As a personal trainer with over 14 years experience I would rate the most frequent excuse I get from clients who do not workout enough or eat well balanced meals is, "I don't have enough time". Even people in tremendous chronic pain, cannot seem to fit in time to do stretches or exercises they need to do to get out of pain. Almost as if the pain is not enough of a motivator. But why is this? Is it because we are all lazy? I don't think so, in fact there are many reasons for this which we will explore in this article and endeavor to give you some great ideas and suggestions on how you don't actually need to find more time, instead you need to become smarter with your usage and be clear on what you want. In a perfect world, we'd all have at least an hour a day to devote to our fitness. But in the real world, we know that for many of us this is unrealistic and 24 hours does not even seem nearly enough time to fit in work, home chores and family commitments yet alone workouts. Let's see if we can give you some good ideas and solutions to help you out.

When planning to start the long process and break up the progressive stages of a knee rehabilitation program, an understanding of what can influence movements from a mobility and stability perspective is critical. Many of the best exercises to develop strength into weak areas are not necessarily the best option in the early stages as the body compensates and adapts to the pain and injury. Using various tools and drills to "retrain" the brain and nervous system is very important in being able to restore efficient functional movements of the body. The quadriceps can be a real problem in the beginning as they may have contributed greatly to creating the injury in the first place, and are often left with excessive tightness and weakness. This makes it very difficult to strengthen without creating more pain, and also more dysfunction. In this article, I am going to explain the role of using the Decline Board Squat to overcome this problem. I will show you how to gradually progress to heel plate squats, to eventually floor based squats and pain free movement. The purpose of the decline squat is to improve the overall strength of quads while maintaining muscle balance and optimal movement pattern of squatting.

I have seen some amazing results in my 15 years as a rehab specialist and the past few years have been the most dramatic, as I have worked with many clients trying to learn how to walk again which has really tested my skills and knowledge. Exercises I would often use successfully to improve stability and strength with other injuries like knee pain or hip pain, had very little effect on changing a person's ability to walk. After months of applying these strength and stability methods and getting nowhere I noticed there was one thing that all these people with severe walking impairments had in common, and that was a very stiff and rigid foot. This rigidity in the foot made it impossible for any other muscle in the leg to function correctly. Working on the foot separately provided some small gains in mobility and strength, but really had no effect as to the way they used the foot when they walked. Sometimes the best ideas come by accident or experimentation and this was one of those times. While I was helping one of our clients walk across a path I noticed how her gait changed whenever she stood on small stones. As her feet were so rigid her foot felt every little stone or bump and instantly reacted to move away from the pain. Her entire gait changed due to the pain in her foot. It was at this point I discovered the benefit of walking across uneven rocky surfaces could play a vital role in restoring motor function. The best part about this is it works almost instantly! This led me to using the Sensa Mat which is arguably the best piece of training equipment I have added to my program over the last 10 years! In this article I will explain how this works and how you can use it in your own training.