Thank You Dr. Donnell for GrandRounds

Thank you Dr. Donnell for the big work of hosting Grand Rounds vol. 10 no. 3 this week.

Dr. Donnell's Notes from Dr. RW included my post Carrying Schoolbooks Is Not the Cause of Back Pain, calling it ergonomically smart book carrying.

Grand Rounds searches medical blogs each week to collect helpful information to make our lives better.

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Don't Confuse Exercise With Real Fitness

Reader Dr. Zoe Eppley e-mailed, "I have been trying to apply your "bending right" approach to my daily activities. I find my tight leg and hip muscles seriously limit my ability to squat. Could you please recommend some stretches that will help?"

I receive this inquiry often. People are realizing that they are too tight to move in healthy ways for normal everyday life. I hear it from instructors of aerobics, yoga, Plates, personal trainers, and many others. This is an important epiphany. If you are too tight to move in healthy ways, then it is likely that you spend every day of your life moving in tight ways that create pain and perpetuate tightness.

The good news is you do not need to "do" stretches and exercises. Keep bending right and you will get exactly the stretch and strengthening you need. My most important message that I stress in all my work about exercise is not to "do exercises" but get crucial, functional, effective exercise by moving in healthy ways during normal everyday life.

People spend fortunes on treatments for pain, gadgets, potions, pills, prescriptions, adjustments, and ongoing medical scans and tests. Tightness and body pain is often made to be a mystery because it persists even after surgery and exercise programs. The reason is that they don't stop the cause. My successful techniques for fixing pain, even the most resistant back, neck, knee, and other musculoskeletal pain, emphasizes that you don't "do exercises" but simply stop the source of the injury by stopping unhealthy injurious movement patterns, and using healthy ones. Many people do ten repetitions of an exercise and hold each stretch for 30 seconds, then go back to unhealthy moving, sitting, bending, walking, exercising, and everything else that caused their pain and tightness in the first place.

If you are too tight to use your legs to bend down and get back up without using your hands or getting help, you need the hard realization that you lack normal function. It may be common in Western society to not be able to lift your own body, but it is dangerously unhealthy weakness.

Dr. Zoe e-mailed me a second time and mentioned watching an Indi-pop movie. She noticed the healthy posture and flexibility of the actors and how easily they squatted. She wisely reflected that she had probably lost much flexibility by not using normal bending and from "spending my life in chairs."

Keep bending right with your heels down, knees back, and your body upright. You will stretch your Achilles tendon and hip, and strengthen your thighs and knees hundreds of times a day - every time you bend.

One fun way to greatly help your bending is not a specific stretch or exercise but another normal daily activity: apply the same healthy positioning to ascending any set of stairs. I will post more about stairs, as it is interesting and enlightening. Until then, any time you go up stairs, notice if you tilt forward and let your heels lift. Instead:

• keep your heel down as you step up,
• keep your knee back over your ankle as you step up, instead of sliding your knee forward,
• keep your body upright.

Use healthy positioning for both bending and stairs and you will quickly gain functional and healthy strength and flexibility.

Labels: achilles stretch, balance, fix pain, hip, hip strength, knee, leg strength, leg stretch, lower back, squat, yoga

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Quick and Easy Strength and Balance Exercise

Several readers sent e-mails about the last post, asking about being able to sit on the floor. Many said they are so tight and weak that it is hard for them to get down, and not comfortable to sit comfortably and straight, as in the photo at left. Others wrote applauding that I am getting the message out that sitting comfortably on the floor is a normal ability, not strange or extreme.

First, don't be shy about posting replies and comments on this blog instead of e-mailing me privately. Next, sitting comfortably on the ground or floor is not an advanced athletic contortion. It is an entry-level physical ability that is crucial for normal physical function of your body.

If you don't have the stretch, strength, and balance to do this most basic of movements, you have severe weakness and tightness. It is not just people who don't exercise. I have seen aerobics instructors and personal trainers who cannot sit comfortably straight on the floor. Their hip is so tight from all the forward bending exercises they do that their hip rolls and rounds under them, which shifts their body weight to their discs and lower back. They may do artificial gym exercises, but cannot easily get down to the floor without using their hands because they have not trained movement that is useful to daily life, called functional exercise.

For a quick exercise to improve strength and balance, try this:

1. Stand up.
2. Easily and lightly, sit down on the floor without using your hands to get down.
3. Sit by crossing your ankles and lowering into a cross-legged sit, or by squatting straight down, or lightly and softly kneeling on one knee then sitting. Experiment until you can do all three ways.
4. Don't thump down hard on the floor. Use your leg muscles to lower softly with shock absorption.
5. Sit straight without rounding your back forward or curling your hip under you.
6. Stand up again without using your hands to get up.

Do this "sit and rise" exercise several times in a row. It is more useful and effective than doing little leg raises or presses in a gym. Don't be put off if you can't do this right away. Practice (safely) and you will quickly get stronger and more flexible, with better balance. When your strength improves so much from practicing sitting and rising from the floor that your body weight is not enough to give you exercise, sit and rise from the floor holding children or packages.

You can sit and rise from the floor ten times a day as an isolated exercise then spend the rest of your day sitting in a chair, but it makes more sense to sit and rise from the floor for real life. Sitting on the floor is not a strange or rare thing only done in poor villages far away. It is done in a great part of the world's countries, even in developed cities, and in our home. When you come to eat with us, you will sit at a low table on the floor by the fire. It's nice.

Sitting and rising from the floor is one of the many ways that much of the world gets built-in leg exercise and protects their hip joints from stiffening, arthritis, and bone loss. You will see grandparents easily lifting grandchildren, and other loads. They get bone-building strength, flexibility, and balance every day through their real life, and don't need to buy little machines or go to trainers to do ten little repetitions of an artificial movement. So can you.


Photo by Tupinamba, CreativeCommons

Labels: aging, balance, leg press, leg strength, leg stretch, sitting, squat, strength, stretch

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Conference on Aging Dec 2, 2006 in Midtown New York

The Greater New York Chapter of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) will hold a conference on aging on Saturday, December 2nd, 2006 at the Flatotel, 135 W. 52nd Street between 6th & 7th Avenue, in New York City.

In one fast moving day, there will be nine lectures by authorities on metabolic changes of aging, cardiovascular changes and the benefits of exercise, exercise in older patients with heart failure, neuromuscular training for the older population, psychosocial aspects, physical training for older clients with special conditions, and nutritional needs of older populations. I will be giving a lecture called "Three Quick Techniques for Three Musculoskeletal Problems Confused for Aging."

Many of the declines that come with doing less are often confused with aging. A stiff and rounded upper back, for example, is not necessarily aging, but practice. Are you sitting rounded forward reading this right now? Do you spend your day rounding over your desk and steering wheel, then go to the gym and bend forward for crunches, leg lifts, Pilates, and toe touches? Do you bend your neck down to do biceps curls? No wonder it's hard for you to straighten out. How long will you practice unhealthy bent forward position before you get stuck that way? There is no need to exercise in the very way that is not healthy when you do it sitting at your desk. There are better ways.

Much of the loss of strength and balance over the years is from disuse not aging. Many people do not use their legs for the hundreds of times each day they need to bend. They bend wrong, throwing their weight on their spine. Their back hurts and their legs and hips tighten and weaken. Eventually they find they are unable to sit comfortably on the floor, and more worryingly, cannot rise from the floor, or even from their chair without using their hands. This is debilitating weakness, and a dangerously unhealthy cycle of use or lose. It is not aging. In cultures where sitting and rising from the floor is a daily activity, people of 90 have the strength and balance to do it. They do not suffer the rates of falls, osteoporosis, arthritis, and cardiovascular disease of less active populations.

My lecture will cover three easy techniques to maintain and improve spine health and muscle strength. Come say hello. The meeting is designed for allied health practitioners, but is open to the public, with reduced registration fees for members of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) New York Chapter. Contact Felicia D. Stoler, MS, RD (732) 946-4436, or e-mail fstoler@att.net

Labels: aging, arthritis, balance, disc, education, fix pain, hip strength, knee, leg strength, leg stretch, lower back, osteoporosis, sitting, squat, strength, stress, stretch, upper back

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Fitness and Health as a Lifestyle for Thanksgiving

If you think you won't have time to exercise over the Thanksgiving holiday, here is good news. This post will show you how to move in healthy ways so that you have healthy exercise built-in to all the cooking, shopping, furniture moving, and social interactions. Here is more good news. You don't have to go to a gym to work off the stress and eating too much of the Thanksgiving holiday. Life is not supposed to be a poison that you deliberately take, then need an antidote to offset.

Here are four of the healthiest, quickest ways to make your Thanksgiving into fitness and health as a lifestyle:

1. To pick up chairs, babies, and grocery bags,
   to move furniture, and for lifting things from the floor, bend your knees, keeping your weight back toward your heels, and your body upright.
   
   
2. To carry chairs, babies, grocery bags, furniture, and any loads in front of you, don't lean back. It is a common bad habit to lean the upper body backward, increasing the lower back arch. Leaning backward shifts the weight of the load off your core and arm muscles and onto your lower spine. Get free, built-in exercise for your abs and arms and save your back by standing straight. Don't lean and arch backward to carry things.
   
   
3. Notice all the times you round and hang forward over things that you can easily reach by standing upright. Check your upper back positioning when standing over counters, sinks, grocery bins, vacuum cleaners, cribs and baby-changing tables, and when setting food tables. Don't let your body weight hang over and forward. Stand upright, chin in, and just tilt your head downward in relaxed manner to see what you are doing. Relax shoulders downward. Smile. Breathe.
   
   
4. Preparations and family interactions are no excuse to do unhealthy behaviors out of habit like smoking, overeating, and arguing, then blame it on stress. The bad habits are even more stress on body and mind. If something is wrong, see about fixing it in a good way. Don't suffer in silence with people telling you that you have to be happy just because of a holiday. Make your home healthy for yourself. There is no place it matters more:

• Get exercise cleaning the house of junk and clutter. Take the extra clothing, toys, and household items to a shelter. Carry the bags with healthy positioning to the people who need it.
• Make a healthy meal with family or alone, without television or phone. Carry the meals to shut-ins and isolated elderly in your neighborhood, and the homeless on the street.
• Volunteer at a soup kitchen. Do grocery shopping, cooking, and vacuuming for those who are too sick or disabled or alone to do it for themselves. If you think you don't have time because you have young children, take them with you to help carry things and to teach them healthy ideals, and how thankful they can be for the home you provide.
• Don't smoke, drink soda (diet soda is just as unhealthy) eat junk food (even if it has marketing words like "organic" on the label), or undo the health benefits of fruit and vegetables by junking them with cream, sugar, and cornstarch. Add up all you spend on cigarettes and junk food that take a healthy body and give it health problems. Take the money and give to the poor. With what you save on prescriptions and treatments for all the pain and jitters you cause yourself, you can feed a village and still take a vacation.
• When you eat the Thanksgiving meal, say thankful things. Taste your food. Turn down seconds. Breathe. Smile. Help clean up. Shoulders back. Enjoy the roof over your head. That is health as a lifestyle.

Drawings and more ideas on healthy positioning in the book Stretching Smarter Stretching Healthier

Labels: abdominal muscles, achilles stretch, arm, arthritis, balance, disc, facet joints, fix pain, hamstring, holiday, knee, leg press, leg strength, leg stretch, lordosis, lower back, neutral spine

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Bending Right is Fitness as a Lifestyle

Readers asked for more pictures of healthy bending around the house and workplace during daily life. They've been getting excited about the idea that daily life is the way to physical ability and health, instead of stopping life to do a bunch of exercises. People spend time and money for endless treatments and gadgets for back and knee pain and tight Achilles tendon. Healthy bending prevents the commonest sources of all of these.

• A major predisposing factor of knee and hip arthritis is weak thighs.
• A major risk factor of hip osteoporosis is lack of weight bearing exercise.
• A major risk factor of falls is weak legs and poor balance.
• The Achilles tendon gets a natural stretch with each time you bend right with heels down, and loses this constant normal source of stretch without good bending.
• The most important contributor to making a lumbar disc degenerate, or slip out of place (herniate), and press on nerves causing sciatica, is bad bending forward.
• The biggest contributor to upper back and neck pain is keeping the upper body rounded and bent over forward.

If you would like to reduce risk of falls, osteoporosis, bad discs, sciatica, achy upper back, and arthritis, get a built-in Achilles tendon stretch, and get strong shapely legs all at the same time, just use your legs with good body position for daily healthy bending.

Why go to the gym or to physical therapy to do knee bends to strengthen your legs, then spend your "real life" weakening your legs and degenerating your lower back discs with bad bending, and say, "I don't have time to exercise."

You will get free built-in exercise just moving in life. My friends and family in Asia are astonished when I tell them I teach Americans how to bend to look in the refrigerator, and that Americans tell me it is too much work to bend right to load dishes in a machine that washes for them. Then they pay money to go to a gym or buy equipment to exercise their legs.

Here is a fun way to change mindset to exercise as a lifestyle:

Count how many times a day you bend and how many times you can choose to harm yourself or help yourself.

If you would like to try "fitness as a lifestyle," this is the best place to start. Think of it:

1. when bending to make the bed,
2. to pick up laundry,
3. look in the refrigerator,
4. load and unload the dishwasher,
5. to pick up your shoes,
6. open a lower cabinet,
7. lift a child or pet,
8. feed a child or pet,
9. pick up things from the floor,
10. pick up hand weights to do exercise,
11. put down weights after exercising,
12. many daily activities.

Send me your lists with photos of how you changed your bending from unhealthy to simple, good bending.



More on bending and reaching, getting built-in lifestyle exercise, and fixing knee and back pain, in the books Fix Your Own Pain Without Drugs or Surgery and Health & Fitness in Plain English.

Labels: achilles stretch, arthritis, disc, fix pain, knee, leg press, leg strength, leg stretch, lower back, osteoporosis, sciatica, squat, strength, stretch, upper back

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Carrying Schoolbooks Is Not the Cause of Back Pain

A recent BBC news article echoed the common idea that children are getting back pain from carrying their books. However, carrying books is not the cause of the pain.

The article continued how children often require "physiotherapy" for their pain. Common programs in physical therapy involve strengthening. An important thing to understand is that carrying your own things would be more strengthening than lifting little weights that often weigh less than the books.

The article mentioned how one of the schools is trying to raise money for more lockers so that children will not have to carry their books between home and school. While physical educations programs are being increasingly cut, and children are getting less exercise, fewer physical skills, and are gaining weight, people still think it is too much exercise for children to carry books.

It is not the backpacks that hurt the back. It is carrying them with poor positioning that pressures the spine. Carrying books, even heavy books, with good positioning would be healthy and good exercise, not a cause of pain. By contrast, pulling a rolling carrier or bag on wheels while bent over in unhealthy ways can cause the same kind of pain.

One common poor positioning when wearing a backpack is rounding the upper body forward or slouching to the side to offset the weight of the pack. These poor positions are the same that create pain when sitting poorly at a desk, which is another source of the children's pain. If you stop hunching forward or sideways when carrying a backpack or other loads, and stand straight, the pressure on the spine shifts from the spine to the core muscles. It is free exercise.

The second major pain producing bad habit when carrying a backpack is leaning or arching backward - allowing the lower back to increase the inward curve (overarch). Backpacks do not make you arch your back. It is you who allow yourself to be pulled backward by the weight. If you straighten yourself and not slouch backward, the compression on the lower back stops. The muscles that pull your spine forward to reduce the backward lean are your abdominal muscles. You would have a free abdominal muscle workout. The action of pulling yourself straight instead of arching backward is the same movement as described in Change Daily Reaching to Get Ab Exercise and Stop Back and Shoulder Pain.

Posts to come will show how to easily carry loads, books, and backpacks so that instead of compressing and hurting your back under the weight, you get free exercise that makes you stronger and healthier. The answer is not to stop carrying books, then go to a gym or physical therapy center to lift weights. It is fitness as a lifestyle to move and get healthy exercise from your daily life, including carrying your own things in healthy ways.


Photo by Sarvodaya, Creative Commons

Labels: abdominal muscles, disc, fix pain, lower back, posture, upper back

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Black Belt Hall of Fame - Black Belts and Black Tie

This past weekend, the Eastern U.S.A. International Martial Arts Association held their 19th annual Black Belt Hall of Fame inductions in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Martial artists traveled from nearly every state in the United States and more than 50 countries overseas to attend the weekend of awards and seminars.

The atmosphere was fun and healthy. Top Grandmasters and martial arts legends mixed easily with attendees. Guests at the host hotel enjoyed the site of dozens of martial arts teams going by, each in the distinctive uniform of their martial arts style. The black belts of many of the participants were heavy with stripes of rank, and ragged from years of training.

During the three-day event, there were seminars on teaching skills and specific techniques in Kendo, kickboxing, Jiu-jutsu, and others. Students were flying in all directions as they tried each training exercise.

I taught a seminar of core training that I developed called The Ab Revolution. It is a method of exercising your abdominal and back muscles the way they work in your real life. It uses no forward bending. The forward bending commonly used for core exercise trains unhealthy bent-forward posture, pressures the spine and discs, and is not the way your muscles work when you stand and move in real life. Click here for a synopsis of The Ab Revolution including sample exercises.



Soke Sean Martin, pictured at left demonstrating with his assistant Christopher, taught Kagedo-Essensu, (Shadow Essence) a style that he developed. Kagedo is a devastating defense technique. It does not require strength and conditioning or years of specific poses and positioning to master. For information about learning this effective technique, contact Sibilxvi@hotmail.com.



The Saturday afternoon awards ceremony was held for kyu ranking (not yet Black Belt) and youth black belts. Saturday evening saw the banquet for new inductees to the Black Belt Hall of Fame and members of the Hall of Fame receiving distinguished awards (photo at left).

Organization founders Soke John Kanzler and Kim Harper are already at work on next year's 20th year anniversary event. Contact them at the International USA Martial Arts Association, toll free at 1-800-456-3872, or e-mail EUSAIMAA@verizon.net.


The book Healthy Martial Arts won the Hall of Fame's Readers Choice award. See the book on my website.

Labels: abdominal muscles, education, martial arts, partner exercise, spirit

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Change Daily Reaching to Get Ab Exercise and Stop Back and Shoulder Pain

Do you arch your lower back to lift your arms up, as in the photo at right? It is unhealthy body mechanics if you do.

Arching your back to raise your arms reduces the stretch and exercise on the shoulder, and creates pressure and loading on the lower back.

Do you arch your back to raise your arms? Try this to tell:

• Stand and reach as high as you can overhead.
• Notice if you lift your ribs and lean your upper body backward.
• Check if you stick your backside out in back, or do the opposite and push your hips forward. Both increase the lower back arch which increases load on the joints and soft tissue. You may feel a familiar pressure in the lower back.

Increasing lower back arching may occur automatically, and may seem "natural," but it is not healthy. Wetting your pants is natural too, but you have to learn to control it. To reduce the unhealthy overarching:

• While standing arched, bring ribs back down to level, and tuck your "tailbone" under you to straighten your hip.
• The motion is like doing an abdominal crunch standing up. Don't bend your upper body to the front, just "crunch" (or flex) the lower spine to reduce the overarching.
• Your lower back moves backward, and your "tailbone" tucks straight under you so it is not tilted out in back.

Now reach up overhead again holding the new straighter position. Feel how the reach needs to come from your shoulder instead of your lower back. Keep shoulders relaxed downward, and don't crane or tense your neck.

It is common for people to push their hip forward, thinking that is what is meant by "tuck the hip." That makes arching worse. Don't push your entire hip forward, just roll the bottom under. This motion is also called a "pelvic tilt." See the tilt in the photo in post Throw a Stronger Punch (or Push a Car or Stroller) Using This Back Pain Reduction Technique.

Watch other people when they reach overhead for exercise and daily life, and notice fitness magazines picturing overhead moves. See how often they arch their lower back to lift and reach. It is important to be able to tell when positioning is unhealthy, not just follow a bunch of strange rules about how to stand and exercise. See more helpful info in Fixing the Commonest Source of Mystery Lower Back Pain, and What Abdominal Muscles Don't Do - The Missing Link.

The next time you are in the shower washing your head, notice if you are leaning backward and remember this post. Reduce the overly large lower back arch using the tucking/tilting move described above. Feel how the pressure is reduced in your lower back. The muscles that work to flex your lower spine to reduce arching are your abdominal muscles. By preventing unhealthy arching each time you reach up, you will get built-in abdominal exercise and better shoulder stretch, and stop the source of much "mystery" lower back pain.

Photo by Dan Mogford, Creative Commons

Labels: abdominal muscles, arm, facet joints, fix pain, lordosis, lower back, posture, shoulder, strength, stretch, upper back

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Healthy Knees

My Tuesday night martial arts students worked hard last night on sweeps, falls, tumbling, and quick recovery to their feet. Each week they also learn a new jump rope technique. They have been getting good at fast skipping, crossing the rope in multiple spins to the front, sides, and overhead, and varied footwork during jumps.

When landing from jumps, it is important not to let your knees knock inward under your body weight (photo at left). It is important for knee health not only when jumping, but descending the stairs, bending for all daily needs, and even getting in and out of your chair.

Letting your weight fall to the inside of your knee joint, instead of holding your weight evenly on your knees using your own leg muscles, adds load and wear to the cartilage on the inner surface of the knee bones, stresses the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in the middle, overstretches the ligament on the inner side of the knee, and can damage a meniscus. A menscus is one of two small cushions in each knee between the knee bones. Letting knees sway inward more commonly damages the medial meniscus (the inner one) although either or both can be stretched or twisted by bad knee positioning. Letting your knees sway inward is not a "condition," and not unavoidable or something you are born to have. It is a posture you can control using your own muscles to hold your legs from swaying inward.

A while back I took a box-aerobics class because I had a coupon for a free week at a local club. The woman in front of me was stomping up and down as she swatted the air. Her knees bumped together every time her feet landed. Her feet were at least ten inches apart yet her knees bashed together, over and over, bending inward at the knee joint. It was alarming.

Don't let your knees (or ankles) sway inward under your weight. Use your muscles to hold knees in position, over your feet:

• When landing, land lightly - softly. Don't pound. The only noise should be the whirring of the jump rope, not your feet slamming the ground, transmitting shock to your knees and hips, and up your spine.
• Bend your knees lightly when you land. Don't land straight-legged.
• When you bend your knees for landing, don't let them sway inward.
• Keep kneecaps facing the same direction as toes, not twisting inward.
• Land softly, on the ball of the foot first. Quickly bring heels down while bending knees to absorb impact.

Remember healthy knee positioning during all activities. Look at your own knees and other people's knees when they take the stairs, and when bending to reach or retrieve things for healthy bending at home and work. Notice knees when you get out of your chair and sit back down. Don't let knees sway inward. Hold them above your ankles, not inward.

It is easy to control leg positioning for healthy knee joints while you stand, bend, take stairs, exercise, and jump so that your daily life and exercise is healthy.


Photos and more on keeping knees healthy during exercise, in the book Healthy Martial Arts and Fix Your Own Pain Without Drugs or Surgery

Labels: aging, ankle, arches, fix pain, injury, knee, leg strength, martial arts, orthotics, posture, pronation, strength, stretch

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Grand Rounds Likes Our New Achilles Tendon Stretch

"A pint of sweat saves a gallon of blood."
- General George S. Patton

Each week, a hard-working person does the sweat-work of collecting medical posts from wide-ranging areas like administration, research, patients, chaplains, medical, and nursing practice to produce Grand Rounds.

Thank you to Rita Schwab, CPCS, CPMSM, for recommending the Fitness Fixer post Better Achilles Tendon Stretch at the MSSP Nexus Blog Grand Rounds this week, reminding people there is a better way to stretch your Achilles than the common "lunge and lean."

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The Cause of Disc and Back Pain

A UK Times article featured a physician musing that as medical students they were not taught in school to identify the cause of medical problems, but to treat symptoms (and give electric shocks to decerebrate frogs). The cause of the problem would still remain.

He mentioned how you may go to the doctor with painful tonsils, and be given a "diagnosis" of tonsillitis. He educates the reader that "Tonsillitis, for example, is not a disease but a symptom - of something else that caused the tonsils to be infected." He continued with how you may go to the doctor with pain down your leg, and be given back a "diagnosis" of sciatica, which just means "pain down the leg" but not what is causing the sciatica. A disc may be pressing on the nerve, but what is making the disc press? The sciatica and the bad disc are the symptoms. They are not the cause. Unfortunately, he stopped there, and for treatment said to go back to your activities with light rest. Nothing about what caused the disc to degenerate (break down) or protrude (herniate or slip) in the first place.

Bad sitting and bending are the main cause of disc degeneration and herniation. Rounded sitting (photo on left) compresses the space between vertebrae in front and opens the space between them in back and squeezes the disc gradually backward into that space. Bad bending (right) levers the weight of your upper body plus whatever you are lifting onto your lower back discs, whether you keep your back straight or rounded. Strengthening your back will not stop you from sitting and bending wrong. Stretches or massage that feel good for the moment will not stop you from sitting and bending in the way that rounds the spine forward, pushing and squeezing the discs until, finally, give break down and squeeze out to the back (herniate). To stop the damage, you simply stop the cause.

A bad disc is not the diagnosis. It is not the cause of the problem. It is the result of what is causing the disc go bad. You can treat the disc pain with pills, exercises, massage, and shots, but not remove the cause. When you continue the cause, the pain often comes back. You can remove the disc, but not remove the cause and so, continue harming your other discs. The post Disc Pain - Not a Mystery, Easy to Fix explains. The post Free Exercise and Free Back and Knee Pain Prevention - Healthy Bending shows simple healthy bending. The post Are You Making Your Exercise Unhealthy (and several others) shows how to easily fix unhealthy sitting.

It is easy to prevent and heal back pain when you simply stop the cause.


Photos: Many thanks to readers who posed pretending to sit and bend wrong to help others. No readers were hurt in the photographing of this post.

Labels: fix pain, injury, leg strength, leg stretch, lower back, posture, sc, sciatica, sitting, squat, upper back

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How Often Should You Be Healthy?

A reader thoughtfully sent in the photos at left to help readers recognize unhealthy bending, and asked, "What is your advice when someone is having to bend to put dishes in the dishwasher? It just seems so uncommon to think to squat while loading the dishes."

There is no better time to bend in healthy ways than your real life. The whole point of fitness as a lifestyle is that your daily life is healthy movement - not to change clothes to do squats at a gym three times a week, then change clothes again, go home, and bend wrong all day. Healthy bending is for every time you bend. How often is that? The post How Good Would You Look From 400 Squats a Day - Just Stop Unhealthy Bending showed how we estimated that you bend an average of 400 times every day for ordinary activities. Why harm your back and miss free exercise for your legs hundreds of times a day?

Most people know and repeat, "bend your knees" if you quiz them on healthy bending. Bending knees slightly, as in the above photos, does not make bad bending healthy. Bending over forward pressures your lower back discs, whether your back is rounded (photo above left) or straighter (above right). You are still bending over and the leverage point is your lower spine. Bending right is simple:

• With feet side-by-side, comfortably apart, bend knees, keeping your torso fairly upright - as if not wanting something to fall from a shirt pocket.
• Keep both heels down and shift your weight back to your heels.
• Pull your knees back over your heels. Don't let them droop forward under your body weight. When you shift your knees back, you will feel the effort shift away from your knee joint to your thigh muscles.
• Don't stick your backside out or exaggerate the lower back arch.

The post Free Exercise and Free Back and Knee Pain Prevention - Healthy Bending shows exactly how to make good bending a healthy normal part of your daily life for the hundreds of times you bend. The posts to come have more photos and drawings, showing how to change unhealthy to healthy bending.

Unless you are moving in healthy ways for your real life, it is not a lifestyle and it is not healthy. Healthy bending is easy and life changing. It is free exercise and injury prevention. When should you do it? Each time you want your daily life to be healthy.


More on good bending and getting built-in lifestyle exercise: Fix Your Own Pain Without Drugs or Surgery, and Health & Fitness in Plain English

Labels: disc, fix pain, injury, knee, leg strength, leg stretch, lower back, posture, squat, upper back

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International Martial Arts Association - Weekend Event Nov 10-12

Next weekend my husband Paul and I will be in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania at the Eastern U.S.A. International Martial Arts Association (EUSAIMAA).

Every November they hold an exhilarating weekend of training, seminars, and events for hundreds of martial artists. They also host the U.S.A. International Black Belt Hall of Fame and annual Hall of Fame awards. The weekend event is recognized and respected by the world martial arts community, and attended by representatives from many dozens of countries from around the world from novice to Grandmaster.

The sizeable work to organize and run this event every year is done by Soke Kanzler and Kim Harper. "Soke" is a Japanese term meaning "head master of a style" and is used for those who have risen to such a degree of understanding of the martial arts that they have founded their own martial arts system.

I will be there, learning all I can, and teaching a seminar of core training - The Ab Revolution - a method of training abdominal and back muscles the way they really work for daily life and for exercise. It is better, harder exercise than conventional ab training and uses no forward bending. The many posts of this blog explain how the commonly-used forward bending for exercise only trains unhealthy bent-forward posture and is not the way your muscles should work when you stand and move in real life. You will learn techniques to increase power and to change spine positioning to prevent injury right in the one-hour seminar.

The weekend event is by invitation only. People must be registered guests to attend seminars. To attend or stop by and say hello, contact the International Headquarters of the International USA Martial Arts Association, or call toll free at 1-800-456-3872. Tell them I referred you.

Labels: abdominal muscles, martial arts

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Better Achilles Tendon Stretch

A frequently seen stretch for the calf muscles and Achilles tendon is the "lunge and lean" pictured at right. It is one of the least effective ways to stretch your calf and Achilles. Although many people spend much time doing this stretch, they often get little or no stretch:

• Bending over forward reduces the stretch and trains the same bent forward position that you already know is poor posture when you sit like that at your desk or steering wheel.
• Sticking your hips out in back reduces the stretch on the Achilles tendon.
• Turning your back foot outward, even a small amount, reduces, and often eliminates the stretch completely.

The "lunge and lean" is not highly effective, even when done "well," and is often done in the ineffective ways listed above. This is one reason why Achilles tendon stretching doesn't seem to be cutting down on injuries as hoped. Instead of the "lunge and lean," following is a quick, effective way to stretch your calf and Achilles tendon:

• Stand facing a wall at about arm's length away.
• Stand with both feet facing straight ahead - parallel - not turned out, even a small amount.
• Put one foot on the wall at knee height. Press that heel against the wall.
• Look down and see if the foot you are standing on is facing directly ahead. Make that standing foot straight, not turned out; not even a little.
• Do not lean toward the wall. Lift your chest until you are standing straight.
• Don't let your hip curl under or your standing knee or hip bend.
• Smile, relax shoulders, and breathe.
• Hold a few seconds and switch legs.

Many people are so tight, that as soon as they raise one leg against the wall, their standing foot turns out without their even noticing it, and they round their back. Don't stretch wrong, allowing the tightness to perpetuate. Do the purpose of the stretch - to retrain the same healthy positioning you need for real life.

Stretching is supposed to be healthy. When you stretch, don't practice bad bent over posture habits. Stretch in ways to make your daily life healthier.


Photo #1 by Macrocomp, Some rights reserved.
Photo #2 (copyright) in the book Fix Your Own Pain Without Drugs or Surgery
Learn more healthy stretches in the fun book, Stretching Smarter Stretching Healthier

Labels: achilles stretch, balance, disc, leg stretch, stretch

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Dr. Hebert's Medical Gumbo Uses Our Stretches in Grand Rounds

"Rhymes, meters, stanza forms, are like servants. If the master is fair enough to win their affection and firm enough to command their respect, the result is an orderly happy household."
- W. H. Auden

This week Michael C. Hebert, M.D. hosted Grand Rounds entirely in Edgar Allen Poe inspired rhyme. Dr. Hebert wrote in his Medical Gumbo that he could use my post Thumbs Can Show Tightness That Leads to Upper Back Pain to stop pain from bending over his work:

"…I pinched the films 'tween thumb and finger,
tension in my back will linger
Many hours shall they linger, unless I stretch my back will burn
Says The Fitness Fixer, so I her test will surely learn..."

Thank you for the hard work of Grand Rounds this week, and doing it with masterful rhymes, meters, and advice.

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Exercise Common Sense Discipline - Turn Down Halloween Junk Food

Martial arts class fell on Halloween night this year. Would students pay lip service to health and discipline in class then go out eating unhealthy junk?

The festival of Halloween, Samhain (pronounced "saow-in") or Summer's end, Hallotide, Saint's day eve (All Hallows Eve), Day of the Dead, and a month earlier as Babye Leto in chilly Russia, is supposed to remember and revere (or at least appease) the ancestors and Saints. The idea wasn't to glorify gore or sickness (or merchandising), but think of those who are gone, just as the life of summer is gone, and thank the last harvests before the coming Winter. Gifts of food, lights, and effigies of those passed on decorate houses and streets.

My students have been learning that self-discipline is a voluntary exercise. To have inner peace, you just stop tensing your body and saying rude things. To stop slouching, you just use your own muscles to move your spine to healthy position. There is no special exercise to strengthen you to do it; you use your muscles to sit and stand straight and that gives you the exercise. There is no special exercise to be able to do the vigorous moves we do in class. You just keep moving and trying, without stopping and without complaining, and that gives you the strength. This week when I came in to teach, students were sitting quietly and comfortably straight. Their equipment was ready and neat. Since class began in September, several quit smoking, at least the day before and of class, to be able to get through class. Two students told me they had stopped binge-and-purge eating because they could not do class as well when they did, even though they had always done it for exercise classes before. They realized a better body and spirit came more from all we do in class than from an eating disorder. Others stopped eating junk because they want to be healthier, and to practice having control instead of acting on every impulse.

Sometimes, people think that training in martial arts means whoever can beat up others the most, or be the most destructive, is the best. The kneeling Zen story before class last night was the story of who is the true master:
It was clear that the second wizard was the true master - the master of himself. In class, students stayed disciplined to learn rapid hand strikes and jumping kicks. After class I had bags for them of oranges and apples, notepads to write thoughts, sprouted mung beans to mix in snacks, some walnuts to crack for hand strength. When they walked outside in the dark and cold, they seemed to glow like harvest candles, standing straight with warmth and cheer from their hard work.


Photo - Jolie on Halloween. Story and more on developing physical skills and discipline in the book Healthy Martial Arts

Labels: holiday, martial arts, nutrition, spirit, stress, weight loss

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