'Getting Around'
Getting Around Your Strength With Rotation
Does your body ‘get around’? If it does it’s probably stronger. This magnificent organism we own allows us to move and function in very dynamic ways. But notice how many of your joints rotate. While you’re at it, think about what happens to someone when they get injured, get sick, or get old. You may observe that they stop rotating. We have a myriad of muscles that facilitate this rotation. These muscles provide stability and are supposed to be strong. When our back is injured the first thing we do is stiffen up. This does provide some protection from pain, but it also weakens and turns off muscles that give us stability and strength. Using golf as an example, the most efficient golf swing optimizes the rotational strength of the joints. Power in the golf swing is depleted when the body moves linearly instead of rotationally. This also applies to sports from baseball to swimming. The big problems come when we start to compensate ‘around’ our rotators and use muscle designed for straight movements to do rotational work.
So, if you have pain with rotation, be it at the neck or the ankle, you have a problem. If you do an activity that requires strength and power and you find yourself moving in a straight line, you probably are, at the least limiting your potential, and at the worst, setting yourself up for injury. If you find you have pain when you rotate now, the trouble has already begun and calls for action. Get around to getting fixed you may end up stiff as a board.
Does your body ‘get around’? If it does it’s probably stronger. This magnificent organism we own allows us to move and function in very dynamic ways. But notice how many of your joints rotate. While you’re at it, think about what happens to someone when they get injured, get sick, or get old. You may observe that they stop rotating. We have a myriad of muscles that facilitate this rotation. These muscles provide stability and are supposed to be strong. When our back is injured the first thing we do is stiffen up. This does provide some protection from pain, but it also weakens and turns off muscles that give us stability and strength. Using golf as an example, the most efficient golf swing optimizes the rotational strength of the joints. Power in the golf swing is depleted when the body moves linearly instead of rotationally. This also applies to sports from baseball to swimming. The big problems come when we start to compensate ‘around’ our rotators and use muscle designed for straight movements to do rotational work.
So, if you have pain with rotation, be it at the neck or the ankle, you have a problem. If you do an activity that requires strength and power and you find yourself moving in a straight line, you probably are, at the least limiting your potential, and at the worst, setting yourself up for injury. If you find you have pain when you rotate now, the trouble has already begun and calls for action. Get around to getting fixed you may end up stiff as a board.
