NIFS Healthy Living Blog

Parkinson’s Disease is a chronic neurological disorder that often causes muscle tremors, rigidity, balance issues, and loss of muscular control. For individuals living with this condition, maintaining a regular fitness routine is important—but equally important is incorporating mobility work into their daily lives. Mobility helps reduce the impact of these symptoms and supports success in both everyday activities and exercise routines.

Stretching is one of the most effective ways to promote mobility. It helps lengthen tight muscles and increases the range of motion in the joints. By decreasing stiffness and improving flexibility, individuals with Parkinson’s can more easily complete daily tasks and maintain a consistent fitness routine, ultimately enhancing their overall quality of life.

There are three main types of stretching that can benefit individuals with Parkinson’s: static, dynamic, and assisted stretching.

Static and Dynamic Stretching
Static stretching involves holding a position for a period of time without movement. It’s a safe and effective way to gently increase flexibility and is an excellent starting point for many individuals. Examples include a seated hamstring stretch, a wall calf stretch, or a gentle neck stretch. These stretches can be done independently and are generally low risk, making them ideal for people with balance concerns.

Dynamic stretching, on the other hand, involves controlled movement through a range of motion. These stretches are great for warming up the muscles and preparing the body for physical activity. Examples include bodyweight squats, modified push-ups, or resistance band movements. Like static stretches, dynamic stretches can be performed independently and can help improve functional mobility.

Assisted Stretching
While self-directed stretching is important, assisted stretching can have the most significant impact on mobility and joint health. This type of stretching is performed by a certified practitioner and often involves techniques like proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation (PNF). PNF includes cycles of contracting and relaxing muscles, which not only helps lengthen the muscles but also improves the fascia and overall joint function. Additionally, this kind of guided movement helps activate areas of the brain associated with muscle control—an important benefit for individuals with Parkinson’s.

Starting your fitness journey is always an exciting step forward, but it is essential to make sure you are listening to your body and prioritizing your recovery and self-care. Many people tend to neglect their bodies' needs and push themselves past their limits, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The importance of recovery and self-care play a crucial role in ensuring your long-term success in the gym, and one mistake can lead to a possible injury that can take away and/or limit that progress.

The Importance of Recovery

Recovery is one of the most important aspects of any fitness regimen. Giving yourself enough time to recover helps your body repair and strengthen itself. Without giving the proper recovery your body needs can lead to a higher risk of fatigue, decreased performance, and increased risk of injuries. Here are a few key components to ensuring you have an effective recovery period:

• Rest Days: Incorporating rest days is essential in allowing your body to heal and grow your muscles. You typically want to aim between 1-3 times a week depending on your fitness level and intensity for your workouts, so it may vary from person to person.
  
  
• Sleep Quality: Quality of sleep is a must for effective recovery. Anywhere between 7-9 hours a night is optimal to support muscle repair, hormone balance, and overall mental and physical health. Maintaining a consistent sleep routine will help manage your body's recovery each day.
  
  
• Hydration and Nutrition: Proper hydration and nutrition play a significant role in your body’s growth and recovery. Ensuring that you are drinking plenty of water during the day, and focusing on a balanced diet with protein, healthy fats, and complex carbohydrates will keep your body properly replenished and aid in muscle growth and repair.

Self-Care Practices

• Mobility and Stretching: Practicing stretching and focusing on mobility work regularly can help enhance flexibility, reduce muscle soreness, and prevent injuries. Incorporating dynamic stretching before workouts and static stretches after workouts helps maintain your muscle's elasticity and joint health. This can help with knee pain, lower back issues, and posture over time.
  
  
• Mindfulness: Mental wellness is just as important as physical wellness. Practicing mindfulness can help reduce stress, improve your focus, and enhance your overall well-being. Focus on relaxing the mind for a few minutes a day to help clear your head, such as deep-breathing exercises to calm the mind and body. This can be paired with your static stretches to help your mind and body at the same time.
  
  
• Active Recovery: On rest days, engaging in active recovery activities such as swimming, biking, yoga, or walking can help promote blood flow, reduce muscle soreness, and aid in muscle recovery without straining your body. Ensure that you are keeping a low intensity when engaging in these activities.

Prioritizing your recovery and self-care can play an important role in enhancing your performance, maintaining a balanced lifestyle, and helping prevent injuries. These practices will not happen overnight and will take dedication and time to achieve but will help you in the long run. Embrace, motivate, and stay consistent, and embark on your fitness journey prepared and ready to take on any challenge.

If you're unsure where to start or want to ensure you have the right balance between your fitness goals and recovery, or if you're simply looking to work with a professional, NIFS offers personal trainers who can help guide you every step of the way. Take the next steps with the support you need!

The Pain-Free Three workout was created years ago for NIFS Mini Marathon runners and walkers, the moves are effective for a quick and easy way to boost your leg and core strength. You will develop the supporting muscles to balance out the weakness you may have. Strengthen your glutes, and hamstrings with the Deadlift. The quads and core get work with Lunge variations and the upper body and core get work with the Inchworm. As with any program consistence is the key. There is a training plan below but a few reps of each of these before and after your running or walking will keep your body strong as you increase your mileage in the coming weeks. Running the Mini Marathon is a wonderful way to test your fitness, but the last thing you want is to be hurting at the starting line.

 Three moves to assist you in being your best!

These exercises can serve as a warm-up and/or cool-down. While they initially may be difficult to perform, keep working at them and ultimately they will serve as a perfect complement to your running or walking routine.

Weeks 1 – 8: Perform exercises 3 times per week.
Weeks 9 – 14: Perform exercises 2 times per week.
Weeks 15 – 16: Perform exercises once per week.

1. One Leg Deadlift with Touch (Hamstring, Glute, Back, Core, Shoulder)

Stand tall on one leg (knee slightly bent); stay stiff from the top of your head to the opposite heel.

Place a target in front of you and one on each side. Hinge at your hips, and lean forward, until your body is in a T shape. Using the opposite hand of the leg you are standing on, reach in front of you as far as possible. Slowly return to the start position. Adjust targets if needed.

Next, hinge at the hips and reach out to the opposite side of the leg you are standing on. Slowly come back to start. 

If you need help staying balanced, hold onto a chair, brace against a wall, etc. with a non-reaching hand. Each week you will notice your balance improving and your flexibility allowing you to reach further! 

2. Lunge progression (Total Body)

Standing tall, bring your knee and toe up as high as possible without tilting back.

Stride out into a lunge with your front ankle directly under your knee, back knee flexed (knee may touch the floor to decrease difficulty), and shoulders over hips (not tilted forward).

Targeting the IT Band: At the bottom of the lunge, extend the arm opposite of the stride leg up and lean over to the opposite side. Feel the stretch along your side, down to the hip. Come back to the center and push off the back leg to start the next step. Proceed with high knee/ toes on that leg (squeezing the glute of the standing leg will help with stability). Perform 2 lunges and stretches per leg.

Targeting the Total Body: At the bottom of the lunge, bring your arms up and bend your elbows to 90 degrees. Turn your shoulders toward the side of the front leg, looking as far to that side as you can. Turn back and stride into the opposite side. Perform 2 lunges and stretches per leg.

3. Inchworm

Begin with your hands and feet touching the floor (bend knees, if necessary). Walk your hands out to the push-up position. Perform 2-5 pushups, keeping your body in a straight line. Drop to your knees if you cannot keep your hips from sagging (quality over quantity). 

After the last push-up, keep your hands planted, and drive your hips up, then take small steps forward (driving your heels into the floor) until your knees are slightly bent. Walk out with your hands again and perform 2-5 push-ups.

After the second set of push-ups, bend your knees and walk your feet to your hands. Shift your weight to your feet and slowly rise. Perform 4-6 repetitions.

This blog was written by Kris Simpson, BS, ACSM-PT, HFS, personal trainer, and USTA at NIFS. To read more about the NIFS bloggers, click here.

In an athlete’s world, every fraction of a second and inch of athletic performance are significant for them to play at their best on and off the field. However, being an athlete means consistently searching for innovative ways to elevate your game. This is where fascia training enters the conversation as one of the many ways of improving one’s athletic performance. Fascia training is an emerging topic that holds the promise of unlocking your untapped potential and improving your performance.

In this blog, you willet an introduction to the world of fascia, understand its role within your body, and see how and why fascia training can be what you need to enhance your athletic performance.

What Is Fascia?

Fascia is a connective tissue network that wraps around muscles, bones, and organs, providing structural support, and facilitating movement and proprioception (awareness of the position or movement of a specific part of your body within space). This intricate web of tissue plays a pivotal role in transmitting force and energy throughout the body. For athletes, optimal fascial health can lead to improved agility, explosiveness, and overall performance.

How Are Fascia and Athletic Performance Connected?

Fascia, having elastic properties, stores and releases elastic energy within the body during any movement. Within athletes, well-conditioned fascia can contribute to enhancing power output and efficiency like a coiled spring that can unleash explosive bursts of stored energy, enabling it to reach greater heights. This can make an athlete extremely efficient and powerful in their respective disciplines.

What Are Some Benefits of Fascia Training?

• Improved Elasticity: Fascia training includes techniques that target myofascial release and dynamic stretching, resulting in fascia elasticity maintenance. This specific elasticity translates into more efficient movements, reduced risk of injury, and improved range of motion.
• Enhanced Proprioception: Because proprioception is one of the properties of fascia, a well-conditioned fascial system will result in enhancements in proprioception. This improvement in proprioception will translate well into better balance, coordination, and agility. For example, gymnasts must have well-conditioned fascial systems for improved proprioception because they’re efficiently twisting, flipping, and turning in all directions during competition.
• Injury Prevention: Engaging in fascia-focused exercises can help prevent injuries by maintaining the suppleness and resilience of the fascial network. In turn, this supports joint health and reduces the likelihood of strains and sprains.

How Can I Incorporate Fascia Training into My Daily Routine?

• Dynamic Stretching: Incorporate dynamic stretching such as (but not limited to) high kicks, leg swings, walking lunges, and trunk twists. You will be stimulating the fascial system and promoting its elasticity.
• Myofascial Release: By utilizing foam rollers, massage balls, or any tool to apply pressure to specific areas, you’re releasing tension and improving your blood flow within the fascial network, thus resulting in the system working more efficiently.
• Plyometric Training: Plyometrics typically involves explosive movements that stress and “train” the fascial system within the athlete’s respective discipline(s). Exercises include box jumps, lateral bounds, high skips, and more, all of which have the goal of activating and improving the responsiveness of the fascial system.

Conclusion

Fascia training presents a groundbreaking avenue for athletes to tap into their full potential. By understanding the role of fascia in the body and implementing targeted training techniques, athletes can enhance their performance, reduce the risk of injuries, and elevate their overall athletic prowess. As the science behind fascia continues to evolve, athletes have an exciting opportunity to incorporate this innovative approach into their training arsenal, taking their achievements to new heights on the field, court, track, or wherever their specific discipline/passion lies.

This blog was written by Deveon Martin, NIFS Health Fitness Specialist. To read more about the NIFS bloggers, click here.

Chances are if you are like me, you have been told your whole life, “Make sure you’re stretching, it’s important!” But to many, the first thought that pops into their head when they think about stretching is, “Why?” And that is a very understandable response because stretching can involve a lot of discomfort (in the beginning) and to some, it might even cause a bit of pain. But there certainly is a method to the madness, and a reason why stretching is a vital component of your fitness program and, ultimately, your lifestyle.

What Is Stretching?

For starters, I’ll briefly describe what stretching is. Stretching can be somewhat of an umbrella term in that a lot of day-to-day activities do in fact involve some sort of stretching to some degree. In fact, every time your muscles contract there is a stretching and a shortening occurring inside the muscle to produce force. But the type of stretching I am talking about today is more deliberate and the kind of stretching most people think of when they hear the word “stretching”; think bending over and touching your toes, for example.

Stretching is important because it is all about increasing your range of motion and flexibility in the hope that doing this can lower your risk for muscle and joint injury or strains. The better our bodies are able to move, the lower the chance is for a muscle strain or getting injured when caught in an awkward position. Stretching both statically and dynamically is known to reduce injury risk.

Types of Stretching

The main types of stretching are active, passive, dynamic, and proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation (PNF) stretching.

• Active stretching is the main one people think of when they are told to stretch, and this type of stretching can be really good for isolating certain muscle groups. A big part of active stretching is the fact that you yourself are the one stretching out your muscles; there is no outside intervention. 
• Passive stretching is similar to active stretching in that it can be isolated to certain muscle groups, but this type normally has a partner assisting in the stretch to perhaps reach a little bit more range of motion. For example, as you can see in this picture, the person on the ground is relaxed and her partner is the one actively applying stretching force to her leg, ideally achieving more range of motion.
• Dynamic stretching is the next variation. In this type you have more of a momentum-based approach. What I mean by that is that a big part of it is using body movement and motion of the limbs themselves to achieve a change in range of motion. For example a foundational dynamic movement is high knees. This explosive movement of having knees come up as high as they can go will create range of motion throughout the legs. The foundational piece of this type of stretching is an idea of the stretch shortening cycle, which is a concept that as muscles contract and lengthen, they then shorten, and as a result are ready for activity.
• Proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation, or PNF for short, is last but not least. PNF stretching is essentially the technique of contracting and relaxing the muscle in order to increase range of motion. The rationale behind it is that after contracting a specific muscle, the signals that lead to a muscle resisting stretching are used up, and by following up the contraction immediately with a stretch, the muscle is more likely to achieve a higher range of motion. 

Incorporate Stretching into Your Workout

After seeing these different types of stretching in more detail, the last thing to consider is, “Is this something I should incorporate into my exercise routine?” The answer is a resounding YES! Stretching has been researched and studied and has been shown to decrease the chance of injury and increase performance. So the next time you throw on your running shoes and get ready to hit the ground running (literally), take a second to do a light stretching warmup. Your body will thank you down the road (also literally)!

This blog was written by Ricky Rocha, Health Fitness Specialist. To learn more about the NIFS bloggers, click here.

Don't miss the other blogs in this series including:

“Caddy Smack”: Fitness Tips to Improve Your Golf Game

"Caddy Smack Deuce": More Fitness Tips to Improve Your Golf Game

"Caddy Smack 3": Strength and Power Exercises for a Better Golf Swing

This blog was written by Alex Soller, Health Fitness Instructor and Athletic Performance Coach. Click here for more information about the NIFS bloggers.