The Fix Program

Happy New Year!

Every year has its ups and downs. Each experience shapes who we are today and who we will be in the future.

The Fix Program family wish each of you a happy and healthy 2023! Onwards and upwards everyone, no regrets!

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👂Listen to the way you move.

👀Watch when you can in a mirror when exercising.

❓How do you move? Does your posture show symmetry? What happens when you start to fatigue? What little changes can you make to stay balanced in your alignments and muscles used?

❓What line of movement do your limbs take when you move them? Are these the same left and right? Is your movement smooth, coordinated and equal on each side of your body?

❓What is your breath like? Do you feel your ribs expanding with each inhale effort? Do you breathe with shallow tight breaths, using more of your neck and chest than your mighty diaphragm?

✅Slow down and spend time moving with heightened awareness. Your body will love you for it!

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Joy and blessings, from The Fix Program family to yours. May this holiday season and every day be merry and bright. Look after yourselves peeps! We have been on one hell of a ride these past years! 💓

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I do 💓 Sydney at this time of year!

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✅Yes!

All great physiotherapists will look at the way you move ( and think) holistically. After all, aren't the body and the mind all a part of something so intricately interconnected? And injury, or pain, or altered movement can only truly be explained by reference to the whole?

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✅Says it all..really!

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💓 Did you know that your brain and nervous system swim around in a soup of neurotransmitters and hormones. This soup is forever changing...and the best bit? You can help to make these changes.

Dopamine, somatostatin, gonadotropin, corticotropin, oxytocin, vasopressin, thyroxine, growth hormone, melatonin, adrenocorticotropin, prolactin......to name a few!

The hormones you want in abundance are the ones that make you happy! They also keep your brain from atrophy (becoming smaller), losing your memory, or decreased cognitive processing and ability.

So, build up your levels of
💓 serotonin
💓 oxytocin
💓 dopamine
💓 endorphins!

Feed you brain by doing things that make you happy. Exercise. Sunshine. Family time. Laughs with friends. A great book or movie. Deep breathing and meditation.

💓 Make a positive change to your brain soup.

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👊Finding it hard to beat your back pain? Enjoy these FREE classes to start your journey. Pilates online, with physio expertise and instruction. Slow and mindful, for all levels of ability and exercise levels.

👊Improve your body awareness, posture and strength. Move with focus. Unwind habits and postures that feed back into your back pain.

👊 Unlock your free 'beat back pain' workout immediately from our linktree link in our bio.

https://linktr.ee/thefixprogram

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The Fix Program The Fix Program is physiotherapy and Pilates in Sydney, Australia and now online. Posture. Movement. Pilates. Therapy. Back pain. Pregnancy. Post natal. Visit www.fixprogram.com and www.online.fixprogram.com

Oestrogen, the female hormone, plays a huge role in the body of every woman. It's levels change with the monthly menstrual cycle, decrease during peri-menopause and beyond, and can be manipulated thorough a woman's life with the oral contraceptive pill and HRT. We also know that it is clearly beneficial for muscle mass and strength in the training athlete and exerciser. Here are some cool facts to ponder, especially if you are trying to build muscle strength and are in the menopausal period of life.

💋Muscle mass, and therefore strength, is largely dependent on the balance between the synthesis and degradation of muscle protein when stimulated through exercise or load.

💋 Higher rates of muscle protein synthesis and breakdown have been observed in these women when compared to age matched men and pre-menopausal women (Smith et al., 2014). There appears to be an imbalance between the protein build-up and breakdown, leading to a shift to the latter and a rapid decrease in muscle mass and strength.

💋 When oestrogen levels were raised to that of pre-menopausal women using estrogen replacement therapy (ERT), the response to the muscle protein synthesis and overall muscle mass was normalized (Hansen et al., 2012).

💋ERT or HRT is therefore beneficial for peri- and postmenopausal muscle mass and function. Combined with exercise, improvements in muscle mass and function have been shown to be more beneficial than HRT ( or exercise) alone.(Beydoun et al., 2012)

Training smarter and chatting with your GP about the right oestrogen replacement for you, will get you feeling stronger, less vulnerable to injury or frailty, and achieving those goals!

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👍 The shoulder blades are a big part of your healthy functioning shoulder.

When your arms move, the blades should move in a particular way also. This is called scapulo-humeral rhythm (where scapular refers to the shoulder blade and humerus the arm bone). Initially, when you move the arm or shoulder joint, there is not much movement at the scapula. However, after this, there is a ratio of 1:2 with the shoulder moving 2 degrees for every 1 degree of the scapula. This allows for an efficient and good alignment shoulder joint throughout all movements of your arm.

When we hear of, or even suffer from shoulder rotator cuff tears, tendonitis, bursitis and impingement injuries of the shoulder, these structures are becoming injured from a breakdown of this rhythm.

If you have been placing your shoulders blades 'back and down' your back because a trainer told you to do so, you are not observing this very crucial relationship. You're effectively locking the scapulae down, preventing the 1:2 ratio of its intended movement and risking shoulder joint injury.

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awareness

💪There are many great reasons why slow movements are used in muscle strengthening.

💪Training slow brings your muscles to exhaustion by keeping them loaded throughout the movement. This is called 'time under tension' (TUT).

💪Using a slow weighted movement to fatigue produces greater increases in rates of muscle protein synthesis than the same movement performed rapidly.

💪Lifting with a slower tempo, when controlled for the same relative load, increases the total energy required and improves your metabolic function.

💪Slow movements reduce your injury risk, requiring better awareness of technique and movement patterns. Making any needed changes here are more possible than when moving explosively or quickly.

💪Slow movements in each direction ask much more of your smaller supporting and postural muscles. These important stabilisers to all of our movements can really benefit with gains in strength and endurance with slower movements.

💪 Slower, controlled movements are often used to stimulate muscle hypertrophy or growth, while faster, uncontrolled movements are typically employed to develop strength and muscle power.

So, learn to move a little slower within parts of your gym, Pilates or boot camp classes and routines.

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😍Clinic hours. Come and visit me in the Sydney CBD's gorgeous Dymocks Building with all its heritage old world charms. Marble floors, timber features, stained glass. I am available for physio consultations and face to face clinical Pilates groups with only 3 per class! Now that's individualised!

Mondays 9am - 6pm
Tuesdays 9am - 7.30pm
Wednesdays 9am - 7.30pm

☝️Book online with our linktree page in bio.

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😍I love this word when it comes to exercise, posture and movement awareness.

Until you really understand WHY you are doing an exercise, the link to the everyday and the way you move is lost. Yes, you are doing your exercises to get stronger or more flexible, but what about all the other hours of the day and week and your postures and movements here? Why was it in the first place that you started to develop your ni**les? How you were moving? Your posture?

I cannot get enough of using what I call 'FLOs', or 'functional link opportunities!' There are hundreds I use. One of my favourites is for those with knee or patello-femoral pain. When we are practicing small range squats with focused 'knee tracking' and 'hip sinking with control' for rehab, I will ask, "so how do you track your knee when you sit on to the loo, or get off the loo, or the sofa, or when you walk up and down stairs? Do you think you could start to think of all these movement cues for your knee with your everyday function?"

💪Practical application. It goes a long long way!

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⭐So so true!

As a physio, I teach people how to move better, through touch, awareness cues, tricks (yes! tricking the body) and repeated movement. Often, an entire consultation with me will be all about movement (and nothing else).
Together, my clients and I start with a problematic, painful or difficult movement or task. We break it down. Then....practice practice practice, with lots of feedback and touch.

💡I find these 'movement' or 'active' consultations the most rewarding! I can see those light globe moments in clients! And what a fantastic way to learn, to make long term changes to a body to prevent re-injury and to get the most out of it.

🙈How could a handout sheet of exercises that you never did together actually make any difference?

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👉 Did you know that bladder leakage, no mater how light, is NOT normal? Pregnancy, the post natal period and menopause are the times women may experience leaking and other issues 'down there.' But even the fittest of athletes who have had no children still leak. Why?

👉 More than 1 in 3 women suffer from incontinence. 1 in 10 men also suffer.

👉 Over 70% of those with urinary incontinence in Australia do NOT seek help.

👉 Leaking is NOT a natural part of childbirth or being a woman!

👉 Bladder (or bowel) control issues do NOT get better on their own.

👉 Incontinence CAN be treated, managed and in most part cured with the help of a pelvic floor physiotherapist. Find yourself one!

👉 Pelvic floor weakness is not the only reason for poor bladder control. There may be other factors or causes going on, including mild to severe pelvic organ prolapse, urethral hypermobility, pelvic nerve irritation, bladder wall irritations, or poor coordination and incorrect methods of holding the muscles about the hips and pelvis.

👉Even the fittest of women, or women who have even not had a baby can still suffer from a leaky bladder.

👉 There are men's health pelvic floor physios out there to help men also!

DON'T PUT UP WITH A LEAKY BLADDER!

💪 An awesome day. Shall never forget this one.

My maiden marathon with a sunny and sparkling Sydney, friends on course when you need them, and a result I'm super proud of. Consistent pace and to plan.

Thanks to everyone who helped me get here....you all know who you are! ❤️

Ok.....what's next?! 😉

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💪Go you mighty Swans. Show those Magpies who's boss.

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☀️Good luck to everyone taking on the challenge at this year's Sydney Running Festival on Sunday. No matter the distance, have an absolute ball. The training is done, the weather looks perfect and our gorgeous Sydney will really turn it on. We've waited 2 full years for this one after the cancelled events of 2020 and 2021.

☀️Bring it on!

☀️See you out there on the course! I am obviously pumped!

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'Shin splints’ pain is a common cry from many a runner, from your novice to your elite. It is not so much a diagnosis, but rather a general term or the region of the pain. What really is going on when you have shin pain as a runner?

👉Muscles. Due to imbalance caused by weakness and tightness of the lower leg, muscles behind the shin bone or tibia can become inflamed and cause bony bruising from constant tugging at the muscles attachment. Poor biomechanics ( from the pelvis, hip, lower leg or foot), or too much load too soon are the culprits here.

👉Bone. The tibia itself can become overloaded when training and load exceed rest and recovery. Bone stress and even microscopic fractures can develop if rest is not heeded here. This is not one you can train through! Bone pain at night and at rest and pin point tenderness on the tibia may warrant a scan to determine the extent of bone stress and the period of time to rest from the running!

👉 Nerves and blood vessels. Nerve compression, or blood vessel engorgement of the lower leg can also cause shin pain. These are less common, but should be investigated if the typical signs of the other causes above don't seem to weigh up.

Get assessed by a running physio. it may not be as bad as you think and a cross training, targeted programs for tissue loading can keep you busy as you gradually return to the beloved track, road or trail. For you running addicts, it may not be perfect, but, taking this approach will decrease your risks of re-injury better than only allowing the time to heal.

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❤️Go and find a hug!

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Did you know, that according to Sports Medicine Australia* (SMA), up to 70% of all runners sustain some kind of running 'ni**le' over any 12 month period of time? Not surprisingly, most occur in the lower body.

42% are to the knee
17% to the foot and ankle
13% to the lower leg, such as the calf and shin
11% to the hip and pelvis.

Typically, these injuries occur due to training errors, such as increasing the load, the frequency, or the speed too quickly. In addition, an inappropriate or lack of any cross training for strength and conditioning means our bodies start to break down.

This does not mean you have to give it away! Quite the contrary. Let your physio be your 'body coach' and ask them to

💪 assess the whole you. Injuries and overuse in the knee and lower leg can often stem from the trunk, the pelvis or the hip.

💪 establish a graduated training program as soon as possible. This can happen even in the first weeks of an injury. This may initially involve cross training, cycling or swimming, with a gradual re-introduction of walk/run intervals after healing is well underway (think 4 weeks).

💪ensure appropriate soft tissue loading and strength adaptation. How can we make your tissues stronger and better equipped to deal with your running loads? After all, why did you injure in the first place?

💪create fun, running specific dynamic loading and plyometric work. This, added to any necessary proximal hip strengthening will get you back and with decreased risk of re-occurence.

✅Keeping posture simple.

Here I sit, with my plates sitting stacked over my bowl.

My ribs float gently from each other and my bowl rests as level as I can while I sit. I could be sitting at my desk at work, the dinner table for my meal, the bar stool at the pub, or on the bench at the gym to do my upper body weights.

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awareness

✅Keeping posture simple.

Our neck postures, due to the pull forward effect of gravity on our skulls, are often poor, contributing to neck tension, neck joint irritations and even cervical headaches. The neck vertebrae become sheered forward and the neck overall shortens to the back to your skull. This is very compressive on all structure and tissues in our neck.

✅ Imagine your skull to be a red balloon full of helium. It floats skyward, allowing your neck to gently float taller from the back, all the way to the base of your skull. This new neck position will stack your neck spinal levels on top of each and help reduce neck- associated pain and tension. Try it even when looking down to your phones or keyboard.

Try it right now. Feel the difference?

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awareness

👉 Exercise progression allows for our bodies to move gradually forward towards a more advanced state. This allows for a magical thing called 'tissue adaptation.' Tissue adaptation is the buzz word for stronger structures and strength- think muscles, tendons, bone - that respond to training by changing physiologically, ultimately allowing you to do more.

👉 If we are not progressive with our exercise frequency, intensity, time and type, we can overload our tissues and body structures, causing injury and imbalance.

👉 Lack of exercise progression, and coming at exercise way too fast can create a 'boom and bust' pattern. This is seen in the exerciser that starts, goes hard and then stops completely due to fatigue, or injury. Not only a physical bummer, but an emotional and frustrating one too.

👉 Pace it, don't race it! Practice progressive. It is actually harder than you think, so don't give up.

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✅Getting more out of mindful exercise!

Make this simple correction to strengthen your glutes while in a great posture ( yes, getting the core to work too!).

✅If you exercise in a bridge, take time to make sure your ankles or heels are directly below your knees. Drive through your heels mindfully to get your glutes in the picture ( and not your hamstrings as much).

✅Also, to improve spinal neutral postures from head to toe, think of keeping your ribs 'low' (gently, not allowing them to pop upward) and hips 'high.' This will stop the gripping over arched back, making your spine more comfortable and encouraging the use of your deep abdominal corset.

Happy days! Better strength outcomes, for minimal effort.

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✅Keeping posture simple.

When it comes to good shoulder function and upper back posture, it all comes down to the work across your upper back and shoulder blade support muscles. We call this 'scapular stability.'

✅Imagine your shoulder blades sitting on your upper back. We want to feel that they are gently widened and sitting flat upon your back ( no winging). You could imagine them sitting into their little 'pockets' like you would picture your bum pockets on your jeans. Like the image, the pockets sit slightly splayed away from each other, just as your shoulder blades should sit.

You will feel a little work across the upper back. And notice that your chest at the front is gently widened.

❎We do NOT want to squeeze the shoulder blades 'back and down' - this creates a dropped shoulder posture, inefficient and non-ideal shoulder movement, pulling on the neck and an over worked or over active "back gripping" posture strategy. Not good end results at all.

awareness

😕Do you feel like this when it comes to problems?

Trying to get into that exercise routine again? Feeling tired and sore? Feeling overwhelmed with looking after your baby? Your family? Your home? Your work?

Don't be afraid to ask for that little bit of help. You do not need to manage it all on your own. Swallow your pride and call for assistance!


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👊We humans have an inner drive. It is in our DNA, or our biology to grow and learn. What are you busy learning and bettering in your life at the moment?

✅Getting more out of mindful exercise!

Make this simple correction to strengthen your posture and core.

✅If you exercise in side lying, take your top hip and gently lengthen it from your ribs. Feel your top waist lengthen and your lower waist lift a little from the floor. Imagine a blue berry under this lower waist and throughout your exercise set, try not to squash it!

The result? A better aligned and straight spine and increased work for your core. Perfect for all those clams, glute lifts and sideplank based exercises.

💪 This is me at the moment - embracing and trusting my running training plan. With only 5 weeks until I run my inaugural marathon, I am holding onto that plan with all my might.

Some days I have doubts that I am not doing enough. But that is normal I am told. Trust the training you are devoted to.

Some days I don't feel like training. That is normal too as fatigue and life sweeps over me. Yet I embrace it all, for I am doing all the hard work now. I will enjoy and smile my way throughout the actual day. Sydney Marathon, you are my reward!

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