Free Exercise and Free Back and Knee Pain Prevention - Healthy Bending
Monday, October 02, 2006
Healthline
If you think that not having time to exercise is the problem, here is good news. Thinking that your life and your health are two separate things is the problem. You don't have to stop your life to get exercise.
The last post explained that you bend many times every day as part of normal life (How Good Would You Look From 400 Squats a Day - Just Stop Unhealthy Bending). This post shows one way to do healthy bending when you are bending with feet side by side - the squat bend.
Look at the drawings, above left. The left-hand drawing shows bad bending - letting weight rock forward, heels lifting, and overly arching the lower back. The right-hand drawing shows healthy bending - keeping weight back, heels down, and the lower back in healthy position, not rounded and not overly arched. Look at the right-hand drawing and try it:
- Keep your upper body as upright as you can, instead of rounding over forward
- Keep both heels down as you bend your knees (right drawing).
- If you find you lift your heels, use your leg muscles to deliberately pull your knees back so that your weight shifts back over your heels. Shifting your weight back keeps your weight on your leg muscles and off your knee joints. There should be no knee pain with good bending.
- Keep your knees back toward your ankles. If you just let your weight flop, the knees will come forward past your toes. Don't allow your knees to shift forward.
- Don't overarch the lower spine (overly sticking your behind out in back). Keep neutral spine. If you overarch, tuck your hip (tailbone) under you just enough to prevent having a too large arch (inward curve) in your lower back. Although it is often taught in exercise and weight lifting classes to stick far out and overarch, increasing the arch increases pressure on the joints of your vertebrae, called facet joints, and the soft tissue of your lower back. Overarching is a major hidden cause of lower back pain and injury.
Have a friend take photos of you from the side as you stand and bend, showing how you fixed your bending from unhealthy to healthy during whatever you do all day for work and at home. Write a fun summary and e-mail your photos and stories to me. I can post the best photos and most fun stories.
Realize that a big part of your health is the way you move in real life. Make a conscious decision to change your idea of exercise, fitness, and health from stopping life to "do exercise" to how you live. Have fun - the best health.
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Labels: abdominal muscles, achilles stretch, disc, facet joints, fix pain, hip, knee, leg press, leg strength, leg stretch, lordosis, lower back, neutral spine, posture, squat, strength, upper back
7 Comments:
At Friday, October 13, 2006 3:54:00 PM,
Ivy - New Zealand said…
I had been following Dr Jolie Bookspan's "How to Fix Your Own Pain Without Drugs or Surgery" for a few months when I noted that not only was I having succes with my sciatica, my knees, too, were not as painful. I was no longer having to ice them each night. On reading Dr Jolie's "Knee Pain Prevention," I discovered that while walking I was placing my foot flat to the ground instead of the "heel toe" action that she spoke of. No wonder my knees were so painful. Combined with all the squats and lunges I do daily, I am now free of knee pain.
On a lighter note Dr Jolie, I am now looking forward to having great looking legs due to all those squats and lunges I am doing. Not bad for a coming up 70 year old.
At Tuesday, December 09, 2008 4:14:00 PM,
Anonymous said…
It's not physically possible to keep your knees directly over your ankles. You will fall over backwards. What's up with that?
At Friday, December 12, 2008 11:46:00 AM,
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM said…
Blogger is having problems with comments disappearing after posting. In case, it doesn't appear above, the original question from Anonymous was: "It's not physically possible to keep your knees directly over your ankles. You will fall over backwards. What's up with that?"posted Tuesday, December 09, 2008 1:14:00 PM.
Anonymous, Keeping knees back toward the ankle rather than slumping forward is not only possible, but is the healthful bending you want for squatting exercise, and all the hundreds of times you bend daily around the house and workplace.
Instructions to learn it are in this post that you commented to. See comments from others who have tried this on several Fitness Fixer posts, and click the label "squat" under the post to see many posts with photos, and learn more of why healthy joint mechanics are a good idea. Start with KathyB's comments to the article Disc Pain - Not a Mystery, Easy to Fix. She tells how she did it. Try it and send in your photos of your success.
At Tuesday, December 30, 2008 5:20:00 PM,
Anonymous said…
I am finding it very difficult to rise from a chair without first leaning forward. What am I doing wrong?
At Tuesday, December 30, 2008 7:02:00 PM,
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM said…
To Anonymous, Great that you tried it. Keep your heels down and push with your entire foot, not just toes. Use more thigh muscles. A slight shift of the entire body forward isn't a problem. The idea is to have enough strength and balance not to need to pitch forward as if bowing.
Have fun with it, send in photos of your successes.
At Tuesday, January 27, 2009 4:14:00 PM,
Please help! said…
Hi!
What is becoming confusing to me is this..
Alot of "items" in life are much lower then the half squat. So this leaves quite a bit of confusion on how to pick them up without falling backward by going even lower in a squat(which is hard!) or leaning(bending which we are not supposed to do)..
Should one continue to teach themselves to squat eve lower then the half? I can do it, but beyond a certain range my upper body seems to sway forward the farther I go.
So this leads to a big of confusion when it comes to grabbing things that are floor level etc as in a half squat, which is just enough to get into chairs and pick up higher things, I cannot reach lower things.
I am glad I came across your site as I have ordered books etc. I had an injury to my lower back that really started to show faster improvement when I started to listen to your advice(books and here). I was one of those who bent forward or wrongly(on the knees/toes).. So I would greatly appreciate any advice on this as I still feel kinda "disabled" because I cannot reach items that are very low without turning the squat into a slight bend at the hips or simply bending over..
Thank you for your wonderfull place...
At Wednesday, June 10, 2009 7:03:00 AM,
Jill said…
When I shift my weight towards my heels when squatting and go all the way down to the floor, nowhere does it hurt more than at the outside of my knees. What am I doing wrong?
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