Sales of height-adjustable standing desks, which can also be used in a seated position, are on the rise. What are the benefits of these desks? What explains this sales increase? And can we integrate these desks into a more far-ranging plan to take the well-being of our employees to a higher level?
New products must first be perfected and are initially expensive. Later on, they become less exclusive and their prices go down. Thanks to the current price drop, height-adjustable standing desks meet the budgets of more companies - a logical and interesting evolution!

We are working longer hours and spending more time in front of screens, and we need to deal with the consequences of this development. This should never be at the expense of workers' health and well-being. In order to create and maintain a positive, dynamic work culture in your company, and anticipate any problems, you need an in-depth health policy, which must, of course, include ergonomics!
Height-adjustable standing desks are useful from an ergonomic point of view. They can be adjusted at any time to ensure a perfect seating posture. Working standing up also reduces the pressure on our intervertebral discs, thus protecting us against the low back pain that can occur when we spend a lot of time sitting down.

More and more studies are putting us face to face with the facts. Our sedentary life increases the risk of obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and even premature death by 20% to 60%. To decreases these risks, we would have to exercise at medium intensity for more than an hour a day: unthinkable for many! Rather, the solution lies in spending fewer hours sitting down. And what can help us do exactly that? A height-adjustable standing desk!

At the moment, not all companies are able to invest in height-adjustable desks. However, there are intermediate solutions tailored to your company. Good office ergonomics strike a balance between movement at work - active - and effective support - passive - for prolonged periods of sitting. If we can achieve this, we are on the right track!

At SQUADT, as physiotherapists and manual therapists, we are committed to bringing these tips to your company! Through the interactive clinic "Pimp Your Posture" we work on raising self-awareness in terms of posture and movement among employees. We look for each employee’s intrinsic motivation, we take a closer look at their desks and we give personal advice. Our medical background is a big asset. In the end, together with your company, we work out a plan for a healthy and dynamic working atmosphere!

Interested?

Stretching is undoubtedly the most widely discussed and debated subject in sports.
It is generally assumed that stretching prevents injuries and flexibility exercises are recommended for warm-ups and/or cooling-down programs.
However, when reviewing the scientific literature, we find many contradictory findings. Some articles claim that stretching has a positive effect on injuries, while others claim stretching has no impact on the prevention of injuries.
In addition, there is a lot of discussion about the way one should stretch: which stretching exercise is the right one, is ballistic stretching good or rather bad, how long should you stretch, and so on.
The first article on stretching tries to clarify the contradictory findings and discussions on whether or not stretching is useful. The second article discusses the stretching methods in more detail.< br /> What is certain is that when it comes to stretching, there is no clear-cut answer. Stretching is not always good or bad. Everything depends on the sport, the athlete and even the muscle in question.
 
MANU WEMEL

How does a muscle work?

To discover the effects of stretching, we need to understand how a muscle works.
During a movement, a muscle can provide strength by shortening. This is called a concentric contraction. An example is the thigh muscle (m. quadriceps), which contracts when kicking a ball (stretching of the knee).
On the other hand, a muscle can also provide strength by lengthening (excentric contraction), for example the thigh muscle, which ensures your knees slowly buckle rather than immediately giving out.
 
Once the muscle receives a stimulus from the brain, its strength is transferred via such a concentric or eccentric contraction to the tendon, which then sets the joint in motion.
When great or rapid strength is required, the body also has a specific system to make use of. During these explosive movements (e.g. when jumping), the muscle-tendon unit is stretched and then uses the energy stored to contract even more. You can compare this to a tense elastic that you let go of. In the literature this is called a stretch-shortening cycle (SSC). When you try to jump as high as possible, you will always first bend your knees (the thigh muscle works excentrically and stretches for a very short time) before jumping up. As such, you use the stretch shortening cycle to jump higher.
Less explosive movements or more cyclic movements are less complicated. In this case, the energy generated by various chemical processes in the muscle is immediately transferred to the tendon and joint to make a movement, usually concentric.

For which sport is stretching the most beneficial?

If you look at the two systems, it is also logical that for the SSCs (jumping, sprinting, throwing,...) it is more beneficial to have a more flexible muscle-tendon unit than for the more cyclic movements (swimming, cycling, long-distance running,...). With the more cyclic movements energy would be lost if they were too flexible. The intention there is to enable the strength to turn into a movement as quickly as possible.
For sports that require a lot of SSCs, on the other hand, it is better to stretch more in order to promote the elasticity of the muscle-tendon unit. This involves storing as much potential energy as possible in the muscle in order to allow it to transform into kinetic energy (movement energy). However, there is probably an optimum level of this flexibility to carry out a specific task. In other words, if you have a very flexible elastic and you let it go, it won't fly far... So, for an SSC the muscle must be sufficiently stiff, but also sufficiently flexible. Stretching too much or being too flexible may also have a negative effect on performance.

Can stretching reduce the risk of injury?

. Before discussing whether or not stretching reduces the risk of injury, it is important that we take a closer look at the muscle-tendon unit referred to above. There is a difference between the muscle that can actively contract and the tendon that can only passively transmit strength.
For SSCs (more explosive sports), the tendon absorbs some of the energy exposed to the muscle-tendon unit. However, when the tendon itself has less flexibility and is therefore rather stiff, less energy can be absorbed by the tendon, exposing the muscle to greater forces. This could then lead to muscle trauma. A tendon that is more flexible, on the other hand, can absorb more energy itself, exposing the muscle to less strength.
Bearing this in mind, stretching could therefore have a preventive effect if we could make the tendon itself more flexible.
The good news is that several studies actually showed that this is possible. Stretching influences the elasticity of the tendon, allowing it to absorb more energy over time.
 
However, when we look at sports with no or low-intensity SSCs, the reasoning is completely different. In these sports, the tendon does not need to absorb very high forces because they simply do not exist or because they never exceed the absorption capacity of the tendon. In these sports, stretching does not reduce the risk of injury. As discussed above, athletes may even experience a detrimental effect on their performance because the transfer of strength from muscle to tendon is less efficient if the tendon is too flexible.

So, should you never stretch when practicing sports such as jogging, cycling or swimming?

. Here too, as you probably expected, there is no clear-cut answer. In each of the sports mentioned above, one has to look at the movements that have to be performed.
Concretely, we need to look at each individual muscle. The hip flexors of a cyclist should not be stretched too much as they always have to work in a shortened position. The hamstrings, on the other hand, sometimes do need stretching because the cyclist needs to be able to sit in a specific position (e.g. in a time trial).
In swimming, for example, we need to look at the most commonly used swimming technique. For example, breaststroke swimmers are more likely to benefit from a large inward rotation of their hips (endorotation of the hips) as this allows them to move more water and thus move forward faster.
A lot depends on the techniques used by each individual athlete. Many will remember Kim Clijsters’ slide, where she almost does a split to reach a distant ball. The muscles on the inside of her thigh (adductors) need to be very flexible for her to do this. For other tennis players this could be less beneficial or even disadvantageous as their elasticity would increase too much, which would negatively affect the SSC.

How come very agile and flexible athletes suffer muscle injuries?

.  
In practice, we see that very agile and flexible athletes sometimes get muscle injuries. This may seem strange as you might assume that someone who has a very flexible muscle-tendon unit has enough ability to absorb the energy.
The very simple reason why these athletes still get muscle injuries is that a stiffer muscle-tendon unit is not the only risk factor for muscle injuries in sports with a lot of SSCs, for example.
. In other words, muscle injuries are caused by a variety of factors. Fatigue, lifestyle, behavioral habits, metabolic processes, etc. may all influence muscle injuries. More research is required to clarify this further.

To stretch or not to stretch?

As you have read above, stretching is anything but straightforward. You need to find a balance between optimum performance and avoiding injuries. It is assumed that the biological composition of muscles and tendons in terms of flexibility, among other things, is also one of the reasons why athletes from certain countries or even tribes are better at long-distance running or sprinting. The composition and flexibility of their muscle-tendon unit may be optimal for the efficient transfer of the energy that is supplied into a movement.
For top athletes we need to have a detailed look at each individual sport, muscle and athlete.
For recreational athletes and younger athletes, we can give some general guidelines for stretching:
 
Always try to stretch a little after exercising
When exercising, your muscles frequently contract. That is when the well-known actin and myosin filaments slide over each other. When you stretch after exercising, you pull these filaments apart, bringing your muscle back to its original length.
 
Don’t stretch too much just before sports with lots of SSCs:
If you stretch a lot just before sports with a lot of SSCs you will lose some of the ability to store energy in the tendon because the tendon temporarily becomes too flexible. As a result, you may become a little less explosive. It's a matter of finding the perfect level of flexibility to perform your sport as efficiently as possible.
 
Make stretching a key goal during growth spurts
During a growth spurt or immediately after, many injuries occur (muscle injuries or overloading of the attachment between tendons and bones) because the size of the skeleton no longer corresponds to the length of the muscles. After all, the skeleton is growing and the muscles must be given the time to adjust to these new dimensions. It is important to rebalance this as soon as possible in order to prevent injuries.
 
References:
Wilson GJ, Murphy AJ, Pryor JF. Musculotendinous stiffness: its relationship to eccentric, isometric and concentric performance. J Appl Physiol 1994; 76 (6): 2714-9
Wilson GJ, Elliott BC, Wood GA. Stretch-shortening cycle performance enhancement through flexibility training. Med Sci Sports Exerc 1992; 24: 116-23
Ettema GJC. Muscle efficiency: the controversial role of elasticity and release of series elastic energy in skeletal muscle during stretch-shortening cycles. J Exp Biol 1996; 199: 1983-97
Witvrouw E, Mahieu N, Danneels L, McNair P. Stretching and Injury Prevention. Sports Med 2004; 34(7): 443-9
Witvrouw E, Mahieu N, McNair P. The role of stretching in tendon injuries. Br J Sports Med 2007; 41: 224-6

"I got my daily dose of sport during my rehabilitation at SQUADT in Waregem."

Top-notch quality in Belgium

During the weekend of 2 & 3 July SQUADT is organizing a few taster sessions to introduce two new and promising items in the world of sports medicine to the general public: the EXO-L Brace and SportKompas.

The revolutionary EXO-L ankle brace is ideal for people who often sprain their ankle or athletes who are inhibited in their sport by an unstable ankle. This brace is ingenious in its simplicity and completely custom-made based on a 3D scan. It provides support exactly when the ankle is at risk of a sprain, but otherwise guarantees complete freedom of movement. The ankle brace mimics the human anatomy and, just the way a seatbelt works, blocks one specific movement that prevents injury. EXO-L is the only brace on the market that allows the wearer to freely move their ankle. But there’s more! The brace is also extremely durable and, unlike other solutions, causes no tape or brace friction in the shoe.
During the weekend of 2 and 3 July, you can have an obligation-free ankle scan made and test this comfortable brace in various contexts to experience how it feels. And if you decide to order one, during this event you will benefit from an exceptional discount.
. For more information or to register, please contact Evelyn at evelyn@squadt.be
.
In addition to the Exo L brace, our physical coach will also present SportKompas , a talent detection test that aims to encourage children aged 6 to 12 to take part in sports and stay active.
From our experience, children tend to realize that they have made the wrong choice of sport as they grow older. Using a battery of 12 tests, we can give advice on which sport best suits their specific talents, enabling them to choose the right sport at an early age and thus increase their chances of success within that specific sport.
In a nutshell, SportKompas advizes children to try out a certain sports discipline, offering them the opportunity to nurture their sporting talents. During our taster sessions, children will receive a report with advice on which sport is most suited to their specific talents based on various tests (flexibility, strength, coordination and speed). If you would like more information about these tests, or if you would like to register, please send an e-mail to davy@squadt.be
.
We are looking forward to meeting you on 2 and 3 July!

Team SQUADT

Regular exercise is considered an important part of an active and healthy lifestyle.
However, when exercise exceeds the athlete's load capacity, injuries can occur, which can sometimes mean that exercise needs to be restricted or is no longer possible at all.
In addition to this ‘overburdening’, there are also risk factors specific to each sport that can cause or accelerate injury. It is very important to be aware of these risk factors in order to prevent injuries.
The risk factors for certain injuries can be divided into two major categories: intrinsic risk factors and extrinsic risk factors.

Intrinsic risk factors are individual factors such as condition, flexibility, age, strength (endurance), mobility, technique, core stability, and so on. By responding to risk factors that can be influenced by, among other things, a good training program, good supervision and a healthy lifestyle, you can make your body more resistant to injuries.

Extrinsic risk factors, on the other hand, are not always easy to influence as they are environmental factors that you cannot always control yourself. Some examples include the condition of the pitch, weather conditions, footwear, etc.
In consultation with the physiotherapist/physical coach, the intrinsic (and if possible also the extrinsic) sport-specific risk factors can be reduced as much as possible.
The start of a new season should be preceded by a sound preparation, making it the ideal time to tackle these factors.

In order to map the intrinsic factors, we use SPARTANOVA. These are sports-specific tests that reveal the possible weak links in the body. Based on the results, we can set up a tailored individual prevention program for athletes to work on their shortcomings.
Together we work towards a balanced and strong body to ensure that athletes can enjoy their sport to the full with a minimal risk of injuries".

It happens over and over again: KVK-Club, full house. And in the past five years, another recurring phenomenon has been KVK winning home games against Club. "I can't remember ever losing against my former team here," Brecht Capon chuckles.

the KV Kortrijk defense didn't let up, partly thanks to Baptiste Martin, who normally would have been out of action for a few more weeks. Speaking of a miraculous healing... "I worked very hard during my rehabilitation in Waregem and I have to say a big thank you to Manu (Wemel, ed. ) and Vincent (Callewaert, ed. ), who prepped me beautifully."

At the beginning of March, Lieselot Decroix was driving when a ghost driver rammed into her car. In addition to a severe concussion, she also suffered an ankle, shin and calf bone fracture.
"I look at it positively: I was lucky. It could have ended much worse," says the elite runner from Kuurne. "So far my rehabilitation is going well. I owe a lot to SQUADT, the Centre for Sports and Physical Rehabilitation in Waregem."

Manu Wemel and Vincent Callewaert have a master's degree in physiotherapy and motor rehabilitation. They specialized in sports physiotherapy and sports rehabilitation and have meanwhile developed their sports training practice in Waregem into a true sports rehabilitation center that helps athletes and non-athletes find their way to the optimal recovery process.