Nenagh Muscular Therapy - Modern Pain Care

12/02/2026

TAKE CREATINE. THE END :)

5-10 g of creatine daily is one of the simplest, most evidence-based choices you can make for muscle health as you age.
Cheap, safe, and effective.

Creatine works by increasing phosphocreatine stores in muscle, which helps regenerate ATP. The immediate energy source your muscles use for strength, power, and repeated effort. That matters not just for lifting weights, but for standing up from a chair, climbing stairs, and preventing falls.

In older adults, creatine has been shown to:
-Support muscle strength and lean mass
-Improve training response when combined with resistance exercise
-Help preserve functional capacity during aging
-Potentially supports cognitive function, as the brain also uses creatine for energy
You don’t need a loading phase.
You don’t need special timing.
Just 5-10 g daily, consistently.
Creatine isn’t a shortcut. It doesn’t replace movement or strength training.
It simply helps your body do the work it’s already trying to do a little better.

11/02/2026

Weights better than cardio!! 🙏😉👏👏👏👏👏👏

❤️ Heart health has always been tied to one thing: endless hours of boring cardio.

We’ve been told for decades that if you want to fix your cholesterol, you need to lace up your running shoes.
But a groundbreaking new study just flipped the script on everything we thought we knew about the gym.

Researchers at the University of Granada decided to put cardio and weightlifting head-to-head.

They took over 100 sedentary adults and split them into two different training groups.
One group hit the treadmills for a traditional aerobic workout.
The other group focused purely on resistance training and lifting weights.

After 12 weeks, the scientists checked the results, and they were stunned.

While both groups saw improvements, the weightlifting group absolutely crushed the competition.

Here is what the science says you should focus on:

1️⃣ Compound movements like squats and deadlifts to engage more muscle.

2️⃣ Progressive overload to keep the heart and metabolism working hard.

3️⃣ Consistency over a minimum of 12 weeks for biological changes.

4️⃣ High intensity with proper recovery periods.

11/02/2026

Excellent article 👏👏👏

“Movement is so essential to human biology that we had to invent the concept of exercise to compensate for modern inactivity.”
— often discussed in the context of Dr. Iñigo San Millán

Let that sit for a second….Humans didn’t evolve to “work out.” We evolved to move. To walk long distances. To lift, carry, climb, rotate, sprint, squat, and recover. Movement wasn’t a hobby. It was survival.

Exercise is a modern patch for a biological mismatch.

We built a world that removed movement from daily life. Cars instead of walking, chairs instead of squatting, screens instead of labor. So now we schedule 45 minutes in a gym to artificially reintroduce what used to be automatic.

That gap between what our biology expects and how we actually live is where physical therapy lives.

Physical therapy is not just rehab after injury. It is applied human biology. It is the intentional reintroduction of load, variability, and adaptation into a system that has been under-dosed for years. Pain is often not the enemy. It’s feedback from a body that has lost capacity relative to its demands.

- Strength is not cosmetic. It is protective.
- Mobility is not flexibility tricks. It is usable range under control.
- Endurance is not punishment. It is metabolic competence.

When someone comes to PT, we aren’t just treating a shoulder or a knee. We are restoring their ability to tolerate life. We are rebuilding margin. We are recalibrating a system that was designed for movement but forced into stillness.

That’s why physical therapy has value. Not because we hand out exercises. But because we understand dose, progression, adaptation, and recovery better than almost any profession.

We don’t sell banded clamshells. We sell capacity. And in a culture defined by convenience and inactivity, capacity is becoming a scarce asset. Which means its value is only going up.

11/02/2026

Why does my pain keep coming back?”

You felt better.
You had treatment.
You did the exercises.

Then a week later… it’s back.

So what’s going on?

First — pain coming back does not automatically mean something is damaged again.

Pain isn’t a simple “tissue broken = pain” equation. It’s a protective output from the nervous system. And protection can flare up long after tissue healing has occurred.

Most persistent pain isn’t about something being “out of place.” It’s about sensitivity.

If your system is still on high alert — poor sleep, stress, overload, inconsistent movement, fear of certain movements — the volume can turn back up.

That doesn’t mean treatment failed.
It means adaptation takes time.

Manual therapy can reduce sensitivity.
Exercise can increase capacity.
But neither is magic.

If you’ve had pain for months (or years), expecting it to disappear permanently after one or two sessions is unrealistic. The body doesn’t work on a “quick fix” timeline.

Progress often looks like this:

Less intensity.
Shorter flare-ups.
More things you can do.

Even if pain hasn’t vanished yet.

And flare-ups?

They don’t mean you’ve re-injured anything. They usually mean you did more than your system currently tolerates. That’s a capacity issue — not a catastrophe.

The goal isn’t “zero pain forever.”
The goal is building resilience so pain has less control over you.

If your pain keeps coming back, the question isn’t:

“What’s out of place?”

It’s:

“Is my overall capacity increasing?”

That’s where the real progress is.

11/02/2026

"stretching" your I.T band 🤣🙏

You can’t “stretch” the IT band. It’s thick fascia built to transfer load, not a rubber band waiting for your favourite stretch or roller to magically lengthen it. You might feel looser afterwards, but that’s not the IT band changing length—it’s just your nervous system calming down or nearby muscles like TFL and glutes doing something useful.

If stretching the IT band actually worked, runners would’ve solved IT band pain decades ago. What tends to help instead is sensible load management and getting the hips stronger, not obsessively yanking on a structure that isn’t designed to stretch in the first place.

10/02/2026

Human biology wasn’t built for comfort alone. Muscles, bones, tendons, the heart, and the brain evolved to respond to challenge. When exposed to manageable stress physical effort, load, balance demands these systems adapt and become stronger.

When stress is removed entirely, the opposite happens.
Strength fades.
Resilience declines.
Capacity shrinks.

This doesn’t mean chasing exhaustion or pain. It means respecting the role of appropriate stress the kind that signals the body to repair, rebuild, and prepare for life.

At any age, your body still understands this language.

A little resistance tells muscle to grow.
A little impact tells bone to stay strong.
A little imbalance tells your nervous system to sharpen control.

Avoiding all stress doesn’t protect us.
It quietly weakens us.

The goal isn’t to eliminate challenge it’s to dose it wisely, so we stay capable, confident, and independent for as long as possible.

10/02/2026

Calories 💪🙏

While all calories contain the same amount of physical energy (a unit of heat), they are not created equal regarding their effect on the body, weight management, and health. Different types of calories (e.g., protein vs. sugar) influence hormones, satiety, and metabolism differently, making food quality just as important as quantity. But technically a calorie is a unit of measurement like a mile or foot.
I understand both sides here. 500 calories from a choc bar vs 500 calories from a salad are still 500 calories but there are different effects to the body.

10/02/2026

People get obsessed with pain. I get it — pain is loud, it’s obvious, it’s hard to ignore. But pain isn’t the only marker of progress. When someone first comes in, there are things they simply can’t do. Then weeks later, they’re moving more, doing more, tolerating more — sometimes while pain is still there. That matters. That’s progress, even if it doesn’t feel like it.

Recovery isn’t linear. You’ll have days where things feel great, then a flare-up out of nowhere. That doesn’t mean you’ve re-injured anything. It usually means the system didn’t like something you did, stress went up, load went up, or your nervous system just got a bit louder. That’s part of the process, not a sign you’re back to square one.

A lot of people want the quick fix. Sometimes that exists. Often it doesn’t. Rehab and manual therapy take time, repetition, and patience. You can’t rush biology. You have to trust the process, and you have to trust the person guiding you through it — assuming they actually know what they’re doing.

“Everybody wants healing until medicine shows up in the form of discipline.”

Progress isn’t always pain-free. It’s about capacity, consistency, and staying the course — even when it’s frustrating.

10/02/2026

More outdated utter sh*te! 💪🙏
Follow the science, not the dinosaurs.

This picture is the manual therapy equivalent of blaming the toaster for your divorce.

Somehow we’re meant to believe that simply looking at a phone or using a computer magically turns certain muscles “tight,” others “weak,” draws a neat red X across your body, and voilà — Upper Crossed Syndrome™. As if the human body has a Windows error message: “Error 404: Deep neck flexors not found.”

This idea has been dragged around for decades because it’s simple, neat, and gives people something visual to point at. Red arrows. Labels. “Tight here, weak there.” It looks scientific, so it must be true, right?

Except it isn’t.

Humans have been reading, writing, sewing, typing, driving, and staring at things long before smartphones existed. If phones and computers caused some predictable muscular catastrophe, we’d all look the same, feel the same, and hurt in the same places. We don’t. Two people can spend all day at a desk — one has pain, one doesn’t. One has rounded shoulders, one doesn’t. One lifts well, one doesn’t. That alone should kill this narrative, but here we are.

And the “tight vs weak” thing? Absolute nonsense. Muscles don’t sit around plotting against each other because you checked Instagram. They respond to load, context, threat, fatigue, stress, sleep, previous injury, and about a hundred other variables that never make it onto these diagrams. Calling muscles “weak” or “tight” based on a static picture is lazy thinking dressed up as anatomy.

What really keeps this myth alive is that it gives people something easy to blame. Your phone. Your laptop. Your desk. Not uncertainty. Not variability. Not pain being complex. Just a villain you can point at and feel clever about.

And yes, horsesh*t can be useful — you can grow things with it. This version isn’t even fertiliser. It just keeps the same outdated story alive while people are told their body is broken because it doesn’t match a diagram.

Upper crossed syndrome as a diagnosis for modern life?
Looking crap. Thinking crap. Teaching crap.

09/02/2026

Muscle memory is REAL!! 💪💯💪💪

Missed Training? Don’t Panic

Your gains aren’t as fragile as you think.
New research proves muscle memory is real, breaks won’t kill your progress.

What The Science Shows:
New study (PMID: 39364857):

Periodic Training: 10 weeks on → 10 weeks off → 10 weeks back
2. Continuous Training: 20 weeks straight
3. Results: Both groups made identical long-term gains in strength, size, and power
4. The Kicker: The break group regained losses faster than continuous trainers progressed

The Reality:
Your body remembers what you built.
Temporary losses reverse quickly when you return.

Smart Strategy:
1. Don’t stress breaks when life happens
2. Focus on getting back rather than perfect consistency
3. Trust the process of regaining vs. starting over
4. Quality over quantity when you return

My Take:
Your gains are tougher than your excuses. Train hard, rest when life demands it, then get back after it. Your body remembers.

Bottom Line: Muscle memory isn’t a myth, it’s your safety net. Use it.

08/02/2026

They say powerlifting is a young person's game. Our Masters athletes prove them wrong every single day. ‌ There is a unique kind of strength that comes with time. It is not just about the weight on the bar; it is about the resilience to keep showing up through decades of life, career, family, and injuries.

To the lifters in their 40s, 50s, 60s, and beyond: You are the living proof that this sport is a lifelong journey. You don't just compete; you lead the way.

Tag a Masters lifter who inspires you to keep going.