Posts Tagged ‘gym’
Starting Fresh
For many people who have been exercise-free for years, entering the gym can seem like an insurmountable obstacle. The sheer amount of information available at a second’s notice regarding health and wellness can also be overwhelming and leave you feeling disenchanted. However, the blatant reality is that if you want to live longer and feel better, regular exercise is almost indispensible. Besides helping you to maintain a healthy weight, exercise is good for things like promoting better circulation and stimulating endorphins to help manage stress. If you are amongst the millions of Americans who want to feel better and look better but are at a loss as to how to start, give our office in Park Slope a call. We have found that a face-to-face, human-to-human conversation can be the catalyst you need to get motivated and excited about working out. Here’s how:
- A clear plan: the main benefit of interfacing. There is no grey area or internet overload; we hash out your health goals, your priorities and limitations and go about setting up a plan to deal with achieve success in a concrete manner.
- Starting slow: what are you comfortable with? What are your strengths and what do you absolutely detest? Not everyone is cut out to be a gym rat, but almost everyone can find their happy place with specific workouts and stretches.
- Accountability partner: this is key. Great things are built by teams, and we want to be your go-to-resource for information, chiropractic care, acupuncture and accountability.
- Managing pain: Certainly working out is made miserable by pain. If an injury or chronic pain is holding you back, we need to correct this so you can stop using pain as an excuse.
A fresh start is attainable if you go about it the right way. As a doctor of chiropractic and acupuncture, I am completely invested in your health and well-being. Let’s start on a path toward a healthier, happier you together and let’s start today.
Dr. Karen Thomas, D.C., L.Ac.
Acupuncture for Fitness (Part 2)
The benefits of acupuncture seem to be almost as far-reaching as the time it has endured as a healing procedure. For fitness fanatics, acupuncture has a wealth of benefits. By boosting your psychological well-being, you will perform better in the gym. After just one session, people experience reduced stress and anxiety, catharsis and general sense of well-being. In fact, the more you work out the more you can get out of acupuncture. Here are some of the other benefits:
- Muscle and joint injury rehabilitation: re-oxygenating tissues, reducing inflammation.
- Improved stamina: improving circulation generally means you will see a boost in your energy at the gym.
- Weight loss: curbing hunger, improving digestive efficiency and allowing the body to burn more fat.
- Muscle relaxation: provides a way for your muscles to recover and grow in the wake of exertion.
Acupuncture is an integral piece of our holistic approach to health at Community Chiropractic & Acupuncture of Park Slope. No one piece will be the magic ingredient by itself; instead, we would like to put all of our modalities at your disposal as part of a healthy lifestyle. No matter what your affliction or idea for self-improvement, we have tools to help. Call our office in Park Slope at (718) 398-3100
Dr. Karen Thomas, D.C., L.Ac.
Overtraining as a Syndrome
Listen to your body! In all aspects of life, your body’s internal monitor can be an ally or foe in your quest for health. It is always a good metric for athletic endeavor: getting in tune with your limits is important.
Your body will send sublte warning signals when you are approaching the brink of overtraining, and you should definitely know when you have overdone it. But overtraining is a syndrome: it goes against our nature to stop working out just because our body feels strained. After all, how are you supposed to build more muscle or endurance if you can’t keep going?
But at a certain point, more work stops equaling more reward. Injury and sickness accrue when you keep pushing past these warning signs.
Here are sure signs that you’ve overdone it in the gym:
- Chronic fatigue
- Depression
- Underperformance
- Aches and pains
- Feeling drained after a usually productive workout
- Personality and mood changes
- Loss of concentration
Many of these symptoms can be traced back to nervous system imbalances, which may be aggravated by too much physical stress and not enough rest. So take a day or week, if need be, off weights. Switch to light cardiovascular exercise and give your body a chance to catch up. Rest and ingest healthful ingredients and plenty of hydration and before you know it you will be back in the gym performing at an even higher level.
At Community Chiropractic & Acupuncture, we specialize in helping people get in tune with their bodies to maximize their health. Call our office in Park Slope at (718) 398-3100 to schedule an appointment today.
Dr. Karen Thomas, D.C., L.A.C.
Overtraining
At Community Chiropractic & Acupuncture, we want to encourage athletes of all disciplines to train smarter if they are going to train harder. The science and study of strength training has evolved immensely as more and more money is pumped into professional sports, creating a windfall of information for those of us who are happy to play at our own level. We can help you identify exercises and habits that may be actually working against your attempts to build muscle and endurance.
At our office in Park Slope, we want athletes to be aware of the pitfall of overtraining: when muscles are not given enough time or nutrition to rebuild after vigorous exercise.
Overtraining is a great way to injure yourself and it is entirely avoidable. With the proper attention to hydration, nutrition and rest, you will enter the gym refreshed and inspired rather than tired and ragged. This will in turn, allow you to get the most out of your exercise. For many people, a simple conversation is all it takes to catalyze an entire program of health and efficient muscle building.
Rather than fearing injury, we want you to be confident that your biomechanics are in solid order when you perform your first deadlift, which is incidentally, when performed properly, quite a good exercise for lower back strengthening. We monitor, identify and correct muscular imbalances that could be setting you up for a muscle tear if you push yourself too hard.
Call our office in Brooklyn at (718) 398-3100 to schedule an appointment today.
Dr. Karen A. Thomas, D.C. L.Ac.
Muscle Building
Make the most out of every muscle building movement by ensuring the health of your spine and nervous system.
Muscle building begins when motor neurons send a signal to a muscle telling it to contract. The easier your brain can activate the muscle contraction, the quicker you will build muscle. This means that ensuring the nerve pathways are clear of interference is a key to muscle building. Therefore, subluxations are extremely counterproductive for a person attempting to gain muscle. Chiropractic adjustment corrects these misalignments, ensuring that your brain can activate the muscles without interference.
Overtraining is also counterproductive: weight lifting for too many reps, or at too high a weight can cause joint sprain, muscle spasm and tissue damage. If you have pushed the envelope too far, we offer rehabilitation modalities that will speed blood flow to the injured area, helping it to heal quicker with oxygen and other nutrients.
Chiropractic care provides the assistance athletes need to excel. At Community Chiropractic & Acupuncture, we want you to get the most out of every lift while contributing to an overall body of health.
Call our office in Park Slope at (718) 398-3100 today. Together, we can institute a combination of strengthening, stretching, eating and chiropractic to ensure your overall health.
Dr. Karen Thomas, D.C. L.Ac.