Bulletin

1. 4 Pillars of Exercise
2. How Nutrition Supports Concussion Recovery
3. VOMS Testing: A Guide for an Essential Concussion Diagnostic Tool

Physical exercise is amongst the most important activities that we can engage in to maintain a healthy body and mind.
Achieving overall physical fitness requires building a strong foundation.
For simplicity, I have broken this down to four main building blocks:

1. Endurance exercise and cardiovascular fitness
2. Strength and muscle maintenance through resistance
3. Range of motion - flexibility
4. Balance and proprioception

Depending on your background experience with exercise and sport, dance, or manual labor, you may identify more with one or two of these pillars than the others. While engaging in any one of these has health benefits, it is the incorporation of all four that really balance overall fitness.

• Endurance: Cardiovascular fitness and muscle endurance is what most people in the United States think of when considering an exercise program. This includes activities such as running, biking, rowing, and swimming. Improving endurance can help to reduce the risk of heart disease, stroke, depression, and diabetes. It is also an important aspect of overall fitness and can improve energy levels and quality of life. To improve cardiovascular endurance, it is important to engage in aerobic exercise regularly, starting with low to moderate intensity and gradually increasing duration and intensity over time. Measuring your perceived level of exertion, monitoring heart rate during exercise, and journalizing time to recovery is an excellent way to calibrate output and track progress.
• Strength: Strength gains require resistance and can range from bodyweight training to weightlifting. Resistance training helps to improve muscle strength, bone density, and joint stability. To generate power, muscles need specific conditioning that challenges the strength of their connections and ability to contract efficiently. Exercises that can improve strength include push-ups, squats, lunges, and deadlifts. Bodyweight exercises such as planks, bridges, and wall sits can also be effective. The benefits of dedicated muscle strengthening exercises on joint function, metabolism, and performance are undeniable.

  As little as 2-3 sessions of 25-40 minutes of lifting has significant impact on bone and muscle strength. A simple push movement (bench press), a pull (row), and picking something up from the ground (dead lift) can have the desired impact.

• Flexibility: The full range of motion of joints and muscle/tendon length is an important aspect of exercise that is often undervalued in sports that do not specifically require flexibility. For athletes that are more focused on speed, power, and endurance, the range of motion around a joint can be improved through practices such as yoga, which can be built into a recovery day. Yoga combines stretching with body position and awareness, which helps to increase flexibility while also promoting mindfulness. Other activities that can improve flexibility include Pilates, tai chi, and dedicated stretching exercises. As a rule, a dynamic warmup should focus on functional range of motion (the range of motion you can easily move through), and flexibility training to increase the range of motion should be reserved for the end of workouts or dedicated sessions of stretching.
• Proprioception and Balance: Proprioception is the ability to sense the position and movement of our body in space. Our coordination centers work with spindle fibers and other sensory mechanisms to sense where we are and unconsciously help us navigate the world. Proprioception and balance are best addressed in sports like dance, gymnastics, or martial arts, which involve movements that challenge the body's balance and coordination. Basic training principles that can be used to improve proprioception and balance include practicing single-leg balance exercises, using balance boards, and performing exercises with unstable surfaces such as a Bosu ball.

Incorporating these foundational pillars of exercise has numerous benefits. Flexibility can improve range of motion and reduce the risk of injury. Proprioception and balance can improve coordination and prevent falls. Strength can improve muscle mass, bone density, and joint stability. Endurance exercise can improve heart health and overall fitness.

In any sport it is relatively easy to identify primary fitness concerns. In soccer speed and endurance prevail. Enhanced cardiovascular endurance is necessary for running, biking, and swimming. Football and Boxing are displays of power, agility and speed. Basketball is likewise a sport highlighting nimble and highly coordinated athletes.

The benefits of a comprehensive exercise strategy can include better performance, injury prevention, and longevity.

The goals of exercise may change over a lifetime, but the foundations virtually always include a balance of the four pillars.

Other Related Links