-Neck Pain- “I hold my stress in my neck”

Tommy Conway, Director and Lead Physiotherapist at OneHEALTH

When the pressure starts to mount, Do you feel your stress levels starting to build? Does this build up come with pain? You know you have overdone it in work, staring at the computer too long and not doing your stretches. It can also have a set time to start, when deadlines need to be hit or when the kids are starting back in school. Your neck is always the first thing to give way. It starts with a mild headache maybe some tension in the jaw. This stiffness can last for a few weeks but then the pain starts travelling between the shoulder blades and up into the base of the skull. The muscle that runs from your neck to your shoulder feels like a “rock” and you get it hard to lift your head “It feels weak, tired”. Sometimes it can get really bad where you can’t look over your shoulder reversing the car, you lose a lot of neck range of motion....

A Bulging Disc - Why me? Why now? 

Tommy Conway, Director and Lead Physiotherapist at OneHEALTH

A bulging disc, slipped disc, ruptured disc and a disc herniation are all the same thing. They are called different names to help us grasp what has happened but they are essentially the same problem. This problem can happen at any level of the spine but most commonly it occurs in the lower back and neck. A bulging disc can present as sciatica symptoms with pain running down the leg but not always. Most can avoid getting to that stage but there are early signs such as: stiffness when bending down, difficult to get out of a low seated position, unable to put on socks without stiffness. You will also find yourself getting stiffness standing at the sink, brushing your teeth or walking for 30 mins or more. This is your body showing you signs that it is losing key movements. There is a direct correlation between losing the movements listed above and disc degeneration and further damage to...

You may have heard us say this term during class. (You may have heard us say some things that make no sense - these can slip out by accident - this isn’t one of them!). You may also hear us say ‘scoop’ the bellybutton into the spine.

We have four layers of abdominal muscles. When we draw (or scoop) the bellybutton into the spine, the two deepest layers are switched on, and form a strong muscular corset in the abdomen. Training in this way has been shown to be very effective in reducing lower back pain and strengthening the abdominal muscles.

Drawing the bellybutton into the spine is different to a ‘brace’. A brace involves a large muscular contraction of all the abdomen and spinal muscles, and makes it difficult to breathe.

With the ‘drawing’ technique, you should be able to maintain a steady inhale and exhale in time with the moves we are doing on the reformer at that time. 

So, next time we are doing the roll down, or arms in straps,...