Do you pull your shoulders back and down?
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While there is a time and place for all movements, back and down may be doing more harm than good!
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When your arms go overhead, the shoulder blades actually fan UP AND OUT.
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Back and down restricts the motion of the shoulder blades and impedes overhead motion (I’m 👀 at you, yoga world)
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I believe this cue us designed to reduce shrugging during overhead motion but that’s a whole other can of 🐛.
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Even if you aren’t trying to hold your shoulders back and down, this is a common habit, especially for people trying to have “good posture.”
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Let those babies go.
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Want to learn more? Would you benefit from more posts to help you achieve strong, pain free, overhead motion? Give me a 👋 in the comments or shoot me a DM 📥
Pain & Torture?
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Somewhere along the line, PT got the nickname “pain and torture.”
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And sure, sometimes physical therapy hurts, and sometimes it feels like torture.
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But if your rehab experience feels like pain and torture, you may be going to someone who subscribes to the “NO PAIN NO GAIN” mentality.
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I have been guilty of imparting some discomfort (sharpest elbows in NJ 💪) and there are totally times you have to push a bit.
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But really, the only kind of discomfort you should endure is the growing pains of working through weaknesses.
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Or maybe the process of working your way back after an injury feels like torture.
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No pain no gain may actually limit your progress, slow down the recovery, and at the very least just doesn’t feel good.
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Suffering through rehab isn’t the only way…
Two years into our partnership, Crossfit Veracity and Total Physical Therapy in Summit, New Jersey are here to help our community move better and feel better. Our mutual goal is for you to move better and feel better. You should be able to squat, lunge, jump, run, twist, lift, press, etc., but without having pain.
If there is pain Total Physical Therapy can help. We are here to assess movement dysfunction, correct the imbalances and teach you how to stay in alignment and in proper position so you can move in a pain-free way. If there is no pain with movement, Crossfit Veracity is here to get you stronger and keep you from being out of pain. Contact us for complimentary consultations to see if Total-PT is for you?
Two years into our partnership, Crossfit Veracity and Total Physical Therapy in Summit, New Jersey are here to help our community move better and feel better. Our mutual goal is for you to move better and feel better. You should be able to squat, lunge, jump, run, twist, lift, press, etc., but without having pain.
If there is pain Total Physical Therapy can help. We are here to assess movement dysfunction, correct the imbalances and teach you how to stay in alignment and in proper position so you can move in a pain-free way. If there is no pain with movement, Crossfit Veracity is here to get you stronger and keep you from being out of pain. Contact us for complimentary consultations to see if Total-PT is for you?
I have been dealing with sciatic nerve pain that was traveling all the way down my left leg. My daughter recommended seeing Dimitry for a consultation. The consultation was very thorough. He let me explain everything that was going on and then devised a plan of action and said, “I can fix you!”
Within 3 days of performing Dimitry’s exercises, I could feel a difference. And now, not quite a week later, there has been a vast improvement in my condition. There is no way I can say enough positive things about Dimitry. This man has a healing gift. I cannot recommend him highly enough. He deserves more than 5 stars. THANK YOU, DIMITRY!!
Some people say that I am ‘over the top & energetic’ when I treat. 🤙
Some people say that I am ‘really animated’ when I treat. 🤙
Some say that I’m ‘really into it’ when I work with patients. 🤙
Sometimes I can’t help myself & try to teach & explain everything that I’m doing with each client so they understand WHY I’m doing the intervention that I chose to do with them. 🤓
The fact of the matter is that ALL of the above is absolutely true! I f#%@ing LOVE ❤️ what I do every single day! 🙌 To be able to step into a room or on a gym floor and be able to have someone move better &/or pain-free for the first time in a long time is absolutely contagious! 💥
What’s even better is that I TEACH our patients how to do it with very minimal contact from me! 😲 That is the goal since I want my patients to leave feeling great & know that they were the ones that created that change! 💪 It fires me up 🔥 every time I do it . . .even 28 years later, every day is my 1st day‼️
So go check out Total Physical Therapy in Summit, New Jersey. Go check out Total Physical Therapy in Bernardsville, New Jersey. Go check out Total Physical Therapy in Bridgewater, New Jersey. You’ll be glad you did! #movehealchange
Our patients always say it best‼️ They’re the ones going through the change. They’re the ones that are learning how to change how they move so they can always move better and really understand what to do when things go south. Life is tricky. You need to be resilient because you’re not always going to move well. Total Physical Therapy is here to give you that resilience. The ability to overcome and to bounce back without ‘having an episode,’ or ‘blowing your back out again.’
We have offices in Bernardsville, Summit and Bridgewater and every session is only with one therapist. We spend up to 90 minutes assessing and diagnosing the root cause of every complaint. We then educate and treat the pateint and make sure that they know how to get better and stay better.
Are you ready for a change? #movehealchange
Far and away the best PT experience I’ve had over twelve years of knee injuries and operations.
First, Dimitry’s title should be upgraded from “Doctor” to “Wizard” of PT. His ability to identify and address the biomechanical root cause of an issue is incredible and at times feels closer to witchcraft than medicine.
Second, his business/treatment model is far more effective, sustainable and ethical than traditional Physical Therapy. Every session is one-on-one and focused on correcting problems specific to each patient’s body, yielding better and faster results.
Rather than simply supervising, Dimitry educates his patients so they are able to essentially treat themselves independently, meaning fewer sessions and lower overall cost.
What does a physical therapist do?
My practice looks very different from other PTs so I can’t really answer that for everyone.
But I can tell you what I do.
I troubleshoot movement and teach people to use strength to get out of pain, return post-op/postpartum, and optimize performance.
In other words, I assess what your body can and can’t do and help you retrain it to have more strength in more positions.
I typically do this through fundamental movements—breath, core, hip hinges, squats, push, and pull, but occasionally apply some fancy tricks I’ve picked up along the way which aren’t really fancy, they’re just more basics, done well.
I specialize in the fundamentals of movement and I teach people how to use them for their own benefit. #movehealchange
Chest out & Shoulder Back! Some of our clients tell us that this is what they were told as a strategy for good standing posture. The main problem is that they were told this 30-40 years ago. Yet I still have clients come in & stand exactly like that day in and day out🙄
Chances are there are better cues for good standing posture in 2019 – better than this guy! Note how most of his body is in front of the plum line. That means that he has a forward weight shift. That places excessive strain/load through the toes, meaning that his toe flexors, calves, quads and back muscles are going to have to work much harder to keep him upright.
This creates an excessive lumbar curve and that has many implications, the biggest of which is down-regulating abdominal tension, increased compression of the lumbar spine, increased tone of the back muscles & restricted ability to breathe (specifically exhalation!) That creates a necessity to flare the anterior rib-cage which leads to apical breathing patterns and excessive engagement of neck muscles – cue neck pain 😭!
Ideally the plum line should split this guy in 1/2 (front to back.) Then his center of mass is exactly that – centered. That means his abs and glutei are on & his calves/quads & back muscles are not overloaded when standing. Ribs are down allowing him to exhale better 💨 – which allow him to inhale better into the posterior thorax! 💥 Easier said than done.
But we do that here at Total-PT! Better yet, we find out the reasons for why people default to standing this way & give them really great software upgrades. So it’s very 2019! #movehealchange