Shin guards used to only be worn by those on mountain bikes or by people playing soccer. Now, they are marketed to crossfit athletes and many powerlifters. Why is that? Because when you are doing box jumps you can have a missed rep and hit your shin on the wood or metal frame. The same is true for when you are using a barbell to do your heavy deadlifts.  A barbell can scrape against your lower leg and sometimes lead to bleeding. OUCH!  I find it interesting that people feel the need to use a sock, sleeve or guard for protection while working out in the gym. The shin guard doesn’t lead to more success in powerlifting and certainly doesn’t mean you will improve at Crossfit. How could someone learn to lift their feet high enough when jumping or realize that their barbell deadlifts are getting sloppy because they are fatigued if they are always protected from the pain of their mistakes?  I see pain as a teacher and I also view our failures as valuable and...

5 Reasons to start exercising after age 55

What are your dreams for aging gracefully? Do you believe that getting older has to hurt? Are you being told to slow down or take it easy by your primary care? Many of the clients I have worked with come to me when they start enjoying more time with Grandkids and want to be able to move and play with them. I don’t think pain should be an association with old age. In fact, I am a firm believer that age is just a number, and we are only as old as we act. Below are 5 reasons to start exercising in your later years.

1. Restore your central nervous system by focusing on your breath. As you age, your brain and nervous system go through natural changes. Your brain and spinal cord lose nerve cells and weight (atrophy). Nerve cells may begin to pass messages more slowly than in the past. Waste products can collect in the brain tissue as nerve cells break down. Breakdown of nerves can affect your senses. You might have reduced...

FOOT HEALTH 101: The Basics to Functional Footwear for Men & Women

Looks can be deceiving, why aesthetics are not the only reason to purchase a shoe.

The short-term comfort of foam and air is having a long-term effect on our health. Most shoes are made to look cool and trendy and demand you get another pair of sneakers to add to your collection. Big shoe companies make claims that their shoes can even enhance your performance by increasing efficiency and reducing injury when you run. They use fun color schemes and fancy sparkles and try to convince you that your foot can't perform well without it.  If these products really did help you run better then why didn't I take first place in my relay race I did a few years back? If your shoes can take away your heel pain then why are we still selling orthotics to people? They try to make you think that their technology in footwear is a necessity for your moving life. But I think the most incredible piece of technology to...

Four Reasons Movement is Crucial to Injury Recovery 

An injury can be the dark storm cloud of any day for anyone. They are painful, imply a long road to recovery, and are severely limiting. At Rooted MVMT, one of our core beliefs is continual movement. Anything from taking the stairs instead of the elevator, to extensive workouts multiple days a week are important to maintaining a healthy, injury prone body. Sometimes though, an injury strikes regardless of our healthy practices and we are left to deal with it. The quickest, safest, and most effective road to injury recovery involves movement. The old adage, “use it or lose it” explains the nature of our claim: if we fail to utilize our ability to move, it slowly fades away. So, when we are injured, when we are incapable of moving as freely as before, we must strengthen and keep our bodies active by moving.

Why is movement so crucial to injury recovery?

Think about how our muscles grow when we work out: we tear them...

How do Olympic Shooting and tactical athletes need to train? The physical, psychological, and emotional demands of these disciplines are high. Therefore, those who want to be successful at these sports and professions for a long time need to have a structured training plan in place to help facilitate the goals of enhanced performance with reduced injury risk. 

Where to Begin? 

All intelligently designed training plans should begin with a thorough assessment that takes the whole body into consideration looking for movement quality, impairments, and potential limiting factors that could lead to pain, injury, discomfort, and result in detriments is shooting performance.  Therefore, I begin all of my evaluations by working with the feet from the ground up. The feet are our only contact with the ground and are intimately connection to the hips, pelvis, and low back. They also communicate necessary, nutritious information and data to our brain that tells our body how to...

Movement is something that we often take for granted…until we can’t do it. The reason

why MOVEMENT is the foundational pillar of MVMNTTM is simple: To move is to be

alive. Every living thing on this earth must move, shift, advance, grow, develop or

evolve. But, before we dive deeper into why movement matters, and its purpose, I

I believe it is important to shed light on the very opposite of movement: stagnation. 

Think of a pond that has algae growing on it. The algae grow as a result of the water

ceasing to move or circulate. Thus, the cessation of moving water develops a growth

of bacteria on its surface that makes it less drinkable and less beneficial for the

wildlife around it. In this example, the stagnant water represents a human body that is

motionless and begins to develop tension and stiffness. In the absence of flowing

energy, we become more susceptible to disease and illness. When we are not

moving often and not circulating the blood,...

Written by Coach Paige

We believe that rehabilitation and training for performance are one in the same. They may fall on different ends of the spectrum of athleticism, but the process of progression is identical. It’s about understanding your weaknesses, learning how to move your body well, and building capacity and durability with progressive overload to handle whatever life throws at you. Whether you are a former athlete or a recreational one, whether you are currently going to the gym with the same old training routine from 10 years ago or perhaps that nagging knee pain after running sprints keeps coming back -technology has a way to help you. With telehealth and online personal training, the trainer and P.T. can come to you! Whether on your laptop, ipad or cell phone, virtual physical therapy and fitness coaching provides flexibility and expert knowledge at an affordable price.

Hi Friends! I am Coach Paige, the movement specialists and strength coach at Rooted in...

“Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones, but Words Will?...”

The next time you get under a heavy barbell, give yourself the following cues:

1. Don’t round your back, or your discs will explode.
2. Keep your knees from going over your toes, otherwise your kneecaps will slingshot forward and take out someone’s eye
3. If you feel anything sketchy, just push through it.

How confident did you feel just now? Are you ready to smash a new PR? Words are neurological events and what we hear is transformed by the brain into emotional, conceptual, and potentially even danger signals (3). Words are very powerful tools, and have the ability to bring healing or cause harm depending on what words are used, and how they are delivered.

As a coach, using the “right” words in the gym or on the field can activate both the pain-busting opioid networks (7). and the feel-good dopamine-driven reward systems in the brain, producing motivation, effort, and empowerment. Using...

As we learned in Power Athlete Episode - 251 with Adriaan Louw, working with athletes in pain is a tricky business, but one that has fast become an integral component of today’s training environment.  

As strength and conditioning coaches, physical therapists, or sport coaches,we will encounter men and women who are managing some sort of pain, and the effectiveness of this management factors into the successes and failures of our programs. Therefore, in order to help these individuals, we need to truly grasp the concept of pain and understand how it affects our athletes on both a physical and mental playing field. Is all pain the same?  What happens when pain persists? Such questions quickly lead us down a rabbit hole, attempting to seek complex answers from medical providers who may not have the slightest clue about the athletes we work with.

The aim of this article is to answer those questions, explain the difference between acute and chronic pain, and provide...

Did you know that the US healthcare system spends approximately two billion dollars a year on the management of pain due to sport-related injuries alone? Beyond just the physical discomfort, this pain creates a huge financial burden for athletes when it comes to things like rehabilitation costs and loss of salary.

• 50.9% of all NHL players missed at least one game within a season of play, and injuries represent a total salary cost of approximately $218 million yearly (3).
• Knee injuries alone cost the NBA $358 million dollars last year (9).
• The NFL spends around $35 million dollars annually in salaries to players who cannot play due to pain or injury (9).
• Medical costs for sports injuries and pain-related ER visits exceed $935 million each year (6,7).
• Training and sport related pain accounted for 20% of all ER visits for children ages 6-19 (6).
• The US spends $50 billion on the treatment of back pain each year. (NIH 2,4).

These statistics are staggering, but the fallout from...