I had one of my sports people in Saturday, we looked at a number of things that were causing them trouble. Breathing related relationships were top of the pile, in particular the diaphragm and a little known set of muscles called the serratus posterior.
As they play ice hockey, I wanted to demonstrate the importance of breathing and intra abdominal pressure, and how it affects literally everything else, but specifically their abilities on the ice.
We looked at grip to begin with. Grip strength has been used as an indicator for heart disease, cancer and a wide range of other poor-health outcomes.
It’s also a great way of demonstrating force transfer from the core to the limbs – all the way down to the pinkies. As it’s the furthest point from the core which is easy to test, making it easy to demonstrate the changes.
We did a grip test before we started any treatment – they fell within the mean average for their age. We noted a difference of 10lbs between either side (dominant to non dominant hand).
We carried out the corrections required (just breathing and core related, no arm work), ran through some breathing drills – we practiced for around 2 minutes, retested, and …. grip strength went up by 10lbs on the dominant hand, and 12lbs on the non dominant, bringing them closer together, and increasing playability on the ice.
For this to hold, they will need to practice their home exercise programme.
Being a competitive sort, they wanted to know what my grip strength was. They were crushed (did you see what I did there 🤣) to see it was almost double, but that’s only because I practice my corrective breathing strategies every day 👨🏻🎓🧠💪🏻
Want to find out more:
https://www.gla.ac.uk/news/headline_584113_en.html (2018)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5750866/ (2017)
https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/grip-strength-may-provide-clues-to-heart-health-201505198022 (2015)
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=grip+strength+and+cognition&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart#d=gs_qabs&p=&u=%23p%3D7UhyUPbeQIoJ (2006)
Image Credit Lafayette
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