Most people don’t like body maintenance. They say they do, but the majority of athletes and weekend warriors wait until they have a “thing” until they do the right things for the “thing.”

Don’t get me wrong, plenty of people out there are foam rolling until the cows come home, and even stretching and doing yoga. But really addressing what your body needs, takes a little bit more thought, and preparation, because let's face it, foam rolling is pretty accessible and great to chat to your mates pre or post workout as you lay about, but is it really actually helping you? (Hint:..no it isn’t)

Like anything that is good for your body, a program designed to keep your body in tip-top shape should be specific.
In the Not Really Yoga system we ensure we are doing the right thing by basing what we do on a few super logical and simple principles;

* stretch whats short, strengthen whats long
* stretching only makes you good at...

Burn Your Foam Roller..play with your balls instead

A very short travel back in time as little as 10 years ago would have seen you met with surprised looks walking into many a sporting goods store and asking for a foam roller. These days even your granny has one, and it’s hard to take a step in most gyms without falling over someone flailing their body around on a cylindrical tube of high density foam.

But what is it actually doing?

Your average bro in the gym will swear by using his foam roller to warm up prior to working out, and then use it for recovery post workout, as well as improving flexibility and range of motion (ROM)..because stretching doesn’t work and impacts your performance apparently-thanks bro!

Oddly, there seems to be this idea that rolling around on the foam roller will be beneficial for every one of these 3 scenarios (warm up, cool down, improve flexibility) with the exact same techniques, with a change in the users intention being the defining factor...

Pain in the butt..piriformis syndrome myths, hamstring confusion and other reasons that might not be why you think you are in pain

It isn’t until you’ve succumbed to a deep horrible pain in the butt, that you come to realise why the phrase, “pain in the butt,” exists. At times it can be debilitating for some, with painkillers having no real impact, yet daily stresses and difficulties, can increase the pain to the point of not being able to interact with anyone, without filling your yearly swear jar quota in a day.

Runners in particular tend to jump to 2 conclusions for a pain in the butt. Hamstring tendinopathy and piriformis syndrome lead the charge here, and very often, Dr. Google, and poorly armed therapists, commonly misdiagnose these, and even worse, offer up treatments that never really see the patient set free from the patient status.

Here we look at some common reasons for butt pain and a few ideas as to what needs to happen to get past it.

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Could the way you walk be wrecking your squat?

The headline here could have the word “squat” replaced by nearly anything, but here we’ll look at how one particular phase of your walking cycle, may be destroying your ability to perform a decent squat.

Squat Depth

During the squat, our ability to descend to depth is limited somewhat through the length of the adductors. Often times doing some work through releasing the adductors, and following up with some squat patterning work can help to see the athlete get even deeper in the squat.

But what happens when one side is shorter than the other?

Hip rotation in the squat exercise

A huge number of athletes I see suffer from some rotation in their squat, and a good number of you reading this will as well. Sometimes this will manifest as a very obvious rotation through the hips (where one hip moves backwards during the squat), other times it will result in a weight shift to one side, or any other array of...

Can Ankle Sprains Cause Shoulder Pain?

The body only heals for efficiency, not perfection (Gary Ward).

Ever had an ankle sprain? Even a little one? This could be the reason for your wrecked shoulder (or back, or knee or the other bits that continue to cause pain).

In 2016, the foot and ankle association released content encouraging medical professionals to take an ankle sprain, any ankle sprain. As part of a significant medical history, also publishing an interesting paper looking at the long term effects a of quality of life on ankle sprains (read it here if you like academic vibes).

Let's not limit this sentiment of long term problems to only ankle sprains. The info here is in this little post is relevant for any injury, but for a sec, let's think about what happened when you sprained your ankle (or did the thing that you did that hurt, if you are one of very few people to have never sustained a sprain).

Following the sprain, you surely had concerns about placing your full body...