Emeryville Sports Physical Therapy

Emeryville Sport Physical Therapy
2322 Powell Street
Emerville, CA

510-653-5151

💪 Core exercises train the muscles in your pelvis, lower back, hips and abdomen to work in harmony. This leads to better balance and stability, whether on the playing field or in daily activities. In fact, most sports and other physical activities depend on stable core muscles.

Core strength is especially helpful in preventing injuries of the lower extremities – hips, legs and ankles – that can result from running, jumping or lateral/cutting movements in sports like soccer.

Why include these exercise in a core stabilization program?

- A bridge exercise isolates and strengthens your gluteus (butt) muscles — the gluteus maximus, medius and minimus — and hamstrings, which are the main muscles that make up the posterior chain.

- Stirring the pot is a great way to engage and strengthen your anterior core muscles, predominantly the abdominals. To a lesser extent, your lats, lower back, obliques and shoulders will also receive a work out and keeping your glutes tight adds strength here too.

- The dead bug exercise is a safe and effective way to strengthen and stabilize your core, spine, and back muscles. This improves your posture and helps relieve and prevent low back pain. You'll also improve balance and coordination. ✌🏽️

Emeryville Sport Physical Therapy
2322 Powell Street
Emerville, CA

510-653-5151

💪 Core exercises train the muscles in your pelvis, lower back, hips and abdomen to work in harmony. This leads to better balance and stability, whether on the playing field or in daily activities. In fact, most sports and other physical activities depend on stable core muscles.

Core strength is especially helpful in preventing injuries of the lower extremities – hips, legs and ankles – that can result from running, jumping or lateral/cutting movements in sports like soccer.

Why include these exercise in a core stabilization program?

- A bridge exercise isolates and strengthens your gluteus (butt) muscles — the gluteus maximus, medius and minimus — and hamstrings, which are the main muscles that make up the posterior chain.

- Stirring the pot is a great way to engage and strengthen your anterior core muscles, predominantly the abdominals. To a lesser extent, your lats, lower back, obliques and shoulders will also receive a work out and keeping your glutes tight adds strength here too.

- The dead bug exercise is a safe and effective way to strengthen and stabilize your core, spine, and back muscles. This improves your posture and helps relieve and prevent low back pain. You'll also improve balance and coordination. ✌🏽️

ESPT has been providing exceptional service to the Emeryville community for more than 15 years and has consistently prided itself on being a leader in functional movement therapy. We are here to serve you, the customer, and help you accomplish your goals – however ambitious. We will continuously educate our staff and collaborate with professionals nationally to ensure each of our clients is cared for in best way possible.

Emeryville Sport Physical Therapy
2322 Powell Street
Emerville, CA

510-653-5151

💪 Running requires a greater demand on the body that just walking requiring greater muscle strength, balance, and endurance. With increasing speed comes increased air time comes more need for single leg support and shock absorption, essentially, better biomechanics.

Developing good running technique encourages better motor patterning and muscle recruitment. This will help improve your running efficiency and reduce the risk of fatigue including overuse injuries – particularly with longer and more frequent running.

3 key components we watch for at ESPT:

1. Body position/posture including neutral spine and pelvis, reciprocal arm swing
2. Foot strike position - heel toe, good foot strong in relation to your center of mass
3. Cadence - should be constant regardless of speed which helps stride length, combat fatigue, allow for better biomechanics.

Every runner is different, and while there is no one ideal running form, performing a running gait analysis allows you to see abnormal movements that reduce the efficiency of your running like overstriding, excessive vertical body translation, and insufficient arm swing. ✌🏽️

Emeryville Sport Physical Therapy
2322 Powell Street
Emerville, CA

510-653-5151

Emeryville Sport Physical Therapy
2322 Powell Street
Emerville, CA

510-653-5151

💪🏽 Squatting targets the muscles in the legs, lower back, and core. It can help people strengthen their muscles and burn fat. However, performing a squat without learning the proper form can cause injury.

The specific benefits to the body include strengthens the muscles, in the legs, including the quadriceps, calves, and hamstrings, knees and low back.

Good form is important for maximum benefits and avoiding misplaced loads on ones and low back.

Roger is using different tactile cues to improve bilateral loading with the mobility stick, technique with wall glutei taps, as well as monster band rear resisted mini squats to improve hip hinge ability. 💪🏽

Emeryville Sport Physical Therapy
2322 Powell Street
Emerville, CA

510-653-5151

Emeryville Sport Physical Therapy
2322 Powell Street
Emerville, CA

510-653-5151

💪Core Stabilization Progressions

The core muscles have two main functions 1) to spare the spine from excessive load and 2) to transfer force from the lower body to the upper body and vice versa. Having a strong, stable core helps us to prevent injuries and allows us to perform at our best.
Injuries to the spine tend to come from a combination of bending forward, side to side or rotating excessively. Back injuries are not usually linked to one specific incident (lifting something heavy), but rather to a history or excessive load with bad mechanics. In order to protect the back, ideally we want to create 360 degrees of stiffness around the spine as we move, run, jump, throw, lift objects and transfer force throughout our body. We do this when all of the muscles in our hips, torso and shoulders work together.

Challenge your ability to activate and stabilize your deep trunk muscles with these core progressions.

💥Stir The Pot

💥Knee Up Ball Planks

💥Table Top T Band Pull Downs

Emeryville Sport Physical Therapy
2322 Powell Street
Emerville, CA

510-653-5151

💪 Core stability and spinal flexibility are important for spinal health whether performing a functional exercise or simply sitting for work. The hips, trunk muscles, and shoulders play a role in maintaining neutral posture and reducing load on the spinal segments which makes training these muscles is important.

Shown here, Roger is combining resisted hip external rotation, transverse abdominals activation, with bilateral external shoulder rotation to promote spinal extension which puts the shoulders and head back your center of gravity while promoting trunk and pelvic floor muscle development. Try this intervention, making sure to engage the trunk muscles fully, retract the shoulder blades, and breath normally. Hold for approximately 5 - 10 seconds and increase the holding time as you progress and maintaining this position becomes less challenging. ✌🏽️

Emeryville Sport Physical Therapy
2322 Powell Street
Emerville, CA

510-653-5151

💥 Studies show that taking a stretch break allows your mind to rest, recharge and refocus, which can directly improve your productivity for the rest of the day. Taking time out during the day – even if you choose to have multiple, short breaks – this gives your brain a chance to recuperate. 🏂⛹🏽‍♀️🏃🏽‍♀️🚴🏽‍♀️espt

Single limb stability is key for optimum performance. Sometimes referred to as the “golfer’s lift” works many different muscle groups and promotes balance, strength, and coordination. Thank you !

💪🏽The step-up is excellent for building strength in the quadricep muscle in the front of the thigh. Your quads get little use in level running or walking and so you may need to exercise them to keep them in balance if those are your main cardio activities. Step-ups also involve the posterior chain (glutes and hamstrings). Building the quads helps protect the knee and step-ups, when performed correctly, create minimal stress on the knee. This exercise is functional as people climb stairs frequently in daily life.

With the added high knee raise, this engages the contralateral glute and because you are pausing at the top of the range, you will get a single leg balance intervention as well.

Here , Connie Chan, PT is utilizing this step up variation to increase glute activity in the running form.

Early to late stage ACL rehab

💪🏽Many different factors influence the post-operative meniscal repair rehabilitation outcomes, including type and location of the meniscal tear and repair. Considerations for a more conservative approach to range of motion, weight bearing, and rehab progression with more complex tears, all-inside meniscal repairs, and meniscal transplants are taken into consideration.

Or Nativ, PT is working with his patient who is status post left ACLR and left ACLR with meniscus debridement. He is progressing well and moving into increased weighted exercise which includes a general hip warm up, single leg eccentric training, step ups, long arc quads and finally, static holds. These interventions are designed to promote weight bearing tolerance, motor control, and with the addition of KAATSU blood flow modification training, hypertrophy.