Jumpstart Your Muscles!

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Have you tried various traditional therapies such as exercise, stretching, creams, or hot/cold treatments to help you feel better yet nothing has provided you with long-lasting relief?

Jumpstart Your Muscles

It is too easy to blame age for all of your problems but where the muscles are concerned there are many gains to be made. Picture this: your car battery is dead, so when you turn the key the car will not start. This is the same premise as expecting your muscles to contract and stabilize your joints when they have lost their connection – they simply will not ‘start’ either. Just as the car will not start until we use booster cables to jumpstart the battery, muscles similarly need to be jumpstarted with MAT in order to get them to contract and start adding stability and strength to the body and in turn decrease tightness and discomfort.

We use a gentle hands-on pressure to activate the muscles and we recommend daily corrective exercises that will increase the tolerance of these muscles to withstand the stresses of daily life and your specific exercise regime.

When you jumpstart a car battery, you need to operate the vehicle for a time to ensure that the battery is fully charged. This is very similar to what we do with Muscle Activation Techniques (MAT). The goal is to build up the strength of your weak links (muscles) over time and get your whole body functioning optimally.

Where MAT Can Help

Here are just some of the situations where MAT can generate positive and successful results:

  • you have seen some results with other therapies but you are not quite in top condition
  • you still cannot roll over and/or sleep on your ‘bad’ shoulder
  • when you do a certain exercise at the gym, you feel discomfort for the next day or two
  • when you walk for any period of time/distance, your feet are in a lot of pain/discomfort
  • you cannot sleep because you just cannot get comfortable
  • you have discomfort in your back when you bend to pick up something from the floor
  • you cannot lift your grandchildren, children, or even a bag of potatoes without feeling some pain in your neck, back, shoulder, and/or hips
  • you were in a car accident a few years ago and are now feeling its effects on your body
  • you have scoliosis, kyphosis, or lordosis and you want to manage it as best you can
  • you want to work on the strength of your feet so you do not need to rely on orthotics
  • you believe the limitations in movement in your neck are related to your daily headaches

Apana Bodywork will answer all your questions and you will be guided by a qualified specialist on how to optimize the healing process from the first session through each subsequent session.

Have You Lost Hope that You Will Ever Feel Better?

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Do you sometimes feel as if you have tried every possible remedy? Have you seen little in the way of results and each specialist/doctor seems to be telling you something different? After all this, have you begun to feel like you will not be able to find a solution to your issue and that you will “just have to live with it”?

Don’t give up, try something different!

Muscle Activation Techniques (MAT) is different! MAT specifically restores muscle function by jumpstarting the muscle. Just as jumpstarting a battery gets a car engine running, MAT gets your muscles firing. This will change the way you feel when you walk, climb stairs, or workout at the gym. There is a great deal of healing that you can do simply by getting the muscular system up and running.

Case in point: a client with bad knee pain had previously been told by a sports medicine doctor that she would have to avoid stairs for the rest of her life because this caused her severe pain and she was not being helped by physiotherapy. After treating her with MAT for four sessions, she was climbing stairs again without pain. This major breakthrough was due to getting her muscles working again so that she could create stability and alignment and take the stress and strain off her knee.

We are all unique!

Here is some helpful information that you may not have been told nor heard about previously:

  • just because a friend was greatly helped by her specialist, it does not mean that you will get the same results
  • exercise or even “rehab exercises” do not fix all problems; sometimes they make it worse
  • the painful area is not always the problem area i.e.: your foot pain could be caused by a hip or neck problem
  • any and all injuries sustained throughout your life stack up to create the body you have now
  • all of the stress in your life accumulates to create the body you have now
  • stretching may make you feel better for a short time but your nervous system is actually in charge of muscle length/tension and the muscle(s) will go back to feeling tight again
  • stretching could conceivably make some people feel worse

When you feel like you are a square peg trying to fit into a round hole call Apana Bodywork, as we understand what you are going through.

Get your free 30-minute consultation to discuss how Muscle Activation Techniques can help you get better. Call Apana Bodywork today at (647) 801-2424 to schedule a one-on-one assessment and treatment and discover how good you can feel!

Bend With Your Knees, Not With Your Back

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Are you a mother who has to lift your child countless times per day? This can create a situation for your back that can get quite ugly – constant pain and virtual immobility. In this short post, I will share some tips for moms (and dads) on how to properly lift your child so that you do not put undue strain on your back and potentially find yourself in traction or a body cast.

It took some time but I eventually determined that I was committing “lifting fraud”. After many months and hundreds of bad lifts, I finally came to the realization that this was the cause of my back pain. It dawned on me that I should be lifting with my knees and not my back! And I am in the rehab/personal training field!

Then it occurred to me that, if I am forgetting to do this, how many others are forgetting it too?

If you want to know how to lift your child so that you prevent injury and do not become crippled by back pain, follow these few simple steps:

  1. Bend your knees, not at your waist
  2. Stick your pretty butt out (yes, I mean you!)
  3. Keep your abs tight
  4. Inhale as you lift up (this expands your ribcage and acts to inflate your back and give it more stability and strength)

So simple yet so easy to forget when you are taking care of the cutest bundle of joy and love – not to mention an endless number of matters to think about inside and outside your household.

When you are a mom, especially a new mom, things can get complicated (like having groceries in one arm and a baby in the other and being determined to only make one trip from the car to the house!).

Mothers, please take care of your backs; these steps are preventative – and free of charge, too!

Moms (and dads), remember to bend with your knees, not your back (and keep your abs tight!)