Message from the CEO

 

Healthy Running Step by Step, by Robert Forster, PT, and Roy M. Wallack, is due out this Fall and is a must-read for runners of all ages and abilities.

Fair Weather Injuries 

>> Read each week's CEO Message here 

Special Offer: Pre-Order your copy of Robert Forster's new book, Healthy Running Step by Step, due out this Summer by Fairwinds Press, and receive a free signed copy of the best seller, The Complete Water Power Workout Book by Robert Forster, PT and Lynda Huey. Bring in your online pre-order receipt to Forster Physical Therapy or Phase IV and receive a free, signed copy of the water book, a must-read for runners and anyone who wants a great workout that's easy on your joints! 

Anatomy of Overuse Injuries

Book excerpt from Healthy Running Step by Step, by Robert Forster, PT and Roy Wallack

Mere inattentiveness is sufficient to lapse into an overuse injury; emphasize recovery and build rest days into your training to allow your body to keep up with the stress of your workouts. Photo courtesy runaddicts.net.

"Authentic, loaded with insight and information, Healthy Running Step by Step illustrates the scientific approach Bob used to help me stay healthy over four Olympic games and many others stay injury-free and achieve our ultimate Olympic goals." -- Jackie Joyner Kersee, Six Time Olympic Medalist and Multiple World Record Holder

 

Anatomy of Overuse Injuries

 

Unless you fall down and break a bone or step wrong and sprain your ankle, the vast majority of running injuries you are likely to suffer are overuse injuries. Overuse injuries occur when we outpace our body's ability to adapt to the stress of training. The micro-trauma suffered by the tissues during training, which would normally heal and make us stronger with adequate recovery, instead builds into a macro-trauma with back-to-back hard days and weeks of training.

 

By the time pain arises, the typical overuse injury may be weeks or months in the making. The injured tissue most likely had been struggling to heal for quite some time, but the repetitive stress of running stalled the healing process.

 

The chain of physiological events that is put in motion to repair the damaged tissues begins with the inflammatory response. This is a characteristic reaction set in motion to first clean up the debris of the damaged cells and then begin the healing of the injured area with scar tissue.

 

These events are repeated throughout your body every time you run, and they go unnoticed if your training is progressive and designed with built-in time for recovery-and that means several recovery days every week, a recovery week every month, and some time off every year. You see, when your workouts are too frequent, or too hard, and go on for too long and with not enough time provided for recovery, the body struggles to stay ahead of the stress.

 

 

>> Pre-order Healthy Running Step by Step here

Special Offer: Bring in your online pre-order receipt to Forster Physical Therapy and receive a free, signed copy of my first book, The Complete Waterpower Workout Book. 

On Bended Knee >> The Source

with Dr. Amy Tran, DPT

Physical therapy, along with diligence in performing home therapeutic exercise programs, is essential in treating ACL injuries. Derrick Rose, shown, made a solid -- if not brief -- return from his 2012 ACL tear.

 

Amy Tran, DPT, joined the Forster PT team at the start of 2013, quickly establishing herself alongside her Forster PT colleagues as a specialist in treating orthopedic and sport-related injuries, as well as conditions of the spine and jaw.

 

As such, The Source's Brandon Robinson reached out to Tran for her expertise on rehabilitating ACL injuries in the context of basketball, as well as any other sport or even activities of daily life.

 

"A physical therapist's job is to help a player walk with aerobic work and riding a stationary bike to improve strength and motion of the knee," writes Robinson. "'You have to restrengthen the knee after the surgery,' says Dr. Amy Tran, a sports physical therapist in Santa Monica, California... According to Tran, physical therapy before and after surgery is key to a successful recovery. 'I tell my athletes all of the time that they have to be compliant with their exercises in addition to strengthening, training, and icing.'"

 

>> Read the original article in the April/May 2014 publication of The Source

Pre-Order Healthy Running Step by Step

Pre-order Healthy Running Step by Step before its arrival in stores and online in August.

Click here to pre-order Healthy Running Step by Step, the new book by Robert Forster, PT, and Roy M. Wallack, due out this August from Fairwinds Press, and gain automatic entry into a raffle for a free VO2 test!

 

(Click here for more information on VO2 testing.)

 

Don't let an old injury keep you from enjoying races, morning runs, or attaining fitness goals. In the first part of Healthy Running Step by Step, authors Robert Forster, PT and Roy M. Wallack recommend the best training based on your fitness goals, including strength training, cross training, sprints, yoga, and plenty of rest. Part two goes a step further from other books by addressing the most modern methods of treatment -- including current studies on the amount of rest required, new and controversial surgical operations and injections, the newest and most effective gear, and barefoot/minimalist running as a form of healing. If you are recovering from an injury or want to prevent becoming injured in the first place, Healthy Running Step by Step is a must-have guide.

 

Available in stores and at Phase IV and Forster Physical Therapy this Fall!

 

• Format: Paperback
• Publication: August 2014
• Pre-Order Price: $24.99

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Time to end the war against saturated fat?

Reproduced from The Los Angeles Times Online

The British Medical Journal has issued a clarion call to all who want to ward off heart disease: Forget the statins and bring back the bacon (or at least the full-fat yogurt). Saturated fat is not the widow-maker it's been made out to be, writes British cardiologist Aseem Malhotra in a stinging "Observations" column in the BMJ: The more likely culprits are empty carbs and added sugar.

Virtually all the truths about preventing heart attacks that physicians and patients have held dear for more than a generation are wrong and need to be abandoned, Malhotra writes. He musters a passel of recent research that suggests that the "obsession" with lowering a patients' total cholesterol with statins, and a public health message that has made all sources of saturated fat verboten to the health-conscious, have failed to reduce heart disease.

Indeed, he writes, they have set off market forces that have put people at greater risk. After the Framingham Heart Study showed a correlation between total cholesterol and risk for coronary artery disease in the early 1970s, patients at risk for heart disease were urged to swear off red meat, school lunchrooms shifted to fat-free and low-fat milk, and a food industry eager to please consumers cutting their fat intake rushed to boost the flavor of their new fat-free offerings with added sugar (and, of course, with trans-fats).