Anyone who has had a severe or chronic leg injury, will know just how difficult it can be to do the simplest of movements or activities such as walking up stairs or getting in and out of cars. Even just regular walking itself can be hard! I should know, I have had more than my share of injuries. Most of my injuries have been on my left leg, and many of them could have been easily prevented if I had adopted the methods and exercise techniques I am going to share with you in this article. For these injuries were not bad luck, they were all postural and movement related. Plus the fact I did not rehabilitate them correctly and went straight back to playing sports, led to compensation and dysfunction, that created a new injury. Each time this happened I became much less stable, stiff at various joints and much weaker. It was only later in life taking on my current role, researching and learning from my mistakes, did I find the answer. And possibly the greatest answer has been the power of learning how to do a Single Leg Squat. In this article. I will show why we regard this so highly in both rehabilitation and injury prevention.

In the past 10 years the role that strength training plays in the Health industry has taken some giant leaps forward. No longer is this just limited to the guys who want to look like Arnie. Better education and a more open minded approach by many health organizations and practitioners who now see how important adding muscle is for prevention of disease such as Cancer, Diabetes and prevention of many injuries. The community looks up to these authorities to guide them on what to do, and as a result things have started to change in gyms as people are sold on the idea that strength training is important for health. However, it is at this point that things begin to go backwards. The methods that people follow with strength training are still based on the guys doing "Arnie curls" and even worse machine training. And I don't just mean Personal Trainers, but most of the rehabilitation field and methods used for older adults also use this style of training. Why? Well there is many reasons for this which I will explain in this article, but by far the biggest problem is that their is still a real lack of education about how we are designed to move, how we efficiently create and improve our strength, and how strength relates to health. So while we have come far in terms of recognizing we need resistance training, our method on doing this has a long way to go.

Recently we covered a great article about the importance of eating more greens, and we also discussed why saturated fat is in fact good for you! Apart from people eating too much sugar one of the biggest obstacles to people needing help with cancer, diabetes and chronic injury is adding muscle. To add muscle you need to complete strength training program, but you also need to eat enough protein to repair the damaged muscle tissue and enable the muscle to grow. Without enough good quality protein you will eat your own tissue to repair yourself! Meaning you will not get the rewards you are looking for! If your goal is to just lose weight and look good adding muscle is just as important for adding muscle increases your metabolic rate helping you to shed the excess fat and kilos more easily. Lastly protein helps to keep blood sugars and hormones under control stopping the food cravings from kicking in and ruining all of your health and fitness efforts. To help get your head around all these factors here is an article put together by our Exercise Physiologist Trainer Nathan Fejes as he is very passionate about nutrition, and especially the value of protein. Enjoy.