Tag: Sports physical therapy

Marathon Training and Racing Wellness: Why I Chose Tina

On By bbpt1In BBPT Health Tip, fitness, fundraiser, physical therapy, sports, strength, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Molly Team Tisch MSMolly Caughlan PT, DPT

I am very excited to announce that I will begin training soon and will be running the New York Marathon for the first time. I will be running as part of Team TISCH MS alongside my awesome and inspirational co-worker, Fiona McMahon. We are working together to raise a combined $10,000 dollars to support multiple sclerosis research. You can donate to my personal fundraising page here. This is an incredible opportunity that I feel so honored to be a part of. I decided to run the marathon as part of my New York and life bucket list. I see marathon training as a perfect way to get to know all of the five burrows. Running has always been my way of getting to know the city I’m living in.

I have trained for several 5K, 10K and half marathon races, but only one full marathon. My first (and only) marathon I call my “almost marathon” took place in Savannah, GA in November, when the weather should be sunny and 70s. Unfortunately, due to a heat index of 105 and with several hundred participants fainting due to heat exhaustion, they cut the race short and made everyone turn around at mile 14. I was relieved, frustrated, exhausted, and incredibly HOT. My 6 months of training in the hot Atlanta summer had not prepared me for the intense humidity that made me feel as if I were swimming and not running.

Beyond Basics Physical Therapy has generously offered physical therapy services to me to help me meet my marathon training goals. First and foremost, I’d like to complete my training and marathon without any major injuries. In previous races, I’ve been fortunate to not have any serious injuries and just minor aches/pains. My main problem areas are my right sacroiliac joint and right foot feeling occasionally unstable and achy. Second, I’d like to finish in under 4 and a half hours, meaning little to no walking breaks. My pace is on the slower end (around 10 min/mile) and I’m hoping to increase my pace. My third goal is to get the most out of my training and to fully enjoy the whole process.

My co-worker Tina Cardenia will be my physical therapist and I could not be more thrilled to be working with someone so incredibly talented, intelligent, and experienced. Tina has an extensive background working in an orthopedic setting and has completed the intense certification process in Functional Manual Therapy (CFMT). Tina uses this strong framework to look at the body as a whole and bring its function to optimal capacity.

These next 6 months will be intense, but I’m excited to push my body to new limits and finally cross “marathon” off the list. With the help of Tina, Team TISCH, and Beyond Basics, I am excited to take on this new challenge. I’m confident that I’ll meet all the goals I’ve set out for myself and look forward to November as they come into fruition.

Both Molly and Tina work in our Midtown Location.

PT Molly

 

A Holiday Gift for You! BBPT is Offering Free Consults for People Living in the Greater NYC Area!

On By bbpt1In BBPT Health Tip, bladder, bowel, breast cancer, cancer, Cold Laser, community, constipation, Core Stability, cupping, cycle for survival, dance medicine, diastasis recti, education, Endometriosis, fitness, fundraiser, Guest blogger, Health, health awareness, Incontinence, injury prevention, Kids Health, LGBTQ+, lymphedema, male pelvic pain, marathon, meditation, Men's Health, Modalities, multiple sclerosis, nutrition, orthopedics, Painful Bladder Syndrome/IC, Painful Sex, pediatrics, Pelvic Pain, persistent genital arousal disorder, physical therapy, Pilates, Pregnancy and postpartum, prostate cancer, prostatitis, pumpkin, recipe, relaxation, running, sexual health, sports, strength, Tech, Uncategorized, urinary dysfunction, vaginismus, Women's Health, YogaLeave a comment

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Any persistent pain or chronic back or pelvic pain can be tough. It is tough to have and often times it can be extremely isolating. Many of our patients have to go through a number of clinicians before they even get a diagnosis of pelvic floor dysfunction. If you are reading this blog, you probably have some questions about pelvic floor dysfunction and if physical therapy is right for you.

We are here to help. If you are living in the Greater New York Area and have some questions about orthopedic, sports or pelvic floor dysfunction and if physical therapy is right for you, I encourage you to call our office. For a limited period of time, we are offering free 15-minute phone consults with our licensed physical therapists to patients in the greater New York Area. For those of you living outside this area, a fee may apply to the consult but can be applied towards payment for a PT visit if you chose to visit us. Don’t miss this opportunity to learn more about your pelvic floor and what PT can do for you.

The Physical Therapists at Beyond Basics also treat orthopedic (sport and joint injuries), pediatric pelvic floor dysfunction and orthopedic injury, and much more. Give us a call to discuss how PT can help with any one of these issues!

All the best,

Beyond Basics Physical Therapy

212-354-2622 (42nd Street Location)

212-267-0240 (William Street Location)

Marathon Training: Two Perspectives

On By bbpt1In fundraiser, marathon, Men's Health, Painful Bladder Syndrome/IC, physical therapy, running, sports, strength, Uncategorized, Women's HealthLeave a comment

sneaker.pngAs we creep closer and closer towards marathon weekend, our very own Tina Cardenia PT, DPT, CFMT and Victoria LaManna (Vicky) PT, DPT, CLT, PRPC were kind enough to share their stories about preparing for the 2018 New York City Marathon. Vicky will be running her first marathon on November 4th, 2018 in order to raise money for Multiple Sclerosis Research. Tina was gracious enough to volunteer her expertise in orthopedic physical therapy to help Vicky have the best run possible for a great cause. If you are interested in donating to support MS research, please donate here and read more about their stories below. If you are interested in hearing more about our orthopedic and sports program here at Beyond Basics Physical Therapy, give us a call at 212-354-2622.

From the Runner’s Perspective

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Victoria LaManna (Vicky) PT, DPT, CLT, PRPC

This year I am participating in my first ever marathon in the NYC Marathon for Team TischMS. Truly, this is my first ever 5k, Half Marathon, or Full Marathon. I am traditionally an anaerobic, (short bursts energy) exerciser. I have played soccer, dabbled in Muay Thai kickboxing, yoga, and weight lifting for exercise. The mind-body challenge of running a marathon (and doing it all for a great cause!) appealed to me. But where to start?

Luckily, I am in a profession that specializes in exercise, injury screening, and prevention, as well as injury rehabilitation. One of my co-workers has also run a few marathons and pointed me in the right direction for a training schedule. To further help ensure success in my training process, I also started physical therapy and made sure I got on my co-worker Tina’s super busy schedule.

vicky.pngShe first tested my core strength, checked hip mobility and strength, as well as spine and rib cage mobility. All areas that are important for efficient running. Tina found that I had poor core-first responses to outside forces, meaning that every time my foot hit the ground while running, my core was not firing to connect my lower extremities to my trunk. This could definitely be why I was experiencing right low back pain with running, and it could actually lead to further injury and result in not being able to RUN at all! Tina also found limitations in my breathing, rib cage, and thoracic mobility. Other than back pain, my first main complaint a few weeks into training was that I could not breathe. While you could chalk that up to poor conditioning, it was something that was felt immediately in runs – as if I just did not have the capacity to take a breath in. This is where we started our treatment – rib cage and thoracic spine mobility.

From there, Tina continued treating based on observation of my running pattern. She continued to work on hip, spine mobility and core control based on what she saw was insufficient in my running. My breathing improved greatly, as well as my mobility. I began to run completely pain-free with ease.

About 2 months away from Marathon Day, I injured my right foot trying to complete a 16-mile training run. I was unable to walk without pain and was limping around the office. Tina quickly observed that I had a bone in my foot and ankle that were compressed and out of alignment. Her work to align my foot and ankle, working all the way up again through my hip and trunk helped me to get back to pain-free running.

I am all set to run the NYC Marathon Sunday, November 4th! I am incredibly thankful to Tina for helping me to get through my training pain-free, manage an injury along the way, and quickly get me back on track for race day. And I am thankful for Team TISCH for allowing me the opportunity to join their team and support a great cause that affects many men and women.

Are you training for a marathon? Looking to improve your running form? OR even improve your golf swing? I would highly recommend seeing a physical therapist for an injury prevention screen for any and all sports, recreation or exercise. Setting yourself up for optimal movement and mechanics will enhance your activity, as well as reduce the risk of injury. It worked for me!!

 

From the Therapist’s Perspective:

Tina Cardenia PT, DPT, CFMT

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Victoria LaManna is such an inspiration. She volunteered to run the NYC marathon this year with little to no running experience and I was lucky enough to help prepare her! I have been working with Victoria for the past 6 months and I am amazed by how far she has come and how much she has already accomplished. Each week during our PT sessions there were a couple of things that I would look at to monitor her progress. I would observe her running, assess her core with tests called the Lumbar Protective Mechanism* and the Elbow Flexion Test*, her standing posture, her single leg stance, double leg squat, single leg squat, her glut and hamstring strength and how it connects to her trunk, and trunk rotation range of motion.

I saw that Vicky’s main limitations when I was observing her run were her limited trunk rotation towards the right, poor landing control on both of her legs especially her right one, and running with her feet turned out. One of the main things I looked for when observing Vicky run is the force transfer through her body from her feet to her trunk, and how the force translates through the rest of her body. It looked as though the force transfer wasn’t as efficient as I would have liked and this repetitive stress through her back and legs could potentially lead to injury.

tina and vickyVicky’s limitation with trunk rotation correlated to one of her complaints of having difficulty breathing during her runs. It seemed as though she was only able to get a good breath through only one side of her body. Upon examination, I found that she was limited into rib cage expansion especially on the right side. After some rib mobilization and breathing inhalation retraining and working thoracic spine rotation Victoria was able to rotate more symmetrically and reported an increased ease of breath with running.

Vicky’s lack of control with landing while running meant that she had a lack of eccentric (the motion of an active muscle while it is lengthening) control through her pelvis, causing compression through her back every time she lands. This could explain the low back pain Vicky has been experiencing. To address this, I worked on increasing the mobility and range of motion through her hips, pelvis, and back. I then worked on retraining her body with specific neuromuscular techniques called Proprioceptive Neuromuscular Facilitation (PNF) and specific exercises to help Vicky create a core first strategy with her running. This means, with every step and every movement Vicky is able to initiate with her core muscles first, which prevented her from overusing her bigger muscles which tend to fatigue quickly and can lead to injury and pain.

Vicky was running with her feet turned out causing poor force absorption from her feet up to her body. This style of running can also result in muscle overuse injuries and pain over time. This could have also been contributing to her complaints of shin splints while running. To work on this, I evaluated Vicky’s foot and ankle mobility, her knee tracking with squats, and single leg squats. With knee tracking, I noticed that she went into valgus with both of her knees, but it was worse on her right. Valgus means that her knees were “knocking in” which was an issue of having weak hip strength as well as lack of mobility and flexibility through some of her leg muscles and joints.  I did a lot of manual work to restore good range of motion and mobility and a lot of muscle retraining and drills to train Vicky to use those muscles appropriately and to be able to carry it over into her running.

After all this training and all the hard work that Vicky has been putting into running, Vicky’s running form now looks great! She has much more mobility through her trunk, is able to control her landing much more efficiently and is able to connect her feet for a better push off during running! Even as Vicky increased her mileage, she kept reporting to me how much easier her runs have been feeling, how much easier it was to breathe and how much more ease of motion she had through each run, and I couldn’t be more proud of her hard work!

*The Lumbar Protective Mechanism and the Elbow Flexion Test are special tests that come from the Institute of Physical Art. If you would like to learn more about their approach to PT, click here.

Why seek out a physical therapist with advanced orthopedic training? The case for CFMT and OCS

On By bbpt1In BBPT Health Tip, bladder, bowel, breast cancer, cancer, Cold Laser, constipation, Core Stability, dance medicine, diastasis recti, education, Endometriosis, fitness, Health, health awareness, Incontinence, injury prevention, marathon, orthopedics, Painful Bladder Syndrome/IC, Painful Sex, Pelvic Pain, physical therapy, Pregnancy and postpartum, prostate cancer, running, sexual health, sports, strength, Uncategorized, urinary dysfunction, vaginismusLeave a comment

Pelvic 3By: Kaitlyn Parrotte, PT, DPT, OCS, CFMT

If you have perused our website, you might have noticed that here at Beyond Basics, we have many physical therapists who have a CFMT certification, or are in the process of completing one. Now the question lies, what is a CFMT? How is this approach unique? How can this approach be of benefit to me?

The acronym CFMT stands for Certified Functional Manual Therapist. This certification is through the Institute of Physical Art (IPA), which is an organization founded by two physical therapists, Gregg and Vicky Johnson.

With the CFMT approach, we evaluate and treat every individual’s mechanical capacity (how your tissues and joints move), neuromuscular function (how your system stabilizes itself, and the coordination of muscle activation), and motor control (how an individual moves and performs daily tasks). Furthermore, we assess and retrain how these three individual components interact to ensure each person can return to the tasks/activities they need and love to do.

What this means is, when a new patient walks through our door, we don’t just focus on one small area, such as only the knee in which you report pain. Instead, we will look at the big picture by assessing your strength, amount of limb and segmental motion available to you, posture and alignment, and movement, which can be as simple as getting out of a chair, or a higher level activity such as running, weight lifting or other sport-related activity. This will allow us to get a thorough impression of what impairments you might have, and will help us determine what the cause of your symptoms and functional limitations is (what is the driver?). From here we can figure out the most effective approach to your treatment, and will apply progressive interventions that help to ensure continued benefits from each session. We have found that this approach commonly gets you back to your activity or sport faster!

Now you may be asking yourself, “Well this sounds interesting, but why does it matter?” Looking at the whole person and treating your system overall, allows us to make lasting changes, not only to a specific body part that is causing problems for you, but also with your habits of how you hold yourself and move. By becoming more aware of your body and moving with more efficiency, you will find day-to-day activities, and even sporting activities, are easier for you to perform. Furthermore, and most importantly, if you are able to move and live in a more efficient way, you are decreasing the risk of future injury.

So whether you are experiencing incontinence, pelvic pain, low back pain, or a shoulder injury, having a knowledgeable therapist work with you, can make a significant impact on your function and quality of life.

 

Marathon Update: Shaving Time off my Race with Physical Therapy and Doing Good in the Name of Multiple Sclerosis Research

On By bbpt1In fitness, fundraiser, Health, marathon, multiple sclerosis, orthopedics, physical therapy, running, sports, strength, UncategorizedLeave a comment

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Fiona McMahon PT, DPT

Hi everyone! It’s Fiona from BBPT. I am writing the day after the 2017 NYC Marathon sore, tired, but happy. It was a great training season, in which I pushed myself harder than I had before and had a great physical therapist, Jessica Babich PT, DPT looking after me the whole way.

Let’s not bury the lead any further. As of today, we managed to raise over $3,500 to support research for multiple sclerosis (MS) through NYC Team Tisch MS and as a group Team Tisch raised over $100,000 dollars to further the goal of making TISCH MS history.

finish timeALSO…. physical therapy definitely payed off. I shaved over 17 minutes my last NYC marathon in 2013, going from a time of 4 hours 0 minutes and 4 seconds, to 3 hours 43 minutes and 2 seconds. Not only was it a personal record for the course, but it was 8 minutes faster than my previous all time best at Sugarloaf in 2011.

This was my first time getting physical therapy during training for a race, rather than having to turn to it when some type of disaster struck, be it a rolled ankle, irritable knee, etc. This is the first time I’ve had someone care not only about my core, but whether or not it engaged when it was supposed to.

I would advise anyone who is considering engaging in an athletic endeavor, especially a new one, or when competing in a sport for time, to strongly consider getting an experienced physical therapist with expert skills in manual therapy and a keen eye for function. They can evaluate problem spots from head to toe (literally, in my case, Jessica worked on both my neck and ankles). They can help you tailor your training to get the most out of your exercises to allow you to perform at higher levels. Jessica kept me healthy and motivated, and her work allowed me to train safely and effectively at an intensity I hadn’t yet explored independently.

Thank you all for your support. If you still care to donate you still can here.

If you think you would benefit from PT at Beyond Basics, click here or call today.

Marathon Training Update

On By bbpt1In BBPT Health Tip, fitness, Health, injury prevention, marathon, nutrition, running, sports, strength, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Fiona McMahon PT, DPT

Hello everyone! Here’s a brief little update from physical therapy land about progress for the marathon! We are actually a little less than a month away from race day. We are close to our donation goal, but really need your help to make it. Please click here to support research to end multiple sclerosis. This is go time. It’s where the rubber hits the road and you have to put a little more muscle in your hustle. Typically this is the point at which you start to approach 20 miles training runs and things can go right, which is great, or things can go wrong and you learn from them. I will also give you a quick update on what’s been going on in physical therapy.

Nutrition Mistakes

I had a pretty good learning experience a couple of weeks ago that I want to share with you, so you don’t end up making the same mistakes I made. On my first mega mile run, which I consider anything over 15 miles in this category, I hit the wall so hard I think I might have left a Fiona shaped impression in the brick. I started out a 17 mile run fast, doing about 8 minute miles. I also neglected to do my usual carb load for breakfast. On top of that, I forgot to bring any glucose replacement supplements with me. You know where this is headed. At mile 13 I crashed. I sat on the side of the road and contemplated calling an uber. I managed to make it back but average a 9:30 pace, no where close to my goal pace.

This just goes to show how important it is to have the right fuel whether you’re pounding the pavement. My subsequent two runs 18 and 20 miles respectively went much better. I tried out GU, a glucose replacement gel versus glucose tablets. I’ve use GU a lot, but it has a thick consistency, which can only be described as gnarly, but the stuff works and you certainly aren’t eating it for taste. The glucose tablets were delicious, if you like sweet tarts candies, which I do. The only drawback is I can imagine the dry powder of them to be a little rugged to get down on days where you might end up more dehydrated. I have one more 20 miler to pound out before the big day, so I’m going to try a mixture of both and see how I feel. What’s so beneficial about long runs is not just the physical training, but also learning what works for your body. It allows you to foresee possible problems that could occur on race day and address them before they arise.

Physical Therapy

As I alluded to in my last blog, this fall has been a bit tough with colds and stomach bugs. Jessica was good to incorporate some visceral mobilization work into treatment to allow more sore little digestive organs a chance to heal. She also worked on my sacrum, the bone above your tailbone, to make sure that I had enough range of motion to run efficiently. She then made me work! We did work to activate more core muscles and at the end of treatment, there was a real increase in my core strength!

This fall has been full of surprises health/training-wise, but with Jessica’s help I was able to immediately feel a little better, without taking my eye off my goal of a 8:35 mile pace! If you could use someone like Jessica in your corner, call us at BBPT today.

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