One of the most challenging populations for any exercise professional is women entering the perimenopausal or menopausal phases of life wishing to lose weight. Weight changes during this period for women are common due primarily to changes in key hormones, estrogen and progesterone, and metabolic changes/slow downs due to aging. Combined these changes can lead...
One of things I love most about Colorado is the ability to get outside anytime of year and participate in all the outdoor activities our great state has to offer. Especially in stressful times like today each of us needs the steam release valve only exercise can provide. The mental and emotional health benefits of...
The ability of aerobic exercise to reduce systolic (top number) blood pressure has long been established. Reductions in blood pressure have been shown to reduce an individual’s risk for chronic diseases including heart disease and ischemic events such as stroke and heart attack. Reducing an adult’s high blood pressure is an aim of many primary...
It has been said you can tell a person’s priorities by examining their check book and calendar. Tasks and activities which are urgent or important to us are more likely to be done on a busy day, but others like sleep or exercise may be pushed to the back burner. This is despite the overwhelming...
A common question we receive from parents is “when can my child start weight training”. This is a difficult question to give a standard answer on because so many variables are at play including the maturity of the athlete (skeletal, neuromuscular, emotional, and mental), the demands of their sport, and their training experience. Our main...
There are few treatments more effective for the prevention and treatment of injuries and musculoskeletal conditions than resistance training. Unfortunately, many Americans are not performing enough strengthening to prevent the loss of muscle mass (sarcopenia) which begins to occur in the 3rd decade of life. After age 30 we begin to demonstrate a progressive loss...
Time is one of the finite resources in life and is reported as the main barrier by individuals who do not reach the national guidelines for exercise minutes each week. Each portion of a weekly exercise program should be evaluated for both health and fitness, as well as, injury prevention benefits. Static stretching consistently...
It seems there is not much eccentric exercises cannot do between healing injured tissue, improving mobility and strength, and now possibly contributing to muscle size. We have long known muscles gain the majority of their strength gains after training because of the eccentric or lowering portion of any lift. Participants who skip or speed through...
In a prior blog posts we discussed the effects of stretching on fitness, performance and flexibility. We are often prescribing mobility exercises to restore movement to a joint or body region (thoracic spine and rib cage) in order to improve movement patterns for performance, pain relief, or as part of a weekly fitness program. While...
At Mend we provide many treatments to our Boulder Physical Therapy patients, but strength training is the common treatment between all patients and conditions. Often we prescribe an effective resistance training exercise leading to quick gains in strength. This rapid increase in strength over the first 6-8 weeks of an exercise program is due to...
