Lunges and Beans
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
To get a better lunge stretch and stop pressure on the medial knee (the side facing the other leg), don't turn your back leg outward (left photo). Turn your back foot parallel, and face forward (right photo)
The previous post Hip Stretch While You Strengthen Legs shows a key move to position the hip to get a great stretch on the front of the hip and feel a better strengthener for the legs as you lower and rise in standing lunges.
One of my students, Lily, demonstrates good hip and leg position for the lunge (second photo at right). Instead of tilting the hip forward in front and out in back, you tuck the bottom of the hip to maintain it vertical from the top of the leg (hip joint) to the middle of the waist. Note the stripe of the side of the pants compared to the vertical line in the wall behind her.
On occasion, Lily makes me a wonderful bean dish and brings it to class in a glass container. The glass is a thoughtful healthy touch to avoid whatever may leach out of plastics into food. My students and I try to do this with food and drinks carried to work and class. Here is her recipe. Just throw it all in a bowl:
Lily's Wonderful BeansSome people with celiac omit the corn. Celiac causes various discomforts after eating wheat and related products.
Cup or two of cooked black beans
Cup or two of corn
1 jalapeño pepper, diced
1 red onion, chopped
1 red pepper, chopped
2 tablespoons cumin powder
1 bunch fresh cilantro, chopped
salt and pepper to taste
sprinkle of olive oil, just enough to blend ingredients
squeeze 1 fresh lime over the top
Good bending gives free exercise and stops a major cause of several chronic pain syndromes (muscle strain, disc degeneration, disc herniation, and sciatica) at the same time. Click the labels under this post for related posts. If you use the lunge and squat around the house for all the things you need to bend for instead of bad bending, you will stop a major source of back pain back, and get hundreds of free leg exercises a day. Enjoy healthy eating and healthy lunging.
Labels: celiac, disc, hip, hip strength, leg strength, leg stretch, lunge, nutrition, sciatica, stretch
3 Comments:
At Thursday, July 26, 2007 1:04:00 AM,
Jill said…
One correction: corn is fine on a gluten-free diet. Some celiacs have additional sensitivity to corn, but for most it's not a problem.
The undisputed gluten-containing grains are wheat, rye, and barley. Oats have traditionally been considered unsafe for celiacs, but there is considerable controversy about whether that is due to a protein in the grain itself or due to processing of the oats in the same machines that process wheat, leading to cross-contamination. Some companies are now producing noncontaminated oats and some celiacs are experimenting with eating them.
At Friday, July 27, 2007 6:51:00 PM,
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD said…
Jill, yes, some people with celiac also have a separate sensitivity to corn. That's why I wanted to include it. It is sometimes missed.
Thank you for listing main gluten-containing grains. Celiac is an often overlooked contributor to osteoporosis. It's good to have information. The post Stomach Acid Drugs Increase Osteoporosis and Hip Fractures
has more on osteoporosis.
At Friday, August 03, 2007 6:08:00 PM,
Jill said…
This seems as good a place as any to tell you that I had bad and steadily worsening joint problems, expecially in the knees, for ten years before I found out about my gluten sensitivity. By that time my legs were extremely weak from having been unable to put weight on a bent knee for so long.
I let the knees heal without doing anything special for them until I hit a plateau, then started doing isometric exercise for the quads (the classic wall chair), then six months after that started running slowly on an elliptical trainer. Weightlifting exercises for quads, though, still left me hobbling.
That's where I was when I found your blog, and since then I've been doing squats at every opportunity, which was very hard at first and got much easier. Along with the foot stretch you gave, the achilles tendon stretch in the squates also caused tremendous improvement in my plantar fasciitis.
After a few weeks of that you posted the stair climbing posts and now I'm having far less trouble on the large numbers of stairs I climb every day. I am shying away from lunges from long associating them with pain, but plan to get over that soon and try them (gently) according to your detailed suggestions.
Your blog has given me an enormous number of ideas to help in rehabilitating my knees from the years of gluten, which has made an enormous improvement in my quality of life. Thank you for the care and skill you put into it.
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