COMMUNITY: Increase flexibility, stability at home

Editor's note; Cody Scharf is the owner of Thrive Spine and Sport, a chiropractic and soft tissue clinic in Cedar Rapids focusing on sport and overuse injuries. Scharf is a graduate of Palmer College of Chiropractic and certified through Integrative Diagnosis for the diagnosis and treatment of soft tissue injuries.

By Cody Scharf, community contributor

If you missed last week's article, I wrote about why stretching doesn't work for most of us and about protective tension.

Protective tension is our body's natural mechanism for making things 'tight.” It is creating tension to protect an area that is weak, overused or injured. It is important to remember there always is a reason for your constant stiffness.

In order to give yourself the best chance at preventing injury, the body requires a combination of flexibility, strength and stability. If stretching is not working for you, there is a strong possibility you are being restricted by adhesion, a buildup of scar tissue on soft tissue, joint dysfunction, misalignments or degeneration of joints leading to instability or abnormal posture and weakness.

All of these issues can and should be treated by a certified manual therapist.

I realize not everyone will take the previous sentence to heart, so I decided to include three things you can do at home as a last-ditch effort to increase flexibility, increase stability and reduce pain in the body.

l Self MyoFascial Release (SMR).

Foam rolling and lacrosse balls have become incredibly popular as a warm up and recovery tool in recent years, and for good reason. If you are unfamiliar with the concepts, you need to get familiar. This should be your first step to regaining some mobility on your own. Foam roll larger body parts and use a lacrosse ball to pinpoint painful areas. Do this 5 to 10 minutes a day on any 'tight” body part when you wake up and before any activity.

l Traction.

Traction is another great method of mobilization to unglue stiff joints. In order to traction, you will need to pick up a thick, supportive elastic band. There are many different kinds, get one that can support you and offer some resistance. In order to traction, you will need to wrap one end of the band around a stable object and another just distal to the stuck joint. Once you do this, actively try and open the joint carefully. Repeat this process 5 to 10 times to start. This is the same concept of inversion and decompression tables.

l Active mobility

. Active mobility comes into play after the first two steps. Some examples of active mobility are hip circles, mountain climbers and 'groiners.” It is important to use proper breathing patterns and focus on stabilizing the core during these movements to make them the most effective. Pick a couple movements for the area that is tight and do two sets of 15 reps.

Try this process for two weeks. If there is no improvement in range of motion or symptoms of pain, then its time to make the call for additional help and treatment. These still are great things to remain dedicated to even if you don't notice the benefit.

This routine can help you to remain flexible, healthy and prevent future injury after receiving the help you need.

l For more information, email Scharf at cody.scharf@gmail.com or visit www.thrivespineandsport.com