Movement Therapy EP

Foam rolling isn’t necessarily useless, but the explanation you’re often given for why it works is.
Rolling around on a foam roller or smashing a lacrosse ball into a “tight” muscle isn’t physically breaking down adhesions, trigger points or reshaping your fascia.
What it can do is temporarily change how you perceive discomfort and movement, which can make an area feel less stiff or more comfortable for a short period of time.
And there’s nothing wrong with using it if you enjoy it or find it useful.
The problem is when it becomes a mandatory part of your rehab or warm-up because you’ve been told your muscles are “tight” and need to be broken apart.
If you need to foam roll every single day just to feel normal, it might be worth asking whether there’s a better way to address what’s actually limiting you.

Tight calves don’t automatically mean you need to stretch them. And they definitely don’t automatically mean they’re weak.
Before blaming a “weak muscle,” look at the basics: ankle flexibility, calf strength, training load and injury history.
If your flexibility and strength are both adequate but your calves still feel tight, the issue might not be your calves at all.
Sometimes the answer is simply that you’re doing too much, too soon, too often.
Not every problem needs to be solved by strengthening the muscle you can feel.
Follow for more evidence-based running and rehab advice.

Shoulder rehab doesn’t need to involve 12 different exercises and a colour-coded resistance band.
One of the most important things you can do is progressively expose the shoulder to load.
And no, that doesn’t mean you need a 20kg dumbbell.
Lateral raises are a simple option because even a relatively light load can become challenging when you increase the reps.
The important part isn’t finding the “perfect” exercise. It’s finding something you can tolerate, progressively increasing the demand, and giving your shoulder enough consistency to adapt.
Pain doesn’t automatically mean you need to stop loading the shoulder.
Sometimes you just need to modify the dose.
Less weight. More reps. Appropriate frequency. Then gradually build from there.
Simple doesn’t mean ineffective.

The soleus is important for running. That part is not up for debate.
It contributes heavily to force production during running and helps manage the repeated loads placed through the lower limb with every stride.
But the mistake is assuming that because the soleus is highly active during running, we need to train it with a specific “soleus exercise”.
The reality is you can train the soleus with either a bent or straight knee position. The biggest driver of adaptation isn’t the position of your knee, it’s whether you’re progressively loading the muscle.
Strength training works by building capacity.
That means challenging the muscle with enough load and volume to create an adaptation.
So instead of obsessing over whether your calf raise is bent-knee or straight-leg, focus on:
✅ Progressive overload
✅ Heavy, quality reps
✅ Consistently building strength over time
Don’t overcomplicate it. The goal isn’t to find the perfect exercise variation 🙅‍♂️ it’s to make the muscles involved in running stronger.💪

One of the most common explanations people receive for back pain is that they have a "weak core."
While strength can absolutely be part of the solution, the reality is that back pain is far more complex than a single muscle group.
Research consistently shows that factors such as sleep quality, stress levels, physical activity, previous experiences with pain, workload, recovery, and overall health can all influence how much pain someone experiences.
That's why two people with similar scans can have completely different symptoms. It's also why some people improve without ever doing a single plank, while others benefit from a well-structured strength program.
Good rehabilitation looks at the whole person, not just one body part.
If you've been told your back pain is simply due to a weak core, it may be worth taking a step back and considering the bigger picture.

Just because a scan shows something doesn't mean it tells you what treatment you need.
One of my biggest pet peeves is seeing treatment recommendations attached to imaging reports as if the scan alone can determine the best course of action.
It can't.
A radiologist interprets the scan. The referring clinician interprets the person.
Your symptoms, goals, injury history, physical examination, previous treatment response and lifestyle all matter. A treatment recommendation based purely on an image is missing a huge part of the picture.
Now, to be clear, there are absolutely situations where radiology-guided interventions are appropriate and can play an important role in healthcare.
But when we're talking about common musculoskeletal conditions like tendinopathies, osteoarthritis and many other pain presentations, the question should be:
Is an invasive intervention actually the best first option?
Or are we skipping over the things that have the strongest evidence behind them: education, progressive loading, exercise and helping people build capacity?
Take tennis elbow as an example. I regularly see reports recommending corticosteroid injections despite evidence showing they may provide short-term relief while often leading to worse long-term outcomes than exercise-based rehabilitation or even doing absolutely nothing.
That doesn't mean injections never have a place. It means healthcare isn't that simple.
Scans are tools. They're not treatment plans.
The best treatment decisions happen when imaging findings are combined with a thorough clinical assessment, not when someone looks at a picture and starts firing off recommendations.
Radiologists interpret scans. Clinicians interpret people.

Proximal hamstring tendinopathy often presents as a deep buttock pain that’s aggravated by sitting, hinging, or faster running.
Stretching isn’t inherently a problem, if it’s tolerated and doesn’t increase symptoms, it can be completely fine. The issue is that many people find early on the tendon simply doesn’t like being loaded in long, lengthened positions, so pushing into that range can keep it irritated.
That’s where early rehab usually starts better with more tolerable loading options like isometric hamstring bridges, before progressing into single-leg variations and then higher-demand exercises like sliders.
Once capacity improves, reintroducing hinging patterns such as an RDL helps bridge the gap back to daily and sporting demands.
And ultimately, if the goal is running, you have to reintroduce running. No gym exercise fully replaces the specific demands of sprinting, so speed work needs to be layered back in gradually.
Rehab is about matching load to tolerance, not avoiding movement.

One of the biggest myths in the fitness industry is that technique is the main thing causing injuries.

Think about how often people say things like:

❌ "Don't let your knees go over your toes."
❌ "Never round your back."
❌ "You'll blow a disc if you lift like that."

Yet the moment they explain why it's dangerous, they almost always bring load into the conversation.

"If that was heavier, you'd hurt yourself."

Exactly! Because load matters.

That doesn't mean technique is completely irrelevant. Technique can change how forces are distributed throughout the body. But the idea that there is one magical "perfect form" that prevents injury simply isn't supported by reality.

The body is adaptable.

What often matters more is whether the load, volume, and intensity of training exceed your current capacity.

You can get injured with textbook form.

You can also stay injury-free using techniques that social media experts would call "dangerous."

The danger isn't always in the movement.

It's often in the dose.

If you're a runner, you need to stop majoring in the minors.

The biggest thing that will improve your running isn't a fancy drill, a new gadget, or the latest recovery hack.

It's running.

Not smashing your mileage overnight and hoping for the best. Just gradually increasing your running volume over time and giving your body a chance to adapt.

Most runners spend too much time looking for shortcuts when the answer is usually pretty simple: run consistently, build patiently, and let time do the work.

One of the biggest mistakes I see in rehab is people being given exercises that have absolutely nothing to do with their end goal.
If you hurt your back deadlifting 100kg and your goal is to get back to deadlifting 100kg, your rehab should eventually look a lot like... deadlifting.
That doesn't mean you need to jump straight back into the movement at full load.
It means finding a version of the movement that you can tolerate, building strength and confidence there, and progressively working your way back towards the goal.
Too often people spend weeks or months doing random band exercises, core drills, and activation work without ever progressing towards the thing they're actually trying to get back to.
Rehab doesn't need to be complicated.
Identify the goal ➡️ Regress the movement ➡️ Build capacity ➡️ Progress the movement ➡️ Return to what you love doing.
Simple.
Follow .movement.therapist for more simple rehab advice that actually makes sense.