlight some basic injury prevention techniques. The two most commonly injured areas in CrossFit are the low back and the shoulder. This blog post highlights some simple assessments we perform for those areas to determine if an athlete has limitations. We believe in educating our clients as well as the general public to help prevent injuries. If you have any questions then please reach out. We want to help the Northern Virginia community learn and grow! Share this with anyone that would benefit from reading! Check it out here - https://www.eclipsewellnessnova.com/post/physical-therapy-for-crossfit-athletes-in-sterling-va

As a physical therapist, here is how I use massage guns ⬇️ It’s important to remember that massage guns are just another manual therapy tool. They are a good way to promote general relaxation and decrease muscle guarding. There is nothing wrong with using general relaxation tools like massage guns or cupping, but they are not the whole picture. Simply making the area feel better is not addressing the reason that it was tight or painful in the first place. All tools have a time and place and depend on personal preference. What do you think about massage guns?

Advice for new physical therapists‼️I see this rush in newer clinicians to establish themselves as soon as possible. There is tremendous pressure to open your own clinic and make a million dollars one year out of school. Otherwise you are a failure. At least that is what the IG ads will tell you. They will show you some bank account graphic of making a million dollars two years out of school or talk about buying your own freedom. The truth is that you probably didn’t go to PT school to stress about marketing or running a business. You went because you wanted to be a good PT and help people. Before worrying about investing thousands of dollars in a business course or paying for a mentor, ask yourself if you are actually a good PT. Would you trust yourself to help a loved one rehab? If the answer is no then you have to go back to the basics. The first step of being a PT is helping the person in front of you. Once you are able to do that confidently, then you should look around at other avenues to help more people (creating a business, etc.). The thing is, it takes years to reach that. At the end of the day, you will always have pressure to buy the latest course or try the newest technique. If you remember the principle of trying to do the best for your patients then you will do well. Also remember, it takes years to become a good PT and you really can’t rush that!

A set of bench press is not going to make you a better or worse pitcher‼️ First of all, one set of anything isn’t going to change much. I see some folks convinced that a set of bench press will cause baseball players to lose all mobility. Most young baseball players I see could benefit from building general strength, particularly in the off-season. Should you lift like a powerlifter? No. You also shouldn’t be afraid to lift heavy stuff and get strong. Overall, strength is a missed quality I often see in young baseball players. The pitcher who benches 200 pounds has more velo potential than the pitcher who benches 100 pounds if everything else is the same. They are also less likely to get injured while pitching because their body is acclimated to higher loads. Does this mean your off-season should just consist of bench press? Of course not. The ideal off-season involves an assessment to determine your individual needs and a plan to meet them. Coincidentally we utilize a thorough assessment process with our baseball athletes to help them determine if they lack mobility, strength, power, or all of the above. The worst thing you can do this off-season is not improve. The next worst thing is a generic program that doesn’t account for your individual abilities. The best thing you can do is take the time to have an individualized plan to dominate this off-season and hit the ground running in the spring. Reach out and let’s get you ready to roll 👊🏻 #novabaseball #loudouncounty #sterlingva #ashburnva

Hamstrings strains suck, but here is how to rehab them‼️You need to focus on eccentric loading. This refers to the muscle generating force as it lengthens. Most hamstrings injuries come while your muscle is extending. That does not mean that you need to stretch 👎🏼 Instead, you need to strengthen the muscle and build its resilience to controlled lengthening. Try this simple bridge and rollout with a ball to feel those hamstrings on 🔥 I usually introduce these to my clients midway through the rehab process. The first part of rehab is getting the injury to calm down, the second part is getting stronger, and the final component is getting back to your sport and activity. Questions? Send me a DM or let me know below ⬇️ #hamstringstrain #hamstringrehab #pulledhamstring

Get rid of low back pain with lunges‼️Most people think that a longer stance with lunges is better. That’s usually not true. When you take a longer stance, you require more hip mobility to prevent your low back from arching. Most people don’t have enough hip mobility to achieve this. Instead of locking your low back into extension, narrow your base to lessen the demand. It also helps to keep a neutral pelvic position throughout the movement. These simple tricks will decrease your back pain, improve your hip mobility, and increase the effectiveness of the lunge. Give it a shot‼️

Elevating your heels can get rid of hip pain 🤯 The 🔑 to understand is the position of your pelvis. Squatting requires your pelvis to move vertically, but we often get stuck moving horizontally. The weights help you keep your pelvis in a neutral position, which makes vertical movement much easier. Practice a couple of sets of squats with your heels elevated and your regular squat will feel better. You can also just try elevating your heels with all squats!

Try this simple test to evaluate your rotator cuff‼️The painful arc is a special test used by physical therapists to evaluate for rotator cuff issues. Special tests are simply diagnostic assessments that can help pinpoint the cause of your pain. Truthfully, individual special tests are 💩 but together they can be useful. They do not replace a thorough history, but they can be a valuable addition during an evaluation. Sometimes we don’t know exactly what causes your pain and that is ok. However, we can provide a theory or possible diagnosis in some cases, which can help guide your treatment plan. Just remember, a 30 second Instagram video is part of a comprehensive assessment. I take an hour to evaluate my clients and we often use the entire time to figure out what is actually going on. That allows us to make the best plan possible to deliver individualized care and results. So feel free to try this on yourself if you have shoulder pain, but don’t hesitate to reach out to a qualified physical therapist if you actually want to do something about your pain‼️ #shoulderpain #rotatorcufftear

Don’t neglect the basics as an athlete‼️Too often I see athletes skip step 1 that I describe above and go right to focusing on how to move in their sport. If you can’t move well then you are wasting your time and increasing injury risk. Take a step back and make a plan this off-season. Attack the basics and be ready to dominate by spring time! Reach out and schedule an assessment to get individualized exercises and strategies to designed for you to help you move and perform better‼️

There are no perfect solutions in medicine‼️You can go to 10 medical providers and they may give you 10 different solutions to your problem 🤯 This can be incredibly frustrating or it can be rewarding. The truth is that most injuries can get better in different ways. There is no perfect solution. Too often people jump from provider to provider looking for the holy grail. It’s not there. Physical therapy isn’t perfect for everything, injections aren’t perfect for everything, and surgery isn’t perfect for everything. Anyone who says otherwise is lying or too inexperienced to know the truth. So, what should you do? Find someone who aligns with your ideas and preferences and give that a shot. At Eclipse Wellness, we utilize passive techniques including manual therapy, but exercise and movement are always the goal. At the end of the day I don’t care if you feel good lying on a table, I care that you feel good living your life. If you find someone who aligns with your beliefs and helps challenge and educate you about your body, then you have found the right person. If not then keep looking. Just make sure you don’t run from the person who tells you injuries are complicated and they don’t have all of the answers. That person is actually looking out for you. #sterlingva #loudouncounty

Sometimes the simple solutions work‼️If your shoulder feels tight or stiff, stretching it can sometimes be the answer. Pendulums are often given to people after shoulder surgery, but they can feel good if you just have a little tightness or discomfort. Our shoulders often deal with compressive force from pressing, and some distraction can help them relax. This won’t “fix” your shoulder, but if it makes it feel good and you are able to exercise then that is a win. Try this and let me know how it felt! #shoulderpain #shoulderpainrelief #sterlingva

Shoulder pain reaching overhead⁉️Don’t forget the crucial role that your spine plays in overhead mobility. Your body rotates towards the arm being raised. If it can’t rotate then your overhead mobility becomes limited or painful. You can test this yourself if you rotate towards and away from your arm while you lift it. Your physical therapist should be looking at neck and spinal mobility when they are treating your shoulder pain. All movements are affected by the surrounding joints and a thorough evaluation should take everything into account. That is difficult in a 20 minute eval when your PT has multiple patients. Do yourself a favor and find someone who can actually get to the root of your problem and doesn’t just give you a printout of band exercises for shoulder pain. #shoulderpain #shoulderimpingement #shoulderpainrehab

Just because you are in pain doesn’t mean you have to slow down‼️The typical physical therapy response to someone with an injury is to slow them down. We often talk about “controlled movement” and “muscle activation” 🙃 I find that often leads to clients being hyper-focused on their pain and becoming more fearful of movement. Slowing down gives people too much time to think 🤔 Sometimes you just need to move quickly and see where your body takes you. If you are able to bend forward when slamming a ball then your body learns that it can stop being so tight and worried about pain 😬 The obvious caveat with this is to see a medical professional if you are dealing with pain. You need to rule out any serious issues before throwing medicine balls 🥼 Looking to finally get rid of that nagging back pain? Reach out and let’s make a plan 👍🏻 #sterlingfest #sterlingva #loudouncounty

If you have pain in layback it might be due to your scapula‼️The base of the shoulder is your scapula. Basically, the shoulder is a golf ball on a tee and the scapula is the tee ⛳️ If your scapula is unable to retract back behind you when throwing, you are putting more stress on the structures of your shoulder. This can also limit your velo because you aren’t taking advantage of all of your available movement to build power ⛽️ So if you have pain with throwing, try working on scapular mobility to put your shoulder in a better position to succeed 👍🏻 If you are a baseball player in Northern Virginia reach out for an assessment to make a plan to dominate your off-season! #nvtbl #loudouncounty #armcare

Side bends are a go to with my clients suffering from low back pain‼️As human beings we spend a lot of time going forwards and backwards. We don’t do a lot of side bending or rotation. If it hurts to bend forward your first thought might be to force your body to stretch forward. This can irritate things and cause more guarding in your body because it doesn’t want pain 👎🏼 Imagine you have something stuck in the ground and you are trying to get it out. You wouldn’t just move it back and forth one way would you 🤷🏻‍♂️ You would probably move back and forth, side to side, and any other direction you could think of. You would probably look for the directions with the least resistance and move it there 🤯 Our bodies can respond similarly. If it hurts to bend forward, we might not get as much pain bending sideways and our body won’t perceive that as a threat. Instead we can mobilize the tissues in our low back and pelvis to improve our tolerance to bending forward 👍🏻 So next time it hurts to bend forward take a second. Don’t just keep bending forward into pain and making the problem worse. Work around the pain and feel your back loosen up. Work smarter not harder! 🧠 #backpainrelief #lowbackpain #sterlingva #loudouncountyva