Dr.Benjamin Bluestein, Chiropractor, Toronto

05/16/2023

If you already have pain, restriction and stiffness in your joints, doing more cutting and pivoting in your gym sessions won’t make your joints more resilient to said movements. It’s best to break down what capacity each part requires and train those specific capacities.

08/06/2022

Neck aka cervical spine tissue is made up of the same stuff as other parts of the body.

Why is it when you hurt your neck, get whiplash. wake up with a stiff neck, or have chronic tightness, active care consists mainly of passive stretching or chin tucks?

If you hurt your knee, shoulder, hip, lower back, a responsible clinician may give you standard active care like squats, shoulder rotations, or “core”work. I find that many of my cervical spine patients have not received an active based program that addresses improving their capacity for life and their sport.

Neck and the cervical spine can be trained actively through principles and using an internal strength model to increase capacities of those tissues. Here are just a few samples of strength work you can do with your neck with no equipment, using gravity or internal resistance (@2.5x speed)

The necks time you visit your clinician, trainer, rehab specialist, ask them what specifically you can do to improve the tissue capacity of your neck.

08/04/2022

Do you get stiffness in your back or hips when sitting too long? post workout? Or with sport?

You’ll need to build capacity and make each area function well. Getting a systematic assessment will help you determine the next steps. and utilises a systematic approach in assessing the parts.

The clinician can find out of your spine is acting like a spine should. Is it joint restrictions or difficulty with control? Your spine as 7 cervical, 12 thoracic and 5 lumbar and each has multiple articulations, muscles and nerves. Taking care to check each level and direction is important.

The same thing when it comes to the hip. Does your hip have the ability to rotate in both directions? Do you get pinching in your hip in the front, back or groin area? The ball and socket nature of the hip, means you need to have good range and strength in a variety of positions.

08/02/2022

Assess your readiness with CARs

CARs or controlled articular rotations are more than a warm up. They can be used for joint health assessment, strength training and more. One great thing they can be used for is to empower the client or patient to assess joint readiness and obtain their own objective measurement on where they can and can’t move.

With brief education, CARs help the client and clinician can make decisions on whether a particular training exercise, position or pose is safe or aggravating and if modifications are necessary.

07/20/2022

Use some resistance to supercharge your cat cow and segmentation.

You can use a resistance band or loop to get more out of your cat cow. Cat cow/spinal motion/waves can be great introduction to knowing how to move in fundamental flexion and extension motions. I see some bodies require increase in feedback and/or intensity to help change or improve capacity in a specific area.

A resistance band can help you or your clients increase sensation to the spinal areas that may be difficult to cUse some resistance to supercharge your cat cow and segmentation.

You can use a resistance band or loop to get more out of your cat cow. Cat cow/spinal motion/waves can be great introduction to knowing how to move in fundamental flexion and extension motions. I see some bodies require increase in feedback and/or intensity to help change or improve capacity in a specific area.

A resistance band can help you or your clients increase sensation to the spinal areas that may be difficult to control and also add resistance or intensity where needed.









and also add resistance or intensity where needed.

07/16/2022

Is my neck pain coming from my shoulder or shoulder pain coming from my neck?

If you have neck pain (cervical spine), assess and train the affected tissues in your shoulder (and upper back). If you have shoulder pain, assess, treat and train the neck. Your clinician and trainer should be looking at adjacent segments.

A lot of times there are interplay with the cervical spine, shoulder, neck and scapulae. Its best to go with a systematic, joint-by-joint approach and improve the individual parts. Then improve the capacity of said parts for whatever the client goals are.

Here we have blackbelt receiving his tune up with and I. Thanks for the training and trust in us.

posted on their Instagram profile: “Is my neck pain coming from my shoulder or shoulder pain coming from my neck? If you have neck…”

07/16/2022

Do you get spasm or tightness in your back?

These symptoms are reported by people from both active and sedentary backgrounds. helps to give valuable information on the condition of tissues under your hand and what should be done next with those tissues in terms of manual therapy, training, exercise and more.

07/13/2022

Table, Treatment and Training is the best recipe for long term joint health

As soon as your clinician can get you off the table, the better. From there you can begin to treat and train. It’s a misconception that treatment only occurs on a table or in the clinicians office. You should be able to get it at any time. Training is the same.

If your clinician doesn’t have access to a gym, have them collaborate with someone that knows training. From there, you, the trainer and the clinician, can work together to improve your capacity for what you want in life and sport.

Here is some quick highlights from a thoracic spine session. We collaborated with personal trainer Greg, to get some traditional training in to build tissue capacity in the upper posterior chain.

07/11/2022

Observing movement is a great way to see spinal capacity.

A spinal examination is more than just an x ray or a 10 minute exam you get at a fair. It involves taking a detailed history, movement observation, orthopaedics, palpation, goal setting, lifting assessment and more.

A systematic approach needs to be employed to select the best, most specific, treatment, training and education.

05/17/2022

I’ll be leaving Hong Kong and relocating back to Toronto

After 7.5 years of living and practicing abroad, I will be leaving Hong Kong and heading back home to Toronto this June. Here’s a lil photo summary.

Look out for more Toronto news coming soon. If you still want to get in before I leave, feel free to DM me, I’ll be opening up some extra spots until the end of May. If you want to visit me in Toronto, you can drop me your contact details and I will let you know where and when you can book a visit.

Hong Kong been a great experience for me. I came here newly married with . Little to no social or business network definitely was a growing phase.

In terms of personal growth I learned to work together with my partner and try and listen more. We also now have 2 amazing kids. I also was able to find a BJJ family with and and team there. Made life long friendships learned a little too haha. I dabbled in other sports with my first love of basketball and also ultimate. Hiking and camping is amazing, I suggest you try it here. Also studied cantonese.

Professionally I eventually linked up with . The physiotherapists, coaches and variety of clinicians, were a great source of growth and really helped me thrive as a clinician. Shout out to the fifth floor. To my patients/clients in Hong Kong and abroad thanks for your support.

I then became an on-site specialist for a bank, JP Morgan. Random in terms of of how Chiropractors go as its not a sports team. The HR and the Wellness Program there is top notch. There’s a reason why you haven’t seen many clinical posts as we have strict social media guidelines 😂 .

I was also able to visit different cities Asia and Australia with and met some great clinicians and coaches.

Watch this space I learn to navigate Toronto with my family and continue forging elite joints.

03/04/2022

Get outside for some 🏃🏻run and ☀️sun!

One part of my daily routine is to get outside to walk, run, jog and hike, regardless of the weather.

Do you have any specific daily routines?