Sports Medicine
Dr. Ken Kinakin
D.C., CSCS
Dr. Ken Kinakin is a sport medicine doctor, chiropractor, certified strength and conditioning specialist and personal trainer! He’s also the author of the book “Optimal Muscle Training” and has competed in bodybuilding and powerlifting for over 20 years. Dr. Kinakin lectures around the world to doctors and personal trainers on the areas of weight-training, rehabilitation and nutrition. He is also the clinic director for the AIM Health & Wellness clinic (see www.aimhealthgroup.com), with a rehabilitation and training centre in Mississauga, Ontario. Dr. Kinakin founded the Society of Weight-Training Injury Specialists (SWIS), an organization that educates and certifies doctors, therapists and personal trainers in the area of exercise muscle testing, rehabilitation and treatment of weight training injuries (see www.swis.ca).
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Heavy Squatting And Recovery Supplements
QUESTION: My doctor told me to stay away from heavy squatting because it will kill my knees and lower back. If I can’t squat, what should I be doing instead?
ANSWER: First of all, I’d find a new doctor, as this information is wrong. Unless you have some underlying dysfunction or trauma, the squat is one of the best exercises you could do. If the squat causes pain, seek treatment. If you’re really lucky, you’ll find one person that can treat the muscle, joint, and nerve aspect, but usually you’ll need highly skilled practitioners of two or three of the following: chiropractic, physiotherapy, massage therapy, and/or acupuncture.
But if you do need to stay off the squat, the leg press is the second best exercise. You can fatigue the leg muscle completely without fatiguing the lower back muscles. But you must do one important thing while doing the leg press: blow out your air when pressing the weight up. A study done a few years ago at McMaster University studied the effects of the leg press on blood pressure. The results were astounding. Normal blood pressure is 120/80. Medical doctors start getting concerned when the blood pressure goes to 140–160/ 90–100. The leg press study raised the blood pressure to the highest measurements ever recorded in history—an astounding 420/ 320. Yes, you read that right. The leg press can be a good aneurysm test if you decide to hold your breath.
QUESTION: Are there any supplements you recommend to enhance recovery from an injury in and out of the gym?
ANSWER
You can use several supplements to help enhance the recovery. I personally first try to determine why the person got injured. Many injuries are caused by overstressing the body and not recovering properly. These people exhaust their stores of stress-fighting vitamins and minerals and are usually unable to fully recover from their previous workouts. If that’s the case, high doses of vitamin C and the entire vitamin B complex will usually help increase the recovery capacity within a week or two. Once that’s taken care of, I usually use a cream we use for whiplash caused by motor vehicle injuries called Traumeel. It’s a great acute trauma cream that helps heal the tissues and brings down swelling faster than anything I’ve ever seen before.
For more on injury prevention from Dr. Kinakin, click here!
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