3 Tips To Stay At Your Best This Holiday Season!

The Queensland summer is upon us! As the Christmas lights start to appear, along with the 5am sunrises, it feels like there is only one thing missing? The warmth! Having moved from interstate, Queensland is unique as the morning state compared to the late evening running and sports groups in Victoria and New South Wales for example due to daylight savings. This has challenged me personally to train before work rather than after work to get the most out of the day. To help everyone prepare for their 2018 goals and yearly consumption of food during the December Christmas parties, here are some tips to keep you injury-free or motivate you to start this festive season.

Tip One: Check your shoes

Imagine living in an uneven house that’s on a slope and the effect that’ll have on your body. These are the same problems old shoes will give you as you dust them off from the winter months, ready to climb Table Top mountain. When you’re looking at the age of your shoes, the usual consensus is that 1000 km is how long it takes the EVA (a main component of your shoe) to compress before it loses its bounce. Other factors are the age of the shoe and once it gets more than 1-2 years old, the EVA loses it’s ability to absorb shock as efficiently as when it’s new. To start off injury free this December, start with checking out your sandals, walking or running shoes and if you wear orthotics and think it’s time for a tune up, come and visit us.

Tip Two: Get your body ready

The human body is the most remarkable engineered machine and it will become efficient at what you do most, so if you sit majority of your 168 hours per week then you’ll become a chair. Those cold winter months of tight hip flexors, calf muscles and pectoral muscles create an unhappy posture which is sure to give you a niggle here or there as you run or walk your first December park run. To combat this, I prescribe all my patients with hourly exercises during the day to help their bodies realise they’re not a bus turning into a Ferrari before or after work but require consistent movement during the day to prepare for exercise and movement.

Tip Three: Warm up and warm down

Now that those cold frozen mornings are behind us, you can forget about wiping off the frost from your car window and warming up the engine before you go to work. What you will need to do is clear out the winter frost out of your pipes – just like you do for your body with warm-ups. Warm-ups and warm-downs are important because what you’re telling your body is that it’s time to get moving, time to prepare for exercise, or time to become a Ferrari or Landcruiser for some. Generally I would recommend a 15-20 minute warm up including some active stretches, walking or jogging. This allows your heart rate to come up and arteries to dilate which supplies your legs and arms with energy. A common complaint is that people feel really unfit and after 10-15 minutes of exercise they just want to stop and pack it in until the next year. The mistake in this is that if you exercise too hard in that first 20 minutes then your body doesn’t even have the realisation you’re doing exercise yet, so it has no rhythm to exercise on. Make sure you start slow or play some totem tennis or frisbee as a warm up for 10-15 minutes and get that heart rate up and reward your body with some movement as well. The same goes for the warm-downs.

So enjoy the summer – when it finally arrives! Take the steps now to prepare for it and if you have any questions or don’t know where to start with your shoes, walking or running then please contact us. Some activities to start these summer holidays with a laugh: Totem tennis – head down to your local Big W or K-Mart and pick up one of these and take on family or a friend, be sure to play right and left handed. I’m sure there’s a frisbee just waiting to be thrown around with either friends or your favourite fur-buddies. Table Top is always a winner, so take a picnic and make an adventure of it. Park run is warming up on Saturday mornings at 7am in Queens Park, so print out those barcodes, it’s open to walkers or runners who are competitive or social.

Enjoy the Christmas parties and family time – from your favourite Podiatrists inToowoomba & Warwick !