What really causes muscle cramps? Muscle cramps have long been attributed to electrolyte depletion and dehydration, especially when they occur in athletes. However, research does not support these theories, and instead points to altered neuromuscular control and muscle fatigue as the culprits. In this post, I'll summarize the research and explain why muscle cramps [...]
Why Stretching Doesn't Relieve Iliotibial Band Syndrome Iliotibial band syndrome is a painful inflammatory condition of the knee joint that often plagues runners, hikers, and cyclists. Stretching is typically recommended to lengthen the iliotibial band and relieve the condition, but as you'll learn in this post, static stretching has little to no lasting effect [...]
What's Causing Your Snapping Hip Syndrome? Up to 10% of us experience snapping hip syndrome at some point in our lives. The condition is most often caused by connective tissue snapping over bone as we flex and extend the hip joint. For some people, snapping hip is painless and simply annoying, but for others [...]
7 Reasons Why Every Athlete Should Do Clinical Somatics If you haven't heard of Clinical Somatics before, you've been missing out. These incredibly effective exercises retrain deeply learned, automatic muscular patterns and undo years of chronic muscle tightness and pain. The benefits of the exercises are so life-changing that every athlete needs to be [...]
Why Stretching Doesn't Work From the ages of twelve to twenty-one, I was a ballet dancer. It was all I did and all I wanted to do. Being extremely disciplined, I stretched for half an hour every night before bed so I could get more flexible. And it worked—I got pretty darn flexible. Even on [...]
Combining Your Clinical Somatics and Yoga Practices One of the questions that students ask me most often is whether or not they should continue their yoga practice while doing Clinical Somatics exercises, and if so, how to go about combining the two practices. I love yoga, and I practice it regularly. Everything I've learned and [...]
How to get optimal strength, stability, and flexibility in your coreWhat does core strength really mean, and why is it so important?The most common misconception about core strength is that it means simply having strong abdominals—like the enviable washboard stomach achieved by developing your rectus abdominis muscle.In truth, optimal core strength means having balanced flexibility, [...]
