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Hey, I had a random question for you regarding my back giving out on me and putting me in to level 10 pain. A couple months ago I was playing hockey, and of course my back went out. This puts me in to a major hip shift that you can see in the picture I attached. Obviously hockey involves a lot of squatting and twisting. I am trying to pin point the weakness or inflexibility to avoid this so I can resume playing hockey recreationally as I enjoy it and want to stay fit. Any information you might be able to provide or point me in the right direction would be appreciated. When it happens I get stuck in a squat position and am not able to straighten. It then takes weeks of chiropractic and pain treatment to get back to walking and sitting:). I am new to the stretch therapy program, but have had great success with mobility already helping me to sit comfortably which is a blessing! Thanks so much! Please know that I am standing “straight” in the pic and am in an extreme amount of pain 😅 A few notes as well. I had a right hip labrum repaired about 5 years ago, along with a L4-L5 herniated disc among other hockey injuries:)

Hi, new here, this seemed like the best place to post this. A little bit of background: I am very very good at accumulating injuries. This has led me into the field of rehab, and the topic I wanna discuss now is the topic of stretching injured areas, whether they are long term parasitic injuries or newly accumulated injuries. So first of all, the biggest problem with an injury is that you can lose the ability to stretch. If you move into end ROM it's not a healthy stretch, but a suddenly painful experience. Many of my chronic cases have evolved to this. What I've found works the best for me to get the ability to stretch is conscious and explorative movement in and out of the tough-to-stretch area. I try to embody a feeling of ease throughout the movements. If I don't have this movement ease I easily go in too deep and get a rebound in the form of protective tension or pain. I also feel like warming the area up is particularly important here. Here is an example: Both of my ankles have some protective post-injury tension due to two bad sprains and walking on the balls of my feet since from basically around 4 years old to 15 years old. They have a fairly poor ability to stretch in dorsiflexion. They have what I would call a parasitic injury. I always have to be very careful when stretching them to not get more protective tension/inability to stretch (rebound). Sometimes I do my rehab/mobilisation in the morning and sometimes around lunch. If I do it around lunch I will have gotten about 40 minutes of walking before the rehab, and my ankles are fairly warm. The difference it makes is very big. I run a much lower chance of getting a rebound protective tension. Once, when I did an eccentric calf stretch in the morning (fairly cold) I got A LOT of protective tension and pain that lasted the whole day. Note that I am otherwise doing acrobatics and parkour regularly more than half a year after the actual injury with the same ankles. This is solely an inability to stretch. When doing the rehab in the morning I warm the area up with some band movements before applying any harder stretch. After having tried a lot of things in areas that I have been unable to stretch this is what I have found not to work as well: Static stretching I think it is because statics just allow you more comfort. My experience when trying to stretch injured areas with statics is that they take make you too comfortable after a while, so you cannot properly feel if it is too much. When in the static position you don't get these small painful sensations that keep you in from going too deep into the stretch. Usually after coming out of a static stretch in an injured area I am more likely to feel a rebound, sometimes not immediatly but after I have cooled down. Active loaded stretching Isometrics, eccentrics, concentrics. They simply pull too much in the area with the inability to stretch. Too much of a stretch = rebound = bad time. Makes sense that you shouldn't add muscle tension if your joint doesnt even work properly. Bottom line: I have found that low load dynamic explorative end ROM stretching/movement works best for regaining the ability to stretch for me. This post is just to start a discussion and share some of my thoughts. Questions: How have you come back from injuries you previously could not stretch? Am I nitpicking, and the emphasis is simply on just not applying too much force in the stretch? Other thoughts?