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Hump Day Hustling – Weekly Research Summary – September 6, 2023

by | Sep 6, 2023 | Hump Day Hustling

Research on dry needling, air bike, youth resistance training, and more in this episode of Hump Day Hustling! Enjoy, and if you want to dive deeper with ICE Physio content make sure to check out our Upcoming Course Dates and Locations!

Music for Pain Relief?

Pump up the jams indeed!

​This is a 2021 paper but we never shared it in HDH and should have! Anytime natural options decrease pain we want to mic up the good news!

“Participants who listened to music after surgery reported significantly lower pain intensity and distress in hospital and post-discharge at home“

We know stress can impact pain levels so it only makes sense that spending some time listening to familiar tunes can bring the understandable stress from surgery and hospitalization down a few notches!

Youth Resistance Training

Now featuring cognitive gains!

​This open access systematic review from July’s Sports Medicine including 53 studies showing us preliminary evidence that resistance training is the way for improved cognitive performance in our youth, ages 5-18 years old. Muscular fitness out performed aerobic only and aerobic and resistance combination.

Perhaps we should start these “older adults in training” at age 5?

Let’s goooo…

Hamstring Injuries

Let’s take a deep dive

​Link to article

Hypothesis: weakness and/or fatigue of glute max during late swing phase causes the hamstring muscle group to absorb a disproportionate amount of force to decelerate the leg prior to initial contact

​Assessment: Sprint mechanics, speed, muscle EMG strength, pressure pain threshold, and hip & knee flexion angles during late swing phase
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Intervention: 10 sets of 15 reps of rear-foot elevated split squats with a 26# KB in the goblet position (that volume!)​
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Results: 48 hours after the “DOMS-causing exercise”, subjects demonstrated no change in sprint speed, but did show significant reductions in hip extension angles during late swing alongside simultaneous increases in knee flexion angles which corresponded with significant reductions in pressure pain threshold of the glute max & reduction in muscle EMG activity of the glutes (with increases in muscle EMG activity of the hamstrings)
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​Takeaways: Ass moves mass. Strong, resilient glutes can withstand more work & help the hamstrings to decelerate the legs during running. There’s probably also a lesson in here regarding resistance training programming & periodization, especially in the days leading up to a significant event like a game/match, race, or any other running activity where you want your glutes rested & ready to go.

Dry Needling

Systematic review on chronic neck pain

Great to see systematic review level papers coming out on efficacy of dry needling. Even greater to see that of the 14 included papers 13 were rated high methodological quality. Authors looked at short (< 1 month) medium (1-3 months) and long term (> 3 months) pain / functional outcomes.

A couple interesting findings from this study:

  • Those OVER 40 seemed to have a greater benefit from dry needling than those UNDER 40
  • Dry needling ALONE didn’t seem to get the job done, but when COMBINED with physical therapy it did
  • Short and mid term outcomes were solid, long term was more mixed/contradictory

Stationary Bike

Bad news, they work

Hate it or love it, the Air Bike appears to be an effective way to improve cardiovascular fitness​
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32 subjects were assigned to control (30 minutes moderate intensity), sprint interval (3 sets of 8 rounds of 10 sec sprint/5 sec rest with 2.5 min rest between sets – “half tabata”) or sprint interval (3 sets of 8 rounds of 20 sec sprint/10 sec rest with 5 min rest between sets – “triple tabata”). Biking was performed 3x/week for 4 weeks for all protocols.
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Assessment of time to exhaustion, absolute & relative VO2max, and metabolic equivalent output (METs) revealed significant differences for time to exhaustion, absolute and relative VO2max, and METs among all groups. Average improvements were 8% for time to exhaustion, 13% improvement in absolute & relative VO2max, and 13% improvement in METs.​
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The varying factor here was time worked. Over the course of the study, the moderate intensity group worked for 360 minutes/6 hours while the triple tabata group worked for 144 total minutes (~2.5 hours) and the half tabata group worked for 72 minutes. The moderate intensity & half tabata group’s improvements were almost identical & higher than the triple tabata group although not statistically significant, showing the shortest sprint interval protocol to be approximately 250% more time efficient than the moderate intensity group.
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​TL;dr – If you want to see significant cardiovascular improvements & are crunched on time, get an air bike & start sprinting.

PTonICE Rewind

Did you miss any of our ICE Physio podcasts last week? Well here you go!

Monday: “Early postpartum CrossFit” (Rachel Moore)
Tuesday: “The stimulus of suffering in hip and knee OA” (Lindsey Hughey)
Wednesday: “Assessing physical activity and behavior change in older adults” (Alex Germano)
Thursday: “Next gen: Growing and scaling your business” (Alan Fredendall)
Friday: “Clipped in, clipless, and clueless” (Matt Koester)

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📢 On Virtual ICE next week we’ll be chatting “Training as a competitive athlete” with ICE faculty Kelly Benfey! Not in our virtual mentorship program? Find out how to enroll and learn more HERE