Injury Prevention

Mountain bike riding, hiking, kayaking, and fly-fishing can take a toll on your body and produce shoulder, low back, knee or neck pain.  Any repetitive movements eventually will creep up on you and cause some kind of pain, that’s why it’s so important to do self-care and prevention techniques.

Countering these repetitive movements with the opposite movement patterns is essential in preventing pain. An example would be if you do a lot of mountain bike riding, your hip flexors and quadriceps will be primarily used thus it’s important to perform exercises such as deadlifts which work your posterior chain muscles which include your glutes and hamstrings to balance your body.

Pain can stop us from participating in the activities that we love. We can ignore it for so long and push through it, but eventually when it becomes too much we have to confront it.

Here are some steps you can take for prevention:

• Myofascial Release Therapy is a great method to free up any restrictions within your body. Working with a MFR therapist can be a great way to maintain the freedom that your joints and muscles need to be in balance.

• Strength training is a great way to counter the repetitive movements in the sports you participate most in which will help prevent pain syndromes and also has a lot of carryover to these sports meaning it will help you perform better in them.

• Mobilization techniques are helpful in keeping your joints free of compression and restrictions which can then cause pain in other areas of the body. For instance an ankle or hip lacking mobility can cause knee pain.

• Sauna and Cold plunge speed up healing, relieve muscle soreness, reduce inflammation.