Following a gruelling six-month selection camp that included events such as the left arm 1 rep max bicep curl and racing a great white shark I was given the honour to spend 4 weeks with the Average Joe’s down at Evolutio. It wasn’t all sunshine and smiles though. Two weeks before flying over from Glasgow I began to have the nervous shakes about coming to Melbourne and what happened next I will never forget. Team Captain Alex called me and said "Well, I guess if a person never quit when the going got tough, they wouldn't have anything to regret for the rest of their life. But good luck to you. I'm sure this decision won't haunt you forever." Now that may or may not be a quote from Dodgeball the movie and that may or may not have actually happened.

Most people know what the rotator cuff is, and most know that with the majority of shoulder injuries there should be an element for rotator cuff strengthening in their rehab program.  The majority of clients are pretty savvy too, and they know they should add some release work around their shoulder and work on some thoracic mobility, which is great! Some clients come to us and they reel off all the exercises they are doing for their rehab and what they are doing actually sounds pretty good. So the question is, why aren’t they getting better? Most of the time it's because the quality or intensity of their rehab isn’t up to scratch. This brings me back to my last blog on about quality being the key factor that can make or break your rehab. (Link to Last Blog)

We breathe on average about 21,000 times a day. Now, what if we are not breathing correctly? That’s a lot of times in one day to do something wrong. There’s various ways to breathe: mouth V nasal, chest V abdominal. Some good, some not so good. If our breathing pattern is not “normal”, then we will struggle to normalise any of our other movement patterns.

Optimal oxygenation occurs through nasal breathing. We should be doing this 99% of the time. Mouth breathing is associated with “fight or flight”, whereas nasal breathing is associated with “rest and digest”. Basically we want to convince our brain that it is in a “rest and digest” state a majority of the time to reap the benefits. Nasal breathing reassures our subconscious we are safe. We need to turn nasal breathing into a habit. This can be tricky at first, but we will explain how and why you should be doing this below.

“Everyone you will ever meet knows something you don't"

Short of this sounding like “memoirs of a physio geek”, my intention for this blog post was more to express my personal insight into what it takes to be a health practitioner in today’s modern world where information acquisition is as easy as pushing a button and asking: “Siri, why do I have elbow pain?”

Many of you will have heard of the terms tendinitis or tendinopathy…some of you will have even had the misfortune of experiencing the disruptions it can cause to your training or worse, to day-to-day activities!

Lets be honest, this condition hangs around like a bad smell! The inconsistency in its presentation can drive you insane…it doesn’t take much to flare it up, but on any given day, it could feel like its miraculously disappeared, giving you false hope that you’ve recovered, only for it to come back with a vengeance.