Tuesday May 28, 2024

122. You Can't Stretch Your Problems Away

“Where did this concept come from, that in order to fix our pain, we just need to stretch more?” asks host Dr. Andrew Fix on this episode of The Code, after assessing a number of runners ahead of a major racing day in Colorado. Many athletes who experience joint pain mistakenly think that their problem is a lack of range of motion or tissue mobility—when actually, when they are assessed, they have quite a wide range of mobility, even on the joint experiencing pain. More often than not, Dr. Fix argues, the issue is a lack of strength and control in that joint.

He breaks down the mechanics of movement when playing sports—particularly long distance running—and what leads to the pain we experience even when we stretch, or apply external applications like tape and braces. He explains why increasing our movement habits is important but ultimately won’t home in on the pain, and what you actually need to do to get to the root of the problem.

Humans have evolved to be active on our feet. After this episode, you’ll understand better how to keep moving forward free from pain.

Quotes

• “Let’s not just tape your knee, because what we know is, KT tape or rock tape any one of these external things—a knee brace for example—they don’t fix the problem. They can temporarily change symptoms and give you some sensory input.” (2:18 | Dr. Andrew Fix)

• “In almost every single one of them, on the same side that they had knee pain, we saw either a lack of control or strength in their hip. We had them balance on one foot, it’s really hard. We tested their hip motion, I think a few of them actually had more motion on their “affected” side, the side where they had knee pain. But when we tested their strength, boy, was it lacking. Boy, was it less on the side that they had the knee pain.” (7:08 | Dr. Andrew Fix)

• “It does not take a lot of ‘mobility’ or I should say ‘range of motion’ to go through and do these activities. We have to demonstrate great control and great stability in these small ranges of motion, especially in an activity like running because there’s impact involved.” (9:21 | Dr. Andrew Fix)

• “If you’re lacking mobility and you’re starting to have symptoms, stretching might be appropriate for you, but you have to do some sort of assessment, some sort of a screening process and look at things and figure out what the actual deficits at play here, the limitations in my body or my training that could be responsible for these symptoms.” (11:50 | Dr. Andrew Fix)

Links

https://andrew7ng.podbean.com/e/93-mobility-vs-stiffness-striking-the-perfect-balance/

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