The Olympic cauldron will light in Vancouver on February 12, 2010, marking the start of the XXI (21st) Olympic Winter Games.
The 2010 Olympic Winter Games will be held in Vancouver and Whistler Canada February 12 to 28, 2010. Both the opening and closing ceremonies will take place in Vancouver’s BC Place Stadium, the first Olympics in an indoor stadium in Olympic Games history.
Vancouver and Whistler will host the Paralympic Winter Games from March 12 to 21, 2010. The Paralympic Games Opening Ceremony will be held on March 12, 2010 at BC Place Stadium. The Closing Ceremony will be March 21, 2010, in Whistler.
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A study of men and women over age 70 found two to three times more bone fractures occurred following a hospital admission compared to not being in a hospital. The risk of new fracture was greatest during the first year after hospitalization and increased with the number of times a patient was hospitalized. This included increased numbers of hip fracture, which leads to a fatality within the year in about 30% of people over 50.
Being in a hospital is often joked about as being unhealthy. It is also a reality. When people are sick, it is not the time to keep them sedentary, indoors, eating institutional food, and taking medicines that reduce bone density and increase pain syndromes. Lack of standing and activity quickly reduce bone density. It is a circular problem when people feel they must reduce activity to prevent falls and injury. What is needed is the right, carefully supervised, healthy movement to give the physical skills that prevent falls, the stiffness that results in more pain and lack of function, and reduction in bone density, balance, strength, and mobility crucial for basic health.
Study authors stated, "Because the risk of fracture is greatest soon after hospital discharge, assessment and interventions to reduce risk should be started during the hospital stay or shortly after discharge. Evaluations should include measurement of bone mineral density, assessment of the risk of falling and vision testing." According to the authors, appropriate treatment for these patients include calcium and vitamin D supplements; bisphosphonate drug treatment, such as alendronate (Fosamax) or risedronate (Actonel); vision correction if needed; and physical therapy, including walking programs and exercises to improve flexibility, strength and balance.
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Fast Fitness - Hip and Quadriceps Stretch Lying Down
Friday, February 05, 2010
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Fast Friday Fitness - The front of the leg and hip are helpful places to stretch. Here is another nice stretch for the front of your hip and thigh.
People often "do" a quadriceps stretch without getting a stretch. They keep the front of their hip bent forward at the crease where it meets the body, meaning the area is being shortened not stretched. This is opposite of the point of the stretch. To get the stretch and the idea of lengthening and extending at the hip:
Lie on one side with both knees bent in front of you. It is ok to round your body a bit. The spine is not rounding under compression. It's a nice stretch. Prop your head comfortably.
Keep the bottom knee still bent in front of your body.
Notice different stretch with raised and lowered top knee placement. Stretch the other leg too.
Prevent these reasons the top knee may hurt:
Don't pull back so hard that it pulls painfully at the knee.
Tight quads can feel like knee pain when they tightly pull where they attach at the knee. It is not a problem with the knee, but with tight thigh and quadriceps muscles. Tight people may feel sharp pulling or yanking around the knee when trying to put weight on a knee stretched behind them, as when ruining or lunging. The problem is tightness, so stretch gently and intelligently. The idea is to stretch the quads so you don't hurt, not yank so that you do.
Check that you are not twisting at the knee - generally you can tell this if your foot is facing a different direction than the front of your knee. One commonly missed reason for knee pain felt during running and walking is twisted stretching, including yoga poses like lotus and hero if you don't turn from the hip, and others, covered in Knee Pain When Running - Check Your Yoga.
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Doctors Don't Prescribe Effective Back and Neck Pain Therapy - Exercise
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Studies have confirmed that directed exercise is beneficial for chronic low back and neck pain. Is it being used? In a survey reported in Arthritis Care & Research, of 684 patients with chronic low back or neck pain, only 14.4% were prescribed exercise by their physicians. By contrast, 63.8% of those seeing a physical therapist and 33.1% of those who saw a chiropractor were prescribed exercise.
Other significant predictors of an exercise prescription were being female, having greater than a high school education, and being on workers' compensation.
Primary source: Freburger JK, et al "Exercise prescription for chronic back or neck pain: Who prescribes it? Who gets it? What is prescribed?" Arthritis Care Res 2009; 61(2): 192-200.
My colleague, family medicine physician Dr. Fabrice Czarnecki sent me this:
A study did a review "prospective controlled trials of interventions." These are studies that evaluated effectiveness of various interventions to prevent back pain (BP) in working age adults. In short, after all the math and big words were sifted through, they found that, "only exercise was found effective for preventing self-reported BPs in seven of eight trials. Other interventions were not found to reduce either incidence or severity of BP episodes compared with controls. Negative trials included five trials of education, four of lumbar supports, two of shoe inserts, and four of reduced lifting programs."
Their conclusions: "Twenty high-quality controlled trials found strong, consistent evidence to guide prevention of BP episodes in working-age adults. Trials found exercise interventions effective and other interventions not effective, including stress management, shoe inserts, back supports, ergonomic/back education, and reduced lifting programs. The varied successful exercise approaches suggest possible benefits beyond their intended physiologic goals."
Bigos SJ, Holland J, Holland C, et al. High-quality controlled trials on preventing episodes of back problems: systematic literature review in working-age adults. Spine J. 2009 Feb;9(2):147-68. (Review) PMID: 19185272
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Readers were excited when I wrote about Sepak Takraw, a fast net game using feet, leaping windmill kicks, shoulders, and head, but no hands to volley a woven ball called a "takraw."
Readers asked if this kind of game exists in other world cultures. Here is one from Brazil, created in the mid 1960’s.
Footvolley combines beach volleyball with the ball-touch rules of soccer. Players score points by heading, chest butting, and kicking the ball with foot or knee over the seven-foot-tall net to the opponents’ court.
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Perceived exertion is your own description of how hard you are exercising
Perceived exertion is usually described on a scale of 1 to 10 (very, very easy to extremely hard).
Until recently, perceived exertion was found to correlate with actual oxygen consumption, meaning your body is working medium hard, when the effort feels medium hard. Perceived exertion scales are becoming ineffective as young people become increasingly unused to exercise and rate almost any minor effort as extremely hard.
It is not an injury when you exercise hard enough to have sore muscles over the next three to four days. It is not an injury when you use your body enough to feel aching effort in your muscles. It is not a respiratory problem when you are out of breath from hard exercise. It is not a medical problem when you are tired at the end of the day. If you have worked hard, being tired enough to sleep is right and needed, and avoids the need for taking medicines to sleep.
Work to increase the effort it takes to become out of breath and feel hard muscular effort. Work to increase the amount of work it takes for you to feel something is moderately hard.
--- Read success stories of these methods and send your own. See if your answers are already here by clicking labels, links in posts, archives, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, click "updates via e-mail" upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class space for personal feedback. Top students may earn certification,DrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
If your knee pain from running isn't getting better with fixing bad gait, physical therapy, and medical care, check your yoga. Several poses directly twist, overstretch, or pinch knee cartilage. Over time, injury builds that does not show much in people who do yoga and little else, until their knees encounter resisted motion for running and sports, or from a trip or fall.
Not long ago, people in yoga or sports did not intersect much. Now, the previously more sedentary yoga populations try running, aerobics, and sports. Athletes are being told that yoga will give them magic benefits. Knee injuries bloom when they go back to sports, making the staunch yoga camps claim sports are the culprit. Check for knee damaging motions in yoga and other stretches. The knee is a primarily a hinge joint, like the hinge on a door that only can open and close. The door swings toward you and away. If you lift up on the door, it twists the hinge and eventually loosens it. The door begins to creak and rub and make noise.
Think of sitting cross-legged (tailor style). Your knees are out to the side and your lower legs bend toward you. All is fine at that point. Now picture, as with lifting upward on a door, you lift the foot and lower leg to rest it on your thigh in Lotus position. Unless you outwardly rotate the upper leg fully at the hip, the knee twists, overstretching the lateral (outside) ligament and pinching the medial meniscus and soft tissue. Some pigeon poses, do the same, right.
Often people bend the ankle upwards too, a separate problem - Unhealthy Yoga Ankles.
How to picture rotation at the hip? Think of a stapler. Like the door just mentioned, the stapler has a hinge or knee joining two sections, like your upper and lower leg. It opens and closes on the hinge. If you pull the upper or lower part sideways, it twists or shears the hinge. To turn to staple sideways, you need to rotate the whole thing.
Hero pose, (Supta Virasana) begins sitting on bent knees, meditation style, which often is fine. The knee hinge swings like closing a door, normal bending. Then you pull the feet outside of the upper legs, like pulling upward on the door hinge. If you do not inwardly rotate both upper legs at the hip fully, your knee twists at the hinge, overstretching the medial (inside- facing the other knee) ligament, pinching the lateral (outer) meniscus and soft tissue. In "W" sitting, both feet face outward. Not a problem for the knee unless the hips do not fully rotate (whether relentless W sitting is eventually is too much at the hip is a separate question). Runner's hurdler stretch is the same issue, one leg at a time.
Even though yoga may call for "doing both sides" and following each motion in one direction with one in the other, twisting both the medial and lateral sides of the knee cartilage by doing both Lotus and Hero will not cancel each other, but can overstretch and degenerate both sides.
Warrior poses 1 and 2 are like a lunge. Check your front knee. Is it inside the line of your foot? Do your foot and knee face the same direction?
Sagging inward unequally loads the knee and when the foot and knee face differently, the knee twists under body weight (blue center model, photo at right). Keep your knee above your foot, both facing directly forward.
Mighty Chair pose - watch for overly stylized artificial position, not valuable for any functional motion (photo right and lower drawing left).
Hindu squats and one-legged heel-up deep bends may not twist the knee as much as pry it. Picture a tool to crack nuts - two handles joined at a hinge, like your upper and lower leg joined at the knee. Put an object (for example, a soccer ball) between the upper and lower leg and try to close the heel toward the upper leg - if the ball does not compress, the hinge (knee) pries open. That happens with low squats on the toes (heels up) if you have large or heavy legs. If you have slender legs, the heels can come closely, like bending your elbow so that your lower arm rests along your upper arm. Slender legs do this, while muscular athletes may destabilize their knees, leaving them venerable to future injury.
To lift the back foot for King Pigeon, turn the knee of the back leg facing downward, to the floor, not to the side. By turning the leg to face the knee downward, you get a better anterior hip stretch, and when you lift the foot, the knee can bend like a hinge not twist.
One Legged King Pigeon kneels on one knee with that knee bent so only the kneecap bears your weight, not the lower leg. To reduce compression and get a better stretch for the hip, move your back leg further back so that your weight rests on the thigh, not kneecap.
I have taken several yoga teacher certifications. Each gives different, plausible-sounding rationale why knee twist poses help, but the anatomy is just off enough to come to wrong conclusions. In one, they taught to deliberately twist the lower leg on the upper "to protect the meniscus." There are two bones in the lower leg, allowing some rotation, but twisting injures other structures. Another teacher training stressed extreme knee twisting as a stretch in itself, stating that any increase in motion is beneficial, especially from joints. Knee laxity results. Without much muscle and positioning training, you predispose yourself to instability when giving the knee challenge, like going back to sports, or from a fall or blow. Another certification teacher training taught that knee twisting is beneficial since it allows great range of motion in case you fall down with your knee twisted backward. Sounds plausible for that one fall (unless you fall differently), but for every other day in your life, so much extra space can result that the joint 'rattles' and wears prematurely. In another class we were made to sit in Lotus, then, still folded in Lotus, rise to knees and swivel from knee to knee to waddle around the room.
In each yoga teacher training and class I take, I hear teachers tell about their knee pain and surgeries. They go back to the injurious poses and get relief or distraction for the moment then pain comes back. Movement in general often relieves pain for the moment. No need to injure yourself to get temporary relief.
There are assertions that many people do these stretches and not everyone gets knee pain, so they must be fine. Smoking and unsafe sex do not have a one-to-one association with immediately bad consequences every time. Some stretches and movements twist the knee and overstretch cartilage. If you do these stretches and have pain, or just sit or stand with your knees hyper-extended (locked back) even if you think it is unrelated, it is one place to think about.
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I am a scientist in human physiology. I study how the body works in extremes of environments. I lived on mountains and underwater. I slept outdoors in snow to study cold adaptation. I spun pilots in centrifuges until their faces looked like shar pei puppies. I make grown men cry.
Readers asked for stories of when I lived the extremes myself.
Here is a story when I worked and lived in an underwater lab.
I didn't have a camera then, and have few photos from those years, so at right is a photo of an underwater lab found on the Internet using a search of the terms "underwater lab."
You live many meters underwater in a metal structure that keeps out the water. It is an air pocket the size of a big room and the air you breathe is under pressure equal to the surrounding water depth. Since you live there for days, or weeks, the lab has a kitchen. Cooking and using the bathroom in the higher pressure is for another story.
To get to the lab you need to dive down underwater. You can wear scuba gear or use a long surface supplied hose. Occasionally a reporter would come visit the facility and want to stay in the underwater lab for a day to get a story. We, the staff, would teach them enough to use the air supply safely to get them down and back up after their stay, and transport their sometimes large and unwieldy suitcases for them in watertight containers.
One day, another staff member and I helped a reporter dive down to the lab, helped her inside, all nice and dry, and left here there to set up her typewriter (this was a long time ago before laptops and wireless devices). We returned to the surface and put the air hoses away. Shortly later, we decided to free dive back down to check on her.
We took a deep breath, held our breath and dived down down down
We thumped on the big tempered glass portholes trying to get her attention.
thump thump! (holding breath)
thump thump thump! (holding breath longer)
thump! longer... oooooooh!
She noticed us. She was delighted to see two mer-people swimming in the blue depths outside. She waived at us gaily. We hovered swimming weightlessly outside in the blue, holding our breath.
She raised her two hands, making a camera gesture. She clicked a finger in air and then pointed it to tell us - "Wait!"
Through the porthole we watched her pawing around for her suitcase to find her camera. (still holding our breath, outside in the deep blue water)
She looked and looked. She scattered clothes and bags.
The other staff and I used a swallowing technique to extend breath-hold time -uuuuuuuuuuuMH
Finally, a camera waved at the view port.
She positioned the camera to take our photo.
(Still holding our breath waiting, waiting).
She held up the camera .... She leaned back, ... She stopped and oriented the camera the other way, ..... She leaned to the side
She gestured WAIT!! She gestured, "I have to get it just right! Just a moment longer just WAIT."
CLICK!!
She got the photo. We saw the flash bounce off the glass, knowing the photo would never come out. She didn't seem fazed.
She held up one finger and pantomimed through the glass - "Wait - one more!"
"The cure for everything is salt water — sweat, tears or the sea." — Isak Dinesen
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Fast Fitness - New Understanding of Hyperlordosis and Disc Injury
Friday, January 22, 2010
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - a new possible contributor to vertebral disc injury, and how to avoid it:
In my previous studies, I found that overdoing the inward lower spine curve (hyperlordosis) pinches the lower spine like a soda straw. It forces the spine joints, called facets, backward against each other, eventually wearing them, and compresses surrounding soft tissue. After long periods of standing, exercise, and lifting with too much inward curve, lower back pain is not a big surprise or mysterious to fix.
Hyperlordosis was not previously thought of as a direct herniating force on discs. The major factor was and still is too much forward bending. Weighted flexion (bending forward bearing your body weight) opens the space between vertebrae in back, and over years of slouched sitting and bad bending and lifting forward, presses discs outward through that space creating herniated discs (an injury, not a disease). In my previous work I found that for someone with a disc already herniated, hyperlordosis pinches it, adding pain to the separate problem of the disc. Showing people how to stop standing in hyperlordosis greatly reduced their disc pain. In recent work, I found that hyperlordosis exacerbates, and possibly initiates disc herniation itself.
My new work is showing that hyperlordosis is a probable mechanism to directly shift disc position. I made a diagram showing the disc injury coming from overarching/ hyperlordosis/ hyperextending the spine that is so common in pop fitness.
Above - Hyperlordosis, and results over time, on the discs. MRI on right shows disc herniation and pinching between lower vertebrae.
Hyperlordosis in both walkers, easily seen at right. Damaging sloppy posture.
Hyperlordosis (overarching the lower spine) is a spine damaging posture. Hyperlordosis and the pain from it can be changed as easily as moving your spine to a smaller healthier degree of arch (neutral spine).
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The theme of Grand Rounds this week was Food as Medicine. Many posts talked about buying and eating food for yourself. I wrote of food for others too.
Dr. LaPuma writes, "Fitness Fixer’s Dr Bookspan, bless her heart, takes pleasure in the rhythm of cooking and giving and gardening."
Thank you Dr. LaPuma for good words and all your hard work for Grand Rounds.
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Racers eat all sorts of things hoping to extend endurance. A long history of drugs and supplements have been used from illegal to unhealthy to useless to good common sense nutrition.
Some racers load on unhealthful simple sugars hoping that will maximize needed carbohydrate stores called glycogen in the muscles. Others shun carbohydrates, even healthy needed nutrition in fruit and vegetables because they want to lose weight. A main effect of low carbohydrate diets is loss of muscle glycogen, quickly reducing size and water weight, giving the illusion of weight loss, and reducing exercise ability.
Another factor was identified in a study at Oxford University looking at using a high-fat diet. They found "stark reduction in physical endurance and a decline in cognitive ability after just nine days." Researcher found increased levels of a protein called the 'uncoupling protein' in the muscle and heart cells of rats on the high-fat diet. This protein 'uncouples' the process of burning food stuffs for energy in the cells, reducing the efficiency of the heart and muscles.
The study used rats, which have different nutritional needs than people. Previous rat nutrition studies led to higher than needed protein estimations, still believed by body builders hoping to build muscle through eating. This rat study seems to be in line with longitudinal dietary studies of human athletes who could not run as long on a treadmill or navigate as well through a maze. Dr Andrew Murray led the work at Oxford University. He stated, "We found that rats, when switched to a high-fat diet from their standard low-fat feed, showed a surprisingly quick reduction in their physical performance."
Primary Source: 'Deterioration of physical performance and cognitive function in rats with short-term high-fat feeding' by Andrew J Murray and colleagues. The FASEB Journal, 2009; DOI: 10.1096/fj.09-139691. Copy of the paper: http://www.fasebj.org/cgi/rapidpdf/fj.09-139691v1.pdf
What they called a high fat diet was 55 per cent of the calories from fat. This may be less total fat than what I observe many people eating with fast food and junk food. Patients come to me proudly showing a food diary that they think is balanced because it lowers the total fat percentage of a recipe with lard by adding sugar. That is still the same high fat amount. Reduce your total fat, and keep your head not to avoid vegetables because they have a high percentage of carbohydrate. The percentage is high, not the total. If you have a one-dollar bill in your pocket and that's all, your pocket has 100% dollar bills, but not a lot of them.
In American Samoa, 93.5% of the people are estimated to be overweight since changing traditional complex carbohydrate low fat meals to Western imports of fatty food, junk sugar, and processed meat like Spam. In the Republic of Kiribati, another tropical island nation of the central Pacific, 81.5% are estimated overweight for the same reasons. Egypt began an increase of obesity when they began importing fast food. In the United States, over 65% of the people are considered overweight, related to considerable fat and high simple sugar from processed food with corn oil and high fructose corn syrup.
If your body chemistry, your temperament, medications you take, or economic situation pushes you to gain body fat from eating too much unhealthful food, eating less of it is still key to reducing overweight. I am not a nutrient biochemistry specialist, just a physiologist. For health and sports success over the long term, a working generality is to stop eating the fat and refined sugar of junk food, fast, food, and processed food, and many so-called "health-foods" which are expensive candy or over-processed products. Try an apple or favorite fruit and some walnuts for healthy exercise and endurance.
There are many components of health covered in the hundreds of Fitness Fixer articles already here, including how to fix injuries, stop pain, and improve sports and life abilities without expensive unhealthful sports food or drugs and medicines that reduce overall health.
--- Read success stories of these methods and send your own. See if your answers are already here by clicking labels, links in posts, archives, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, click "updates via e-mail" upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class space for personal feedback. Top students may earn certification,DrBookspan.com/Academy. Get more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
Natural Hard Exercise - Stuart's Community Health Stewardship Continues
Monday, January 18, 2010
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Reader Stuart W did a magnificent thing; he took charge and started using and teaching my work in his community for projects ranging from school health to senior health to water harvesting in his arid city of Tucson.
Stuart writes:
"The second group of pictures in the set are from a water harvesting project run by the Water Management Group here in Tucson. We spent 5 hours digging and bending and planting. The structures make use of street run-off in a way that reduces road and water pollution while at the same time "greening" the street by providing the plants with water which will eventually shade the side-walk and street and reduce the "heat-island" created by all the asphalt and concrete that attracts and absorbs sunlight/heat.
"This was my first time volunteering with them and I didn't get a chance to teach but I did figure out how to dig and bend correctly myself. It was a work-out and felt really good. I have dug in the past for long hours with improper bending and what it a difference it makes! Soon I hope to teach the other volunteers so that in addition to being good stewards of the community they can also be good stewards of their health.
"The watershed admin is thinking the best thing for me to do would be to teach the various instructors so that they could then oversee the volunteers throughout the city.
Stuart will retrain participants' bending so that their exercise is healthy for themselves and the community
"I was looking at your website (DrBookspan.com/Academy) and seeing the part about scholarships for Native Americans and the elderly, that intrigued me a lot. There is a large reservation just south of town for the Tohono O'odahm Indians, I have been thinking about how neat it would be to teach some of them.
"Recently there has been a wellness program implemented by the City of Tucson to reduce work-related strains and injuries. They have not been exposed to your work yet but they have been exposed to stretches that are potentially damaging at worst and ineffective at best! My friend spoke kindly of me and how your blog and my advice had helped him so, when I talked to his supervisor, he was more than helpful in suggesting ways in which I might be able to teach city workers in various settings and occupations."
More work is in progress. Reports to come.
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure about you. We were born to manifest the glory that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. As we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
--- Read success stories of these methods and send your own. See if your answers are already here by clicking labels, links in posts, archives, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, click "updates via e-mail" upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class space for personal feedback. Top students may earn certification atDrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
Fast Fitness - Fifth Group Functional Training: Ankle and Knee Safety With Lateral Movement
Friday, January 15, 2010
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - fifth in the series of Functional Fitness Training (FFT) to teach your group, teams, classes, students, kids, battalions…
In this FFT, learn to be ready for changing direction, cutting, lateral movement, landing to the side from jumps, slips and missteps, and more. It builds on the Third Functional Training exercise where you learned to jump with good lower body mechanics.
Assemble your group in neat rows. Stand in front in view of all. Tell them this is a basic, functional physical skill to learn how to reduce lower body injuries during sideways jumps. Remind them they use the previously learned principles from the Third FFT of vertical jumps.
Have everyone crouch using good bending (knees do not sway inward or slide forward, taught in the first FFT skill), then rise to toes with stable neutral ankle (not bowing outward at the side, taught in the second skill). Remind them that when they land from a jump they use the same neutral ankle.
Next, have everyone to leap sideways at once, off one leg onto the other foot, landing softly with good knee bending and neutral ankle. On landing, the knee is already above the foot, not bent inward. Foot is neutral, not flattened inward (pronated) or turning outward like a sprain (inversion and supination).
Leap back to starting place onto the other foot. On landing, the knee is already above the foot. Repeat leaping sideways from foot to foot. With each landing, watch the knee of the landing leg. Make sure the knee doesn't sway inward of foot.
Improve by jumping increasingly fast, and far, for longer periods of time.
Each new Functional Training exercise shows how to teach your groups (or self) how to prevent common musculoskeletal problems during the team season or operational theater. Learn this one to be ready for the fourth one coming next, needed for cutting, changing direction, lateral movement, more.
Trainers, Drill Instructors, readers, send in your stories of how you use these in your program.
--- Read success stories of these methods and send your own. See if your answers are already here by clicking labels, links in posts, archives, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, click "updates via e-mail" upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class space for personal feedback. Top students may earn certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Get more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
DrRich, host of Grand Rounds this week, says he has been thinking about starting his own healthy movement program.
Thank you Dr. Rich. Congratulations Stuart.
--- Read success stories and send your own. See if your answers are already here - click Fitness Fixer labels, links, archives, andIndex. Subscribe free - "updates via e-mail"upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions.
In the article Kneecap Tracking - Don't Miss These Reasons It Doesn't Get Better, I listed common reasons knee pain doesn't resolve, including common bad stretches, bad shoes, treating the wrong thing, treating the right thing but returning to pronated gait (letting arches flatten or knees sag inward under your weight instead of standing straight (neutral), and omitting functional exercise and use. Fancy "supportive" running shoes, no matter how expensive or engineered often add to knee pain. I wrote that surgery for a tight lateral area isn't needed when you can stretch it. Readers wrote asking why stretch when you can just have surgery and cut it?
One common surgical procedures is an arthroscopic lateral release - surgical cutting of the lateral muscles from the patella (kneecap). The idea of the surgery is to decrease pull and pressure on the underside of the patella.
Studies following up people undergoing the surgery show, "The results are not always predictable or successful and in some cases, the surgery may have no effect on the patient's problem." http://www.arthroscopy.com/sp05032.htm
Another study from the Netherlands confirmed previous studies showing exercise therapy for patellofemoral pain was more effective to reduce pain and increase function than the often used "rest, wait and see." Science Daily.
Surgery often is made to sound like a quick way to get ahead, but numbers now confirm that you are restricted from full activity for enough time that your physical conditioning, flexibility, bone density, aerobic capacity, strength, and enthusiasm diminish. You will often be further behind, rather than quickly fixing a cause and going forward. Often, as much physical therapy is needed for full recovery after surgery as if you didn't go for the surgery. Stories are told of someone who had the surgery then went right back to skiing. I am the one who many of these people come to a year later. They say they are fine, but they still use pain medicine, still can't bend their knee enough to stretch enough to get relief of other tight areas and so on, and often haven't gotten back to previous benchmarks. To me, that is not "fine" enough. They slowly diminish in key areas of their life. They get new pain they don't recognize as related to compensating movement from the old ones. By the time they see me, they are often on several pain medicines, anti-depression medicines, and others that make new problems.
Surgical risks are also becoming better reported. Blood clot incidence is far higher after surgery than previous released. A study of nearly 1 million women tracked for an average of 6.2 years after surgery, showed risk continues for 12 weeks and includes minimally invasive procedures.
Not all patellofemoral pain is a tracking problem. Tracking pain is in the patellorfemoral area (where kneecap and top leg bone meet). However, other conditions besides tracking make patellofemoral pain. People with patellofemoral knee pain may be sent for tracking therapy even surgery, without needing it. Standing and moving allowing the knee to sag or rotate inward can also make rubbing. Surgery and tracking exercises do not address this. They may be done but yield no result. It is not a mystery.
--- Read success stories of these methods and send your own. See if your answers are already here by clicking labels, links in posts, archives, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, click "updates via e-mail"upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal feedback. Top students may apply for certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
Reader Paul J has been named Winner of the contest to name the figure who illustrates many of my books, articles in Fitness Fixer, web site articles, and Academy teaching materials.
The comic figure who educates about healthy movement continues from one I had an artist design for me. The artist moved away and could no longer work for me. I am no artist, and had to learn to draw him - not great like the original artist's, but what I could figure out for myself.
When I hired the talented young medical graphics artist, I told him I envisioned an image that was not man or woman, not black or white, not young or old, but everyone. He drew me a white guy, with a big western nose. Still it was a funny warm character that people say they can identify with as he figures out life.
Runner-up was reader JayaKrishna who gave him the name, Dr. Goodback™. I like that, and that remains his formal professional name. The rest of the time, thanks to Paul J, his name is Backman!™
When you see Fitness Fixer posts with this character, you should see the trademark symbol and his copyrighted name.
The name also reminded me of a SuperHero name. I wrote to thank Paul J, saying "I am BACKman!™ POW! splat! take that Joker!"
He wrote back, "Do you mean Jock-err...the steroid using muscle man that does bad bending?"
Close to 200 drawings in the book Stretching Smarter Stretching Healthier, many more in Health & Fitness THIRD edition, among the 114 photos and drawing in The Ab Revolution™ third edition revised expanded, and Fix Your Own Pain Without Drugs or Surgery - all on www.DrBookspan.com.
--- Read success stories of these methods and send your own. See if your answers are already here by clicking labels, links in posts, archives, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, click "updates via e-mail" upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal feedback. Top students may apply for certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
Fast Fitness - How To Be An Inspiring Success and Send In Your Story
Friday, January 08, 2010
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
The 2009 Fitness Fixer Hall of Fame listed readers who fixed their fitness and sent their stories. How can you be in the Hall of Fame 2010?
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - Send in your reader inspiring success story. If you have read Fitness Fixer for any time, you probably are smart and would use it, and by now, be better at some aspect of your life:
Large or small, write what you did and why and how. It can be one small improvement like sitting in healthy position at your desk or bending right so that you no longer hurt. It can be that you stopped pain and now can do activities you used to love, or wanted to try for the first time. It can be how you taught a family member or friend to stop their pain.
If you don't have something, choose a fun and easy Fitness Fixer - close to 700 so far. Labels under each article gives all articles in that category, for example all Fast Fitness, or all reader inspiring stories. Or use the Fitness Fixer Index.
Take photos and short movies if you can, of small file-size. Send me your story with your link to your photos on a photo-sharing site like Flickr, MyPhotoTown, Picassa, or other you prefer. If you don't know how to do that, it may be fun to learn. At last resort, e-mail me the photos.
Ivy from New Zealand had to borrow a film camera, wait for developing, and mail me the photos from overseas, which I scanned and uploaded. Her efforts with her 86 year old neighbor who took the photos are on Inspirational Ivy. Reader Robert Davis propped his camera phone on a paperclip, put the camera on timer, and ran into place. For smart Fitness Fixer readers, there is always a way. On my professional website www.DrBookspan.com, the academy page and the BOOKS page have contact links to be used for Sending Good. Separate pages and contact links exist for asking questions and professional help.
A telling observation is when I search photo databases for examples for the hundreds of articles for all of you, searches using keywords of "exercise," "health" and "fitness," or searches of fitness sites yield only bad, unhealthful positioning. Often, unless I take the photo myself of a student or patient, or a reader sends one in, there is no "good" example. Come be one.
Double Benefit: Enter the Fitness Fixer contests. If you show how you do it yourself, and why this is a positive change in your life, you can have two successes - contest winner and success story.
--- Read success stories of these methods and send your own. See if your answers are already here by clicking labels, links in posts, archives, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, click "updates via e-mail" upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal feedback. Top students may apply for certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
Ms. McAllister swims and water-skis every day. She says the key is you have to keep going, don't quit.
My father was also an avid water skier. I have photos of him slalom-skiing, long silver hair flying. In water-ski vocabulary, "slalom" means only one ski. I also have a photo of him high diving from the Mexican cliffs with the real cliff divers - for another story. I have photos of my grandmother lifting weights in her 90's with her hip-length hair still black, but she said she doesn't like the photos because she looks old.
Stay active, no matter what your age. It is the key to being mobile and independent
--- Read success stories of these methods and send your own. See if your answers are already here by clicking labels, links in posts, archives, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, click "updates via e-mail" upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal feedback. Top students may apply for certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
On the web, Grand Rounds is a collection of the best on-line medical posts from the past week. A different host works hard each week to find and list the articles. This is different from the Grand Rounds in a hospital, which is a lecture for doctors about a patient or topic.
Thank you to Dr. Genes, this week's host for doing the hard work of collecting and featuring our posts.
--- Read success stories and send your own. See if your answers are already here - click Fitness Fixer labels, links, archives, andIndex. Subscribe free - "updates via e-mail" upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class space for personal feedback. Top students may earn certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
Are You Always Colder With Exercise In Cold Water?
Tuesday, January 05, 2010
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
It is winter in the northern hemisphere. Outdoor swimming and boating waters range from chilly to frozen. A widespread assumption is that exercise in cold water always makes you colder. Some scuba diving textbooks assert that cold water will cause heat loss and therefore you will always chill in cold water. Some survival protocols may say you must never try to swim to safety if you find yourself unexpectedly in cold water. Are these true?
Although you lose a high amount of body heat to moving water, it is also true that you gain heat from being alive and from moving. The more heat you can generate, the more it is likely to meet or exceed the amount you lose. Losing heat by itself does not mean that you are chilling. If you generate more than you lose, you do not chill, you can stay warm when swimming and diving, even overheat. If not, of course, you can get very cold.
In general, it is easier to chill than overheat in cold water. However, in some cases, you can generate enough heat through exercise to match or surpass the heat you lose, even moreso if you are well insulated with muscle and fat. Swimmers doing laps in pools and divers sweating into their masks during hard finning against currents can tell you that. During Desert Storm, some divers in the Persian Gulf needed to wear ice vests for heat extraction to prevent overheating.
Many factors are involved including your fitness (ability to exercise hard enough to make enough heat), your build, your clothing, medicines you may be taking, how far it is to safety, your health, how warm you were when you started, the weather, water current and conditions. You can have net loss and gain back and forth during the same swim. Much to know.
When I competed in swimming, we swam miles each day. In winter, after finishing pool training, I walked home, hair still dripping. A fun thing was to see how fast it would freeze. When I'd pat the top of my head, the frozen hair crackled humorously. You could hold locks out to freeze in shapes. Teammates and I experimented informally, running various speeds to see if the wind froze the hair more or our rising body heat could melt it. Some of us were able to generate a literal head of steam. Most of my training was pool swimming (wimpy) but I have tried ice swimming in no more than a bathing suit. My family were Russian Ice swimmers and my Grandfather was the oldest member of the Iceberg club, who swam in the ocean every day, including New Year's Day. I am trying to find any photos that may have been taken. I know the club and my Grandfather were pictured in an issue of Strength and Health magazine.
In my military work in cold survival, we used computer models to compare heat loss in critically cold water scenarios for downed pilots and combat swimmers, to our real experiments putting volunteers in cold water with lots of forced convection - waves, wind, overhead spray, and my little toy wind-up sharks and penguins. You can become incapacitated by cold before becoming hypothermic. You can die from cold incapacitation in the water without ever reaching a hypothermic state. In informal conversation, the terms hypothermia and chilling are often used interchangeably, but that is not correct, and they are not the same. I made t-shirts for "my guys" the military volunteers in each extreme experimental protocol. The cold immersion trial shirts were inspired by the verse "Many are called but few are chosen" to become, "Many are cold but few are frozen."
--- Read success stories of these methods and send your own. See if your answers are already here by clicking labels, links in posts, archives, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe free, click "updates via e-mail" upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class space for personal feedback. Top students may apply for certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Get more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
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Ice swimming photo by farlane Iceskiing photo by pdbreen
"I'd bought a steel fire pit that weighs about 50 lbs, and when I got it last November I could barely move it more than a few feet and that was with some pain. I was going to ask someone to help me move it for use on New Years Eve. But I've been really watching and correcting my posture for the last couple months, and when I picked it up New Years Eve, it seemed really light. I just whisked it out to the front yard like it weighed nothing, and there was no pain!!!
Left drawing shows neutral spine and hip. Center and Right show two kinds of swayback (hyperlordosis) a slouching posture you can easily change to stop pain.
"I was amazed. I would never have guessed that good posture makes one so much stronger, but it does! I've also noticed a difference in my poise -- like forcing yourself to smile makes you feel happier, so does good posture make you feel more self confident. No surgeon could ever have given me that!
"Thanks, Dr. J.
"Happy 2010! -Bill"
Good body mechanics are a powerful performance enhancing aid.
--- Read success stories and send your own. See if your answers are already here - click Fitness Fixer labels, links, archives, andIndex. Subscribe free - "updates via e-mail" upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class space for personal feedback. Top students may earn certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
Here is Friday Fast Fitness for the New Year- Knowing What Is Fitness.
Being fit of body and mind is not doing a bunch of artificial rituals in a gym.
True fitness is how you live your life. How you treat yourself and others. How you walk, bend and lift outside the gym. How you stand breathe smile and take pleasure in the rhythm of cooking and cleaning as a life meditation. How you work together by seeing that it doesn't matter if someone cuts in front of you in line:
No matter how fancy and expensive the car you drive, do you use it to take food to the hungry, or an old person where they need to go?
It doesn't matter how expensive your house, but if you welcome friends to come in out of the cold, and make it a place of peace and health for yourself and family.
It doesn't matter how expensive your cosmetics and manicures and hairstyles, and clothes, but if you use your hands, your voice, and yourself to speak well, act with honor and make the world a garden.
--- Read success stories and send your own. See if your answers are already here - click Fitness Fixer labels, links, archives, andIndex. Subscribe free - "updates via e-mail" upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class space for personal feedback. Top students may apply for certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Get more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
For your New Year's Resolutions and for the New Year to come, here are real stories from readers that appeared during 2009 here on Fitness Fixer:
World Program Health
Stuart Wood got up and just did it, He studied and used my work, then designed several programs for children and adults to learn healthy movement not only for itself, but to use for building community works. Watch for many honorable and important projects from Stuart to come as one of my Academy appointees - Reader Gains Academy Appointment for Making Community Projects Healthy
Fixed ankle pain and used healthy squatting, bending, and horse riding for a month rugged trek. Composer Andrea Clearfield and artist Maureen Drdak trekked a month in Nepal to record the sacred music and art of LUNG-TA, the Windhorse - Pain Free Trekking to Kingdom of Lo
Lisa P was told to stop running. She got out of shape but the injuries remained. She learned to stop the foot injuries, lost weight, got in shape, ran marathons, changed to healthy movement, and was able to fulfill her dream of working as a professional photographer - Physician Told Her Give Up, Fitness Fixer Made Her Able
David from Belgium took time to make us many training videos even with firstborn daughter Aiko on the way, then continued after her arrival with this gem, called by reader Shannon, "The most charming "fitness video" I have ever seen." - Fast Fitness - Isometric Abs Training. Keep your sound/speakers on.
Two great people won their fame this year and manfully allowed their stories to go next year so others could be counted now - Fellow rider BikaBill, and my old friend and fellow wild-hair Mark Lonsdale who will have his successes as frogman, marksman, and Specialized Tactical Training Unit instructor, coming soon.
Thank you everyone for using my methods for Good. Thank you for writing your stories for others to benefit. Congratulations on your great work.
Thank You Readers For Nice Comments And Successes In The Comments Of Posts
Anton, Alberto (farioreo), Anya, Terry Lee, Teresa, Vietanh, Dada, Caregiver Sandy, Captain Scott, Mr. Glass, Poleminx, Y, Marina, Rennie, Rene, Belly Dancer, Ted, Shannon, Dentists Plantation, BikaBill, Cockroach Catcher, jojo, JayaKrishna, MegaMom, TonyP. Sam, rania123456, meanne, Joe, Jeff, Elliott, RealMother, Hope, M.Pradeep, Kirstine, Steven, Uma, Vasudha, Laura, byte5, Sylvia, DD, Naiche, Margie, Reggie (R2_G2), SwissGraphics, Charles, Brooke, Sebastian, JH, adarrel, Ted, priyamno1, EMR, NurseLine, John, Dufbil (David), Alena, Shane, Maryk, Jilly, Ness, 4myJagiya, MountainsMan, Wondering Oriental, alkime, and others, let me know if you should be here to thank.
Thank You All For Your E-Mails Of Success
Paul J wrote, "8 months Chiropractor free, so Merry Christmas to you."
Anya taught her Grandmother to fix neck pain over Skype. Watch for insightful, smart, strong, stories from Anya to come next year. Anya reminds, "We are so far from knowing our limits!"
Hundreds more, too shy to put their story online, mailed me notes of the best thanks - that because of these methods, they stopped pain, they got strong, they had their lives back.
For Next Year
Start envisioning your success using these methods. Send me your photo sharing link with photos of what you do to fix your fitness, your well being, your life. Send in your story and you will soon be in the Fitness Fixer Hall of Fame 2010.
Link for all Success Stories - readers inspiring story. It will take a while to load - there are so many.
--- Read success stories of these methods and send your own. See if your answers are already here by clicking labels, links in posts, archives, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, click "updates via e-mail" upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal feedback. Top students may apply for certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
Academy of Functional Exercise Medicine Award by Alessandro Schiavone Creative Director from Ravenna, Italy Dr. Bookspan's Academy - www.DrBookspan.com/Academy
Thank you Grand Rounds Volume 6: Number 14 - the last Grand Rounds of 2009 - for including my article Contest To Sit Up Straight - A Hint in the 'round-up' of best medical writing for the week.
Grand Rounds host Jessica Otte, a Family Practice Resident from British Columbia, writes,
"Dr. Jolie Bookspan, the Fitness Fixer, will help you overcome your Cro Magnon-like state. Maybe we wouldn’t be such slouches if we just would follow her advice and learn How to Sit Up Straight!"
On the web, Grand Rounds is a collection of the best on-line medical posts from the past week. A different host works hard each week to find and list the articles. This is different from the Grand Rounds in a hospital, which is a lecture for doctors about a patient or topic.
Thank you to this week's host for doing the hard work of collecting and featuring our posts.
--- Read success stories and send your own. See if your answers are already here - click Fitness Fixer labels, links, archives, andIndex. Subscribe free - "updates via e-mail" upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class space for personal feedback. Top students may earn certification,DrBookspan.com/Academy. Get more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
What does it take to sit up straight? Is it possible that the numbers of physicians, surgeons, instructors, and trainers who entered did not know? We now have five winners:
Paul J was first to write in to the contest with understanding,
"Brains are required to think and correct bad posture."
Steve Rice knew it when he wrote in the hints that first in importance, above doing any strengthening or stretching is,
"1. Engage the brain to develop better postural habits. No matter how strong the elongated muscles get, and how long the contracted muscles get, if the brain says "slouch" that's what the body will do. The other steps (stretch/strength) are necessary but not sufficient to fix the posture problem.
He also correctly stated that you use back muscles (not abs) to pull your spine back to straighten from rounded forward.
1. Only the brain is required. I simply have to do it! 2. Name the muscles -- lean back by stretching the pectorals, and maintain neutral spine in the lower back. All these years I was just too ignorant to use them until Dr. Jolie said so! 3. I think it's 'cause their chest is too tight from rounded shoulders. Good pectoral stretching, and remembering to maintain good posture will correct.
It's that remembering thing that's the problem. Fortunately my back keeps reminding my brain to use what I've learned! :-D
"Thanks, again, especially for what I've learned from you. My back is getting much better and I don't need a doctor!!!"
I learned things from readers:
Hopefully joking, were not one, but two surgeons who wrote that surgery is required to cut tight front (anterior) muscles.
Readers think abdominal muscles do every motion of all your limbs whether they do or not.
Readers think that somehow squeezing your abdominal muscles makes you move, and they think using one set of muscles magically makes you stop (inhibit) others. This is an often repeated bit of mythology, not true in all cases as previously thought. In fact, we couldn't move properly if it were true.
Readers think abdominal muscles somehow stop you from rounding forward and make you sit straight if you just do something called "engage." I have no idea how or what that would be. Abdominal muscles are flexors (bend the spine forward - not the body as a whole). Fourth winner Mr. Georges Nakhlé, my Academy instructor and manager of the Middle Eastern division was one of the two entrants who knew that abdominal muscles do not straighten you from a rounded forward position. Your back muscles are needed to pull back enough to straighten you (only if you use them). He names them in the Hints. Abdominal muscles do not attach to your legs. They cannot pull your body closer to your leg (or leg closer to body) if you are sitting with your hip slouched back away from your leg.
A helpful comment from Anonymous in Contest Hints enlightened me about a major source of the problem - readers honestly don't know what muscles do, and they feel like outsiders when hearing names of muscles and their actions. This is important. It opened a large door for me.
Thanks to these reader comments, I know to start writing articles explaining actual muscle use. No one should need any medical degree or training to know your body, names of parts, and how you move. Just like if you are not a mechanic, by knowing simple car parts, you can save much money and pain and being fooled by fancy sales talk.
Fifth winner was reader Sister Mary Smackham Witherstick of the Royal Order of Order,
"Quit yer sorry whining. Straighten up laddies!"
How hard was that?
Maybe our slogan for this contest could be the zombie cry from Return of the Living Dead,
--- Read success stories and send your own. See if your answers are already here - click Fitness Fixer labels, links, archives, andIndex. Subscribe free - "updates via e-mail" upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class space for personal feedback. Top students may earn certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
Here is Fast Friday Fitness - a life-saving holiday gift that you can give, even if you haven't shopped - give a CPR class.
CPR is a first aid procedure. With CPR training, you can help save someone who has stopped breathing or heartbeat.
CPR stands for Cardio-Pulmonary Resuscitation. CPR gives the person air, and presses on their chest to circulate blood until emergency care arrives.
CPR can be learned and practiced under instructor supervision in a single session class. Class lengths vary. Introductory 3 and 4 hour classes may include use of external automatic defibrillators (AED). Longer classes include additional procedures, the different protocols for adults, children, and infants, and how two people can work together to do rescues.
Gift idea - give a person a card with your pledge to pay for their class or go with them. Contact the Red Cross, Heart Association, and other community preparedness training group to check classes and prices in your area (Red Crescent is more projects than classes). CPR methods change over the years. If you took a class years ago, methods are different now. Certification expires after one year. This month I spent many days renewing my various certifications and teaching Red Cross certification classes as a volunteer.
In a CPR class I taught earlier this month, obese students chomped potato chips while watching videos of CPR for heart attack. A student who said he was in graduate school for kinesiology sat extremely slouched for the 4 hour class, and bent wrong repeatedly to pick up blankets and move his practice CPR manikin. Remember - it's a class for better health?
Give blood. After I last wrote about donating, several readers asked if I give blood. I have given 41 times to the Red Cross (not paid), not counting three times directly for relatives in emergencies. This is a small number compared to Lillian in Blood Hero.
There Are Still Millions Around The World Without Basics to Live:
--- Read success stories and send your own. See if your answers are already here - click Fitness Fixer labels, links, archives, andIndex. Subscribe free - "updates via e-mail" upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class space for personal feedback. Top students may apply for certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Get more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
Happy Holidays to all readers. Over the next month many cultures will celebrate many holidays on solar and lunar calendars. Enjoy all your days. Here are ways to make your time healthy - your cooking, your cleaning, your preparing, your traveling:
Is overeating, and overstressing avoidable on the holidays? - Grate Christmas
Be good to each other. If others are pushing past you, wave them with a smile. The purpose of the holidays is all for health and better spirit, not stress.
Reader Ivy wrote:
"I would like to express a huge thank you for all the wonderful posts on the Healthline website. I am sure that there are thousands of people who, like me, look forward to reading each one.
"No doubt you will be looking forward to the holiday period. May 2010 be a wonderful year.
"Much love to both you and Paul "Hugs "Ivy"
Ivy, many readers write me how your success stories have led them to healthier exercise, fixing pain, and happier life. Thank you all for using this work for Good.
--- Read success stories and send your own. See if your answers are already here - click Fitness Fixer labels, links, archives, andIndex. Subscribe free - "updates via e-mail" upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class space for personal feedback. Top students may apply for certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
Reader Success - Using Good Bending For Shoveling Snow
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
About two feet of snow fell over the weekend in the Northeast US. I got a lovely Christmas card shortly after. I wrote back to thank the sender for remembering me.
KathyB replied,
"I not only remembered you, I've had you on my mind, as I so often do. I was thinking on Sunday, after I'd shoveled snow for 3 hours straight without hurting my back, and again yesterday when I did another half hour, that you gave me a gift that just keeps on giving, that I'll NEVER forget what you've done for me, and I thought how wonderful it must be to be able to do something like that for people.
"I wish you and Paul the very best always,
"Kathy"
Kathy - you make it all worthwhile. Kathy writes well. In fact, she is a professional mystery writer. I will ask her to tell us about some of her exciting books in the future.
In 2006 KathyB stopped 13 years of back pain using my work. She describes what she did in the comments of:
--- Read success stories and send your own. See if your answers are already here - click Fitness Fixer labels, links, archives, andIndex. Subscribe free - "updates via e-mail" upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class space for personal feedback. Top students may earn certification -DrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
On the web, Grand Rounds is a collection of the best on-line medical posts from the past week. Dr. Brown did a nice thing by including both the link for our winning posts and the link for each entire blog.
A different host works hard each week to find and list the Grand Round articles. This is different from the Grand Rounds in a hospital, which is a lecture for doctors about a patient or topic.
Thank you to this week's host Dr Brown of Teen Health 411 for doing the hard work of collecting and featuring our work.
My professional and life work is understanding and studying the fastest, highest, quickest, coldest, hottest, bravest, strongest in human physiology. I study the body in extremes. I study what makes one person able to survive an event and the person next to him perish. Strong brave men get hazardous duty pay to spend a day with me. I make grown men cry.
Since I was small, I wanted to be a scientist. I wanted to live under the sea. I wanted to understand why three people will fall in freezing water, one will die, one will be sick, and one will be fine. In the same marathon, some racers will have heat exhaustion, others experience cold injury. I have lived underwater, on ships, and mountains. I examine long unsolved cold cases as Science Officer of The Vidocq Society, not to know how they died, but their state while alive. (I am the "Spock of Vidocq.")
Since I was very small, I read accounts of survival - stories of defecting MIG pilots, tiger pit prisoners, remote plane crashes, snowbound hikers, expeditions across continents, near-drownings, children of war, swimming races in the arctic, the different bones developed in children learning different trades and movement patterns. I grew up to study the difference in joint angles and limb lengths that confer speed or strength advantage. I study which and how much training supersedes inborn advantage and increases performance.
As a research scientist, I do the "get-your-hands-cold-and-dirty" work to distinguish what actually happens and how it comes to be that way. Many things we heard in school or in stories were never true, just repeated. My work in extremes is mostly behind the scenes (the team player scenario). Piles of data I collected and hand-analyzed for countless studies are in my file cabinets and brain. I apply these studies to develop training methods and injury recovery methods that work for the moment, and for long-term health.
Some readers have asked me to make a category of Fitness Fixer stories called Dr. Bookspan's Excellent Adventures. I will work on it. A few samples are in the Related links below.
Happy Solstice, the longest night of the year in the Northern hemisphere.
--- Read success stories and send your own. See if your answers are already here - click Fitness Fixer labels, links, archives, andIndex. Subscribe free - "updates via e-mail" upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class space for personal feedback. Top students may earn certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Get more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
Fast Fitness - Mobilize and Strengthen With Serratus PushUps
Friday, December 18, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - Strengthen and learn to use the often forgotten serratus anterior muscles and learn a good mobilization for your shoulders so that you don't get stiff, and become stuck round-shouldered when driving or typing.
"Serratus" muscles wrap your chest below your armpits. Their sections fan out like your fingers, looking serrated, giving the name. They wrap around your sides to the front, so are further described with the word "anterior." Muscle names are often descriptive, and can be easy and fun to understand. They are important for keeping your shoulder blades in place - but only when you use them to.
My student Yash demonstrates:
1. Hold a push up position with straight not locked arms. This is often called a plank position. Keeping your arms straight at the elbow, let your upper body sink under your weight so that your shoulder blades roll back and squeeze together - photo 1.
2. Correct that problem by pulling your upper back to a straighter position - photo 2
3. Do as many repetitions of sinking and pulling upward to correct the winging that you can at once. Improve by increasing the number and speed you can correct.Coming posts will describe the serratus more and what it does, more on winging scapula, more fixes for it, and more on understanding muscle names and uses. Understanding, rather than memorizing, will help you know if claims for exercise fads and machines will help or not, and to not feel like an outsider about your anatomy and health. No medical degrees needed to understand your own body.
StuartShip - How To Start Healthy Movement Programs
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Reader Stuart Wood knew that the way to healthier communities is getting up and teaching it. He wrote me several impressive notes of using my work to fix his own injuries, then for his Boss, then requesting if he could use it formally to teach community projects. I awarded him an Academy Appointment for Making Community Projects Healthy.
Stuart writes this update:
"After months of reading your blog I have become inspired to teach some of your information to whoever is willing to listen. I think the health and fitness situation in our country can benefit from your work and after trying it out and seeing results, as well as helping my friend to fix his bulging disc, I thought that the information you provide on your websites and in your books needs to reach more people. I read your blog regularly and have always loved the inspirational stories that your readers have supplied. The writings between you and "Inspirational Ivy" really helped to make me realize that I could be healthy and strong for many years to come as well as the posts of the Thai women in their 80's going strong! I think it is so unfortunate that aging and weakness are commonly believed to go hand in hand. I think the problem needs to be addressed when children are young and before they ingrain bad health and movement habits.
"My co-workers have been receptive to your ideas and they have helped me greatly in thinking about and learning how to effectively explain your technique.
Today I taught for the first time in a semi-formal setting. I had a friend who had helped fix his own back pain (bulged disc) take pictures for me. The first thing I learned is that I have much improvement to make in my own movement, I suggest (like you have said) that everyone have a friend take candid pictures of them to test their progress. The group of kids I'm teaching are at the Archer Center in Tucson, AZ. They are part of the CATCH after school program and I wanted to teach them some good movement habits to benefit them in their daily lives as well as in sports and play-time.
"I was not sure how to start or what to teach exactly and time was limited for each group (only about 20 minutes) so I went to the Functional Fitness Friday posts and the (main) stretches like the side-stretch (done well at right, using wall for straight placement) and chest stretch and lunge. It was quite the learning experience! The first group of children were between 8-10 or so and their attention spans were short and I couldn't achieve much with them in the short time. I think the best thing would be big exercises like push-ups with neutral spine and lunge and activities full of movement because they seemed most interested in those things. The second group of kids were older and they were very focused and interested. I taught them the side and chest stretches, emphasizing relaxation and making it feel good. I had them do the wall test and then stretch and see if they found a difference. Some did and some didn't. I realized that teaching these age groups would require multiple sessions broken down into different sessions and incorporated into games.
"What I realized most was how interested the instructor was, he felt the difference at once between improper and proper techniques. I think in addition to teaching children I would like to teach the instructors because they are the primary source of information for the children. I am also very inspired to keep at it myself because I want to be effective in my demonstrations and be a model student myself."
"My teaching from today is listed under "Teaching to CATCH program" which is an after school health and wellness program.
Stuart is working on two other community programs so far, including a wellness Pilot program and a water harvesting project for his dry city of Tucson, with stories to come.
He summarizes:
"I went to the Parks and Rec Aquatics Supervisor and asked if I could teach and take some pics. The city of Tucson is starting a wellness pilot program in early January because of the high rate of strain related injuries. Because my friend (the one who I helped fix back pain) talked about the good your work had done for him with the aquatics supervisor at a recent wellness meeting for city employees, he already knew a little about what I was up to and is going to work with me to incorporate your method into the wellness program to teach employees at district meetings city wide!
"I just graduated from the University of Arizona with a bachelors in anthropology. I would like to pursue graduate school but not sure in what field.
"Thanks for the graduation present, couldn't have asked for better!" ;)
--- Read success stories of these methods and send your own. See if your answers are already here by clicking labels, links in posts, archives, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, click "updates via e-mail" upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy.
This week's Grand Rounds theme was to reduce key healthcare topics to a word. Articles were listed about medicine that is timely, patient centered, or efficient. Academy of Functional Exercise Medicine Awards give Appreciation and encouragement for real world health. Check it here and add what you would like to achieve for next year.
On the web, Grand Rounds is a collection of the best on-line medical posts from the past week. A different host works hard each week to find and list the articles. This is different from the Grand Rounds in a hospital, which is a lecture for doctors about a patient or topic. Thank you to this week's host for doing the hard work of collecting and featuring our work.
--- Read success stories and send your own. See if your answers are already here by clicking labels, links in posts, archives, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe free, click "updates via e-mail" upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class space for personal feedback. Top students earn certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
We have three excellent answers so far that will be announced as contest winners along with reader BikaBill who sent in winning photos. There is still time to send in yours to be among the winners. About thirty to forty wrote claiming some vague involvement of abdominal muscles. Pop fitness throws around "abs" so much that odd ideas get ingrained that are not real anatomy.
To help with your contest and your real life, which is the idea of the contest:
Hint 1
Abdominal muscles curl your spine forward.
If you are already sitting rounded forward, you do not want to curl forward more. You need the opposite - back muscles to unround, not the abdominal muscles in front.
Readers correctly noticing the tilted back pelvis that is part of rounded spine in the photo of bad sitting (note the stripes pointing back at the side of the hip instead of vertical) were correct that the top of the hip/pelvis needs to pull forward, to reduce the angle between pelvis and leg so that the pelvis can straighten to upright and vertical. Abdominal muscles do not that do that. Abdominal muscles do not connect to your leg, so cannot move your leg closer to your body or your body closer to your leg.
Think what muscles may be the ones you need instead. Then, do strong muscles move all by themselves?
Hint 2
Mr. Georges Nakhlé is my director of the Lebanon office of The Academy of Functional Exercise Medicine (AFEM), the teaching arm of my practice. He instructs classes and wrote in to help readers:
Mr. Nakhlé writes:
My answer is: Muscles required to contract are : the paravertebrals (extension of vertebrae), trapezius inferior (adduction and lowering of scapula), the deltoideus posterior and latissimus dorsi (extension of arm) and the rhomboideus (for scapula stabilization)
Muscles required to stretch: pelvi-trochanters to ease the medial rotation of the pelvis on the femur and the pectoralis major
Muscles required to straighten the back: the major work goes for the Latissimus dorsi and a part for paravertebrals; the rhomboideus for scapula stabilization, the trapezius inferior for scapula lowering, the triceps brachii for arm extension.
Another contest question was: >Explain why the same tightness or weakness does not show itself standing where people often hyperlordose instead of flex the lower spine.
Mr. Nakhlé writes:
Tightness when standing: When standing the psoas is stretched so it pulls the lumbar vertebrae, and if the rectus femoris is tight it will tilt the pelvis in an anterior pelvic tilt. Weakness when standing: when standing we don't need muscle strength, just little adjustments.
Readers what do you think?
Here is the Contest. Send In Your Answers, Winners Announced Next Week:
--- Read success stories of these methods and send your own. See if your answers are already here by clicking labels, links in posts, archives, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, click "updates via e-mail" upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy.
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Thank you to djwhelan - Slouching and calling it fitness photo
Fast Fitness - Getting Exercise Making Holiday Light Power
Friday, December 11, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Fast Friday Fitness - Why pay money to go to a gym to use electricity to power a treadmill or exercise bike, when it should be the other way around.
Burn calories and save money generating electricity to power holiday lights for your house and community (and maybe your blender).
Fourteen year old William Kamkwamba brought the first electric power to his village. He had no school to teach him, he went to the library to learn how to build a windmill from parts he hunted in a junkyard. If he can do it, can the engineers, builders, electricians, tinkers, teachers, and smarties of Fitness Fixer readers make a simple bicycle generator to hook up to holiday lights?
Try a bike shop to see how to make or get a bicycle powered generator. Several models power bicycle lights. Adapt one to hook up to holiday lights.
Each person in your group can get a turn to burn healthy calories and get in shape pedaling for an hour. The world gets clean electricity and you make it.
Happy New Decade of Common Sense Functional and Green Fitness.
Related:
These are the kinds of projects my Academy works on - The Academy of Functional Exercise Medicine (AFEM). Come join us - www.DrBookspan.com/Academy.
--- Read success stories of these methods and send your own. See if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe free, click "updates via e-mail"upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class space for personal feedback. Top students may earn certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
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Photo of Fluorescent light, human-powered electric generator (le vélo produit l'énergie électrique pour allumer le siège recouvert de néons qui est à l'arrière), by Dalbera and Arsenale (53ème Biennale de Venise) (Set
The medical community often does not look on fitness as legitimate medicine, or may think it is only posture for an obsessed few. Check Fitness Fixer for reasons why injuries persist, despite exercise and medical care - or maybe because of them.
On the web, Grand Rounds is a collection of the best on-line medical posts from the past week. A different host works each week to find and list the articles. This is different from the Grand Rounds in a hospital, which is a lecture for doctors about a patient or topic. Thank you to this week's host for doing the hard work of collecting and featuring our posts.
--- Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Before asking, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe free, click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal feedback. Top students may earn certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
Reader Gains Academy Appointment for Making Community Projects Healthy
Wednesday, December 09, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Stuart W first contacted me with dozens of great observations and questions about fixing his injuries, tightness, and tension headaches using methods of healthy mechanics I developed. It was apparent that Stuart would soon be fixing more than himself, the bulging disc of his boss, and the aqua-aerobics class where he lifeguards.
Stuart writes:
"Oh, one more thing, I dearly want to become a certified student or teacher of AFEM. I have a dream of neighborhood groups all working together on community projects using proper mechanics to get free exercise, pain relief, and help beautify their cities. I live in Tucson and there is lots work to be done installing rainwater harvesting works!
"It a local group and they install groundworks in neighborhoods to harvest runoff water for native plants. Yes I would want to teach them to bend and dig correctly (hopefully they will be receptive) I better get to work with them first and lead by example so they know I'm for real. I could take photos for sure, both before and after instruction, possibly with little interviews of pain before and after techniques...
"I would love to travel and teach that would be great, there is an aqua-aerobics class that is full of older women who are in the class for "exercise" but they do improper stretches and I know that they could be helped, after they unsteadily get out of the pool I watch them walk around knock-kneed (and doing quadriceps stretches with lower spines overarched) and my heart goes out to them.
"I would also love to teach kids at schools proper habits because they have all this wonderful flexibility then after a few years cultural habits turn them into tight- hipped hunched teens. I think "fitness as a lifestyle" is such a commonsense and wonderful idea that much of the world adheres to and I think the "fitness" craze in the US is very destructive. So much effort going into (paying for!) bad exercises that could be redirected to health.
"I recently attended a water-harvesting workshop where we dug basins and planted trees I thought it would be difficult to properly bend all day but it was not and I even figured out how to swing a pick-axe without bending badly. I took pictures of the project as well as of the other volunteers who were digging and stooping in harmful ways so that if I get your permission to instruct them I will have before and after photos. Thanks, I hope to hear from you soon!
"Because my friend ( the one who I helped fix back pain) talked about the good your work had done for him with the aquatics supervisor at a recent wellness meeting for city employees, he already knew a little about what I was up to and is going to work with me to incorporate your method into the wellness program to teach employees at district meetings city wide! Wonderful!
"I was just thinking about how I used to pay for chiropractic work which led me nowherrrrrrre, except on a quest for good info, which led me to you!" - Stuart Wood
For his care and interest, I have given Stuart an Academy Appointment for the coming year for Community Health Projects. The idea is that his fun happy projects blossom into years of health for people and the larger community.
JoinTheFun:
We need better titles for our people who work to make things happen. They are not just coordinators or facilitators or directors, they are the brains and muscle too. What can we call these appointments?
Join Stuart in his work, and do the same for your own local world. Send in your own ideas and stories. See my Academy page - www.DrBookspan.com/Academy.
--- Read success stories of these methods and send your own. See if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe free, click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class space for personal feedback. Top students may earn certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Get more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
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Photo of construction of a 10,000 liter rainwater harvesting and ground well water storage tank, Some Rights Reserved, by Weenhayek
Here is Fast Friday Fitness - Fun rows to strengthen your back, chest, arms, grip, and torso muscles, without bending over or forward, using commonly available objects, no gym needed:
To start, leave both feet on the ground. Hold a low study pipe, branch, or overhead handle. Lean far back, body straight. Bend both elbows to pull up and lower down as many times as you can. Improve by increasing the number of times, and how fast you can pull up.
Once you can hold on and pull up, increase strength and balance by lifting your feet to the overhead support. Hold on whatever way you want that is safe. Pull up and down.
Hold your body straight, not rounded as pictured. You will work your muscles harder, involve core muscles, and train knowledge and use of healthier positioning.
Rows are great and useful exercise. Instead of standing or sitting bent over, you can strengthen the same and more muscles without loading the lumbar discs. These incline rows are fun and useful for climbing, and building ability to do pull-ups.
Readers send in your straightened photo to be featured as the Fix for this Fitness.
When you send me your photos of fixing this and other fun things, send a photo sharing link of web-size, not high resolution, instead of e-mailing photos to me. Blogger isn't letting me upload directly, and when on the road, I don't have programs to resize. Have fun.
--- Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal feedback. Top students may apply for certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
Academy Awards - Academy of Functional Exercise Medicine Awards Leading World Health 2009
Wednesday, December 02, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
It is an honor to announce the 2009 award winners of the Academy of Functional Exercise Medicine, AFEM. I am director of the Academy, and work (unpaid) for it to be an international resource for people and communities to learn to be healthy in body and actions. Award winners were selected for representing and carrying out true world health.
This year is the first year that we will award honorees. The design for the award is by Alessandro Schiavone, Creative Director from Ravenna, Italy.
The Academy is the certification teaching branch of my sports medicine practice. My practice and the academy teach individuals and groups healthy biomechanics and movement habits for daily life instead of injury-producing habits, good food instead of disease-causing food, healthier training for athletes, healthier medical practices for the sick, no cost preventive medicine, "green" fitness, and healthier mindset.
Leading World Health - Award Winners 2009
The 14th Dalai Lama He leads by example in his message of healthy, clean, non-violent, kind life to all ages, all people, all colors, all politics. www.dalailama.com
Jackie Chan - Nickname of Chan Kong Sang Antiviolence role model in martial arts, anti smoking public service pieces, leading by example of discipline in physical training, charity work, respect for teachers, and honor as a lifestyle. www.jackiechan.com
AboveTheInfluence.com English language web site for young people of personal responsibility in drug use prevention. www.abovetheinfluence.com
Jack and Elaine Lalanne Changed their own lifestyle to health, and since the 1930's have led by example to stop junk food and to exercise no matter what your condition or age. Jack Lananne is (at this writing) in his 90's, Elaine, in her 80s. They continue to exercise daily. www.jacklalanne.com
Amnesty International World organization to raise consciousness that lack of personal safety, rights, and freedom, lack of safe drinking water and adequate nutrition for some, is lack of world health for all. www.amnesty.org
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf Newly elected President of Liberia. Liberia has suffered 25 years of war, hundreds of thousands dead, lack of electricity or running water, 80% unemployment and 90% illiteracy. Grandmother of 6, imprisoned for her work for rights, she continues to put her country on a course of health and renewal. africanhistory.about.com
My Mother - Academy Lifetime Achievement Award Her students stop me in the street to say how she showed them healthy movement. Also their children, their grandchildren, and now, small great grandchildren who have also studied with her and learned that keeping moving is the way to health. Exercise Your Sense of Humor
Leading World Health 2009 - Youth Award Winners
The Youth Leading World Health award this year is shared by 16 year old Babar Ali of west Bengal India and William Kamkwamba of Malawi:
Babar Ali teaches hundreds of students in his family's backyard, where he runs classes for poor children from his village who cannot afford to go to school. news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8299780.stm
William Kamkwambabuilt a windmill from junkyard parts to bring power to his village, continuing work to provide for all Malawians, where only 2% have electricity. He left school at 14 because his family could not afford the $80-a-year tuition. He went to the library: "I was very interested when I saw the windmill could make electricity and pump water. I thought: 'That could be a defence against hunger. Maybe I should build one." He built a turbine from spare bicycle parts, a tractor fan blade and an old shock absorber, and fashioned blades from plastic pipes, flattened by being held over a fire. "I want to help my country and apply the knowledge I've learned," he says. "I feel there's lots of work to be done." news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8257153.stm
Everyone - "There's lots of work to be done" Enjoy the beauty and health you can bring.
Coming later this month - 2009 Fitness Fixer Hall of Fame
--- Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal feedback. Top students may apply for certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
Congratulations to Paul J, Fitness Fixer reader who named the syndrome and contributed the "on the mark" assessment of it. He also sends typo alerts to me, and great ideas for Fitness Fixer and my web site. Currently he presides as Chairman of The Department for Silly Syndromes. For his great work, he has been promoted to the Academy of Functional Exercise Medicine (AFEM)'s think tank.
On the web, Grand Rounds is a collection of the best on-line medical posts from the past week. A different host works hard each week to find and list the articles. This is different from the Grand Rounds in a hospital, which is a lecture for doctors about a patient or topic. Thank you to this week's host for doing the hard work of collecting and featuring our posts.
--- Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal feedback. Top students may apply for certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
Fast Fitness - Which Books to Get for Holiday Shopping Black Friday
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - quick, inexpensive holiday gifts, easy to get, helpful to have. Many readers asked which books to get. Thank you everyone who sent me great notes and success stories how the books made their lives strong, fun, and pain free, and requests for more for friends. Here are descriptions and ways to get books and other fun:
All my books have different information. If you get them all you won't go wrong, or repeat the same stuff.
Limited personally signed copies to you or someone else are possible. I can write something special, with different signing for each person on your list. I can mail them all to you for the same postage, or to different people separately. You can also order straight from retailers instead of me. Links follow below (or click items).
A reader wrote a comment, angry that his e-book did not print, and that it hurt his back "sitting at the computer pasting screenshots into into MSWord" to print his e-book on fixing back pain. He must have thought it was "Reprimand your way to my heart" day. E-books don't print. That is why they are called "E" (electronic) books. The book company lawyers told me his pain was divine punishment for copyright violation. Also for not following book instructions on healthy sitting. I am working on getting new editions of e-Books complied and uploaded (buggy slow software is keeping me at the desk many days overtime). New e-books should be ready for Christmas orders. New editions will soon be available for Kindle and other readers. The e-books already on my web site download directly to your computer. For portable print books, get the print editions.
If you can only get one book:
Top choice for athletes is Healthy Martial Arts. It is a treasury for all athletes. It teaches how to live and move and be healthy during all action of body and mind, with over 200 photographs. For regular exercisers, or those who want to start and just be healthy and have fun, a good choice would be Health & Fitness THIRD edition - How To Be Healthy Happy and Fit For The Rest Of Your Life. It's an all-in-one book with thirty-one fun chapters of fitness, nutrition, health, disease prevention, fixing back and neck pain, joint pain, functional exercise, "green" fitness, emotional health, brain health, stretching, and fun facts about the body. (Or as they say, "if you only read one book this year, you should read more...")
Best Combo:
With either Healthy Martial Arts or Health & Fitness THIRD ed., add Fix Your Own Pain Without Drugs or Surgery.
For the Most "Bang for the Buck:"
Get a bunch, above, and throw in a Stretching Smarter Stretching Healthier (200 illustrations) and Ab Revolution™ Third Edition expanded (114 drawings and photos). The Ab Revolution™ is described in: Back Pain From Running and Innovation in Abdominal Muscles
"Thank-you for your considerable research and explanations regarding neck and low back pain. Have recently checked out the Stretching Smarter... book you wrote to see if it is better than other posture books. It is infinitely better. Want to buy some books with photos next.
For scuba divers and diving medicine people on your list:
Diving Physiology In Plain English - all my career work and research in the field of decompression and diving science and two books summarizing the entire field of Hyperbaric and Diving Medicine.
All books and descriptions - on my web site BOOKS page.
--- Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy.
I give thanks for wonderful readers who use my work to make their lives better, their friends' and neighbors' lives, and their communities, write me nice notes and stories, send web-photos of their progress, and jokes and help for my website.
--- Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal feedback. Top students may apply for certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
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Second harvest food distribution photo of community help by scubabix carrying rice by moyerphotos
How to Cope with Pain is a blog focusing on ways to live your life with pain, written by a psychiatrist who has spent years in chronic pain.
She generously writes:
"The Fitness Fixer recommends fixing the underlying causes of pain, instead of continuing bad habits and hoping enough reps of certain exercises will cover up the problem."
On the web, Grand Rounds is a collection of the best on-line medical posts from the past week. A different host works hard each week to find and list the articles. This is different from the Grand Rounds in a hospital, which is a lecture for doctors about a patient or topic.
Thank you to this week's host for doing the hard work of collecting and featuring our articles.
Thoughts on Pain:
The idea is not to live with pain, but stop the causes and go on to a happier pain free life. Click for tutorials of readers who fixed pain with Fitness Fixer - readers inspiring stories
Visit the Academy of Functional Exercise Medicine (AFEM) where students train to make "health care" healthy, and stop pain caused by counterproductive exercise practices and uncaring medical "care." We teach people and communities how to be healthy in body and actions while having fun - no cost preventive medicine - "green" fitness.
--- Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal feedback. Top students may apply for certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
Fast Fitness - Contest for Children (and Everyone) To Learn What They Live
Friday, November 20, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Fast Friday Fitness - a contest for your kids, students, co-workers, and teams to reinforce healthy movement, deeds, and thinking as part of normal everyday life. It's one thing to say it, or read it, and better to do it and live it:
Choose something fun and easy from Fitness Fixer. There are over 670 Fitness Fixer posts so far. Use labels under posts to get categories, for example all Fast Fitness articles, or all reader inspiring stories, or use the Fitness Fixer Index.
Have your group (or self) learn one or more of the methods or activities. It can be anything from learning simple good bending to use all the time, or better sitting for the whole class, to preparing healthier meals with good body positioning, to doing good deeds in your neighborhood or home.
Draw pictures or take photos of what everyone learned and did, write your stories, and send them in.
A child who lives with healthy ways learns health as a lifestyle. Use your brain. Have fun. I will post the winners - everyone who tries.
--- Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal feedback. Top students may apply for certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
Anton, Alberto (farioreo), and others have asked how many "sets and reps" of exercises and stretches will help. The answer is in a story my Mother told me when I was small:
A young boy in school always made the same mistake in English. Instead of the proper, "I have gone…" he said, "I have went." The teacher told him to stay after school and write 100 times on the chalkboard, "I have gone, I have gone, I have gone…" The boy wrote "I have gone" the required 100 times. When he finished writing, he saw the teacher had stepped outside. He left her a note, "Dear Teacher, I wrote "I have gone" 100 times, and now I have went home."
The answer is that repetitions are not the entire answer - you have to understand and use the result. I am asked the question so many times of how many "reps" (repetitions) of a rehabilitation or training exercise are needed, that it has become a "light bulb" joke - How many (whatever) does it take to change a light bulb?
Readers ask:
Q. How many sets and reps of upper back exercises does it take to straighten rounded forward posture? A. None, you just straighten up right then and hold it. A2. Or you can say one repetition is enough. Then use that one all the time. A3. Or until you actually use it - Note the person slouching (photo right) to measure posture.
Q. How many sets and reps of back exercises does it take before my disc pain stops that I got from bending over wrong to pick up things. A. None if you stop bending wrong to remove the cause. A2. A whole lot more than if you stopped bending wrong.
Q. How many sets and reps of good squats with heels down does it take to get enough stretch in the Achilles tendon to be able to squat well? A. Doesn't matter, if you use good bending in your ordinary day, you will get hundreds of Achilles tendon stretches throughout the day and it will be built in for you. You aren't supposed to stop your day to do a number of repetitions, then go back to heel up squatting, or bending over wrong.
Q. How many sets and reps of squats does it take before I can squat right to bend right? A. Until you do it right.
Q. How many sets and reps of your exercises on Fitness Fixer should I do? A. Until you remember them.
--- Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal feedback. Top students may apply for certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
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Photo of slouching while measuring posture by Neeta Lind
"Jolie Bookspan, the Fitness Fixer, brings us a detailed post about how to look upward without placing strain on our necks. I like the part about how our necks are not Pez dispensers – good visual image. The article is a good reminder that we need to use proper form in all of our daily activities, not just while we’re at the gym."
On the web, Grand Rounds is a collection of the best on-line medical posts from the past week. A different host works hard each week to find and list the articles. This is different from the Grand Rounds in a hospital, which is a lecture for doctors about a patient or topic.
Thank you to this week's host for doing the hard work of collecting and featuring our information.
--- Read success stories of Fitness Fixer methods and send your own. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal feedback. Top students may apply for certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
Fast Fitness - Fourth Group Functional Training Exercise, Functional Upper Back Stretch
Friday, November 13, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Fast Friday Fitness from the 2009 Black Belt Hall of Fame. I am here teaching and learning.
In my "Stretching Smarter" workshop here, I teach healthier ways to move and stretch for daily life and sports. One is the fourth Functional Fitness Training (Bookspan Basics). It retrains how you look and reach upward, to reduce neck and shoulder compression and give a built-in stretch for the upper back:
Assemble your group (or yourself) and tell them that when they look upward, to feel the range of motion more from their upper back than neck. Have them feel, notice, and visualize where is their upper back - one way to do this is to watch a person in line ahead of them.
Remind the group that the neck is not a Pez dispenser - the idea is not to pinch the neck back (photo below with yellow hat), but to "unround" and lift upward more from the upper body.
photo shows unhealthful neck compression - pinching back and jutting chin, creating a postural spondylolisthesis.
3. Have everyone look upward by straightening the upper back and by lifting more in the chest (drawing, upper bike rider on water bottle). Repeat while reaching upward with both hands. Make sure not to return to pinching backward at the neck, jutting the chin forward (photo above), or leaning the upper body backward. Get the reach from the shoulders.
Use conscious control to prevent pinching your neck back every time you look and reach upward.
Each new Functional Training (or Bookspan Basic) shows how to teach your groups (or self) how to prevent common musculoskeletal problems during the team season or operational theater. Trainers, Drill Instructors, readers, send in your stories of how you use these in your program.
Good body mechanics are a powerful performance enhancing aid.
Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal feedback. Top students may apply for certification through DrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
She writes, "I didn’t realize that those old school fitness tests may have been all for naught!" Are they? Click Do They Do What They Claim?
On the web, Grand Rounds is a collection of the best on-line medical posts from the past week. A different host works hard each week to find and list the articles. This is different from the Grand Rounds in a hospital, which is a lecture for doctors about a patient or topic.
Thank you to this week's host for doing the hard work of collecting and featuring our posts.
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Read success stories of Fitness Fixer methods and send your own.
See if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe, free, click "updates via e-mail"upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy.
See if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, The Fitness Fixer Index andDr. Bookspan's Books. Read success stories of Fitness Fixer methods and send your own. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right.
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Image of Tee Yee Neen Ho Ga Row (Hendrick), Emperor of the Six Nations, via Wikipedia
This weekend we will attend the Black Belt Hall of Fame event hosted by the Eastern USA Martial Arts Association. Paul and I are honored to be invited back this year, and receive awards for Instructor of the Year. I will teach a workshop on Stretching Smarter for Martial Artists.
Why stretch smarter? Many standard stretches work to increase flexibility but don't improve martial arts or other sports, and aren't good for the joints.
Martial artists and other athletes often develop injuries from years of bad stretches. It's understandable to put yourself in harm's way to carry children and elders from a burning building, or suffer cold and hypoxia rescuing a stranded mountaineer. It's silly to injure yourself doing stretches and exercises you think are for your health. In martial arts you can harden your body to withstand blows through difficult and uncomfortable training, but it isn't the point of martial arts or other sports and activities to beat up yourself. I cover the difference between toughening the body and injuring it in the seminar and in my book Healthy Martial Arts.
My workshop teaches functional flexibility - changing your body to work better in real ways needed for daily life and fighting arts.
The hall of Fame event is by invitation only. Contact:
Executive Director Soke Kanzler Eastern U.S.A. International Martial Arts Association 1 (800) 456-3872 EUSAIMAA@aol.com P.O. Box 9642 Pittsburgh Pennsylvania 15226 USA
Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer - Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal feedback. Top students may apply for certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
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The Olympic cauldron will light in Vancouver on February 12, 2010, marking the start of the XXI (21st) Olympic Winter Games.
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