One of the most common sports injuries is an anterior cruciate ligament sprain or tear. It’s the one you often see impact top level (or wannabe top level!) footballers or basketballers. And it’s one that can be difficult to recover from, often requiring surgery and subsequent physiotherapy to ensure it heals correctly.

If you are suffering with an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury, sports massage should definitely be on your list of options to consider. Whether you’ve had a reconstruction but not received the subsequent rehabilitation post-surgery, or you’ve been cleared by your surgeon and physio but your ACL is giving you issues again after a period of time, sports massage is the perfect way to work on the affected area and improve your quality of life and ability to exercise.

In this tutorial, I’m talking about the anatomy of the knee and how sports massage can work to improve ACL outcomes.

The anatomy of the knee

While you might think the knee...

Wondering about the process we’ll follow if you sign up for the How to Overcome Lower Back Pain consultation and the online course? Here I’ll go through the process in detail and explain how it worked for one recent client, Beth (not her real name.)

An overview

1. Questionnaires are filled out so I can get an idea of what’s been going on.
2. Consultation over Zoom or similar to allow me to find out more.
3. Advice and recommendations to help overcome your lower back pain.
4. Online support for 2 weeks to answer any questions or clarify understanding.
5. Results and discussion about next steps if required.

Let’s take a look in more detail.

The initial questionnaires

Click through here, enter your email address and you’ll be sent an email with the initial and consultation questionnaires.  I’ll be in touch by email, within 24-hours, to book in your 45-minute online consultation.

The consultation questionnaire provides the information I need to know about...

If you’re looking to improve your core strength, you’ll find plenty of experts suggesting exercises you should try. You might be surprised, therefore, when after a little while you’re not getting the results you’re after.

In my Core Strength & Stability 12-week program I will support you through building the foundations of good movement and then developing the endurance and core skills you need before beginning to build up that speed, power and strength in your movements. It’s a much more effective and safer way to get to where you want to be and reduce your risk of injury.

Here I explore the 4 stages we’ll work through in order to effectively improve your core strength and why this really is the best way to approach things:

1. Fundamental movement and core skills

I often talk about eight fundamental movements:

• Lifting
• Carrying
• Pushing
• Pulling
• Walking
• Running
• Getting up
• Rotating

These are movements you do every day whether just going...

If you suffer with Lordosis and want to improve your posture, stretching and exercise are an essential part of any plan. But, how you stretch and exercise is important – that’s why I wanted to talk a bit about how to perform stretches and exercises for lordosis so you get the best possible results.

Here are some common mistakes I see clients making when they’re stretching or exercising to correct Lordosis:

Mistake 1 - Not using everyday activity to correct Lordosis.

Each day you have 24 hours. You sleep for 8 hours so that leaves 16 hours. And how many of those hours do you exercise? Maybe one? Well, that leaves 15 spare hours you can use to either undo the good work that you did in that hour or to really make a positive difference to your posture. Imagine if you did good quality exercise for one hour and then used those 15 hours more effectively, being mindful about the position your body is in, and really thinking about the way you move.  Your...

When it comes to exercises for lower back pain, there are plenty to choose from, but how do you know which ones are right for you?

Some exercises can help lower back pain and some can hinder it, it all depends on your situation, but arming yourself with information about how each exercise works anatomically is a great place to start in working out which will be most effective.

Why are some exercises better than others for low back pain

Different exercises will require your body to undertake distinct movements, each bringing different muscles into play and exerting force on your spine and other joints. This can be in the form of compression, over extension or ineffective working of the muscles. To get the most out of any exercise you perform, your goal should be to maximise muscular activity while reducing the risk of further injury.

In this tutorial we’ve chosen to compare the Bird Dog and the Back Extensions, two commonly selected exercises for lower back strength and...

The floppy push-up, or McKenzie press-up, as you might have heard it called, is an exercise that is often prescribed as a way to help overcome low back pain. There are good anatomical reasons why that is the case, however, there are also limitations that it’s important to understand before you decide whether this is the right approach for you.

 What is the McKenzie floppy push-up?

To perform a floppy push-up, first lay down on your front. With your hips touching the floor, gradually push up onto your hands, bringing your head and chest upwards away from the floor. You’ll notice you’re creating an exaggerated curve in the lower spine and it’s this that physiotherapist Robin McKenzie, advocate of this approach, claimed could have a positive impact on lower back pain.

And he was right, to a point.

To explain, we need to turn to anatomy.

The anatomy of a disc bulge

The floppy push-up is said to help reduce the pain caused by disc bulges and herniation, so...

As a beginner to the world of core training, it is vital that you go about things in the right way.

Exercises you choose should be simple to understand and to master, they should work on the fundamental aspects of core strength and stability, and they should offer a robust foundation from which you can build.

Of course, when we’re exercising, we want to push our bodies and try out more and more complex exercises. But I believe it’s so important to get these foundations right that I’ve chosen five key exercises and made them the cornerstone of my online core strength and stability programme.

I talk you through them below, but if you prefer a more visual approach, you’ll find plenty of images as well as more detailed explanations of the muscles you’re using in the video linked above.

5 of the best core exercises for beginners

1. The Plank

How?

Yes, the pros might pride themselves on being able to hold a plank rock steady, for a minute or even more, but...

 Core training isn’t just about achieving that flat, six-pack stomach or abs. It’s far more important than that!

Strong core muscles are vital to support your body and aid even the most common of everyday movements, from running and walking to sitting, bending and carrying the shopping. If your core muscles are weak it can lead to problems with the spine as well as other parts of the body such as the hips and shoulders.

But unfortunately, many of the things we’ve been taught are good to develop core strength can actually do more harm than good. And I’ve seen these problems affect people time and again.

What are the 3 fundamental errors people make when train their core?

It’s easy to make mistakes when training, but it’s important to learn what will and won’t benefit your body so that these errors can be kept to a minimum.

1. Doing sit-ups and crunches

Just because once upon a time we were told that sit-ups and crunches were the thing to...

We’ve talked about core stability plenty of times on the blog, discussing the anatomy surrounding it as well as various exercises that can help to improve our balance and coordination. I often talk about the fact that core stability, unlike core strength, is about muscle timing and smoothness of movement. It’s not how many repetitions of an exercise you can do, but the quality of the movement that is important.

The limitations of training for core stability

When we train for core stability, we are really looking at general principles. This is because core stability is specific to the aspect of sport and fitness we’re doing. Whether we’re running, cycling or swimming, a strong core can help us to balance, maintain the correct position and support the larger muscles to generate the power and consistency we need.

One exercise to help improve core stability

If I had to recommend just one exercise to help you work on these general principles of core stability,...

McGill’s ‘Big 3’

Thanks to years studying the spine, Dr McGill has identified three specific exercises that work together to effectively rehabilitate the back and build core stability. Known throughout the industry as ‘the Big 3’, these are some of the first exercises reached for by people and professionals alike when trying to overcome lower back pain.

In this tutorial, however, I want to explain why I think there’s more to it than that.

What do I know?

I’m not trying to be controversial, or to negate the work Dr McGill has done. I use it with people with lower back pain all the time, so I have a good understanding and appreciation of it. But we do have to understand the context in which we’re doing the exercises and make sure we don’t build them up to be something that they’re not.

I’ve read all four of Dr McGill’s books, I’ve completed his level one foundation course, his level two course on assessing...