It is very easy to injure the neck and shoulders when engaging in a lot of heavy clipping and trimming of shrubs and plants in the garden. When your arms become tired with clipping and brush cutting at shoulder height or above, often the muscles around the neck become overused. This also applies if you…
Gardening is a great activity, but it can play havoc with the body at times. Sometimes the back, shoulders and neck can suffer particularly as you battle the weeds that take hold over the summer months. I will be preparing a series of blogs that will be looking at gardening, its impact on the body and how…
We are often adopting poor postures for greater amounts of time than we used to, mainly due to hi-tech gadgets including computers and smart phones. Sitting a lot in bad positions puts an unnatural load on the lumbar discs, the building blocks of our spine in our lower back. Problems with lumbar discs can be…
Back pain is a very common feature for many people. Most will just put up with, not understanding what the problem is and not knowing what they can do from day to day to help. This is the beginning of a series of blogs to help you know a bit more about why you may get back pain…
In this the second blog of our series on trekking, we continue our trekking preparations whether it be in Iceland, the bush trails in Australia or for the Oxfam trailwalk. Whatever your goal, if you are attempting to walk or trek you will need to prepare yourself by increasing your strength and endurance capacity gradually.…
Sleep is a powerful tool – too little sleep slows recovery time from injury, and adversely affects overall physical and mental health. Good quality sleep of 8 hours however, can improve the effects of ageing, and improve memory, healing from injuries and optimize well – being. The National Sleep Foundation of Australia recommends that adults between 18-64 years old have 7 to 9 hours sleep each night, and people over…
In the last of our four blog series on being trek-ready we take a look at the importance of selecting the right size pack for your adventure and give you some final stretches for before and during your trek. 1. Pack Selection Regarding pack selection – pick the smallest possible one for the job. Although…
So, you are walking further to improve your endurance and loading on the muscles and tendons, and you have started improving your upper limb strength. Now we need to discuss lower limb strength and why it is so important. Strength plays a critical part in protecting the joints and ligaments, as well as decreasing the…
Many of us spend days at the computer, travelling to and from work or sitting for long periods. It is important to get away from the screen and that chair, and there is no better way to help with this than to go walking or trekking. So how can you prepare to ensure your body…
Are you suffering from recurring back pain? Lower back pain is one of those things that many people are afflicted with at some point in their life. It often comes on without warning, is very painful, very inconvenient then after a while it settles down and you wondered what all the fuss was about. For…