Brando's Blog

Helping an Olympic Hopeful

You may have seen on a previous post that I met Jade Johnson in San Diego at The CHEK Conference. 

Jade has been Britain's top female long jumper for the best part of the last decade. As a fan of athletics and a former school-boy longer jumper myself, I have been following Jade's career since she first burst on the seen. 

So I was extremely pleased for Jade to ask me to help her out with her energy levels to enable her to train better in the lead up to the Olympics next year.

Jade is an extremely talented athlete who won Silver Medals at The Eurpean and Commonwealth Championships in 2002 and I think she's going to surprise a few people next year. 

I'll keep you posted on her progress.

To Stretch or Not to Stretch? Part 2

In the first part of this blog-post, I discussed how important a pre-workout stretching and mobilization routine is in the base conditioning phases of training.

However, As the training becomes more intensive and moves into maximal strength, power or speed training, then this type of pre-stretching can be detrimental. If a muscle is stretched beyond its normal range or for too long, the nerve impulses that supply the muscles can be down-regulated. This means the muscles will produce less force.

Prior to maximal strength, rapid movements and competition, pre-event stretches and warm-ups should be performed. The reason this is essential is to prepare the bodily systems required prior to your workout or event to maximise your performance. By preparing the neuro-muscular system, cardiovascular system and respiratory system, you will be ready to perform at your best whilst minimising the likelihood of injury. The likelihood of injury is reduced because when muscles are warm, the tissues are less viscous and able to move through a wider range of motion and are therefore less likely to tear when moved quickly, through a wide range at speed.

You should analyse the movement patterns of your sport or workout and use warm-up exercises that closely mimic those movements.

As you warm-up, you should begin slowly and gradually increase the speed until you reach speeds close to that of your sport. By the end of your warm-up you should have a light sweat, but you should not over-do the warm-up and waste vital energy.

If you are in a phase of training that use rapid movements you should still perform corrective mobilizations and stretches. The only difference is when you perform them. You can perform them as part of your post event warm-down (cool-down) or prior to bedtime. This helps to remove metabolic waste from the muscles and anecdotal evidence suggests that stretching post exercise helps to reduce muscle soreness.

If you want more information, you might want to check out my new book, “Anatomy of Sports Injuries for Training and Rehabilitation”.

 

Happy stretching!

 

Novak Djokovic's Gluten-free Rise to the Top - Part 2

So why has Djokovic got so much quicker?

Firstly, if you have a food sensitivity, it creates inflammation in the gut. Inflammation in the gut will cause a reflex inhibition of the core-abdominal musculature. A lack of core function will create instability in the joints and reduce strength, speed and power.

Removing the offending foods for long enough will allow the immune system to calm down and for the inflammation to reduce, allowing the core muscles to function at their optimum. Some foods however, will need to be eliminated for ever, such as the case with Celiac's disease.

This will enable maximum, strength, power and speed.

In addition, he has lost weight. He has probably lost weight from excess water retention and excess body fat. So not only is he stronger, but lighter too, which equals a much greater power to weight ratio.

He also has more energy and can sustain a high level of performance for longer periods.

I’m amazed that elite level sport still blindly advocates high gluten meals like pasta and bread. I would estimate that around 95% of clients I have tested, tested positive to gluten/gliadin.

Identifying and eliminating food sensitivities is not only useful to maximise performance, but also to overcome many conditions.

I have helped people with the following conditions after identifying food sensitivities:

• Irritable Bowel Syndrome
• Crohn’s Disease
• Chronic Fatigue
• Acne
• Eczema
• Asthma
• Hay fever
• Obesity 

I use the most advanced and most accurate form of testing currently available, The Mediator Release Test.

Tests have shown a 94.5% sensitivity and a 92.7% specificity with a split sample reproducibility of >90%. Most other tests show below 50% for accuracy or reproducibility.

It tests 150 different foods and food chemicals against four different immune responses whereas most other tests only test against one immune response. Testing against just one  immune response means you can be tested but still not identify a number of offending foods.

Please contact me if you would like to take a food sensitivity test, but I can’t promise you’ll be number one in the tennis rankings by the end of the year.

 

Novak Djokovic's Gluten-free Rise to the Top

You may have seen in the media this week the story that Novak Djokovic’s rise to the top of men’s tennis has coincided with switching to a gluten free diet.

Gluten or more accurately, gliadin is the protein found in most grains. Gluten is one of the most highly sensitive foods in the human body.

One theory is that grains have only been available for a very short time in relation to our evolution, especially to Europeans where farming only began around 3,000 years ago. Therefore, our bodies do not recognize the proteins as a natural food source.

Our immune systems are sensitive to any foreign protein in the body. These proteins are usually bacterial and parasitic organisms. However, a food sensitivity can also develop in an attempt to attack ANY foreign protein, including ‘unidentified’ or ‘unfriendly’ foods.

Food sensitivities are complex immune mediated reactions involving multiple triggering mechanisms and multiple classes of leukocytes (white blood cells).

Pathogenic reactions lead to pro-inflammatory and pro-algesic (pain) mediators from white blood cells, which can result in a wide range of different symptoms. Djokovic quoted, “I have lost some weight but it's only helped me because my movement is much sharper now and I feel great physically”. 

Watching him beat Andy Murray at this year’s Australian Open, I was amazed to see him move so fast. I believe that’s what won him the match. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a sportsman move so fast.

He was getting balls back that most players wouldn’t have even reached. That left Murray wondering what he had to do to beat this guy. He threw the kitchen sink at him and Djokovic kept coming back with more.

Since the Aussie Open, Djokovic has not lost a single match all year and is breaking all kinds of records. Albeit, in an era when the best two players of all-time are playing (Federer and Nadal).

Tune in to part two when I will explain why I think Djokovic's performance has improved so much... 

 

Hamstring Strains - A Common Occurrence in Sport Today

You may have seen in the media that Liverpool FC's Joe Cole and team captain Steven Gerrard have both suffered hamstrings strains recently.

Hamstring strains are common in sports that require sprinting and fast acceleration. Causes of hamstring strains include:

• A lack of affective warm-up
• A tearing of the muscle when sprinting.  The hamstring muscles slow down the leg prior to heel-strike and are near full stretch. Effectively, they are contracting and stretching at the same time.
• A weak transversus abdominus muscle, therefore causing the biceps femoris (one of the hamstring muscles) to work harder to stabilize the sacro-iliac joint (a joint connecting the sacrum and pelvis)
• Another theory suggests a lengthened and/or weak gluteus maximus muscle causing the hamstrings to over work to extend the hip (synergistic dominance) therefore weakening the hamstrings over time. 
  • Synergistic dominance may be caused by a lower-cross syndrome (LXS). A LXS is a postural distortion where the pelvis is anteriorly rotated, which lengthens the gluteals, hamstrings and lower abdominals.

So what do you do if you have a hamstring strain:

• In the first 24 to 48 hours, 
  • Use Rest, Ice, Compression and Elevation of the affected leg to prevent further damage and optimize healing time.
  • Anti-inflammatory protocols (Traumeel, anti-inflammatory foods, Wobenzyme etc)
  • For grade 3 tears (complete rupture), surgery may be required

• Once the swelling has gone:
  • Sports massage
  • Heat treatments could be introduced to aid blood flow and healing to the area.
  • The hip and knee should be gently moved into pain-free ranges of motion to recover the full range of motion of the joint and help re-align scar tissue
  • Any tight muscles around the pelvis, hip, knee or ankle joints should be gradually and progressively stretched within pain-free ranges. These muscles will differ from person to person.
  • Corrective exercise, especially improving muscle balance in the lower limbs and lumbo-pelvic region, leading to gradual return to training (end-stage rehab) and competition to prevent re-injury.
  • The following muscles should be strengthened: gluteus maximus, hamstrings, transversus and lower abdominals. Strength training normally begins with isometric, then concentric and finally eccentric work is added.
  • Re-training of the Primal Pattern Movements required for the sport. 

Recovery times with appropriate recovery management:

• Grade 1 (minor tear) will heal within a few days
• Grade 2 (partial tear) will heal within three to six weeks
• Grade 3 (total rupture) will heal within two to three months 

The key to rehabilitation is not just to get an athlete back on the field, but to ensure there is no recurrence of the injury and no other injuries are caused by compensations in movements following a premature return to training (or competition) or poor re-education of movement patterns.

Ultimately, the goal is to prevent injuries in the first place. This requires regular assessments of athletes in order to spot injuries before they happen. Regular assessments are often times challenging with athletes' schedules, travelling and pressure from team coaches to get their star athletes back in action as soon as possible.

Over the years, I have managed to rehabilitate a number of athletes (including hamstrings strains) who have managed to compete at the highest level without injury recurrence and in some cases, gone on to perform better than ever and break personal bests and win championships.  

 

 

John Terry's Nerve Injury

You may have seen in the media yesterday that John Terry, former England captain has pulled out of the England squad for tonight’s game with France due to nerve pain in his right leg. 

So, what can cause this kind of injury?

There a number of causes that include: 

*      Lumbar disc bulge

*      Piriformis syndrome

*      Weak Gluteal muscles

*      Spondylolysthesis

*      Spinal Stenosis

*      Scar tissue

The common theme with this kind of injury is that one of the nerves that supplies the leg, the sciatic nerve, is usually being irritated, causing the pain.

A disc bulge at the lower part of the lumbar spine (L5/S1 or L4/5) can  occur (and is common) after a prolonged period of time with a flat back posture. A flat back posture is when the natural curvature of the lumbar spine is lost and has less than a 30-degree curve.

A flat back puts pressure on the front of the lumbar discs and pushes them backwards towards the spinal cord. If there is enough pressure on the disc, it can bulge and rub or even herniate against and entrap the nerve, irritating it. This can cause the pain to travel down the leg along the nerve.

A tight Piriformis muscle, which is in the same region as the gluteal muscles can also entrap the sciatic nerve, causing pain along the sciatic nerve.

Weak gluteal muscles (hip abductors) will cause the spine to excessively side-flex when walking, jogging and sprinting. Excessive side flexion is caused by the inability of the gluteal muscles working (as a force couple) with the adductor muscles and quadratus lumborum muscles to stabilize the pelvis from side to side (frontal plane).  This is known as a Trendelenburg Sign. The side to side motion of the lumbar spine creates excessive pressures on the edge of the discs, pushing them outwards to the opposite side. This lateral bulging of the disc can also irritate the nerves.

Spondylolysthesis, which is a break of part of one of the vertebra (pars articularis) and causes a forward slippage of the affected vertebra, which can also entrap the nerve supply.

A spinal stenosis, which is a blockage of the spinal canal whether it’s due to boney growths, congential issue, scar tissue (often from surgery) or a spondylolysthesis, can also cause irritation to the nerves.

If I had to guess (I never guess when working with clients), I would guess that John Terry has a flat lumbar spine pushing his lumbar discs towards his spinal cord and may have weak gluteals muscles too further adding to the problem.

However, what needs to happen is a full assessment of his posture, measurement of his spinal curvatures, assessment of his abdominal function, nutritional status and movement pattern analysis to find out the causes of his symptoms and address the causes.

I have had a number of clients with Sciatic symptoms and it is normally very easy to correct with a corrective exercise programme, nutrition plan and manual therapy (to release any trigger points in the muscles and fascia and to release any nerve adhesions).

These conditions however, do tend to become more challenging to resolve once surgery to that area is introduced due to the build up of scar tissue, so surgery should always be a last resort. John Terry is at one of the biggest teams in Europe and I have no doubt the medical team will have him back playing within four weeks, no problem.

How to ... Successfully Rehabilitate Chronic Injuries

Since I first became a CHEK Practitioner back in 2001, I have been able to help many clients overcome injuries and pain. Often times, these clients have previously tried one or more other treatment modality and have been unsuccessful.   I have been particularly successful helping people with injuries to the lower back, knee, shoulder and neck. So why is it that I have been able to help people with these problems when other treatments and modalities haven’t worked?  

The answer is a simple one. It’s down to the training I have received and the system I use. One of the greatest things taught to me by Paul Chek, the founder of The CHEK Institute is the “Reflex Survival Totem Pole”.

 

   The Reflex Survival Totem Pole (which was devised by Paul Chek) gives me a road map to follow which leads me right to the cause of an injury. Other forms of injury rehabilitation either just treat the symptoms or have a much harder time finding the cause. This is why we often see people and athletes struggling to overcome an injury, have recurring injuries or a string of seemingly unrelated injuries.

The Totem Pole highlights the order in which the human brain prioritises the different systems in the body in relation to human survival. The more important a system is, the higher it is on the Totem Pole.

For instance breathing is at the top of the Totem Pole because after three minutes without oxygen, brain cells begin to die and after five minutes irreversible brain damage occurs. Also, breathing includes the sense of smell which would have been the most effective way of identifying and avoiding predators for developmental man living in the wild. 

Faulty breathing can cause postural distortions (which can lead to injury) and alters the body’s pH balance which can affect internal organs and muscle function.   Next is the jaw or temporomandibular joint (TMJ) and in particular jaw mechanics. In human developmental years, it would have been crucial for our bite to be straight otherwise our teeth would wear down whilst chewing. In those days if your teeth wore down, you couldn’t chew and you would starve to death. There weren’t any blenders or protein shakes in those days and meat was always the food of choice.   Next on The Totem Pole is vision. For obvious reasons, vision would have been crucial for hunting, gathering, making shelter, finding a healthy mate and avoiding predators.  Vision comes after the jaw because your family or tribe could have provided you with food and sheltered you from danger, but without being able to chew, you would be doomed.

Stay tuned for Part II when I will further explain the Reflex Survival Totem Pole and how  it helps to uncover the cause of injury.

NHS - National Health Service or National Health Scam? - Part IV

What’s the Solution to a Healthy UK?

The only way the health of individuals will improve is if they take responsibility for their own health. This can only be done following proper and accurate education on health and not relying on industry funded research and media hype.

 

Individuals need to take responsibility for their health and this will sadly only take place when there are financial incentives to do so. For this reason, there should be a large levy on non-organic foods, non-wild fish and anything containing sugar or trans- fatty acids, pasteurised dairy and white flour. Farmers should be given financial support to help to grow organic crops and raise free-range organic meats. This financial support would be more than off-set by the reduction in medical costs.

 

You can play your part now by voting with your wallets. Only buy healthy fresh, organic, natural foods. If there’s no demand for unhealthy foods and products, they will not be produced.

 

Accident and Emergency, congenital, pre and post-natal, paediatric and geriatric related medical care should continue to be tax-payer funded in a National ‘Medical’ Service (NMS). Chronic degenerative diseases should not be covered by tax-payers and should be privately funded.

 

Private funding of ongoing health would promote responsibility within individuals and show the real price of health, whilst comparing the effectiveness of natural, holistic health (taught by healthy people) versus medical interventions. Most people believe organic food to be expensive in comparison to poorer quality, less nutritious food. However, if you had a choice of paying more to live healthily, making healthy practises part of your everyday life and doing less of the things that make you unhealthy or paying ten of thousands of pounds for surgery and medication, which would you choose? The choice is yours!

 

We’ve done many amazing things, put men on the moon, created the internet and discovered quantum physics, so I’ve no doubt we can reclaim our birth-right, our health. We can go from a National Health Scam to a Nation of Healthy Citizens! Are you going to call Trading Standards or shall I?