With the start of spring, many of us begin planning our gardens, including weeding, raking, and preparing for planting. Gardening has many health benefits, but injuries can occur. The low back can be particularly susceptible to injury during gardening as bending, lifting, and squatting can cause you to twist your body into awkward positions or to overstretch, leading to muscle strains or sprains. Check out our 8 tips to prevent low back pain this gardening season!

Winter sports involve dynamic athletic activities engaged in in cold weather and packed snow and ice, heightening the risk of injury significantly. Common winter sports injuries include knee ligament and meniscus tears, wrist fractures and sprains, concussions, and shoulder injuries like dislocations or rotator cuff tears. Physical therapists can help winter sports participants recover effectively from injury and return to winter sports. Check out our 10 tips for winter sports injury prevention!

Running a marathon is one of the most challenging and demanding athletic feats, requiring significant physical and mental strength as you push your body to its maximum limits. The hours, days, and weeks after a marathon are crucial for recovery and to reduce injury. Physical therapists can help marathon runners recover effectively, minimize soreness, and ensure a safe return to running. Check out our 14 tips for post-marathon recovery.

Mangiarelli Rehabilitation physical therapy assistant Patti demonstrates three exercises to improve posture. Good posture refers to proper alignment of the body in static and dynamic positions, holding the body against gravity with the least strain and tension on your muscles, joints, and ligaments. Physical therapists can assess and address any postural impairments, designing a personalized posture training program involving stretching, targeted strengthening, body mechanics instruction, and manual therapy.

During autumn, many of us engage in outdoor tasks to prepare our homes and yards for the winter, including raking copious amounts of leaves. Raking leaves can be quite physically demanding, requiring repetitive movements like pushing, pulling, lifting, twisting, and turning that can place biomechanical stress on the low back, shoulders, and neck. It’s important to take steps to prevent injury while raking leaves and prepare your body for the physical demands of raking. Check out our 6 tips to prevent leaf raking injuries this autumn!

Mangiarelli Rehabilitation physical therapist Bobby demonstrates the variety of ways we utilize the Golf Forever Swing Training Tool in our clinic to improve your golf swing. The golf swing is one of the most dynamic motions in sports, requiring coordinated loading and the generation of power and force throughout the kinetic chain. Physical therapy can help golfers improve their golf swing by enhancing agility and power for longer drives, improving mobility and flexibility in the hips and shoulders and dynamic balance, and enhancing core strength and neuromuscular control for a powerful, controlled, and accurate golf swing.

Pickleball is one of the fastest growing sports in the United States, played on a tennis-like court using a softball-sized, hard-plastic ball and a wooden racket to serve and volley the ball back and forth. While fairly easy to pick up, pickleball requires fast movements of the upper and lower body, sudden pivots and cuts, and side-to-side shuffling, which can contribute to injury. Physical therapy can help pickleball players not only recover from an on-court injury, but also prepare for a successful pickleball season through targeted strength and conditioning.

Check out our 7 tips for an ergonomic workstation! An ergonomic workstation is one that supports your body in a neutral position and reduces the risk of discomfort or pain that the stressors like sitting at a desk and computer for long periods of time can place on our bodies. Poor office ergonomics and posture can contribute to ongoing aches and pain, such as neck strain, low back pain, wrist discomfort, or eye strain. However, proper workstation ergonomics—correct chair height, appropriate equipment spacing, and good desk posture—can help you stay productive but healthy and comfortable at work.

As we step into spring, many of us are planning and starting our gardens, weeding, raking, and preparing for planting. Gardening has numerous health benefits: building strength, promoting sleep, boosting mood, and getting quality sunshine and Vitamin D. However, gardening does place stress and strain on joints and muscles when digging, planting, weeding, mulching, and raking, particularly the knee. Gardener’s knee is a common gardening-related injury that involves inflammation, swelling, and pain in the bursa at the front of the kneecap. To prevent knee pain when gardening, check out our gardening injury prevention tips!

Swelling is a natural part of the inflammatory process after an injury to help protect the injured area and facilitate healing as the body sends white blood cells and supportive fluids to the injured site to repair and heal. However, prolonged swelling can limit your range of motion and negatively affect your muscular strength. It is important to manage and limit swelling with the help of a physical therapist. Check out our 7 tips to manage swelling after injury!

Check out our January 2023 Newsletter, highlighting tips for managing arthritis this winter, wellness program update, winter donation thank you, and meniscus tear recovery with physical therapy.

Check out our October Newsletter that highlights celebrating National Physical Therapy Month, physical therapy for spinal stenosis, how to protect your back when raking leaves, physical therapy for tennis elbow, and our fall donation drive with the St. Vincent de Paul Society.

Autumn brings with it stunning landscapes of red, gold, and orange leaves. However, the aftermath of the turning of the leaves can involve raking and bagging an enormous number of leaves in our yard. Weekly leaf raking during the fall can take quite a toll on your body if you are using incorrect biomechanics that strains your back, neck, and shoulders. The low back is particularly vulnerable to injury when raking due to the repetitive movements and constant bending and lifting of raking. Check out our tips to protect your back this season when raking leaves!

Regular exercise is an essential component of healthy aging, helping seniors maintain independence and improve their physical and mental health. Exercise has numerous benefits for older adults, including improving muscle strength, building bone density, enhancing mobility and balance, and slowing age-related cognitive decline. Experts recommend that older adults engage in moderate-intensity aerobic exercise 150 minutes a week, strength train twice a week, and engage in weekly balance and flexibility training.

Carrying a backpack can have significant biomechanical, physiological, and discomfort impacts on the wearer, placing undue stress on the body, changing posture, and leading to back, neck, and shoulder pain. It’s essential that parents take steps to prevent backpack-related musculoskeletal pain in their children this school year. Check out our ergonomic tips for backpack safety!

Shin splints are a common soccer injury that involves inflammation of the tibia and surrounding muscles, which strain where they connect to the tibia and develop micro-tears, causing pain through the lower leg. Shin splints often occur early in the season during intense conditioning due to a rapid increase in the frequency and duration of exercise that places too much stress on the shin bone and muscles. Physical therapy can help soccer players manage shin splint-related pain, restore function and strength in the lower leg, and help athletes return to sport safely.

Check out our August 2022 Newsletter, which highlights physical therapy for shoulder osteoarthritis, back-to-school ergonomics, how to improve your golf swing, and 12 tips for running in the heat.

Running in the summer heat places tremendous stress on your body, raising your body temperature, increasing your heart rate, and causing you to sweat more. It is essential to take proper steps to ensure safe summer runs that enhance your running skill without overtaxing your body or leading to heat-related illness. Check out our 12 tips for running safely in the heat!

Hiking is a fun outdoor activity to engage in with family and friends throughout the summer and has numerous health benefits. However, hiking can be arduous, placing significant physical stress on the body as you navigate varied terrain and high temperatures. Check out our tips for preventing common hiking injuries like knee pain, ankle sprains, and heat exhaustion and what to do to ensure a safe hike this summer!

Track and field involve a variety of events that involve running, throwing, and jumping, which can place unique stress on the athlete’s body and contribute to injury. Track injuries are most often chronic overuse injuries such as runner’s knee, shin splints, plantar fasciitis, and hamstring injuries. Physical therapists can help track and field athletes manage and recover from overuse injuries and prevent injury through therapeutic exercise, strength training, gait analysis, and manual therapy. Check out our 10 tips to prevent injury this track season!