Fast Fitness - Balance Contest!

Here is Friday Fast Fitness - another contest! Do you know what constitutes ability in balance as a lifestyle? Tell us!

On the urging of reader Mr. Georges Nakhlé, I started the Academy of Functional Exercise Medicine (AFEM) to train people in healthier, functional, more common-sense exercise and lifestyle. We teach classes, certify top students, and are creating better methods of instruction.

One of our courses is Balance. Mr. Nakhlé, who runs the AFEM office in Lebanon asked me, "Which test tells whether a person has good balance or not?"

1. Write your ideas for different needed levels of balance
2. Write specific balance skills or training drills
3. Give examples that are needed for real daily life - functional balance testing, rather than isolated clinical measures.

Standardized tests exist, but don't predict how someone can function (move doing real things) in real life without falls, sprains, and other injuries of poor balance. A single test, such as the standard, "Can you stand on one foot for 5 seconds" may give a low basic measure, but a single test doesn't cover range needed throughout real life. That means we need several simple tests to rank ability.

Examples:

Basic low level balance needed for safe healthy life:

• "Can you step over a pile of clothes and toys on the floor, without spilling a cup of water"
• "Can you descend narrow basement stairs holding a laundry basket in both hands without holding the railing?"
• "Can you put on hosiery and shoes standing up?"
• "Can you rise from your chair and the floor without using your hands?"
  

Average:

• "Can you leap over a puddle or hole in the street and land lightly on the other foot?"
• "Can you safely climb a stepladder without hands and change an overhead light bulb without holding on?"
  

High:

• "Can you walk though a rushing rocky stream and rescue a child on a rock?"
• Your ideas here…
  

Last contest time running out - How well do you know human movement?

• Only a little time left to give your best answers to last week's Fast Fitness - Contest: What Does It Take To Sit Upright?

More about AFEM - the Academy of Functional Exercise Medicine (renamed from the Academy of Functional Fitness Medicine):

• How we began - New International Academy Using Jolie Bookspan's Methods
• First Winner - International Academy of Functional Sports Medicine Logo Design
• Academy web site - www.DrBookspan.com/Academy
• See our certified students and teachers - www.drbookspan.com/AcademyStudents.html

Related:

• Ancient Shoe Exercise for Hip Stretch and Balance
• Fast Fitness - Balance and Ankle Stability in the Dark
• Married 63 Years With Good Balance
• Fast Fitness - Leap for Balance on Leap Year
• Fast Fitness - Dynamic Partner Balance Challenge
• Fast Fitness - Strength, Abs, Balance, and Ankle and Leg Stabilization
• Fast Fitness - Balance, Strength, Stretch, and Socks
• Better Balance by Christmas

Random Fitness Fixer:

• Fast Fitness - Figuring Heart Rate Training Range

Labels: balance, contest, fast fitness, International Academy of Functional Sports Medicine

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Reader Success With Functional Fitness Training - Stronger Ankles, Better Balance

Here is a good start to October. I had invited readers to send in names for my group Functional Fitness Training program (tentatively named FFT) and success stories using it. Reader Paul J sent in both. He wrote:

"I don't think I can come up with a better name than FFT.

"Some ideas….let's see,

"Simple Training Big Benefits. (The toe balance training is great; I suppose a success story is in order.)
Bookspan's Basic Training.
Bookspan's Body Basics.
Basic Fitness Training
Basic Functional Fitness
Jolie's Joint Jewels (That has a nice ring to it, it might be good for something like a list.)
Functional Physical Training.

"Well, what do you think, any keepers?"

Readers - votes? The "Basic Functional Fitness" name has the advantage (as does "Bookspan Functional Fitness") of the initials BFF, young person lingo for "Best Friend Forever."


Paul J. continued with his success story:

"I have been doing your toe balance training and have noticed some interesting things. Before I learned your toe balance training I would usually stand on one foot to put my sock on and had decent balance from martial arts, but felt my ankles were weak. I even bought a BOSU and it may have helped, but you have to be on it, to get a benefit from it. I remember the first time I tried your technique and how quickly my right foot tried to roll out.

"Thanks to your simple do-anywhere training my ankles are stronger and my balance is much better. The other day stepping out of the tub I had such an odd sense of stability when standing on just my right foot, I looked at my ankle. My general balance has improved too. I have a folding bike with 20” wheels and for the past 3 years hands free was a very bad idea, just the other day it was quite easy. All though to some this may still be a bad idea, it was done in a nice low traffic neighborhood.

"May your favorite physiologist have a fun Friday afternoon. : ) "

Thank you Paul J.


Related Fitness Fixer:

• Fast Fitness - Second Group Functional Training Exercise: Ankle Stability and Ability
• Fast Fitness - Balance, Strength, Stretch, and Socks
• Ancient Shoe Exercise for Hip Stretch and Balance

Unrelated Random Fitness Fixer:

• A Laugh at Sedentary Mindset

Better Martial Arts Training:

• Healthy Martial Arts

Labels: ankle, balance, biking, exercise ball, martial arts, readers inspiring story

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Secret To Get Better and Fitter

What magic secret exercise or machine or supplement makes you fitter?

Fitness Fixer reader Jilly wrote in to ask:

" I am a 65 yr old woman and have no strength in my upper body; I cannot push myself up even by 1 inch but just lie floundering on the floor! How do I start rectifying this to be able to do even a straightforward push up?"

How to get better? Just like anything else, Try. Practice. The body responds. Work and you improve. Money should be that easy.

Remember that Olympic athletes are sore for days after workouts. They fall and fail thousands of times, get back up and work more. Like learning a language - start with nothing, and the more you work, the better you become.

Click the arrow to watch this short video that reminds what practice can achieve:





Everything is Possible - video powered by Metacafe



Retrain your body to move in natural ways, not just in one up/down or side-side motion of gym exercises. Use daily life as your built-in all day strengthener. That is the difference between "doing exercise" then going back to weak unhealthy life, and real healthy living. That is what Fitness Fixer is for.

• Start with What is "Fitness as a Lifestyle?"


• Get ideas with Fitness and Health as a Lifestyle for Thanksgiving and Bending Right is Fitness as a Lifestyle.


• Try Getting Stronger Without a Gym


• See how it all fits together in How Often Should You Be Healthy? and Household Fitness in the New Year. See a reader success movie in Cardiovascular Cleanup.
  
  

Have a real life and enjoy the quick gains. Proceed safely, and have fun. Send in your success stories. Stay inspired.

Labels: balance, performance enhancing modality, practice of medicine, soreness, speed, spirit, video/movie

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Fast Friday - Oblique Core Strength and Balance on the Ball

Here is Friday Fast Fitness - develop strong side abdominal and back muscles, and train balance at the same time:

1. Put both hands on the floor and step one foot up onto an exercise ball of any size
2. Step the other foot up to the ball and turn sideways. Hold straight (upper photo). Hold and feel all abdominal and back muscles working strongly to hold yourself straight.
3. Work up to raising one arm.

Don't let body sag (lower photo). The idea is to train your muscles to be able to hold straight against the resistance of your own body weight during daily life when walking and everything you do. If your muscles don't have the strength or endurance to hold you, then you will sag onto your joints.

Labels: abdominal muscles, balance, endurance, exercise ball, fast fitness, strength

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Fast Fitness - Hip Stretch and Spine Stability Training When Stretching Legs

Here is Fast Friday Fitness - Retrain your standing leg stretches to hold your spine and hip in healthful position, get more stretch to the front of the hip, use your back muscles, practice balance, and learn functional stretching - the way your body needs to move in real life in a healthy way.

When you raise one leg to stretch when standing:

1. Keep your standing leg straight. Don't bend at the knee and hip, as pictured.
2. Don't round your back or let your pelvis and hip round under you, as pictured.
   
3. Stand straight. Relaxed. Don't force or strain. Breathe.

When stretching, remember function. Why practice a position that is rounded, tight, and detrimental to how you move in real life when you lift your legs. It would look silly and unhealthy to stand up that way. Why stretch that way?

Get functional stretch by lengthening your body enough to be able to straighten out. That is the purpose of the stretch.

Use the new length and your brain to stand straight. Transfer the positioning to real life when you are standing and lift one leg to take stairs, kick, dance, play sports, climb over things, and other life activities. Standing without being so tight that you round your body forward, or just round from habit, is healthier, better looking, burns more calories, and stops many sources of chronic aches and pains.

Send me your photos of fixing this stretch. Doing is the best learning. I will post the photos in a reader success story.


See how to retrain this same stretch lying down:

• Fast Fitness - Don't Shorten Hip When Stretching Hamstring

See photos of fixing this same stretch for kicking and stairs:

• Common Exercises Teach Hip Tightness When Kicking, Stretching, and on the Stairs

Related posts:

• Improve Stretch and Strength With Better Kicking
• What Does Stretching Do?
• Are You Making Your Exercise Unhealthy?
• Better Achilles Tendon Stretch
• Sitting Badly Isn't Magically Healthy by Calling It a Hamstring Stretch
• Is Bad Martial Arts Good Exercise?
• The Cause of Disc and Back Pain
• Better Exercise on the Stairs
• Common Exercises Teach Hip Tightness When Kicking, Stretching, and on the Stairs

Labels: balance, fast fitness, fix pain, hip, hip stretch, leg stretch, lower back, posture, stretch, upper back

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Fast Fitness - Make Your Own Device to Strengthen Arms, Upper Body, Balance, and Core Stability

Here is Fast Friday Fitness - Get intensive upper body and core training, balance, fun, and another use for the stability board you built in October 24th's Fast Fitness - Make Your Own Balance, Agility, and Leg and Ankle Retrainer.

Photos are still not loading. We didn't expect the problem to persist this long. I have been working extra to write posts not relying on images to explain concepts and techniques. Click the October link to see the photo of the board that loaded before this problem began:

1. Take the board you made, or make one now.


2. Hold a pushup position with feet on the floor and both hands on the board.


3. Balance the board and hold your pushup position. Then try pushups. Then try deliberately tilting the board to each direction while you hold your body stable. If you built the chutes with clay strips (or other creative ideas) use your hands to rock the board to direct the marble while holding your body stable in plank (pushup position). Work up to doing push ups that way.

Hold neutral spine instead of letting your lower back arch and sag:

• See photos of what overarching looks like in What Does It Look Like to Not Use Abdominal Muscles?
• How to correct pushup up position to neutral spine - Fast Fitness - Strengthen by Changing Your Plank
• How to correct with feet up on a height - Fast Fitness - Fixing Your Handstand to Neutral Spine

Want more? Prop feet up on a bench or wall or other height, and both hands on the board. Want lots more? Use one device for your arms, and one for your feet.

Labels: arm, balance, fast fitness, posture, upper back

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Fast Fitness - Make Your Own Balance, Agility, and Leg and Ankle Retrainer

Here is Friday Fast Fitness - how to make your own device to get a high tech workout that retrains important motor skills, balance, and lower limb proprioception. Proprioception means to know where and how your body is moving.

1. Put a sturdy board on a rock or hard, fairly round object like a solid ball.


2. Step up on the board and balance. Do a variety of movements that mimic your sport, like tennis and golf swings, martial arts punches and kicks. Do daily life movements like reaching cabinets, and bending like squats and lunges. Try all the same on one leg.


3. For intensive training, place lengths of inexpensive putty or child's reusable clay to make chutes (channels) on the board. Control the motions of the board with your feet to direct the marble to the center target.

Good for kids and adults of most ages.

Be careful and use your brain. Remember the board can move suddenly and slide. That is the whole idea. Control movements with your strength and balance to prevent uncontrolled falls. Start with supervision and near a safety wall, not the stairs or the china closet. Know ahead of time how to fall safely.

Labels: ankle, balance, fast fitness, leg strength, sprain

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Fast Fitness - Balance and Ankle Stability in the Dark

Here is Friday Fast Fitness - quickly improve balance and ankle proprioception - the ability of the ankle and foot to correct positioning, reducing sprain and fall potential.

This one helps balance for daily life, and also helps footing in darkness, which can be encountered on stairs, curbs, and late hikes.

1. Stand on one foot.
2. Balance on that foot with eyes closed. Switch feet.
3. Extend length of balance time with frequent practice.

Balance and proprioception are key to preventing and fixing ankle, foot, and balance trouble.

Obviously, don't do this near the stairs or the breakables. Use common sense to get started safely.

Maintain the arch in your foot. Notice if you flatten it downward or teeter too far to the side edge. Use foot and ankle muscles to lift it back to neutral position. See Fast Fitness - Fix Flat Feet, Pronation, and Fallen Arches.

Click the label "balance" under this post for all Fitness Fixer posts on balance.

Labels: ankle, balance, fast fitness, feet, sprain

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Fast Fitness - Handstand Rows

Here is Friday Fast Fitness - rows to strengthen the upper body, practice balance and neutral spine, and avoid lower disc injury from bad forward bending.

Readers have been writing in, excited about doing handstands for the first time or improving the handstand they do to get whole body functional fun exercise. My student Danielle demonstrates:

1. Hold a handstand, either using Easy handstand or Step Up To Handstand. Don't overarch the lower back (overarch is pictured). Instead of overarch/hyperlordosis, hold neutral spine in handstand.
2. Shift your weight to stand on one hand. Grasp a hand weight in the other hand
3. Do rows, and any variety of arm free-weight movements that you want to improve.

There is no need to bend over forward to do rows. It does not train functional posture, and unequally squeezes lower discs outward, which adds to degeneration and herniation forces that are common during bad daily sitting and unhealthy bending. You don't need more unhealthy things while exercising.

• To understand herniation forces on discs from bad forward bending, click: The Cause of Disc and Back Pain and Disc Pain - Not a Mystery, Easy to Fix

• To understand the damaging force on the lower spine of bad backward bending (overarching, hyperlordosis): Prevent Back Surgery

• To reduce overarching/hyperlordosis during handstand: Fast Fitness - Fixing Your Handstand to Neutral Spine.

Labels: arm, balance, disc, fast fitness, handstand, lordosis, shoulder, strength, wrist

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Fast Fitness - Step Up To Handstand

Here is Friday Fast Fitness - learn to lift up to a full handstand, for shoulder, arm, and wrist strength, balance, agility, skill, and fun.

Previous posts showed how to step up to an easy handstand by putting one foot up high behind you on a wall or surface. Here is how to learn swinging up to full handstand:

1. Stand close to a secure surface.
2. Plop both hands on the floor about a foot from the wall and swing one leg upward
3. Use momentum of putting hands down and swinging leg up, to swing the other leg upward to the wall.

• Mr. Sosaku at right holds the finished stance.
• Helen, center shows swinging up straight, bringing both feet to the wall.
• Kimberly shows the beginning - placing hands and getting the idea of lifting legs upward.

Let your feet come to the wall and straighten your body, so that you do not curl your back against the wall. Work to increase strength and balance, so that you need the wall less and less, eventually holding straight handstand without the wall. Note the hand weight on the floor. Future posts will show weightlifting with one arm while in handstand on the other.

More on handstand:

• Don't let your back sag or overarch when holding handstand- Fast Fitness - Fixing Your Handstand to Neutral Spine
• Step backward to easy handstand - Fast Fitness - Easy Handstand for Balance, Upper Body Strength -The Movie and Fast Fitness - Easy Handstand (still photos and full description)
• Using a Handstand for More Than an Exercise - Real Life.

Labels: arm, balance, fast fitness, handstand, strength, video/movie, wrist

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Students Balances, Listens, Fixes Father's Back Pain

My student Ginger sent the photo at right taken on her recent camping trip. Don't try this at home. It takes balance training, concentration, and a few changes to standard back bend technique.

Ginger is distributing the stretch along the spine so that no one area is compressed at an unfavorable angle, and is contributing most of the leg extension from the hip, not lower spine. More safe back extension stretch and strengthening methods will come in future posts.

Ginger is a good student who makes good use of my classes. Last week, while visiting her parents, she was out walking with her father. She told me that her father said that his back hurt from the walking. She looked, and saw that her father was standing and walking with too much inward curve to the lower back - hyperlordosis (swayback). Standing with the lower spine overarched is a slouch that compresses the spine unevenly downward, pinching the joints and soft tissue at the back of the lower vertebrae. Overarching is a large hidden cause of lower back ache during walking and running. This slouch is not fixed in the bone, it is a posture that is easily corrected. It does not require strengthening the back or core muscles, just using the ones you have. In moments, Ginger showed her father what I taught in class - how to change a slouching overarch to neutral spine. Ginger's father said the ache disappeared right there, and that was all there was to it.

• The article Innovation in Abdominal Muscles gives an overview, and the comments give a link to another post with a short movie showing the concept.
• If you want a whole book showing the concept, several techniques to achieve and use neutral spine, and examples of use in all daily life, try the book The Ab Revolution™ Third edition expanded. Part I of the book shows daily use without needing any exercises. Part II shows how to exercise using neutral spine to get more exercise, healthier exercise, and use abdominal muscles functionally to stop unattractive and damaging overarching.

Labels: balance, neutral spine, readers inspiring story, walking

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Fast Fitness - Easy Handstand for Balance, Upper Body Strength -The Movie

Here is Friday Fast Fitness - a quick, safer way to try a handstand. Standing on hands has many health and strength benefits and can be easily practiced in this way.

My student Dennis, Olympic medalist in wrestling, demonstrates in this short movie. Click the arrow to watch the movie:

1. Stand with your back about a foot in front of a wall, and crouch to put your hands on the floor (avoid slippery surface)
2. Put one foot high up on the wall, then lift the other foot up too
3. To get down, step one foot back down, then the other

To see step by step still photos and more explanation, click the post Fast Fitness - Easy Handstand where David from Belgium shows the handstand plus how to add a nice overhead hamstring stretch.


Keep breathing. Smile. Relax. Send in your own photos of trying this. Be safe and have fun.

Labels: arm, balance, circulation, fast fitness, handstand, shoulder, strength, upper back, video/movie, wrist

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Fast Fitness - One-Legged Party Trick for Strength, Flexibility, Balance

Here is Friday Fast Fitness - have fun while building balance, flexibility, coordination, concentration, and leg strength.

1. Stand on one foot with a can or other small container on the floor in front of you
2. While balancing on one leg, bend to lower yourself toward the floor
3. Retrieve something fun from the floor with your mouth - no hands.

Labels: balance, children, fast fitness, hip, leg strength, leg stretch, lunge, squat, strength, stretch

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Fast Fitness - Sprain Prevention and Rehab Training

Here is Fast Friday Fitness - feel how your own muscles work to hold ankle position, so that you can have stable ankles without artificial shoe supports or bracing, which weaken the supporting muscles from disuse:

1. Stand with feet parallel and look in a mirror where you can see your feet, or just look down.
2. Rise to toe and hold
3. Keep body weight over big and second toe with straight ankle position as you remain on tip-toe. Don't let your weight shift over the small toes, allowing ankle to bend outward.

Click the arrow to see this short movie of my student Diana's feet, as she first allows rolling the ankle outward when rising to toe, then at second 3 in the movie, she uses ankle, foot and leg muscles to pull to straight neutral ankle position. She prevents outward rolling as she again rises to toes three more times.

Prevent rolling outward whenever you rise on toe or push off or land from a jump or step.

Developing positioning sense in the receptors of your ankles prevents the sprain-promoting position called inversion, and gains built-in foot and ankle muscle strength and stability. Nice foot stretch too. Practice balancing on tip-toe, and rising up and down without rolling outward every day.

Labels: ankle, balance, fast fitness, feet, fix pain, injury, sprain, toes, video/movie

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Fast Fitness - Easy Handstand

Here is Fast Friday Fitness - if you have been afraid to try a handstand, here is a quick easy way to have success. You will strengthen your hands, wrist, arms, shoulders, upper body, and core, practice balance, and get blood circulating.

1. Crouch down near a wall (avoid slippery floor)
2. Put one foot high up on the wall
3. Lift up the other foot

If you have uncontrolled glaucoma or high blood pressure, ask your care providers first.

• Click here to see a quick video showing how to change sagging spine to neutral spine.
  
• Click Quick and Fun Arm and Body Strengthener for more on the benefits, plus drawings and description.

Labels: arm, balance, circulation, fast fitness, hand, handstand, shoulder, strength, wrist

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Married 63 Years With Good Balance

Reader Joe Blatt recently celebrated his 63rd wedding anniversary. He was a Broadway choreographer and dancer.

He demonstrates how to keep good flexibility and balance through the ordinary daily activity of standing to put on shoes and socks, and tying your shoes.

• Click Ancient Shoe Exercise for Hip Stretch and Balance to learn more about keeping fit through this normal daily activity.
• Click Fast Fitness - Balance, Strength, Stretch, and Socks to see the short movie of it made by reader David from Belgium.

Moving in the way your body needs for daily function is a functional exercise. Use this functional exercise every day.

Labels: aging, balance, hip, hip stretch, leg stretch, readers inspiring story, stretch

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Fast Fitness - Stronger Arms and Chest, and Core, Hip, and Leg Stability With A Friend

Here is Friday Fast Fitness - strengthen inner legs, thighs, arms, and core, while practicing neutral spine with a friend. More exercise than putting hands up on a bench or exercise ball.

My students Johanna (1) and Diana (2) demonstrate the beginning of this move. Description of how to progress follows the photos:

1. Partner 1 lies face up with bent knees
2. Partner 2 does pushups on Partner 1's knees while holding neutral spine, not letting the lower back sag and arch downward. Partner 1 gets entry-level exercise hip and core exercise by holding legs stable and does not let knees wobble. Higher-level exercise is described below the photos.
   
3. Switch and repeat.

• To see a short movie of how to change overarched hyperlordotic sagging spine to neutral spine for pushups, click Fast Fitness - Strengthen by Changing Your Plank.
• For photos to learn to spot hyperlordotic overarched spine and straight neutral spine, see Spotting Back Pain During Running and Walking - What Do Abs Have To Do With It?

To increase core and hip stabilization training for both partners, Partner 1 tilts knees slightly to each side while Partner 2 continues pushups. Try both moving continuously side to side, and holding legs stable at an angle. Do not twist your spine.

Have fun moving and laughing with a partner.

Labels: abdominal muscles, balance, chest, elbow, exercise ball, fast fitness, hand, hip strength, leg strength, partner exercise, strength, wrist

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Fast Fitness - Leap for Balance on Leap Year

Here is Friday Fast Fitness for the intercalary year (Leap Year) - Leap to develop ankle and knee stability, leg power, and balance.

1. Leap forward, landing on the other foot with soft shock absorption. Don't land hard, which jars joints.
2. "Stick" your landing, without wobbling or setting the first foot down.
3. Leap backward to the original foot and place. Hold your landing steady. Try several leaps forward and backward, then change the leading leg and repeat.

When landing, keep ankle stable by preventing your foot from rolling to the outside. Info in the post No More Ankle Sprains Part II.
Train knee and hip stability by preventing your knee from swaying inward upon landing - Healthy Knees.

Labels: ankle, balance, fast fitness, feet, hip, holiday, impact, knee, leg strength, sprain

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Household Fitness in the New Year

Start off the new year with fitness as a lifestyle. Use healthy movement and body positioning as you go about all your daily activities.

David from Belgium trains balance first thing



Ivy from New Zealand uses a half squat to functionally strengthen her legs and prevent back pain while making the bed.






See - Bending Right is Fitness as a Lifestyle.

















Our friend MomPon is relative to the abbot of the Muay Thai Monks on Horseback near the border of Myanmar (Burma). We stayed with her during the time we spent at the monastery. She sits straight and comfortably in full squat to get things for dinner from her garden, then to wash dishes in her kitchen. We do the same when we help. She stands straight with chin in to reach overhead to get tamarind fruit from her tree, see - Change Daily Reaching to Get Ab Exercise and Stop Back and Shoulder Pain.

Labels: balance, biking, children, gardening, lunge, posture, sitting, squat

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Fast Fitness - Dynamic Partner Balance Challenge

Here is Friday Fast Fitness - fun challenge for body stabilization, strength, speed, and balance with a friend.

1. Stand facing a partner
2. Stand on one foot, pressing the other against your partner's raised foot.
   
3. Push, pull, surprise your partner with unexpected movement change, all while remaining balanced. Change to push toe to toe and side to side.

Reader Bernie supplied this photo. His inspiring story will be posted in January. He registered for my back pain workshop two years ago, then skipped it to do surgery instead. His doctors told him that since his pain was from structural damage, that no exercise or repositioning would help. Bernie took my class two years later. Although much of the pain was from structural problems, several of which he didn't have until the surgery, we successfully fixed the worsened structural situation.

His story is posted in:

• Fixing Leg Numbness, Back Pain, Flank Pain, Knee Pain, Nerve Pain, Three Unhealthy Surgeries, Part I
• Fixing Leg Numbness, Back Pain, Flank Pain, Knee Pain, Nerve Pain, Three Unhealthy Surgeries, Part II
• and Cauda Equina - Result Not Cause

He also demonstrates for us:

• Fast Fitness - Quick Relaxing Hip Stretch
• Fast Fitness - Relaxing Hip, Leg, and Groin Stretch

Labels: aging, balance, fast fitness, leg strength, partner exercise, speed, strength

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Fast Fitness - Stabilization During Speed and Directional Change

Here is Friday Fast Fitness - a fun, real-body skill to improve stabilizing your spine, knee, ankle, and foot (and hopefully everywhere else with good positioning) while having fun.

Have a pillow fight standing on one foot:

1. When one partner has to touch down, change feet.
2. When the other loses balance, game over.
3. Swing fully without letting your lower back arch on the swing. Keep neutral spine.

No score, just the big desire to practice again and improve functional balance, stabilization, and have fun from movement.

To practice this solo, swing a pillow on your own. Use a progressively heavy object, such as a ball on a rope, dumbbell, kettlebell, and any household item. Breathe. Have fun.

Labels: balance, children, fast fitness, neutral spine, partner exercise, speed, stress

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Fast Fitness - Functional Agility, Flexibility, Strength

Here is Friday Fast Fitness - build balance, leg and hip strength, and flexibility as a lifestyle.

Lightly sit down on the floor and get up again without your hands.

Being able to rise from the floor is natural lifestyle movement, done in many places in the world by people up to the oldest years. My martial arts student Ms. Han demonstrates in the short mpeg movie. Click the arrow to run the video:

Labels: aging, balance, fast fitness, hip strength, hip stretch, leg press, leg strength, leg stretch, sitting, video/movie

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After School Trapeze Arts is Good Exercise

My mother is a Russian circus teacher. We recently went with her to a recital of a neighbor who teaches elementary trapeze arts. The performers, age about 10 to a women in her 50s, were having fun moving and pulling themselves up and down ropes, scarves, and hoops. It wasn't a polished performance or high technical ability. That wasn't the point. They were lifting their body weight, climbing, stretching, balancing, focusing, burning calories, learning safety and cooperation, exercising, developing arm, hand, wrist, and grip strength, and moving their bodies in functional ways.

Their over-dramatic costumes flopped over their faces when they hung upside down. One young performer wore fly-front long johns. They seemed to think they were great artists. True or not, they were moving, smiling, stretching, laughing, and exercising to do art and fun.

Check for fun safe programs near you of healthy movement of all kinds. Get the good they can provide of new fun ways to use your body and mind functionally. If they use traditional stretches and exercises to warm-up that are not healthful, change or skip them. These posts give ideas:

• Sitting Badly Isn't Magically Healthy by Calling It a Hamstring Stretch
• The Stretch You Need The Least
• Common Exercises Teach Hip Tightness When Kicking, Stretching, and on the Stairs
• Aren't You Supposed To Stick Your Behind Out to Sit Down or Do Squats?
• Better Shoulder and Triceps Stretch
• Change Common Exercises to Get Better Ab Exercise and Stop Back Pain
• Stop doing crunches (ever again) - Good Life Works Better Than Bad Ab Exercise
• Instantly Better Hip and Quadriceps Stretch
• Better Achilles Tendon Stretch

Labels: arm, balance, children, hand, partner exercise, strength, stretch, warmup, weight loss, wrist

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Fast Fitness - Strength, Abs, Balance, and Ankle and Leg Stabilization

Here is Friday Fast Fitness - quickly increase functional stabilization of the knee, leg, and ankle while increasing overall strength and balance.

Anyone can lift weights, but can you do it balancing on a basketball? Get started by standing on one foot:

1. Do your regular lifts, curls, presses while standing on one foot (and then the other). Breathe.


2. Notice the leg you stand on. Don't let the arch of your foot flatten toward the floor, or knee roll inward toward the other leg. Hold knee, ankle, arch inline, using your muscles. See Arch Support Is Not From Shoes.
   


3. Don't lean your upper body backward (increasing lower back arch) when lifting arms up - a hidden source of back pain. See Change Daily Reaching to Get Ab Exercise and Stop Back and Shoulder Pain.

It reduces exercise to sit, even on a fitness ball. It is more exercise, more functional, and better balance training to stand on one foot than to sit. You sit all day already.

Be safe, be excited about having fun doing functional movement, be happy.

Labels: abdominal muscles, ankle, arches, arm, balance, exercise ball, fast fitness, hip strength, knee, leg strength, neutral spine, pronation, sitting, strength

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Fast Fitness - Balance, Strength, Stretch, and Socks

Here is Friday Fast Fitness with a new debut - web movies!

Fitness Fixer reader David D of Belgium has been making us many helpful mpegs. This one shows how to get several important physical skills and daily built-in fitness as a lifestyle by simply standing while dressing:

1. Stand with one ankle crossed over opposite knee
2. Put on your sock while balanced, safely.

If you want more, stay balanced and retrieve your shoe from the floor and put that on too. Stand to put on trousers and other clothes instead of sitting. The more you use balance, the more balance will develop.


Don't strain or force or round your back or make anything go pop. The idea is to learn to move in healthier ways, not unhealthy ones. The post Ancient Shoe Exercise for Hip Stretch and Balance explains more. Breathe. Have fun.

Labels: balance, fast fitness, hip, hip strength, hip stretch, leg strength, leg stretch, lower back, video/movie

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Fast Fitness - Speed and Eye Hand Coordination

Here is Friday Fast Fitness - Train speed and eye-hand coordination while having fun.

Have you seen martial arts movies where the master catches a fly with his chopsticks? The true master doesn't restrain or harm the lives of others. In the spirit of healthful exercise, World Vegetarian month and higher spirit, try this instead:

1. Tear a sheet of paper to different size pieces
2. Throw in the air
3. Catch as many pieces as you can as they flutter downward.

Want more? Use only one hand to catch. Then switch.

You can play this with children too. Get more exercise and prevent pain by using healthy bending to pick pieces up and start again.

Have fun.

Labels: arm, balance, children, circulation, fast fitness, hand, performance enhancing modality, speed, spirit

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Getting More From a Hip Stretch

This post tells the Hip Stretch story started with Inspirational Ivy in August. In that post, Ivy tells how she used healthful body mechanics to fix a serious and extended attack of sciatica and foot drop the year before. Several posts since, have given fun updates. Here is the fun that the Hip Stretch started:

Feb 2006, Ivy from New Zealand wrote to me,

"My hips are tight, particularly the right side that being the side I had the severe attack of sciatica. I have worked so hard on my hamstrings and my "dropped" foot, the bonus being that I am winning. Now it is time to put the same amount of work into my hips."

I figured Ivy would start with the Better Posterior Hip and Piriform Stretch and a few of the other hip stretches in my books, then apply them for daily life by crossing one ankle over the other knee for putting on shoes, shown at right, described in Ancient Shoe Exercise for Hip Stretch and Balance, and that would be that.

In August 2007, she wrote,

"I am jumping for joy. No, I haven't won a million dollars.

"After having been doing the posterior hip stretch lying down for the past 21 months twice a day, I can now do the same stretch sitting. My hips have always been so tight and there was no way that I could get my ankle across the knee - this has been my goal and I have done it. I have to be honest, I have not got it to perfection, that being my next goal. I wonder if that will take another 21 months. It just shows that a little persistence pays off in the end. I trust that all is well with you."

Twenty-one months - what a dedicated learner. It was a joy to work with enthusiastic Ivy. I wrote back saying it should not take so long, and asked if she did the stretch standing up to put on shoes and socks to make it real life, not an artificial stretch. Ivy wrote back,

"I have tried standing to put my sox on and cannot quite make it YET (note the yet), that will come. I do, however, ensure that I always stand to remove my sox, and the like. Also to put them on except for the sox. I also stand when I moisturize my legs and feet - I do this so as to improve my balance."

I wrote back encouraging putting socks and shoes on and off while standing. The point of stretching is healthy function, not to "do a stretch" just to have a greater range. The benefit is from applying the stretch to ability to stand steadily on one foot and have muscle stretch and length to put on shoes standing .

Four hours later Ivy wrote back:

"Wow, I did it. I have just returned from a 30 minute walk, did some lunges as a further warm up and thought I would give it a try. I cheated, instead of shoes, I used slippers - I thought it would be easier. Tomorrow I will try shoes.

"Dr Jolie, you are my inspiration, you asked if I could do it and that set me a challenge. I must NEVER SAY CAN'T. As you are probably aware, I am a very motivated woman, however, there is no one to spur me along - you have done that and again, I can only say a huge thank you."

The next day this arrived,

"I am very pleased with myself. I just needed that push. As I said yesterday, I must never say can't again.

"Again, all I can say is a huge thank you. A huge hug from me."

Readers, stand with safe balance to dress. Send me your fun photos, mpegs (short computer video) and stories of using healthful range of motion for daily life.

Original story and updates:

• Inspirational Ivy
• Inspirational Ivy II - Beating Foot Drop and Sciatica, and Getting Healthier
• Good Life Works Better Than Bad Ab Exercise
• Farm Work, Lifestyle Exercise, and Preventing Overuse Pain

Ivy is a great-grandmother! (and a pretty great person too). She says,

"I guess I am very much like my late father who was a quiet achiever who used to tell me to 'stand tall and be proud of who you are' - I pass this advice on to my kids all the time."

Labels: balance, hip strength, hip stretch, leg stretch, readers inspiring story, sciatica, shoes, spirit, stress, stretch

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Farm Work, Lifestyle Exercise, and Preventing Overuse Pain

Reader Ivy from New Zealand wrote me that she was house-sitting for friends on their farm. When you read her note, remember that Ivy is a great-grandmother,

"You were very much on my mind yesterday. My friends had arranged for someone to come onto the property to feed the stock. By 5pm no one had turned up so I decided that I would have to do it myself.

"Picture me pushing wheelbarrow loads of hay - carrying buckets of water to fill the troughs and so the list goes on. The paddocks were muddy so had to wear gumboots. I was terrified of falling over. Chickens to be fed, eggs to fetch, pony to be fed plus the sheep and cows. Two of the water troughs had to be filled by hand hence the buckets. I tried to crawl (yes crawl) through the bush to get the hose through to no avail. I can laugh now, however, it wasn't funny at the time.

"This is where you come in - I kept repeating these words to myself the whole time "Now do what Dr Jolie has taught you, use your abs, tuck your hip" (to neutral spine so that the lower spine does not overarch) - "Squat, Ivy, squat - don't bend over."

"The whole thing took me 2 hours - I really thought I would have back ache and that the sciatica would rear its ugly head, but no, I am fine (Jolie's note: Ivy stopped previous sciatica using these healthy techniques). My evening meal consisted of a slice of bread and some fruit - I was too tired to even think of cooking. After a hot shower, I fell into bed exhausted and slept through until 6.30am. I don't have any aches or pain.

"That was my day."

I mailed Ivy a few days later to check how she was feeling. Ivy was still great and wrote,

"The neighbours arrived to check the sheep which are ready to drop their lambs. Needless to say Dr Jolie, I am hoping that they hold off until Harriet and family arrive back home on Monday."

We will see if there will be a post about Ivy using good bending and sitting mechanics to tend birthing sheep and baby lambs.

Related Fitness Fixer articles to learn the skills Ivy used:

• Pushing heavy loads without strain
• Bend well with one foot in front of the other - the lunge
• Bend with feet side by side - the half-squat
• Why good bending gives better exercise and prevents pain or injury
• Better balance
• Carrying loads - preventing upper back pain and lower back pain
• Abdominal muscle use when reaching, standing, walking, or running, and for strengthening.

Readers have asked for posts on wrist strength and stopping wrist pain with use and exercise. It is in the works. I am also still working on the post I started with, where Ivy wrote of success doing a hip stretch, coming soon.

Readers, feel inspired, get out of the gym and have some fun lifestyle exercise, have fun taking photos, and send in your own success stories.

Labels: abdominal muscles, aging, balance, fix pain, lunge, neutral spine, readers inspiring story, sciatica, squat

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Fast Fitness - Stronger, Straighter Upper Back

Here is Friday Fast Fitness - Quickly strengthen and straighten the upper back, improve balance, and learn better shoulder position for reaching.

Last Fast Fitness Friday started this one for a strong base. Now that you have practiced, add the upper body:

1. Stand on one foot. Lift the other leg in back and bend at the hip until your body is perpendicular to your leg as in the photo, like the top bar in letter T. See how the body is straight in line with the brown field in the photo?
2. Hold both arms in front of you, parallel to the floor, hands level with, or above your head. Lift from your chest, not neck. Keep your shoulders down and back. Don't hunch or round your shoulder or it will impede raising the arms.
3. Hold straight as long as you can. Switch legs. Hold straight as long as you can.

Work with a mirror or friend until you can tell straight positioning on your own.
Want less? Raise only arm.
Breathe. Enjoy.

Labels: arm, balance, fast fitness, hamstring, hip, leg stretch, lower back, posture, shoulder, upper back

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Fast Fitness - Better Back and Backside Muscles

Here is Friday Fast Fitness - Quickly strengthen lower back and backside muscles, improve balance, stretch your legs, and learn straighter positioning:

1. Stand on one foot.
2. Lift the other leg in back. Bend only at the hip until your entire body is parallel to the floor (like the top bar in letter T) as in the photo. Do not droop your leg down in back or droop your chest in front. Do not jut your chin forward. Chin in. Look in a mirror until you can tell straight positioning on your own.
3. Hold straight as long as you can. Switch legs. Hold straight as long as you can.

Want more? Do the same, standing tip-toe.

Labels: balance, fast fitness, hamstring, hip, hip stretch, leg strength, leg stretch, lower back, posture

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Parcours - Old Fun Is New Exercise

Parcours is pronounced par-core. It is a French word meaning "course" or trail. A parcours is a path with obstacles at varied intervals. You navigate using your body and brain, similar to steeplechase.

Some parcours are formally designed municipal parks. Some are impromptu collections of trees, walls, buildings, windows, and rocks. On a rainy day you can make your own in your house.

In ancient times, a course might involve days of travel. Today, several cities around the world have public courses used by people of all abilities and ages. Modern fitness programs use it, with names like freerunning and various brand names, but the idea is not new.

Stations may be a log to walk across, rings to swing on, various height and shape objects to stretch on and around, a place to see how far or high you can jump, something to balance on, a ladder or wall to climb over or under.

To get to the next station, you can walk, run, bike, skate, or whatever you can do. Parcours length varies from a block to miles. Some people make a day of it with picnics and rests between stations. Others go make a quick lunch run over part or all of the course.

In the early 1980s I was the first person to put exercise programs aboard cruise ships. Until then, cruises were associated only with deck chairs and food. I was told exercise would not catch on. I ran exercise, health education, and stretch classes, and led the scuba and snorkel trips. I also led a parcours, taking about an hour, all over the ship, from deck to deck, stem to stern, over and under tables, chairs, hatches, and railings, and through the cha-cha lessons. We ran, we walked, we balanced, we cha-cha'd, we tip-toed very fast to get away, we laughed.

Parcours uses the body in natural ways to build strength, spirit, and balance. It can be healthier, better training, and more fun than doing artificial repetitions of an isolated exercise.

More to come on keeping parcours safe for joints, and preventing injuries.

Labels: balance, children, circulation, spirit, strength, stretch

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Calories Burned in Prayer

Last week at the sports medicine conference, I talked to a researcher from Kuwait University. Dr. Jasem Ramadan presented a lovely little study called Bioenergetics of Islamic Prayers, measuring the amount of oxygen and calories the physical movements of the prayers burned.

Five standard prayers (Salat) are mandatory every day for every adult male and female Muslim. Each prayer has a continuous sequence of body movements (Rakkas) consisting of standing, bowing, kneeling and sitting. Each Rakka lasts between 3 and 6 minutes. Dr. Ramadan looked at the energy cost of two and four Rakka prayers in thirty-two male and female adults. He found that Salats have a positive effect on metabolic function. For an 80 kg person, energy cost of daily prayers was about 80 calories a day, and could be considered a form of physical activity that enhances fitness.

Dr. Ramadan told me, "The prayers have been done for thousands of years and no one thinks about it as physical exercise." I told him I think that often. I told him that Russian Orthodox prayer was pretty physical. A liturgy lasts hours, done standing and continuously crossing yourself from the floor in a squat to high overhead. Everyone including the oldest people do this, up and down, and up and down, and up and down, stretching and squatting, reaching and bending. I always thought it was group community health activity, probably found long ago to be protective against many ailments (and attributed divinely). The original yogas were the same, reaching upward to exalt the heavens, bowing, kneeling, prostrating, rising, over and over.

I told Dr. Ramadan that many Westerners aren't comfortably able to do the kneeling Rakka shown in Healthy Toe Stretches or rise to a stand without using their hands, as in the post Quick and Easy Strength and Balance Exercise, not only the elderly, but the rest of the population too.

He seemed surprised and interested. I told him I believed that this lack of basic human movement for real daily life was a major contributor to the epidemic numbers of people who are too weak and unstable to get up unassisted, to walk without canes and walkers, have trouble taking stairs, have poor balance, and for much knee and hip pain and degeneration. Dr. Ramadan said that elders in his country do not suffer knee and hip arthritis in high numbers, and can easily rise from the floor into their old age. I told him that many Westerners are familiar with a device that is worn, with a button to press for help if they cannot get up from the floor or chair. At this point, he was sure I was kidding.

If you cannot get up from the floor or low chair easily without using your hands, you likely have dangerously decreased leg strength and balance. Use good bending to strengthen your legs and knees many times a day and improve your fitness, explained in the post How Often Should You Be Healthy? Use healthy movement every day to sit, rise, bend right, clean, garden, give thanks, stretch, take stairs, and play to get healthy functional exercise, and prevent common joint pain. That is fitness as a lifestyle.

Labels: aging, arthritis, balance, fix pain, hip, hip stretch, knee, leg strength, leg stretch, strength, stretch, weight loss, yoga

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Functional Achilles Stretch

Sitting in full squat with heels down can be healthful and useful. Squatting for daily life is a built-in Achilles stretch, more effective and functional than the standard "lunge and lean stretch" against the wall, or lowering one heel from a step or ledge. Better Achilles Tendon Stretch shows one Achilles tendon stretch that is effective and quick. Sitting in a full squat is another. Rising from the squat adds functional leg muscle strengthening and balance.

I took the photo, above left, in an airport in Asia. The man was easily sitting to work on his laptop during the hour before boarding. Others were similarly sitting with laptops and mobile devices to get work done. Elders squatted that way to rest.

Achilles Stretch in the Bathroom introduced the full squat as a functional normal daily action used in many countries for resting, washing, gardening, working, washing, toileting, chatting on the phone, and other activities, and gave an idea of how to try it. Save Knees When Squatting explains how keeping the heels down rather than lifting heels to rest on the ball of the foot is safer for the knees. Reader Mim supplied a wonderful link in the comments for a great little film of the Asia squat. More Fun Squatting tells a funny squatting story.

People new to squatting may find their Achilles tendons are too tight to bend in this normal manner. Reader Ivy of New Zealand offered to demonstrate one easy way to practice this stretch in a safe way, and sent the photo at right.

Keep both heels down while holding something sturdy in front. Straighten your arms and lean back to shift weight away from the knee joints.

Squatting can be a nice stretch for your lower back too. I have been working, off and on, for some years on the interesting finding that slight forward spine rounding when just sitting on your heels in the squat (no weights) does not load the spine to the extent of sitting on your behind in a chair. Be smart about trying it or not if you already have damaged knees. When rising, make sure to keep knees back over your feet, not sliding forward, which loads the knee joint, or inward at an angle (narrower than your feet), which can twist the joint. Either action can grind against the meniscus and cartilage.

Done properly, it should feel good on the Achilles and calf, lower back, be good exercise, not hurt the knees, and become an option for a functional stretch and even normal sitting ability.

Labels: achilles stretch, balance, leg strength, leg stretch, lower back, sitting, squat, strength, stretch

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Do Fun, Not Exercise

Today I took a break from a study we're doing, to do the Leg Stretch That Strengthens Arms in yesterday's post. It is a good exercise that you can do quickly.

A pile of assorted scientific utensils fell out of my pockets, along with pens, rulers, scribbled data notes, a telemetry battery, the roster for a new class starting tonight, and - strange for a scientist - an amount of money in the form of a few coins.

I have long taught to shift weight while holding a handstand to progressively strengthen arms until you can walk on your hands, and to stand balancing on one hand. The idea is to work so that you will be able to do it. Today I was reminded how practical it can be.

Here is a new fun exercise while standing upside down on your hands - shift weight to stand on one hand and retrieve objects on the floor with the other hand to stuff them back in your pocket.

Of course, everything will fall back out. Then you laugh upside down and pick them up again. This will last through a good exercise session. My hat also kept popping off, another good exercise to get back on while upside down. If you need to shoo pets away from your face, all the more exercise. Be safe. Have fun.

To get started doing handstands in a safe, controlled manner, see Quick and Fun Arm and Body Strengthener. It is an excellent upper body and core strengthener and balance trainer.

Labels: arm, balance, strength, stress, stretch, upper back

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Leg Stretch that Strengthens Arms

Readers have e-mailed for more upper body strengtheners.

Increasing upper body strength helps many things. The post Quick and Fun Arm and Body Strengthener listed several benefits to your health and daily activities, and gave a quick, fun upper body strengthener that needs no weights or equipment, no trip to the gym, can be done in the home or office, and improves balance at the same time. It is not as hard as it looks.

Consult the post link and exercise your brains and common sense first:

1. Crouch down in front of a wall (drawing 1).
2. Put one foot up high on the wall (drawing 2).
3. Raise the other so that both feet are on the wall (drawing 3) to produce a quick and easy to do handstand.
4. Hold yourself steady. Relax and breathe.
5. The above link explained how to use this easy handstand to do various other exercises to progressively strengthen.

To add an effective leg stretch:

1. While holding the wall handstand, gently, carefully, lower one foot on the wall, then lift the other foot far away from the wall
2. Open legs overhead into a wide split (drawing at left)
3. Hold, breathe, relax, enjoy
4. Switch legs to stretch the other side.

This stretch feels great and is fun to do. As far as I have been able to determine, it is good for the shoulder (as long as you don't fall on it or do something not intended in this stretch).

Hold weight on your hand and forearm muscles instead of only mashing your wrists back to keep this move a good strengthen for the wrist, which is often needed to prevent wrist pain.

This fun exercise improves balance and is effective to improve your ability to hold body positioning steady - two important skills for health. Use your muscles to hold your torso straight, without letting it sag and sway.

Have fun and develop fun healthy movement with this combination stretch, balance exercise, and strengthener. This stretch and others for all ability levels is in the book Stretching Smarter Stretching Healthier.

Labels: arm, balance, hip, leg stretch, strength, stretch, wrist

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Fixing Fitness Myths

"The public has an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except which is worth knowing." - Oscar Wild

April 1 seems to be a day to notice, more than usual, if things in the news are not facts but April Fool. On other days, urban legends and other stories are still popular, sometimes more popular than what is really going on.

The observation that the Earth is flat seemed obviously true at one time until we had more information. It used to be a taught as a medical fact that the cause of epilepsy was masturbation. When I was in school, one of my medical books stated that you don't need to eat calcium since you can "get all you need from your bones." It is true that you pull calcium from your bones when you don't eat enough, although with unhealthy results.

The post Forensic Science told of two crime-science myths, often still taught in forensic books and popularized in television shows, which were never true. Following are more posts hoping to replace myth with information, so that you can get stronger and do more, without the injuries or restrictions in activity that are part of many fitness or injury rehab practices.

Feet and Ankles

Myth - You need tight shoes for support. Fact - tight shoes can deform toes and prevent healthy muscle use:
Are Your Shoes Too Tight?
and Healthy Toe Stretches.

Myth - All ankle stretches prevent sprains. Fact - Some may enhance predisposition to ankle sprains:
Unhealthy Yoga Ankles.

Myth - Following an ankle sprain, bracing must be continuous since no exercise can restore the area. Here is another way -
How To Treat Ankle Sprains and Prevent Them
and
No More Ankle Sprains Part II.

Dispelling Myths of Orthotics Use:

Myth - Only orthotics can place your arches in neutral position. Fact - your own muscles can often do the same:
Arch Support Is Not From Shoes
and
Which Shoes Help Exercise, Fall Prevention, and Ankles?

Dispelling Aging Myths - That respiratory function only declines with age:

Do Breathing Exercises Work?

Dispelling Aging Myths - That you only get weaker with aging:

Getting Stronger is for Everyone
What I Learned at the Aging Conference
Better Balance by Christmas
Conference on Aging Dec 2, 2006 in Midtown New York.

Dispelling Nutrition for Exercise Myths:

That weight gain with aging is primarily lower metabolism: Metabolism - How to Lose Weight and Save Money

or that Healthy eating is difficult or expensive:
What Medical Students Told Me About Nutrition.

Myth that you must eat much protein to get muscles:
Get Muscles for Christmas

Myth that acid prevention drugs are harmless:
Stomach Acid Drugs May Increase Osteoporosis and Hip Fractures

Myth that food marked "Health Food" means it has to be healthy:
Is Your Health Food Unhealthy
and Exercise Common Sense Discipline - Turn Down Halloween Junk Food

and the myth that it's healthy for children to eat junk food:
A Little Good Exercise, a Lot of Bad Food - Overweight Still No Mystery.

Myths that only gyms and weights can improve your strength:

How to get natural exercise is in Rocky IV and Healthier Exercise,
Getting Stronger Without a Gym
Exercising With A Friend - Partner Leg Press
Don't Confuse Exercise With Real Fitness
Healthy Toe Stretches
Quick and Fun Arm and Body Strengthener
and Quick and Easy Strength and Balance Exercise.

More to come for smart, fun, healthier ways to get exercise.

Labels: aging, ankle, arches, arm, balance, breathing, feet, fix pain, forensic, holiday, leg stretch, myths, nutrition, osteoporosis, partner exercise, shoes, sprain, strength, toes, yoga

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No More Ankle Sprains Part II

The previous post How To Treat Ankle Sprains and Prevent Them promised another effective technique on the missing link in preventing and rehabbing ankle sprains in today's post. It follows below. First, it made news yesterday that a well known name in spine research, Stuart McGill, found what I have been saying for nearly 30 years of my research career - that tightening the abs and "sucking them in" inhibits healthful movement, and using the popular "draw in the abs" technique is making yoga and Pilates classes the sources of more back pain and problems. The post What Abdominal Muscles Don't Do - The Missing Link shows why crunches and Pilates are not the best exercises for core muscles, and the comment replies to Healthier Backpack Carrying to Get Better Exercise and Stop Back Pain give more links on how abs really work. The next post will cover the news from Dr. McGill and my years of research of what works the abdominal muscles in healthier ways instead.

So today you get two breakthrough fitness posts in one. Now the promised second fun thing to do for more stable ankles. Maybe you never sprained your ankle but wear supportive shoes thinking that will keep you from sprains. Maybe you've sprained your ankle in the past, and rested it and keep it braced during activity thinking that will help, and did ankle exercises, usually consisting of "spelling the alphabet" in the air with your foot or using resistance bands. The "exercises" often do not prevent repeat sprains, leading people to think that exercise will not help and only bracing will "support" an ankle. Rest and bracing often make things worse - the numbers show many repeat sprains in people following this method. Why?

The missing link is receptors in your ankle that sense if you are standing straight on your ankle or if your ankle is bending outward, a movement called inversion. In an inversion sprain, the bottom of your foot turns toward the other leg and your ankle bends too much, overstretching or tearing the connective ligaments. Inversion is the most common source of sprains. There are two common beliefs in medicine - that strengthening will help prevent sprains, and that strengthening will not help. Both points of view are missing that preventing sprains requires something else - training the receptors that tell you if you are about to invert. This sense is called proprioception. Without it, the ankle does not send signals to your leg muscles to prevent you from turning it. With proprioception training, you learn how to sense ankle position and balance to keep it from inverting. Allowing inversion when stepping up or down is surprisingly common, even in people who exercise frequently. No wonder they get sprains. The last post showed the interesting proprioception drill of rising to toes while not allowing your ankle to invert. Try that first, then try this next step:

1. Rise to tiptoe and lower to full foot, keeping your ankles straight without allowing your weight to shift over your small toes. Keep weight over your big and second toe. Repeat at least 10 times.
2. Work up to rising to toe and lowering on just one foot (good for balance).
3. Work up to careful jumps, first coming down on both feet, then on one foot. Each time, land with your weight centered over your big and second toe, not turning your ankle outward, then roll gently down until the whole foot is one the floor.
4. Use the above stabilization technique each time you step up or down from anything, including stairs and curbs.
5. With this practice, you can train your ankles to deliberately hold healthy position with each foot-fall, reducing your risk of sprains, instead of letting the ankle turn outward.

Related Fitness Fixer:

Unhealthy Yoga Ankles
and
Better Hip Stretch - Check Your Ankles
show a common way that people predispose themselves to sprains by overstretching ankle ligaments without knowing it, and how to prevent it.

Coming Next:

Why Using Abs Is Not Tightening.

Labels: ankle, balance, feet, gait, injury, sprain, yoga

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How To Treat Ankle Sprains and Prevent Them

The post Which Shoes Help Exercise, Fall Prevention, and Ankles? showed why you don't need high top shoes, or arch supports, or orthotics to prevent your arches and ankles from sagging inward (pronation, arch flattening, or flat feet). You can quickly train your ankles and feet to hold straight stable position using your own sense of positioning that comes from receptors in the muscles and connective tissue around your ankle and foot. The post Arch Support Is Not From Shoes gives a simple retraining to restore healthy comfortable arches and prevent the pronation that can cause knee, hip, ankle and foot pain. It's easy, built-in exercise-as-a-lifestyle.

What about feet and ankles that turn the other way - bending outward, not inward, at the ankle so that you may turn your ankle causing a fall or sprain? What if you already have sprained your ankle and want to get back to activities and prevent future sprains? The same simple principle applies. Using easy positioning training, you can teach your ankles to sense when they are turning too much to the outside, and quickly send signals to your ankle, foot, and leg muscles to straighten your ankle and prevent a sprain. This works well, even with damaged and overstretched ankle ligaments, and is key to rehabbing a sprain.

Wearing supportive shoes, an air cast, splints, taping, and elastic bands to brace an injured ankles is a common practice that perpetuates weak, unstable ankles because these devices prevent sense of balance and positioning. Wearing these things to "support" non-injured ankles for hiking and walking is just as bad. Within only one day of wearing an ankle brace, whether you have a sprain or not, balance is quickly diminished. You can put a healthy person in an ankle brace and test their ability to stand on that foot without the brace at the end of one day and find they are less able to balance and more likely to tip over. This problem compounds each day a brace is worn.

The missing link in ankle rehab and the reason for so many repeat sprains is staying in the bracing and not doing enough balance and positioning retraining after the last sprain. This is why resting an ankle, bracing it, and reducing activity can make things worse. It is also the reason why the usual ankle strengthening exercises have not been working, and people keep spraining their ankles despite strengthening exercises. The issue in ankle sprains is not as much strength as sense of positioning, called proprioception. You need simple and easy-to-do proprioception exercises. Would you like to try one?

1. Stand up. Keep both feet facing straight ahead, not turned out.
2. Rise up on tiptoe. Notice if you allow your weight to teeter over the small toes, tipping your feet and ankles outward. That is the poor positioning and lack of the stabilization that allows your ankle to turn in the outward direction that allows sprains. You don't want this bad positioning to occur any time you are walking, hiking, jumping, dancing, or moving in any way. Not even when sitting.
3. Shift your body weight over your big toe and second toe. Don't let your ankles sag inward or outward. Hold your ankles straight.
4. Hold standing up on tiptoe with straight, good positioning as long as you can. You can practice this on the phone, or when doing dishes or laundry. Make sure you use it in real life activities whenever standing on your toes to reach and lift.

Next: More fun ankle proprioception retraining to rehab ankle sprains and learn to prevent future sprains - No More Ankle Sprains Part II.

Labels: ankle, balance, feet, fix pain, injury, orthotics, pronation, sprain

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Exercising With A Friend - Partner Leg Press

It's Valentine week. Each post this week will show a fun way to improve health with a friend.

The Partner Leg Press strengthens your legs, hips, and posture muscles, and practices balance and good body position. It can be safely done with children too.

1. Partner 1 lies face up on the floor with both feet raised.
2. Partner 2 positions themselves facing down, with Partner 1's feet on their chest or abdomen, and holding their body straight (photo 1).
3. Partner 1, on the floor, bends knees to lower and pushes legs almost straight, in a leg-press action.
4. Repeat the leg pressing many times, trying for at least 10 presses, then switch places.
5. Be careful. This one is so much fun that Partner 2 may drool on, or fall on Partner 1 by accident (or purpose). Have fun on Valentine's Day.
6. Then try the Partner Leg Press with Partner 2 face up (photo 2). Start by partially sitting with Partner 1's feet on your back, and "walk" your feet away for straight positioning. Do several presses, then switch places.

Even when you're on your own, you don't need weights or machines to strengthen your legs. Past posts have shown how healthy bending during daily life strengthens legs in the same way as squats in a gym:
Free Exercise and Free Back and Knee Pain Prevention - Healthy Bending
and
How Good Would You Look From 400 Squats a Day - Just Stop Unhealthy Bending

As you do the fun Partner Leg Press, you adjust your balance and positioning for the other person. Working with a partner practices cooperation and empathy - important and often ignored aspects of health.

Why tell a loved one or child you can't spend time with them because you need to go exercise? Instead of making exercise isolating and separating, and something you have to stop your life and disrupt your family to do, make it unifying, friendly, and fun. That is health.

More partner exercise can be found in the book Healthy Martial Arts.

Labels: balance, holiday, leg press, leg strength, partner exercise, strength

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Healthy Toe Stretches

Don't forget to stretch your toes. You need mobile toes for balance, healthy walking mechanics, and foot health.

Every day, take your feet in your hands and stretch your toes apart side to side, easily and comfortably. Make sure all your toes can move apart from each other, and that each one moves up and down. It is not healthy for your toes to remain stuck together and not moving.

Sitting in various ways can be a built-in stretch for the toes. If you sit on your heels, as in the photo at left, or kneel on your hands and knees with toes curled under you, or when you are sitting in your chair right now, see if you can bend your foot behind you and still touch all your toes to the floor - even your little toes. Don't force toes to bend, just gently see if they all reach the floor. After stretching your toes back (toward the top of your foot) bend them all down toward the bottom of your foot. Many people, particularly people who wear heeled shoes wind up with toes that are bent upward all the time. The tendons on the top of the foot can shorten from keeping the toes bent up, and the toes can get stuck in a pulled-up position. Future posts will cover more on stretching your feet for mobility, pain control, and health.

When you sit, as in the photo above, see if you can rise to a stand without pushing off the floor with your hands or bracing your hands against your leg or knee. Just use your leg muscles and get a strength and balance exercise while you get a nice stretch on the bottom of your feet.

The photo was taken when I studied a medicine course in Cambodia. Before and after classes you practice respect, concentration, and self-discipline. While you do this, you get a lot of physical exercise - it is commonplace for people of any age to kneel without using hands for anything except to hold the candles, flowers, and incense, and to rise the same way. The photo was taken in the middle of bowing, so I am not fully straightened yet. The nun is laughing. My Cambodian is so bad that I made her laugh. I think that is good exercise and good medicine too.

Photo by Paul

Labels: ankle, arches, balance, feet, fix pain, gait, leg strength, orthotics, pronation, shoes, spirit, squat, strength, stretch, toes

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Achilles Stretch in the Bathroom

In the airport, an obvious tourist arriving here in Asia proudly waved a travel pack of toilet seat covers and claimed to be ready for the germs of travel. Another tourist nearby announced that it was a problem for him that women couldn't go to the bathroom outdoors. I asked him why he thought they couldn't. He said it was because they can't stand up to go, and someone needed to invent a tray so that they could. I asked him if men sat to pass their bowels. He seemed surprised when he realized that everyone does natural things the same way. Both men and women have been sitting to "go" for thousands of years before plumbing and raised seats were invented.

All over Asia, Africa, India, the South Sea continents and islands, and even in places in Europe and the Americas, men, women, and children routinely and easily sit in full squat to eat, wait, talk on the phone, rest, relax, wash, and do other activities of life. The tourist with her seat covers may quickly find that squatting is cleaner than touching a seat. Many people who first encounter Western sit-down plumbing think it is unclean and barbaric. The squat is a functional and excellent leg strengthener and Achilles tendon stretch. People in their 80s and older who routinely squat have strong legs and healthy good knees, and can easily rise from the floor.

Would you like to try the squat? (Use your brain to be safe to try things or not, if you have damaged knees):

• Keep both heels down (right drawing) as you bend both knees, which protects your knees.
• One way to practice the squat if your Achilles tendons are too tight, is to hold something in front of you, like a counter or sink, and bend both knees as much as you can with both heels down.
  
• While holding the support in front of you, lean back with both arms straight so that your weight stays over your whole foot and heels, which moves your weight off your knee joints and back onto your leg muscles.
• Try to balance and sit without holding on. If you find yourself falling backward, or if your heels come up (left drawing), it is likely that your Achilles tendons are too tight for this normal activity. Put one or both hands behind you to lean on (not in the squat bathroom but just to practice).

Every time you bend around the house, use a small squat with both heels down, described in Bending Right is Fitness as a Lifestyle and Free Exercise and Free Back and Knee Pain Prevention - Healthy Bending. You will strengthen your thighs and hip, develop healthful bending that stops knee pain, strengthen your shins, and stretch your Achilles tendons each time. As this routing bending strengthens and stretches your legs, progress to lower and lower bending until you can comfortably sit in a squat. Have fun.

Drawing of Backman!™ © copyright Dr. Jolie Bookspan. Read more fun and functional stretching in the book Stretching Smarter Stretching Healthier

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Labels: achilles stretch, balance, knee, leg strength, leg stretch, squat, stretch

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Abdominal Muscle Exercise - Better, Different, Not What You Think

Many medical fitness programs, health and exercise classes, and kickboxing and martial arts practices have a complicated and ritualized belief structure that the abdominal muscles have some magic or central function. They try to fix back pain or improve posture through abdominal strengthening programs. Usually these strengthening programs use the same unhealthful rounding forward motions that cause high pressure on your lumbar discs, practice unhealthful bent-forward posture, and perpetuate several common pain syndromes.

Here in Thailand, the Muay Thai kick-boxers and training camps do not have any beliefs about the torng, or abdomen. Even so, the Thai boxers are among the world's best-conditioned fighters. You can swing a bat at their abdomen and it would not faze them. In fact, that is part of training in many training camps. Today I have an abdominal muscle training exercise for you that is more fun than that:

The post Change Common Exercises to Get Better Ab Exercise and Stop Back Pain showed how the pushup, or just holding a pushup position, called The Plank is often done allowing the lower back to overly arch and sag under body weight, as in the upper photo at left. This extra arching, called hyper-lordosis, pressures the lower back and means that you are not getting exercise because you are just resting your body weight on the joints of your lower back instead of holding up your body weight in a straighter, healthier position, shown in the lower photo. Try this:

• Hold a plank position and use the pelvic tilt, or hip tuck to straighten your spine as taught in the post Throw a Stronger Punch (or Push a Car or Stroller) Using This Back Pain Reduction Technique. Use the lower photo for lower back position reference.
• As soon as you tuck the hip, you will immediately feel the load shift off your lower back and onto your abdominal muscles.
• Once you can hold a good flat plank position, add lifting one arm as shown in the lower photo. Do not allow your lower back to sag, shown in the upper photo. Do not hunch or round your upper body, also shown in the upper photo. Rounding the upper body will get in the way of your shoulder joint being able to lift your arm.
• "Unround" your upper back and lift your chest to straighten your back. This makes room for your shoulder to allow your arm to straighten in line with your body.
• Once you can lift your arm, also lift your opposite leg (not the leg on the same side but the other one). You will feel your abdominal muscles working strongly.
• Hold as long as you can.
• Keep relaxed but straight, and keep breathing.
• Work up to being able to jump to switch the arm and leg that is lifted.

This fun abdominal exercise trains you how to hold your body in the same straight neutral spine position you need for standing and walking and reaching overhead without arching the lower back. That means it is functional abdominal exercise. Many people who do hundreds of crunches a day cannot do this exercise at all because they have never trained their abdominal muscles in the way they really need to work – to hold your spine straight without sagging inward (overly arching).

Crunches are not functional, and train unhealthful, forward-bent posture, which you don't need after a day of sitting at your desk or over the steering wheel.

Instead of crunches, this is one of many fun abdominal-building exercise. You will get better more effective abdominal exercise in the way your body, and abs, work for real.

Books with more:

• Healthy Martial Arts
• The Ab Revolution™ THIRD edition.
  

Photo copyright © Dr. Bookspan from the book Healthy Martial Arts

Labels: abdominal muscles, arm, balance, lordosis, lower back, martial arts, neutral spine, posture, shoulder, strength, upper back, wrist

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Ancient Shoe Exercise for Hip Stretch and Balance

Readers have been asking what happened to the weekly reports of my martial arts classes. Others wanted to hear about my other classes including yoga. My martial arts students continued becoming skilled and disciplined. Next semester I will post some of the fun drills they do to build natural strength, discipline, and flexibility using themselves and each other instead of weights and equipment. In my yoga classes we learn that the poses themselves are not what gives good posture and focus. We learn what healthy positioning is, then apply it to how to move for daily life after walking out of the class.

In my sports medicine practice, I regularly see yoga teachers as patients for back, knee, and neck pain. That is because several yoga moves are not good for anyone - just as not all food is healthful. Many moves are fine, but other traditional poses injure joints, even when done "right" (or especially when done right), like bending over from a stand or a sitting position, whether the back is rounded or straight. We omit those moves and use others that are better stretches without the degenerating forces on the lower back and neck discs, for example, Healthier Hamstring Stretching. You don't have to injure yourself to get exercise. Fitness is supposed to be healthy.

This week in yoga we did a fun, effective hip stretch. We stood on one foot and reached for the other ankle crossed over the bent standing knee (drawing at left). When we do this, we practice the daily healthy position of keeping the upper body upright and straight, with the chin in, not craned forward. One new student was not happy with my class. She was used to sitting on the floor in classes she ordinarily took. She was peeved that we did so much standing. Although people call yoga "mind and body," she didn't like that we used the body. Although people frequently say that yoga is about understanding and light, she whined and complained and cursed me under her breath for most of the class. She wanted to know why I was making everyone do an extreme and bizarre movement.

I told the class it was healthy and happy to do this move every day. I pointed to my crossed foot and spoke the name of this ancient move - "Putting on shoe."

I hope you will try this too, to get a normal and healthy hip stretch and better balance everyday. Remember that most of the world stands to dress - the ones lucky enough to have shoes. Stand up now and try it. You will get free balance, healthy hip stretch, and leg strengthening every day from daily life. When you get good at this fun move, keep your ankle crossed and bend the standing leg enough for you to reach to the floor to retrieve your other shoe or sock. Keep your chest up and your back straight to prevent practicing unhealthful rounded position. Even though this one bends over, it does not transfer the pivot force to the lower discs for several reasons.

Have fun adding new healthy movement to your New Year. Write your stories and take photos of how you make your life better by fixing your fitness to be functional and healthy. Send link to your photo sharing site of your examples, and I can put you up in lights as a role model for healthier life.

Related Fitness Fixer:

• What Does Stretching Do?
• Getting the Right Yoga Medicine
• The Cause of Disc and Back Pain
• Sitting Badly Isn't Magically Healthy by Calling It a Hamstring Stretch
• Better Balance by Christmas
  
  
  

Labels: achilles stretch, balance, hip, hip stretch, leg strength, leg stretch, strength, yoga

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Getting Stronger Without a Gym

I often hear from trainers, and read in exercise books, that you cannot get stronger without lifting weights. They say that body weight is not enough. Then I watch the trainers and read what the exercise books say to do to strengthen. Often the weights they teach to lift are far lighter than the resistance your muscles get from moving your own body during a real life activity.

I see women in exercise classes lifting little two and five pound hand weights, then bend over wrong to put the weights down and bend over wrong again to hoist up their 20-pound handbag. I see knee pain patients in rehab centers with two and three-pound weights strapped on their ankle, sitting down to do little leg raises. Or, they pull stretchy bands with their leg. Then they get up and walk away with injurious body mechanics, letting their knees and ankles sag inward because they are not using their leg muscles to stop it. The unhealthy sagging grinds away joint cartilage and prevents full use of the leg muscles. They don't understand why their knees, ankles, and feet still hurt even when they "Do their exercises."

Your body weight is the most important thing you need to lift. Following are things to start with, to strengthen without a gym or equipment. The main idea of these activities is not to "do" them as an exercise 10 times, but to use them to retrain your muscles how to hold your body in healthy position, then use that healthy positioning for all daily life:

1. Hold a pushup position, called the plank, described in the post Change Common Exercises to Get Better Ab Exercise and Stop Back Pain. Understand that the point of the plank is to learn how to hold your spine straight without sagging under your body weight. I see people doing the plank all the time in gyms and fitness classes, with their bottom hiked up in the air and their low back looking like a hammock, sinking under their body weight. That is not the normal lower back curve. It is injurious overarching. Done poorly this way, the plank does little to strengthen and just pressures your lower back. Done well, the plank is excellent to strengthen your wrist. The wrist is neglected in fitness, and the resulting weakness is a common source of injury. I will post more about wrists. Do the plank every day - that is how helpful and important it is. If you can't even hold up your own body weight, you may have serious weakness.

2. Use the squat for daily bending, described in the post How Good Would You Look From 400 Squats a Day - Just Stop Unhealthy Bending. The point is to use this healthy bending all the time instead of bending wrong. In posts to come, I will show another way for healthy bending using a lunge position with one leg in front and the other in back.

3. If you can't sit and rise from the floor without your hands, you are too weak and tight for ordinary daily life. Try Quick and Easy Strength and Balance Exercise. Also practice getting up from your chair (safely) without using your hands or leaning forward.

4. Stand to put on your hosiery, pants, and shoes: Better Balance by Christmas.

5. Hang from a chining bar, a branch, a pipe, a doorjamb, or any secure overhead. Don't worry if you cannot do full pull-ups, just hold on and hang. When you can do that, hang for as long as you can from a bent-arm position, and begin trying to raise yourself (do a pull-up). Maybe you will need to start by stepping up on a box to help raise yourself, and letting yourself slowly lower without using the box. Work up to full pull-ups. If that is easy, use fewer fingers to hold on.

6. Try the Quick and Fun Arm and Body Strengthener.

When the above body weight activities become too easy, do them carrying functional weight, such packages, children, books, and other common things. It is crucial to health and independence to be able to lift and move your own body weight. In posts to come I will show you how to do more with these body weight activities for more strength and fun being active. Until then, do these every day and send your photos and stories of how you got stronger and happier.

Make it your New Year's Resolutions to be strong for real life in real ways.


Photo by quailwood

Labels: abdominal muscles, achilles stretch, aging, arm, balance, fix pain, hamstring, hand, knee, leg press, leg strength, leg stretch, lower back, practice of medicine, shoulder, side, squat, strength, stretch, upper back

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Quick and Fun Arm and Body Strengthener

Upper body strength is important for health, making daily activities easier, and other benefits including preventing osteoporosis of the upper back and wrist, two major sites of bone loss in both men and women. It is often said in gyms and fitness articles that body weight is not enough to strengthen, and that you need weights and equipment. Fortunately, that is not true.

Here is a quick, fun, upper body strengthener using your own body weight. It has the added advantages of also strengthening core muscles plus training a fair amount of balance. It also gives many benefits of a tilt table or inversion machine. You can use this fun exercise anywhere you have even a small wall space. It is fun and not as hard as it looks. Be brave, and (safely, carefully) try this:

• Stand with your back about a foot in front of a wall (face away from the wall).
• Crouch down and put both hands on the floor - drawing #1 at right.
• Put the bottom of one foot high on the wall - drawing #2.
• Lift your other leg to the wall so that you are standing on your hands with both feet up on the wall - drawing #3.
• Hold as long as you can. Keep breathing.
• When you want to come down, just step one, then both feet back down to the floor the way you started in drawing #1.

Avoid this one if you have uncontrolled high blood pressure or problems with pressure in your eyes or brain. To keep this exercise fun and safe, when you are upside down standing on your hands, don't let your lower back sag into an arch. Keep your hip tucked to straighten your back and you will get free core strengthening while you do this. Don't let your body weight pressure your shoulders. Use your upper body muscles to maintain shoulder position instead of letting your shoulder joints grind under your weight. Don't fall down on your face. Use your arm strength and hold yourself up. Keep breathing and don't tighten and strain, which increases blood pressure.

Don't think of this as an extreme exercise. It can be simple; don't be afraid to try it daily. My Grandmother "downgraded" to this one in her 90's from full handstands (without the wall), because it is easier and safer.

When this exercise becomes too easy, rock side to side so that you stand with weight first on one hand, then the other, as if walking on your hands. Keep your feet against the wall for balance, at first. When this becomes too easy, stand only on one hand for increasing periods. Start doing small dips, like upside-down pushups. Increase until you can dip your head almost to the floor, then push back up to a handstand again. Work until you no longer need the wall.

You do not need to lift big weights in a gym to strengthen. Your body weight provides fun, effective strengthening, with no machines, gyms, or extra weights needed.

Reader Tries This and Shows How To Get Started, Even if You Think You Can't:

• Wall Handstand Success With Liz

Labels: abdominal muscles, arm, balance, hamstring, hand, handstand, leg strength, leg stretch, strength, stretch, upper back, wrist

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Instantly Better Hip and Quadriceps Stretch

The purpose of the quadriceps stretch is to lengthen the front hip muscles. It is often done in ways that do not stretch the front muscles. The standing quadriceps is done by bending one knee to clasp the foot in your hand behind you (or rest it on a chair if you can't reach). If you increase the lower back arch and keep the leg bent forward at the front of the hip (top drawing at left), not much stretch occurs, and the purpose of the stretch is lost.

Instead of "doing" a stretch, get the purpose of the stretch. Try this:

• Look at the top drawing, then the second drawing at left.
• Stand and begin the stretch.
• Tuck your hip under to reduce the lower back arch, as if you are starting an "abdominal crunch."
• Don't curl your upper body forward; just tuck the lower body at the hip.
• When you tuck the hip correctly, you will immediately feel the stretch move to your thigh.
• Straighten your arm away from your body and push your knee downward and backward.
• Allow your lower back to arch again, and you will immediately notice the stretch will lesson or stop.
  
• Tuck your hip under again and you will feel the stretch return to the front of your thigh.

I have seen a poster hanging in various gyms of "dos and don'ts for exercise and stretch." The poster shows this quadriceps stretch and says you should not pull your foot away from your body in back because that makes you arch your back. However, it is not pulling your foot away that makes you arch. You allow the arching if you do not tuck your hip - using your muscles to straighten your spine. The post Throw a Stronger Punch (or Push a Car or Stroller) Using This Back Pain Reduction Technique shows how to reposition your spine using the tucking technique. Then you can pull your foot away to increase the stretch all you want. You can control whether you arch or not.

Many people start this stretch by lifting their leg forward at the hip, bending over forward to reach their foot, then pulling the foot behind them. The point of the stretch is to lengthen the front of your hip, not bend it. Instead of bending forward to reach your foot, stand straight, lift your foot behind you, and reach back. If you are too tight to reach your foot, place it on a chair or bench behind you. Work up from there. If your balance is too poor to do this stretch, stand near something for safety, but do not hold on. You will quickly improve balance by simply practicing it. You will not improve balance by holding on.

Remember - don't "do a stretch" - do the purpose of the stretch. Use this stretch with your upper body upright and straight. Keep your hip tucked under, your shoulders down, and get a nice stretch and balance exercise in one.

Related Fitness Fixer:

• What Does Stretching Do?
• Hamstring to Quadriceps Ratios Not the Answer in Knee Injury
• Common Exercises Teach Hip Tightness When Kicking, Stretching, and on the Stairs
• Fast Fitness - Straighten and Stretch Hip While Strengthening Core, Arms, Legs, and Balance
• Fast Fitness - Don't Shorten Hip When Stretching Hamstring
  
  

Labels: abdominal muscles, balance, hip stretch, leg stretch, lower back, neutral spine, stretch

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What I Learned at the Aging Conference

Last weekend we were packing up to drive to the New York Chapter American College of Sports Medicine conference on aging. It was early and cold. At the corner where we parked, an elder woman waited at the bus stop. She stood straight as a penguin; her things hung over her walker. We were late getting on the highway. I had to get to the conference to give my lecture. I was already going to miss the first lecture given by an expert on metabolic changes of aging. This was an important conference where we would learn important ways to help older people.

She was standing alone. I thought that if she had family she would not be standing alone at a bus stop early in the morning. There was no telling where she needed to go. I wouldn't get all my required continuing education credits if I did not attend all of the meeting. We had to drive all the way to New York, and at this rate I was not even going to be on time for my own lecture. The answer was simple. We opened the door and asked her, "Where can we take you?"

We bundled her into the truck, and asked her name. "Dottie!" she said, pointing to a mole on her forehead. My husband held out his big hand and said, "I'm Paul." Dottie looked at Paul, nearly seven-feet tall, squashed in his seat with his long legs bowed around the steering wheel and his hair brushing the ceiling. She sang, "Tall Paul, he's my all…" and Paul replied, "Annette Funicello," recognizing the old song and singing it along with her. Dottie was on her way to religious services across town. We enjoyed lively conversation with her all the way there. We passed a Greek restaurant. Dottie said, "You won't believe this but I used to belly dance there." My own Grandmother studied belly dancing into her 90's so I believed Dottie. I said, "Belly dancing is good for the hips." Dottie winked, "Belly dancin' is good for lots of things."

We dropped Dottie off at her destination and made sure she had her hat and scarf and gloves and some of our food and a hug. We gave her our number and said, "We won't be passing by in time to take you back home. Call us to go somewhere else sometime."

We met heavy traffic getting to the Lincoln tunnel. I won't get all my continuing education credits from the conference that was supposed to teach us about how to help old people. In posts coming soon I will tell about the lecture I gave on improving musculoskeletal health for older people. Although it is a common misconception to think that ruinous losses of bone density, strength, balance, and flexibility are unavoidable with aging, it is not the case, and at any age, even advanced years, you can still get stronger, faster, more flexible, and better balance through easy daily activity. You can also improve the most important aspect of helping aging people - by helping.


Photo By J Pod

Labels: aging, balance, education, leg strength, osteoporosis, spirit, strength, stress

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Better Balance by Christmas

I heard a radio program about yoga for senior citizens. The yoga program directors made the usual statements about yoga helping strength and balance. Then they said something that seemed at odds with their goal. They said, "If your balance is poor, do the moves sitting down or hold on to the wall." The very thing that you need to improve your balance is to practice standing and (safely) not holding the wall. If you sit and hold on, you prevent practicing balance.

Balance that helps your normal daily life is easy to improve at any age. All you need is to stand up and balance. Balance is quickly lost with sitting and disuse.

How does balance practice help you? You have receptors in all your joints that sense positioning. They can tell if you are about to fall. They tell your body to send signals to your muscles to steady you. If you don't use your balance sensors with balance practice, they become slow and unable to sense positioning well. You may tip over far enough to fall before your receptors sense it and can tell your muscles to pull you to upright position. Balance practice also improves your muscles. Without balance practice, your muscles become too slow and weak to prevent you from tipping over and falling. If you have let yourself become tight, brittle, and weak from lack of general exercise, you may strain, tear, or break something from a fall that would not have otherwise caused any harm.

Years ago when I left working in the hospital to go into private practice in sports medicine, I found that by making house calls you learn the reasons for people's pain and injuries that you will never see in a hospital or clinic exam setting. It was the first time I ever saw anyone have to sit to put on or take off their shoes. Here are a few quick, functional (real life) ways to improve balance:

• Stand up when you put on your socks or hosiery.
• Stand up to put on your pants. Lift one leg in front of you, keep your upper body comfortably straight and upright, and slide on each pant leg.
• Stand up to put on your shoes. Try two ways: holding the foot in the air front of you to place the shoe, and by crossing the ankle on the opposite knee.
• For more balance, after putting on one sock or shoe, remain standing on one foot and do a small squat on one leg to reach the other sock or shoe on the floor.

If you can't stand to dress yourself, and you have at least one working leg, you may be too tight and weak and unsteady for healthy normal life. To get started:

• Practice standing on one foot without holding on to anything. If balance is poor stand near a wall for safety to get started and have a skilled friend help. Practice standing for 10 counts without holding on. Increase how long you can balance.
• Stand on one foot and swing the other forward and back, side to side, without holding on or touching down. Safely.
• If you use a cane, practice walking holding it off the ground. Use your brain to do this intelligently and safely to improve balance and reduce dependence on the cane.

Balance is "use or lose" and can be quickly improved with safe smart practice. You don't need to go to a gym or "do exercises." Use balance skills as part of your daily life.

For more fun and functional real life balance activities see the books Fix Your Own Pain Without Drugs or Surgery and Healthy Martial Arts.

Labels: achilles stretch, aging, ankle, balance, feet, fix pain, holiday, leg strength, leg stretch, practice of medicine, side, spirit, squat, strength, stretch, upper back, yoga

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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.

Related Fitness Fixer:

• What is "Fitness as a Lifestyle?"
• Bending Right is Fitness as a Lifestyle
• Healthy Aging Starts Now - Part II
• Good Life Works Better Than Bad Ab Exercise
• Fitness and Health as a Lifestyle for Thanksgiving
• Want Weightlifting? Plant A Food Garden
• Fast Fitness - Balance, Strength, Stretch, and Socks
• Better Balance by Christmas

Labels: achilles stretch, balance, fix pain, hip, hip strength, knee, leg strength, leg stretch, lower back, practice of medicine, 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 - see the book Stretching Smarter Stretching Healthier

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

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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 toward 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.

The closer you press your heel toward the wall, the more stretch. If you are tight, you will get substantial stretch just getting close. The purpose of this move is not to touch the wall by any means possible, but to get a functional stretch and not automatically go to unhealthful positioning. 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.

Related:

• What Does Stretching Do?
• Functional Achilles Stretch
• Achilles Stretch in the Bathroom
• Fast Fitness - Built In Functional Achilles Tendon Stretch
• Friday Fast Fitness - Partner Achilles Tendon Stretch
  
  
  

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

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Common Exercises Teach Hip Tightness When Kicking, Stretching, and on the Stairs

Tuesday night my martial arts students showed they had improved. When I came in they were waiting in two neat rows. I still had to cue them to sit up straight.

In the post Is Bad Martial Arts Good Exercise? I mentioned showing the class not to let their neck, back, and hip round forward when kicking. By straightening, strength and stretch are built into regular movement.

Several readers e-mailed me that they noticed for the first time that they let one leg pull forward when lifting the other (notice the standing leg in the left-hand photo, at left). They said they felt a good difference when they straightened (right photo).

If the front muscles of your hip are tight, when you lift one leg high you may find that you round your back and bend the other leg. Watch for this during kicks in martial arts and aerobics, when lying on your back raising one leg overhead to stretch the hamstrings, and ascending stairs. The common practice of allowing the other leg to bend forward perpetuates a tight anterior hip, which in turn, contributes to walking bent forward and back pain.

In martial arts, you don't want your standing leg completely straight. That is an invitation for your opponent to kick your knee, snapping it backward. But for both health and effective martial movement, you don't want to bend the leg more than a small amount. Bending the back, hip, and leg when kicking decreases force of the kick, pressures your discs, and reduces stretch on the hip and hamstrings. The rounded-under hip position keeps the hip tight, a hidden cause of groin pulls. It also looks weak and unskilled. For lying hamstring stretches with one leg overhead, it is often taught to keep the second leg bent to "protect the back." However, keeping the leg (and body) flat on the floor give a far better stretch and is healthier for your back. Even in slow easy motions of stair climbing, leaning forward and allowing the second leg to pull forward reduces the normal hamstring and hip stretch, decreases the exercise on your hip and leg muscles, and reduces the back muscle activation for holding the straight position you need for health and back pain prevention.

It is said the martial arts gives you discipline and strength. It won't if you practice unhealthy habits. When raising one leg, hold your neck and back upright. Prevent the other leg from pulling forward. You will get a built-in hip stretch, one of the places you need to stretch most. You will get back and hip exercise in the way you need to move in real life, and prevent tightness and weakness that leads to poor movement and pain. You will change from kicking like a bent over old lady to a young strong athlete. Exercise as a lifestyle is not something done "for body parts." It is built into your normal movement to make it healthy movement.


Photo (and more healthy techniques) from the book Healthy Martial Arts

Labels: achilles stretch, balance, chest, disc, hamstring, hip, hip stretch, knee, leg strength, leg stretch, lower back, martial arts, neck, posture, stairs, strength, stretch, upper back

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What is "Fitness as a Lifestyle?"

To many people, fitness means stopping your "real life," changing clothes, driving somewhere else, and doing uncomfortable things without similarity to movement in daily life. Then they go back to "real life" - slouching, bending wrong, walking heavily, sitting rounded, leaning back to carry packages, taking elevators, and avoiding movement.

At the gym, people do squats with a trainer, paying to learn proper form and upright back, then bend over wrong to put the weight down when they’re finished. They do proper lunges for their legs in exercise class, then bend over wrong without using their legs to pick up their things when they leave. They work with weights to isolate arms but never learn how their entire body stabilizes a weight, then hurt their back opening a window at home. They work on a treadmill or elliptical trainer but sprain their ankle when out walking because they haven't trained balance and stabilization. They sit hunched in bad posture waiting for exercise class to start. In modern life, exercise is something you go and specially "do," then destroy and ignore your health the other 23 hours a day. Fitness has become “fast food” – stripped of value, sweetened up, and mass produced, even when unhealthy.

Changing your real life into healthy movement is a big and inspiring area of rethinking and retraining. Instead of sitting slouched then stopping to stretch because your back hurts, sit and stand well so that you do not get stiff and sore in the first place. Instead of lifting packages, babies, groceries, laundry, and everything else wrong all day, then stopping to do back exercises because your back hurts, lift properly. I will show you exactly how in posts to come. You will get built-in exercise, strengthen your knees, and save your back. You don’t need to go to a gym; move, balance, and reach in healthy ways in order to do your real life. Instead of thinking you must stop your life to get health and exercise, fill your life with built-in healthy movement.

Photo: National Cancer Institute, Linda Bartlett (photographer)

Labels: aging, ankle, balance, children, fix pain, injury, knee, lower back, lunge, nutrition, performance enhancing modality, posture, practice of medicine, sitting, spirit, strength, stress, stretch

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