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<a href="https://www.allsportsphysio.com.au/2022/05/exercise-for-the-right-reasons/">Exercise For The Right Reasons: The Forgotten Benefits Of Exercise</a>

When we think of Australia’s exercise recommendations of at least 2.5 hours of moderate exercise per week alongside two strength training sessions, many of us will immediately link this to helping maintain our physical and cardiovascular health, managing our weight, and preventing disease or conditions like diabetes. 

Thanks to social media and the marketing tactics of the fitness and beauty industry, the view on exercise has been skewed to be a ‘must do’ chore or a punishment for eating tasty foods – a tick-list item that is necessary to achieve an “ideal” body. But there is so much more to exercise than what we see in advertisements and viral videos – and don’t just take our word for it – this is the exact theme of this year’s national Exercise Right Week campaign, which is aiming to change the unhealthy relationship with exercise that this dialogue in the media is creating, showing you that the real additional benefits of exercise have nothing to do with the number on a scale or the amount of kilometres on a tracking app. 

So, in support of this fantastic campaign, here are five incredible benefits of exercise that our practitioners want you to know that have nothing to do with the way you look, and everything to do with the way you feel. 

Exercise Makes You Happy

Yes, it’s true – exercise really does make you happier. According to a study by the University of Michigan, more exercise leads to more happiness – at all ages – and even small bouts of exercise have a positive effect. When you exercise, it triggers the release of endorphins – your happy hormones – but it’s more than just endorphins that help to lift your mood – dopamine, adrenaline, endocannabinoid and myokine, which your body creates when your muscles contract, are all chemicals that get released into the brain when you exercise, helping to make you feel happy, confident and capable., As an added bonus, those hormones even reduce our sensitivity to pain.,

Interestingly, there is a flow on effect of the happiness exercise brings into work and other aspects of life. People who are happier outside of work report a greater perception of happiness in work. Driving happiness through physical activity impacts your sense of joy and contentment across all aspects of your life. 

Being physically active also improves your sleep quality, which can play a large role in your mental health. Sleep deprivation makes us more sensitive to stressful stimuli and events, and is strongly linked to the ability to cope with emotional stress in daily life. Exercise increases the amount of deep sleep where the brain and body revitalise.

The takeaway: engaging in regular physical activity can increase your sense of happiness and satisfaction with life.

Exercise Helps Take The Load Off Your Shoulders

Exercise is one of the most powerful ways to boost your mental health, and give you that feeling of load coming off your shoulders. Those endorphins we mentioned support your brain in reducing stress and anxiety, as well as protecting against depression. Exercise also decreases inflammation, and evidence suggests that inflammatory conditions contribute to mood disorders and poor mental health.

For those living with mental health conditions, exercise can also be an important part of your management plan. Exercise combined with medications significantly improves clinical global outcomes in depression. PTSD & schizophrenic sufferers also report reductions in severity of symptoms when they’re physically active.

Exercise Helps You Think

Exercise not only plays a role in our brains in terms of happiness and mental health, but has also been found to have positive effects on our brain health. More active individuals have better attention span and are able to process information more quickly than their less active counterparts. 

This positive effect exercise can have on your concentration has been found to benefit, not only the general population, but also those with concentration difficulties such as individuals with ADHD. Those with ADHD who engage in frequent physical activity have improvements in their concentration and attention by as much as 30%. 

Put simply: exercise helps your brain to function better, so you can be more alert and attentive –  whether you’re at home with the family, or at your 9-5 workplace. 

Exercise Helps You Bond With Others

Exercise can improve your social life, with research showing that exercise and the social connections it supports have a reciprocal relationship. Exercising with a friend or family member strengthens the social bonds between you. In turn, this can lead to an increased motivation to exercise, greater enjoyment of that exercise when you do it, and can even enhance your performance.,, Next time you’re struggling to maintain a regular exercise schedule, or feeling unmotivated, consider finding a friend or family member to exercise with.  

Exercise that involves working together with others, such as team sports, spotting someone lifting weights, or doing paired interval training, can also improve your interpersonal skills, enhancing your cooperation, collaboration and communication abilities. These skills can be translated into many aspects of your life, benefitting you in the workplace, and at home. 

Exercises Helps Improve Posture And Balance

While we all know the benefits of exercise for our strength, there are also important benefits to our posture and balance that often go forgotten or unappreciated. Physical activity strengthens our postural muscles,, enhancing balance and helping you to maintain posture throughout the day. Whether you’re a parent chasing after and picking up small children, or an office worker sitting long hours at a desk, your muscles are essential for support and protection.

Want to get started with exercising for the right reasons but aren’t sure where to start? Give us a call on 3281 8876 or visit our website to make an appointment with one of team to get your exercise journey started!

References

[1] https://www.health.gov.au/health-topics/physical-activity-and-exercise/physical-activity-and-exercise-guidelines-for-all-australians

[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32342452/

[3] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10902-018-9976-0

[4] https://www.cnet.com/health/fitness/ways-exercise-makes-you-happier/

[5] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213422014000705

[6] https://www.cnet.com/health/fitness/ways-exercise-makes-you-happier/

[7] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5491894/

[8] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022103119305256?via%3Dihub

[9] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7369812/

[10] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7369812/

[11] https://exerciseright.com.au/exercising-for-mental-health-instead-of-weight-loss/

[12] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29108442/

[13] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29108442/

[14] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4372555/

[15] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4372555/

[16] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00110/full#h5

[17] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10150765/

[18] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4552681/

[19] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281549693_Social_Bonds_and_Exercise_Evidence_for_a_Reciprocal_Relationship

[20] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1766945/

[21] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281549693_Social_Bonds_and_Exercise_Evidence_for_a_Reciprocal_Relationship

[22] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281549693_Social_Bonds_and_Exercise_Evidence_for_a_Reciprocal_Relationship

[23] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32560185/

[24] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23542879/

[25] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15743283/

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<a href="https://www.allsportsphysio.com.au/2022/05/back-on-the-sports-field-after-an-injury/">Five Ways To Get Back On The Sports Field As Quickly As Possible After An Injury</a>

After sustaining an injury during sports, the first thing on many players’ agenda isn’t just recovering from that injury, but how to do so as fast as possible. While injuries sustained during sports can vary greatly in their location, severity, and how they occurred, there are five things that anyone can do to help optimise their recovery so they can get back on the sports field as fast as possible regardless of their circumstances.

Here’s a look into what these five things are, why they matter, and how they can help get you back on that field, as recommended by our experienced physiotherapists.

1. Listen To Your Body

In today’s society, it is not uncommon to see recreational sports’ players shrug off their injuries, continue to play through the pain, and never miss a future training session, having adapted a ‘no pain, no gain’ mentality. The reality is that when you feel pain, whether it’s immediately on the field or it continues days later during a training session, it is an important physiological warning signal to your body that something has gone wrong. It also indicates that you need to stop the activities that are causing you pain and take a temporary period of rest to help prevent structural damage and promote healing. 

For injuries like sprains and strains, aim to unload and limit movement for 1-3 days following the injury to minimise bleeding, prevent distension of the injured fibres, and reduce the risk of aggravating the injury. Try to avoid immobilising the injured area for longer than 3 days unless your injury is severe or you have been advised to do so by your physio or a medical professional, as prolonged rest can compromise tissue strength and lead to further pain. It is when we pay attention to our body and work to protect it that we are able to minimise the extent of the injury and start on the road to an effective recovery in an optimal timeframe. 

2. Get A Formal Diagnosis

If you already know you have pain in a specific area, how does having a formal diagnosis speed up your recovery? It’s simple – during your assessment, it is your physio’s role to help uncover exactly what structures in the area have been injured and the severity of the injury – which may go deeper than you think. It’s not uncommon for our physios to see seemingly straightforward ankle sprains but the impact of landing on the outside of the ankle has also led to bony injury. We also see this in knee injuries, where alongside an ACL injury for example, there has been injury to the knee cartilage. Other times, what you may have thought was just slight tweak to a tendon is actually a partial tear, which may require a different treatment approach in the early stages.

Having a formal diagnosis means that all of the bases are covered to help you recover safely and effectively, as opposed to learning weeks down the track that the reason you’re not seeing the progress you’d expect is because of a secondary injury or problem, or the injury is different to what you presumed. More than that, as part of your diagnosis, your physio will help you identify the contributing factors to your injury, and address these in your management plan, reducing the likelihood of re-injuring yourself in the same way in the future.

3. Remember That Exercise And Movement Are Not The Enemy

While some rush back to exercise like nothing has happened, others take a more cautious approach, choosing to avoid physical activity, keeping the injured area as immobilised as possible in the weeks following the injury until their pain has disappeared, in the hopes that this will be their key to a complete recovery. The truth is that there is a strong level of evidence that supports the use of movement and exercise as part of the treatment for soft-tissue injuries such as ankle sprains, as well as reducing the risk of recurring injuries. The key is that the exercise must be appropriate for your injury, which your physio can help you with.

After an acute injury, deconditioning, or a decrease in muscle strength, can occur very quickly after immobilising an injured area, which reduces the load that your tissues can then withstand after you start to get moving. Early resistance exercise is shown to help restore muscle balance, assist the redevelopment of neuromuscular control and function, and aid the development of strength and endurance of injured tissues. Eccentric exercises, as well as heavy slow controlled exercise, has been shown to reduce swelling, reduce pain and help remodel the tendon structure to reduce pain in the short and long term. Even light exercise can help reduce pain levels and improve healing by increasing the blood flow to the muscles around the body.

4. Don’t Rush It

Being patient with your recovery process can be a lot easier said than done when you can’t wait to resume normal activities on and off the sports’ field. However, if you cut corners with your recovery, or jump back into activity before your body is ready, you risk abruptly interrupting your treatment plan and causing more harm than good by overloading your injured muscles or ligaments beyond their current capacity. This can result in re-injury or suboptimal rehabilitation outcomes which can have longstanding effects, such as when a poorly rehabilitated ankle sprain leads to long lasting chronic ankle instability.

Simply put: patients who take the time to adhere to their treatment plan have better outcomes.  Focus on the long-term goal of a full, healthy recovery and know that the process takes time.

5. Book In With Your Physio

Physiotherapists help you get the most out of life – helping you recover from injury, reduce pain and stiffness, increase mobility and prevent further injury. With a four year degree, which includes a focus on musculoskeletal health, and further learning every year to advance their knowledge and skills, your physio is your go-to when pain or injury develop. Booking in with a physio means that you not only receive a custom treatment plan (after a comprehensive assessment) that is designed to optimise your recovery in light of your goals, but a large part of their role is also educating you on everything related to your injury, the cause and future prevention. 

Your physio stays with you throughout your recovery, which involves:

The acute stage – helping to avoid worsening the injury while reducing swelling and pain to optimise your comfortRehabilitation stage – helping you improve your strength, movement and control, and prevent any loss of functional capacity where possible

Return to function – this is where your physio helps you get back to your regular, seamless daily function

Ready To Get Back To Pain-Free Sports?

Your Allsports Physiotherapy team is here to help with clinics across Australia. Book your appointment with your local Physioactive team online or give us a call on 3281 8876.

References

[1] https://blogs.bmj.com/bjsm/2018/02/13/choosing-not-injured-using-warning-signal-pain-overuse-injury-prevention-strategy/

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5015585/

[3] https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/bjsports/54/2/72.full.pdf

[4] https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/46/4/220

[5] https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/52/15/956

[6] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5932411/

[7] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3445177/

[8] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24100287/

[9] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2923776/

[10] https://choose.physio/what-is-physio

[11] https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/bjsports/54/2/72.full.pdf

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Why School Shoes Matter: Finding Well-Fitting, Supportive School Shoes For 2022

The new school year brings a mix of excitement and chaos. Amongst the never-ending to-do list to get the kids prepared is a key priority: buying your kids a new pair of well-fitting school shoes that you feel confident will keep their feet supported and feeling great throughout the school year.

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