In Oslo with Mark Scappitici one of the best therapists in the world, and inventor of the FAT tool

In Oslo with Peter Lundgren, accupunturist who does near magic with needles!

A month ago, I went to Oslo, Norway to learn dry needling from some of the top experts in the world. I have been practicing as often as I can. So far the results have been very good, especially considering how long it takes. Each needle is in for only about 2-3 minutes. And better still, the needles are tiny and almost pain free.

I have seen very quick results with pain reduction, and speed of healing. And combined with other treatment tools, it is a great way of helping get better results with all kinds of injuries and pain issues.

Dry Needling has been getting great results with clients and I will be using it more and more.

In the last 3 days alone, we have treated – Triceps scar tissue and trigger points, back facet joint pain, calf muscle dysfunction, increased range of motion after an ACL reconstruction, and Knee pain from popliteal tendinitis.

It makes a great combination with FAT tool, trigenics and soft tissue work!

Some needle positions to heal with knee and calf issues.

This is important because most people join the personal training or fitness bootcamp programs because they want to train hard for maximum results, but sometimes a past injury or a chronic pain problem gets in the way. Here is where treatment becomes a critical part of their success.

My Classmates At Biomedical Dry Needling Course Oslo, Instructors Peter And Mark in the center

I just got back from a dry needling course in Norway. Here are some observations.

• Bio-medical Dry needling is not like regular acupuncture with the “chi” and meridian system. The only thing in common is that they both use acupuncture needles.
• I need to continue to improve my knowledge of anatomy. A lot of the targets for the needles are not just muscles, but nerves. And we need to know exactly where nerves come closer to the skin so they can be targeted with the needles.
• Acupuncture helps other methods of treatment to improve their results. The reason for this is that acupuncture boosts the overall healing ability of the bod.
• The instructors for this course were excellent therapists. Dr Peter Lundgren and Mark Scappaticci know their stuff. I was especially impressed with their palpation skills. They can feel with their hands exactly what is going on under the skin.
• As usual I was the only Asian at these kind of courses… But one thing I noticed about my fellow participants is how young they were. Average age 27 perhaps? They are way ahead of any therapists I have seen in Singapore at that age.
• I believe this has something to do with the education system in the Nordic countries where students are given a chance to do what they are passionate about, and if they choose wrongly, there is hardly any penalty to go back and start again with something you love. All the participants are doing what they love in the health care business, and do their very best to excel at it resulting in high levels of knowledge at a younger age.
• All of them are fit people. No fat physios or therapists here. Heavy dead lifts and Olympic weightlifting are common activities among the group.

When it comes to training, there are different tools to gain different physical attributes. Heavy lifts for low reps like squats and bench pressing build strength, fast lifts like snatches and plyometrics build speed and power and higher reps build size.

In treatment of injury and movement problems, we need to use the right tools for the job as well. For example…

• Trigenics for problems caused by a poor connection between the brain and the muscle
• Fascial stretching for long term flexibility gains
• Massage and soft tissue work for breaking up scar tissue

In the methods outlined above, if used to solve the right problem they are brutally effective. within one or two treatments there are usually huge increases in flexibility, and decreases in pain as you can see in out rehab testimonials.

But there was one kind of problem that I did not have a quick and efficient solution to.

Trigger points.

Currently we use massage, but that can take several weeks.

Thats too long! I want results ASAP. There is a method that has helped people get results within 2 treatments (depending on the overall health of the patient). It is called dry needling which is a modern, science based, systematic form of acupuncture. I am off to Oslo, Norway to learn it for the next few days.

The doctor teaching it will also be teaching some FAT tool usage as well which is a great method for releasing stuck fascia (connective tissues). (see below). I will be getting one of these for sure!

So in the next 4 days I will be adding 2 tools to the Genesis Gym rehab and injury prevention toolbox. More tools allows us to solve more problems and gives our Singapore personal training and fitness bootcamp clients an even better chance of getting fixed fast!

Stay tuned for updates over the next few days!

In the month of November, it will be time for continuous education for our coaching team. In addition to the weekly staff training meetings that we hold, our senior training team will flying to all corners of the world to learn from experts in the areas of fitness, and sports performance training, as well as healing.

The size of the globe is no obstacle to the persuit of knowledge!

3 of our more senior coaches will be taking up the Poliquin International Certification Level 1 and 2 in Perth Australia. And I will be traveling to a land with only 5 hours of daylight per day in November. Oslo, Norway to learn dry needling, an advanced form of acupuncture which will be able to help our clients if they have issues with trigger points. The teacher is Dr Yun-Tao Ma, the world’s expert in dry needling, and the writer of the top two textbooks on the subject. (Already bought them and read them!:)

Currently we use different forms of massage to deal with trigger points. This is effective, but in more chronic cases, it is slow. (on the order of several weeks if a client is consistent with his self-treatment). The reviews I have heard about dry needling are excellent and it should be able to reduce healing time to a couple of days! A many-fold increase in speed.

As usual, my team and I are committed to staying on top of our games so that our clients get the best results in the shortest time safely possible. Whether you are a sedentary “office job” kind of person trying to burn away some ugly, unwanted fat, or a competitive athlete trying to boost your performance to the next level, my team and I will make sure we have the tools and skills to help you.

As part of the additional services I hope to provide to clients at our personal training gym, my learning this year included the “Trigenics” method of strength/flexibility boosting, and injury rehab. In the last few weeks alone we have had some awesome testimonials of the results achieved with this method. Some of the videos are here.

But the problem was that I needed to practice more to get more skillful and more able to treat a wider variety of problems. So this week I made the investment in time, money and space… and got a massage table for my home to practice with my wife (thank you!). This should allow more practice for better results although it does make our study room a little cramped…

I just finished 14 hours of learning at the Trigenics Institute in Toronto, Canada. I did at one to one private internship with Dr Austin, the founder of trigenics, because I wanted to learn in the fastest and most accurate way possible. Every time I made a mistake, I was corrected immediately, and every time I had a question, I got a great answer immediately. I will gladly pay for education, and I would gladly pay more for fast and accurate and personalized education.

I wanted to learn trigenics because it is a way of delivering what I want to see in a treatment system. Fast results with less (but still some) discomfort for the patient. The method works. After our official training sessions, Dr Austin, the founder of trigenics treated my multifidus, and erector muscles in my lower back because I was unable to turn my torso as far left as I could right.

This is probably due to the thousands of swings I did while playing softball as a kid. Always turning right to throw and hit because I am a left hander. It got to the point where I even had a minor tear of the obliques on my left side which has been annoying for a long time.

But with just one treatment, I am able to turn both directions with equal flexibility. And even more important, I know how to get this same result with our personal training or fitness bootcamp clients.

The method combines an excellent assessment system together with a very elegant system of treatment that works fast!

Also taught were instant muscle strengthening and flexibility techniques. In fact as part of the course I need to produce a “mini-study” on the benefits of this treatment. I will be recruiting volunteers from our client base soon:)

So, more ways to get stronger, heal injuries faster, and prevent injuries through accurate assessment. That is what my trigenics knowledge will do for our Genesis Performance Center clients.

It is quite to hear from our Singapore personal training and fitness boot camp clients that they have been to a chiropractor or therapist for treatment of a past injury before coming to train with us in our Singapore gym.

Sometimes these treatments have great success, sometimes they have no result, and sometimes they cause even more problems.

So how can we tell if a therapist is going to give you a high chance of getting a good result?

After all, the alternative medicine scene is so un-regulated here in Singapore. How do we know if the therapist cares, or only cares about lining his pockets with our money?

One of the key tips that I tell our personal training and bootcamp clients is that they should spend time preparing the body for any kind of manipulation. A good manipulator can achieve a great result in a short time. But before the “crack-crack” they need to spend time preparing the tissues.

They may use an infra-red lamp, they may use massage, or they may use some form of active stretching. But the fact that they spend time on this is important. Manipulation and adjustments without this kind of “warm-up” is like running sprints without warming up. A far greater chance of injury. If you walk in and get treated with manipulation immediately, chances are this is not a good therapist.

Another tip is to see how long the manipulation lasts and what advice the chiropractor or therapist gives you for helping to KEEP the adjustment. There are many reasons that an adjustment doesn’t hold, lack of critical nutrients, too much inflammation in your body, muscle imbalances, scar tissue or trigger points, etc. If your therapist does not tell you about these, then stay away from him/her.

You see, it comes down to $$$, more patients per hour, more $$$. A money minded therapist goes through patients like a machine gun. “Crack-Crack”… next please.

A good one takes the time to prepare you, treat you, and then teach you so that you DON’T need to come back so often and don’t need to buy a “package of 20 treatments”. I personally believe that if you don’t get better within 3-4 treatments (and often 1 treatment), you should look elsewhere.

There we go! Wish you luck in your search for a treatment specialist. If you have an injury that does not seem to get better, you are welcome to come for a injury prevention/recovery consultation with me. Just like all our other services, if you don’t get better, you don’t need to pay. What do you have to lose?

Last week, Keith Bearne, one of the top stretching instructors in Australia came to give a seminar attended by 25 clients and visitors at the Genesis Performance Center, Singapore’s top personal training gym. He explained the principles and fundamentals of stretching and how they can be applied to any stretch to boost its effectiveness while at the same time reducing pain!

The information is designed to help each attendee improve their performance just about instantly.

I personally added some of the stretch techniques to my pre workout routine and found some positions like the deep squat position more comfortable within one session.

We look forward to bringing in more world class experts to improve the level of health education in Singapore.

Here is some feedback from one of the seminar participants.

“Being a personal trainer myself, I’ve always been intrigued by the benefits that stretching can have upon our bodies. Through this seminar, I got to see a clearer picture of how stretching can help relieve many of the common problems faced by the average person and/or athletes. It is extremely useful for me as I am better able to assess my clients’ flexibility issues and address them.

I have since incorporated the stretches that Keith had demonstrated, on myself to relieve the extreme muscle imbalances due to the nature of my sport which is competitive Dragon-boating.

Genesis Performance Center has done a fabulous job in organizing this seminar. Looking forward to more seminars. Thanks!”

-Allison Yen

One of the keys to preventing shin splints is the strength of your anterior tibialis muscle that pulls your foot upwards towards your knee. This is called dorsiflexion and this muscle is important in absorbing shock during running and jumping. When it is strong, and free of tension problems (fixable with soft tissue massage) chances of shin splints are very low. That’s why at our personal training gym, where athletes of all kinds train, we need the machine shown below. It’s the only way to properly train the tibialis anterior. No shin splints for any of our personal training clients or athletes!

In addition to training of the tibialis anterior it is important for the athlete to build up his ability to tolerate lots of jumps and sprints. World class track athletes do up to 1000+ jumps per week in training!

There are special considerations if this guy was a personal training client

I am very conservative with obese clients. This may seem different from the rest of the blog where there is quite a lot of really serious, maximum performance training going on! But…

If a person is very overweight, extra care needs to be taken to ensure safe training. Here are some things to watch out for

Do not…

• Use unstable surfaces like wobble boards or outdoors on uneven ground.
• Use exercises where there are hard landings, certainly no plyometrics… I wouldn’t even do low intensity bouncy stuff like jumping jacks. There are other ways to get the same training benefits safely.
• Train the muscles more than the connective tissue can tolerate (connective tissue like ligaments adapt slower than muscle to stress)
• Cut calories! Instead work on food choices first. ALL obese people should be on a low carb diet, high fat diet (healthy fats not processed trans fats).
• Lose fat without supplementing your detoxification system. Fat burning results in alot of toxin entering your blood – that was formerly in your fat cells. You need sufficient amino acids (i.e. meat!) and nutrients to help your liver detox this stuff.
• Just use common sense!!

This is not the “biggest loser asia”. That is entertainment not science. There is a huge injury risk with the stuff that they do. I much prefer smart training that gets results that matter to the client… not the audience or the producers.

Quoting the news report … “We’ve had multiple hospital visits from the contestants, we’ve had hypoglycaemic shock, kidney issues, busted knees, busted ankles, emotional breakdowns, even mental collapse.” – Would you go to a fitness center or personal trainer that has those kind of “results”?

One of the relatives of my client was on the show. Yes she lost a few kg in the first week BUT its 6-8 hours of training per day AND she busted her knee and is out of action. So… this is not quite a sustainable lifestyle.

The key is that you should aim for the lifestyle not the short term goals. The perfect nutrition plan probably includes 10 different supplements for things that you are deficient in. The perfect training is multiple times per day (2 or more PER DAY) for best results. But these are not realistic for real life so only a portion of my cleints are on such a plan.

However we get good results for both our men and women personal training and fitness boot camp clients because of the consistency of lifestyle that we teach, in addition to the customized training program. The great program gets results. The lifestyle keeps them. That is how we get not only “success stories” but results that last!