Apollo Performance Therapy

Running while pregnant or postpartum comes with a lot of questions.

Am I ready? Is this safe? What if I leak?

Miles with Minis is a 6-week program designed to answer all of that. Each week will start with a physio-led education session, followed by an optional group run.

Not running yet? Not a problem. Come for the knowledge and the company, run when you’re ready.

Topics will include pelvic health, proper warm up, strength training for running, plyometrics, and more!

When:
Thursdays at 4pm starting July 9

Where:
1410 Quadra Street at Apollo Performance Therapy

Cost:
By donation — all proceeds go to KidSport Victoria

Head to the link in our bio to save your spot.

I use variations of this drill a LOT.

Sitting down takes balance out of the equation so you can really just focus on what your pelvis is doing.

You can use a stick if you need, but the goal is to not need it.

The best part is this teaches you the same exact movement that your need to perform at your hips no matter what lower body movement you are doing.

Hip flexion is hip flexion, I’ll just have more knee bend if squatting, and less if hinging.

It really opens some eyes around how much movement you ACTUALLY have at your hips.

For many people….its not very much.

So when you are going further into a range than you have available at your hips, it makes sense that you are going to have to get more motions from other areas (usually your spine).

Using your spine isn’t bad in any way, but if your finding you have issues with your back always getting pissy with squatting and deadlifting, I’d try this out to see how much control over the range you actually have.

Only true beginners suck at pushing their hips back.

If you’ve been lifting for a while, you probably do it well enough.

So stop focusing on it.

Keep the weight over your feet the whole time, keep a long spine. Most things will sort themselves out.

By the way…this equally applies to a squat. Stop pushing your hips back so far.

Find balance over your whole foot, sit your balls/vag straight down to your heels.

That’s it.

If you focus only on what your hips/spine are doing, you will compromise the rest of the lift to do that one thing.

If you focus on staying over your feet, you will find YOUR best position to produce force.

Would suggest lowering weight more than you think the first time doing this, cuz you gonna be sorr in areas you ain’t used to.

“I lift weights.”

Yeah…paperweights.

Those pink DBs aren’t heavy enough to do any of the things you are trying to do with them.

Maintain/build muscle mass.

Maintain/increase bone density.

Maintain/increase independence as you age.

Decrease grunting when getting off the toilet.

Significantly reduce how often you need to say “no” to fun family/friend events because you are worried about your ability to keep up or how wrecked you are gonna be for days afterwards.

If my almost-1 year old can lift them with one hand…..they aren’t challenging enough for you, an adult.

If they are…you need to work on that. Sooner rather than later.

These cute little weights have their place for building tolerance or capacity in the presence of pain or injury.

But should be nowhere in sight when we are trying to do the things mentioned above.

If you are scared of heavier weights, find somebody to help you not be scared (we can do that).

If you think you don’t need to strength train, you’re wrong.

If you just don’t like doing it…..get over it. Again, you’re an adult.

The research for strength training as little as 2x/week when it comes to health, longevity, function, and injury risk reduction is irrefutable at this point.

You don’t have to be a powerlifter. You could just use machines if that’s what you fancy.

But you DO need to use a load that challenges your muscles enough to slow you down, even if you try to move fast.

Go get stronger.

This is why you feel that your injury didn’t “heal properly”:

Just because your pain is gone, doesn’t mean you are moving normally.

Your brain and nervous system remember every injury you have ever had.

The system is constantly trying to predict what might happen next, and how to best prepare you to handle it.

After injury, that means trying to find ways to avoid loading the injured area.

To get over this, we need to expose the area to a LOT of high quality input.

Good positions, good patterns, tolerable loading.

We need to overwhelm the system with information that forces it to believe that the area is fine. It can activate normally, it can hard things without worry.

This negativity bias is the same exact idea as how one bad piece of news will overshadow all the good things that happened that day.

We naturally focus on the negative because it’s a survival mechanism.

Just “easing back into it” and going back to doing what you were doing before your injury isn’t enough.

Give your system high quality information, consistently, for longer than you think.

That’s how you get back to performing how you want.

DONT KNOCK IT ‘TIL YOU TRY IT!

Happy baby rolling make your back/hips/groin go 🤤

But seriously…once you have the mobility, just use it in your training. It won’t go anywhere.

i’m at a point in my life where I need time efficient workouts.

I usually have anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes to complete a full workout, including a warm-up.

Because of this, I’ve been utilizing giant sets a lot lately.

I will choose a squat, a hinge, a push, a pull, and a core exercise and perform them as a circuit with rest between rounds.

Today’s goal was to choose exercises that let me hit somewhere between 6 to 10 reps.

The only downfall of giant sets is that they’re very hard to do at a public gym unless you are good at getting creative with equipment and space.

this workout included a warm-up, build up sprints until my hamstring was tired, and three rounds of this strength circuit, all in under 35 minutes.

This question from my stories last weekend deserves its own post. This is something I hear from almost every person that books a discovery call with us.

The typical pattern goes like this:

Receive treatment.

Symptoms improve for 12-48 hours (or only feels good while it is happening).

Symptoms come back.

Repeat cycle for weeks/months/years.

Here are a couple of the biggest things to keep in mind (but not even close to all the possible reasons).

1. Your plan has only included passive treatments so far.

IMS/acupuncture, massage, adjustments, laser, shockwave, etc all have their place.

But nothing works for everybody.

And if the passive treatments were going to work, they would have by now.

You NEED to include exercise.

Things that can improve your coordination. Your strength. Your overall health to create a better environment for your system.

Strength. Mobility. Power. Elasticity (springiness). Endurance. Coordination.

These are the qualities that you can improve through exercise (and we all have some of these that we can improve).

2. Your area of symptoms is not the problem area. It’s the victim.

I’m all for treating the area of symptoms, but I also want to make sure it is actually CAUSING the symptoms.

If your knee hurts, and you pass all of our clinical tests for the knee (range, strength, jumping, endurance, etc.). I am going to start looking else where.

Is there an ankle/foot issue that is causing the knee to do more work than it can handle?

Is the hip missing range that is causing the knee to take on more rotational torque than it likes?

If you hear hoofbeats, think horses not zebras.....but also make sure you look around to make sure they ARE horses.

Squeeze your shoulder blades together. Grip the floor with your feet. Push your knees out. Keep your chest up.

These are the most common things that you get coached on when learning to squat.

The problem? They are strategies that help you stay stiff and LIMIT motion.

Very useful if you are a powerlifter training heavy sets of 1-3 reps, and trying to just barely hit a specific depth.

NOT useful for us normies that are trying to stay healthy, be able to take part in our activities, and feel good doing it.

If you have different goals for the squat than a powerlifter, you may have to do it differently.

1. Instead of shoulder blades TOGETHER, just think DOWN. Together will shove your ribcage forward and limit your hip mobility more than you think. DOWN will turn on your lats and keep your entire low back with good tension to maintain position.

2. Grabbing the floor with your feet is the cause of that limited ankle mobility you keep complaining about. Your foot needs to spread on the floor for your ankle to bend. RELAX your foot and then use one of the most sensory portions of your body to tell you where you are over your feet.

3. If you focus on your spine, that becomes the goal of the movement. That means you will do weird stuff to maintain that position, instead of completing a squat. Just stay LONG. LEANING FORWARD IS OKAY. A long spine does not mean perfectly upright spine. You can have a long spine in a deadlift where you bend fully over too :).

4. If you don’t push your knees towards your toes, you’ll forever struggle with depth and comfort. It’s completely safe for your knees. Plus, the minor reduction in knee stress that happens with keeping your knees back isn’t worth it.

Most of the time....focusing on foot pressure is by the far the easiest way to make everything else happen.

Happy squatting!

Find positions you struggle with.

Learn how to create force there.

Shaky (like this) means that you aren’t used to that positon, or firing those muscles together in that way.

It doesn’t necessarily mean weak, or unstable. Just new.

New is good when you have been dealing with issues for a long period of time.

Embrace the suck.