Fast Fitness - Contest for Children (and Everyone) To Learn What They Live
Friday, November 20, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Fast Friday Fitness - a contest for your kids, students, co-workers, and teams to reinforce healthy movement, deeds, and thinking as part of normal everyday life. It's one thing to say it, or read it, and better to do it and live it:
Choose something fun and easy from Fitness Fixer. There are over 670 Fitness Fixer posts so far. Use labels under posts to get categories, for example all Fast Fitness articles, or all reader inspiring stories, or use the Fitness Fixer Index.
Have your group (or self) learn one or more of the methods or activities. It can be anything from learning simple good bending to use all the time, or better sitting for the whole class, to preparing healthier meals with good body positioning, to doing good deeds in your neighborhood or home.
Draw pictures or take photos of what everyone learned and did, write your stories, and send them in.
A child who lives with healthy ways learns health as a lifestyle. Use your brain. Have fun. I will post the winners - everyone who tries.
--- Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal feedback. Top students may apply for certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
Fast Fitness - Fourth Group Functional Training Exercise, Functional Upper Back Stretch
Friday, November 13, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Fast Friday Fitness from the 2009 Black Belt Hall of Fame. I am here teaching and learning.
In my "Stretching Smarter" workshop here, I teach healthier ways to move and stretch for daily life and sports. One is the fourth Functional Fitness Training (FFT). It retrains how you look and reach upward, to reduce neck and shoulder compression and give a built-in stretch for the upper back:
Assemble your group (or yourself) and tell them that when they look upward, to feel the range of motion more from their upper back than neck. Have them feel, notice, and visualize where is their upper back - one way to do this is to watch a person in line ahead of them.
Remind the group that the neck is not a Pez dispenser - the idea is not to pinch the neck back (photo below with yellow hat), but to "unround" and lift upward more from the upper body.
photo shows unhealthful neck compression - pinching back and jutting chin, creating a postural spondylolisthesis.
3. Have everyone look upward by straightening the upper back and by lifting more in the chest (drawing, upper bike rider on water bottle). Repeat while reaching upward with both hands. Make sure not to return to pinching backward at the neck, jutting the chin forward (photo above), or leaning the upper body backward. Get the reach from the shoulders.
Use conscious control to prevent pinching your neck back every time you look and reach upward.
Each new Functional Training exercise shows how to teach your groups (or self) how to prevent common musculoskeletal problems during the team season or operational theater. Trainers, Drill Instructors, readers, send in your stories of how you use these in your program.
Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal feedback. Top students may apply for certification through DrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
In the first act of Macbeth, Shakespeare wrote, "Your face, my thane, is as a book where men may read strange matters."
Here is Fast Friday Fitness - Your face shows how you lead your life. In other words, "Time may be a great healer, but it's a lousy beautician." How can you improve your face?
Healthy exercise and hard work doing good deeds, benefits your face more than the same time and money spent on artificial makeup.
Stop eating sugar and processed flour. Your skin will improve. Stop fried food and soda. Simple healthy nutrition improves your face and skin more than all the money spent on fast food, expensive "health food," engineered supplements, and skin drugs.
The woman hoeing a field in India doesn't use indulgent face peels. Her dignity and honest work polish her face. Genuine laughter does more than corny face exercises and laugh yoga. The life you live of integrity, thinking of others, and lack of self-absorption, shows more on your face than all the facial exercise gizmos and programs.
Actress Lauren Bacall said, "I think your whole life shows in your face and you should be proud of that." Instead of spending on externals, save the money or give it to the poor. Decide how you want your life to look, then go make a face.
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Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal feedback. Top students may apply for certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
Fast Fitness - Exercise Involvement In World Health
Friday, October 30, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - shed unhealthy petty feelings of maltreatment because you had to wait in line for your luxury items, or didn't get them in your color.
We have things to be extremely grateful for.
More of the time, it is not necessary to gain them through harming others or the Earth.
Lead by example. Teach children and others not to litter, pollute, harm others, do harm for money, do harm for power, harm themselves.
Check Simple Ways to Get Started:
My Academy- the Academy of Functional Exercise Medicine (AFEM) teaches people and communities how to be healthy in body and actions. Readers who use my work have been teaching their groups simple healthy bending and movement for daily life instead of injury producing habits, good food instead of disease causing food, healthy training for high level athletics and military, healthier medical practices for sick, injured, preventive medicine, "green" fitness, and healthier mindset. Come join us by doing simple things in your home and community - click AFEM.
Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal feedback. Top students may apply for certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
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Images sent to me by Dear Colleague Dr. Ern Campbell - ScubaDoc
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?"
Readers - Your Challenge:
Write your ideas for different needed levels of balance
Write specific balance skills or training drills
Give examples that are needed for real daily life - functional balance testing, rather than isolated clinical measures.
Here Is What To Know:
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?
Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Read success stories of these methods and send your own. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal feedback. Top students may apply for certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
Fast Fitness - Contest: What Does It Take To Sit Upright?
Friday, October 16, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Fast Friday Fitness - a Contest!
Conventional beliefs about posture include that you must do certain exercises or stretches or strengthening to change your posture. Is that true?
Look at photo 1 and 2 and answer the simple question below:
Photo 1
photo 2
Submit Your Answer:
What muscle strengthening or stretch is required to change from first (unhealthy rounded) to second (upright) sitting?
Name the muscle(s) and action needed - don't just name a muscle, say which way it needs to pull.
Explain why the same people (with the same tightness or weakness) who sit with the lower spine rounded forward (flexion) often stand with the lower back overly curved inward (hyperlordosis) - just the opposite.
Disregard the leg position in the two photos - the question is not how to move the leg, those were just the two photos I could find. Focus on describing how to change yourself to upright sitting without moving the leg (why? if you need to move the leg, then you are too tight for basic health. This question is how to restore that basic).
Use your brain. Partial credit applies. I will post answers, explanations, and winners.
Hint for success:
Sit and try it yourself, don't go only to anatomy books.
Read inspiring success stories of these methods and send your own. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and The Fitness Fixer Index. For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. Limited Class spaces for personal feedback. Top students may apply for certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more (answer to this quiz too) in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
Fast Fitness - BIPOD Reader Prescription for Healthier Feet
Friday, October 09, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - BIPOD is a way to happier feet that you can do yourself at home. Reader Paul J sent in this gem in July. Other great work from him and other readers are still in the piles of mail.
For background: A shoe insert is any pad of any size, shape or quality that you put in your shoe for various reasons. Hard shoes are a common course of joint pain. Many shoes benefit from better cushioning and even a cheap soft insert for cushioning purpose can help that. Orthotics are different. Orthotics are hard shapes, specially fitted by a trained orthotist or sometimes a physical therapist with orthotic training. Orthotics usually cost a few hundreds of dollars. Orthotics are rigid forms to hold your feet in a specific position. There are also hard inserts with molded arch or other area advertised to change your foot posture. Sometimes orthotics and hard inserts make more pain or don't change the source of the problem. Most of the time, for non-paralyzed people, if the orthotic can make your foot change to a healthy position, you can do the same using your own muscles and sense of positioning. Using your own feet and ankle muscles is often healthier, more comfortable, and more likely to yield long term results.
Now Paul J's intelligent prescription:
"Bookspan Invisible Pain-free Orthotic Drops - BIPOD. Now you can walk, run, or stand without the pain of traditional hard orthotic inserts. BIPOD will revolutionize the way you stand. Read and follow product instructions, failure to do so will render this product ineffective. Attempts to walk, run, or stand without BIPOD is not recommended by our accountants.
"In order to reduce the burden on landfills, please follow the directions below to make BIPOD at home. You must use your brain and following all directions in order to get DHMO and CS (see above).
Ingredients: one tablespoon of cold tap water one tablespoon of tap water from hot tap, before it gets hot.
Mix for 4 seconds in a container that can hold 2 _ tablespoons of liquid.
"The left over mixture maybe placed in the refrigerator for later use or discarded in most plants."
Remember - get the point of healthy practices. Don't get bogged down on purchasing exercise machines and expensive devices that reduce your own body's involvement in your life, or trivial details of exercise "form." Get the big picture of easy healthier ways and enjoy improving your life.
Many readers' great stories are in the piles. Remember to read the instructions and concepts in articles on fixing pain first before asking what to do. Gain the benefits and better health and send in that story. Then we can all enjoy more instead of taking time plodding through and answering reader comments of, "I read your work on how to fix neck pain, will your stretches work?" and similar instances of missing the point. Would anyone help Hannah (or Cheryl?). She left the 36th comment asking if the stretches work on Fixing Upper Back and Neck Pain, which had already explained, along with the 35 questions and replies already there. Thanks!
--- Read and contribute your own success stories of these methods. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certifiedDrBookspan.com/Academy.
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Image of helping feet with brains by "lapolab" via Flickr
Fast Fitness - Third Group Functional Training Exercise: Ankles and Knees in Jumps and Landings
Friday, October 02, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Fast Friday Fitness - third in the series of Functional Fitness Training (FFT) to teach your teams, squads, classes, students, kids, groups, battalions, etc.
Assemble your group in neat rows. Stand in front in view of all. Tell them this is a basic, functional physical skill to reduce musculoskeletal injuries, that puts together the first and second skills, previously learned:
Tell everyone to crouch using good bending (knees do not sway inward or slide forward, taught in the first skill), then rise to toes with stable neutral ankle (not bowing outward at the side, taught in the second skill).
Next, have everyone bend and rise increasingly rapidly and smoothly, in a jumping motion, first without rising from the ground, then barely jumping. With each bend and rise, they maintain good knee bending and neutral ankle. Repeat 10-100 times, depending on time and needs.
Next, tell everyone to jump, landing softly using thigh and hip muscles for shock absorption, and good knee bending and neutral ankle. Start jumping moderately, then work for increasing height with each repetition. Repeat 10-100 times, depending on time and needs.
Use conscious control to prevent inversion sprains and turns by not allowing the ankle to invert (turn sideways) when rising to toe during push-off in running and jumping, and coming down during landings. Watch for healthy ankle and knee stability and placement throughout the team season.
Each new Functional Training exercise shows how to teach your groups (or self) how to prevent common musculoskeletal problems during the team season or operational theater. Learn this one to be ready for an upcoming FFT, needed for cutting, changing direction, lateral movement, more.
Trainers, Drill Instructors, readers, send in your stories of how you use these in your program.
--- Read and contribute your own success stories of these methods. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certifiedDrBookspan.com/Academy.
Fast Fitness - Second Group Functional Training Exercise: Ankle Stability and Ability
Friday, September 25, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Fast Friday Fitness - the second of the promised series of Functional Fitness Training (call it FFT until we create a better name) that you can teach your teams, squads, classes, students, kids, groups, battalions, etc.
Assemble your group in neat rows. Footwear is whatever used for their sport or activity. Stand in front facing forward. Everyone sees your feet and you see each participant's feet. Tell them this Functional Fitness Training exercise is a basic, needed many dozens of times every day, for their sport or activity, and for daily life - ankle stability when rising to toes, stepping down, landing from jumps, running, turning skills, and other motions requiring ankle stability:
Tell everyone to stand straight and lift heels to stand on the ball of the feet
Tell everyone to look down at their own feet. Weight should not shift outward/sideways over the small toes. While everyone holds tip-toe, make sure each participant straightens ankles, shifting weight back over the big and second toe. Prevent teetering and turning outward.
Have everyone stand flat again, then rise to toes again, this time properly without needing to adjust ankles. They should feel the difference - using leg and ankle muscles instead of letting body weight slide sideways, which bends ankles into classic sprain position - turned at the outside (inversion).
Repeat good toe-rising 10 times or any number that suits your group's need - more for groups needing higher training (or groups with poorer memory), faster for teams requiring this skill done quickly in actual use, and so on. Tell everyone they will need this for skill #3 - for stepping down and landing from jumps. This is scheduled for Fast Fitness Next week.
Watch them for good ankle stability practices throughout the team season. Reduce ankle injury from letting the ankle invert (turn sideways). Instead use muscles and conscious control to prevent inversion sprains and turns, and get leg, foot, and ankle exercise, from the many needed neutral-ankle stability needed for varies movements daily.
Each new Functional Training exercise will show you how to teach your groups (or self) how to prevent common musculo-skeletal issues during the team season or operational theater.
Send in your ideas for a name for this program. Trainers, Drill Instructors, send in your stories of how you use them in your program.
--- Read and contribute your own success stories of these methods. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certifiedDrBookspan.com/Academy.
Fast Fitness - The First Group Functional Training Exercise, Good Bending for Back and Knees
Friday, September 18, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Fast Friday Fitness - the first of the promised series of Functional Fitness Training (call it FFT for now) that you can teach your teams, squads, classes, students, kids, groups, battalions, etc.
Assemble your group in neat rows so you can see each participant, and they feel the self-control of the neat rows. Stand in front facing sideways so everyone can see you in profile view. Tell them that the first Functional Fitness Training exercise is a basic that is needed many dozens of times every day, for their special sport or activity and for daily life - good bending:
Tell everyone to keep both heels down on the ground while they bend their knees and crouch about halfway down
Tell everyone to look down at their own feet and pull their (bent) knees back until they can see their toes. Tell them if they cannot see their toes because their knees cover their toes, their knees are too far forward (left).
Have everyone stand and bend again, this time properly without needing to adjust knees back over feet (right). They should feel the difference - using thigh and hip muscles, instead of sliding weight forward onto the knees.
Repeat good bending 10 times or any number that suits your group's need - more for groups needing higher training (or groups with poorer memory), faster for teams requiring this skill done quickly in actual use, and so on. Then put items on the ground they use for their sport or work and use the new good bending to retrieve. Replace on ground with good bending, and retrieve with good bending. Repeat for the number suited for your needs.
Tell everyone that this is how they can bend for picking up all their gear (except medical or tactical reason not to). Watch them for good bending practices throughout the team season. Reduce back injury from bad bending, get leg exercise, burn calories, and build strong bones from the many free built-in squats daily.
Each new Functional Training exercise will show you how to teach your groups (or self) how to prevent common musculoskeletal issues that arise during the team season or operational theater. Send in your ideas for a name for this program. Trainers, send in your stories of how you use them in your program.
--- Read and contribute your own success stories of these methods. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certifiedDrBookspan.com/Academy.
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - custom portable fitness tea, quick and inexpensive, no need for hot water:
Put clean (or filtered) water in your own healthy bottle.
Poke a teabag in the bottle. The tea will brew on its own in a short time, no need for hot water.
Choose your favorite tea or experiment to find your favorite. Mix several together to make your custom brew - for example mint and lemon (all non-caffeine), or ginger plus green (half and half), or green and black tea together (extra interest). Or a whole bunch of flavors.
This makes a fresh drink, no preservatives or coloring, no hype or purchased throw-away bottles. It easily transports with you to work, school, gym, exercise, and biking.
Add water to make more throughout the day. At the end of your day, remove the bags and wash the bottle for another custom tea tomorrow.
Future posts will cover making your own teabags from loose tea and preparing herbal teas from flowers.
--- I make posts from fun mail and success stories. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certifiedDrBookspan.com/Academy.
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Image by Akibubblet via Flickr. No derivative works.
Fast Fitness - Better Than Ice Cream, Quick Homemade Healthy Treat
Friday, August 28, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Fast Friday Fitness - one of my own favorites - good for a pre-game meal, exercise recovery food, desert, and quick snack. It tastes like chocolate ice cream, sweet and creamy, but made of healthy food, no sugar or dairy, good amounts of vitamins, minerals, fiber, anti-oxidants, and the health benefits of cocoa without the chemicals and sugar of commercial chocolate, quick, inexpensive, and easy to prepare:
Peel and freeze bananas.
In a food processor or bowl, mix plain unsweetened, undutched cocoa with enough water to make a smooth paste. (Boxes of Hershey's powdered cocoa is available in most supermarkets.)
Beat in one frozen banana until creamy smooth (or two bananas and more cocoa).
Don't use unfrozen or partially frozen bananas or it won't be sweet and creamy. Crush in walnuts or pecans for crunchy nut taste. If you can't eat tree nuts, try flax seeds. For extra taste, crush in a slice of fresh ginger root.
If you don't like chocolate, leave out the cocoa. It will still taste like ice cream. Experiment with healthy additions of mint, ginger, real vanilla bean, and spices.
--- I make posts from fun mail and success stories. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. Why not try fun stuff, then contribute! Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certifiedDrBookspan.com/Academy.
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - Save your neck while biking, while drinking from a water bottle while biking, and get a needed upper back stretch at the same time:
Main concept - your neck is not a Pez dispenser. Don't tip and pinch back at the neck to look upward to drink or look forward while riding.
Notice if you jut your chin forward and upward to drink or ride.
Instead, extend upward through your entire upper back. Keep your chin fairly still and see how much upward range you can get from your upper back. Instead of rounding the upper back forward, you get a nice straightening stretch.
Craning the neck (pinching backward at one joint) and pushing the chin forward, pinches and compresses your discs, joints of the neck bones, the soft tissue, and nerves.
To help remember good biking form, I put a reminder on a healthy water bottle. Keep your exercise healthy. Click AcademyGifts or the image to order.
--- I make posts from fun mail and success stories. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. Why not try fun stuff, then contribute! Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certifiedDrBookspan.com/Academy.
Here is Fast Fitness Friday - quick resource for reforming your health care - the Fitness Fixer Index:
Reader David from Belgium first helped me program the index last July (2008). Since then, I have manually added posts and maintained the index on my site.
Fitness Fixer index is now alphabetized to find specific topics more easily, and expanded with more topics.
Image currently the masthead of Dr. Jolie Bookspan's Fitness Fixer - a work in progress. Send in your funny healthy additions. Stay tuned for improvements.
--- Questions come in by hundreds. I make posts from fun mail. Before asking more, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. Why not try fun stuff, then contribute! Read success stories of these methods and send your own.
Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy.
Fast Fitness - Built In Functional Achilles Tendon Stretch
Friday, July 31, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - get a free, built-in stretch for the Achilles tendon in the way your legs need to stretch during normal movement.
Every time you bend with the squat, keep both heels down on the floor (upper right drawing) instead of raising heels (left).
Every time you bend with a lunge, keep the front heel down, not lifted up and shifting forward to the toe.
When ascending stairs, step up on your entire foot including the heel, down on the step, not just the toes and ball of the foot.
Many people stretch their Achilles tendon holding still. Is it such a mystery to get a pull during movement? Prepare your body how to stretch during movement. This normal daily life activity practices lengthening under body weight during normal movement.
Why do a few seconds of Achilles stretch then go back to tight, shortened real life use. Get hundreds of free stretches built in to your day in a way that gives free muscle and bone building exercise too.
Good bending benefits your back, knees, and Achilles Tendon at the same time.
--- Questions come in by hundreds. I make posts from fun mail. Before asking more, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. Why not try fun stuff, then contribute! Read success stories of these methods and send your own.
Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy.
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - how do abs help your back? Only when you use them to:
Abdominal muscles don't help your back by themselves. Support is not automatic. They don't fix your back pain by being stronger. Strengthening abdominal muscles doesn't make you hold neutral position (support you). Holding neutral strengthens your abs.
In the post Fast Fitness - Strengthen by Changing Your Plank Reader David from Belgium showed changing the plank from overarched lower spine to neutral spine. He pushes up from the floor into an arched position, then fixes it. Readers asked to see how to push up from the floor (or from the bottom of a pushup) with neutral spine.
David made us another video. Click the > arrow to see the first 20 seconds show holding neutral - green check mark. Next 15 seconds repeat the same push up, but with over-arched spine, marked with a red X. Then he corrects spine angle until the end - green check again. Can you see the difference? Can you do the difference?
Letting your lower spine cave inward (hyperextend) under your body weight means you are not using core muscles to prevent it. Hyper-extension, is also called hyperlordosis (too much lordosis) and swayback. Hyperlordosis bangs and abrades the joints, called facets, of the spine. Hyperlordosis can also pinch a disc that is already degenerating or bulging, making disc pain worse.
Get the T-shirt - Abs only support your back when you use them to. Shows ab use for carrying load on the back, in front, and standing.
--- Questions come in by hundreds. I'm bailing the ocean with a bucket. I make posts from fun mail. Before asking more, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. Why not try fun stuff, then contribute! Read success stories of these methods and send your own.
Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy.
Fast Fitness - Count How Many Times You Help Or Hurt Your Body Daily
Friday, July 17, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Fast Friday Fitness - a simple tool to help you notice how many times during your ordinary day you can either get functional built-in exercise for leg, back, and hip muscles plus a Achilles tendon stretch, or produce a common factor in back and knee pain.
Every time you bend down to reach or retrieve something, count it
See how many bends you do for ordinary chores and by the end of the day
Choose if you want to hurt or help your fitness each time.
David from Belgium has written numerous Fitness Fixer success stories and created many photos and videos for better learning. He writes:
"I just spent half an hour vacuuming our house downstairs.
"When I do chores like these, I try to practice some focus instead of letting my mind wander all over the place.Usually this means I try to remain aware of my breathing (breathing normally, not grunting, straining, or holding breath to reach or lift things).
"But today I thought of one of your articles that said how many times on average a person bends over during the day. So I decided to count this for myself, just for fun and something to focus on.
"In the roughly 30 minutes of vacuuming, I counted 67 squats. Now that's a good workout! =)
Photos by David of squat and lunge for household bending
Bending over "wrong" is a common factor in back pain, and not only for out of shape people. It is common in many weight lifters. Bending "wrong is often done as an exercise. It doesn't strength back muscles as much as other ways, and puts large load on the discs, So it's not a helpful trade-off.
Previous Fitness Fixer posts explained that doing a few good rehab exercises and stretches for back pain won't undo a day of bad bending, and that you bend hundreds of times each day. "Fitness as a lifestyle" does not mean doing crunches during TV commercials or doing squats while on the phone. It means how you live. Get real exercise, built in, during real daily movement.
You get to choose whether you add an obvious check mark in the pile of things that don't benefit your fitness or whether you get functional exercise.
Fitness Fixer post on good bending for knees and back at the same time:
--- Questions come in by hundreds. I make posts from fun mail. Before asking more, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. Why not try fun stuff, then contribute! Read success stories of these methods and send your own.
Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy.
Notice general good bending using the lunge and half squat
Notice all the times you can do good bending around the house, the gym, and for good deeds.
Functional exercise is how you bend and move all day. Exercise your legs and spirit while you prevent disc degeneration by stopping bending over for things, and instead, using good bending, for all you do.
--- Questions come in by hundreds. I'm bailing the ocean with a bucket. I make posts from fun mail. Before asking more, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. Why not try fun stuff, then contribute! Read success stories of these methods and send your own.
Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy.
An old sports medicine joke says that if you pull a groin muscle, make sure it is someone else's. Here is less known info for Friday Fast Fitness - do you stretch in a way that groin pulls are more likely to happen to you?
When you lift one leg to kick, stretch, or step up, you can get the needed range from the upper leg muscles, or you can just round your back. Many people round the spine and roll the hip under (tuck too much) to make the stretch easier. They don't get the stretch from the muscles high in the leg, leaving the area tight.
In event of large or sudden kick, step, or slip, high forces pull on tight groin muscles. Varying degrees of injury can occur, or the tight area yanks the standing leg out from under and the person falls backward suddenly - seen in aerobics and martial arts classes, and funny video shows. Then the person hobbles around saying they don't understand it since they do their stretching, and articles get published that stretching doesn't work and no one know why.
Being so tight that your other leg comes forward with the lifted one, comes from bad stretching habits that allow hip and pelvis to round and tuck under too much:
When you stand on one leg and lift the other, don't bend at the knee and hip, pictured at left. Straighten your back with chin loosely in, not rounded forward. Hold pelvis upright without letting it tilt and round under you, pictured right.
Keep the standing leg normally straight (not locked straight, but not bent more than normal standing). Stand straight and relaxed (both at once). Don't force or strain. Breathe.
Feel more stretch in the front thigh and groin of the standing leg.
Check your stretching, kicking, and stepping. Check if you round your back and hip when taking the stairs, stretching while standing, and stretching lying on your back.
When lying on your back to stretch by lifting one leg, keep the other leg flat on the floor, not bent at the knee and hip. It is a myth that you must bend your knees when stretching legs to protect your back. If you must bend your knees to protect your back, how are you supposed to stand normally and move?
Prevent Stretch And Exercise Habits Promoting Tight Anterior Hip:
--- Questions come in by hundreds. I'm bailing the ocean with a bucket. I make posts from fun mail. Before asking for more, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. Why not read and learn, then contribute! Read success stories of these methods and send your own.
Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy.
Fast Fitness - Somebody Please Do My Personal Responsibility For Me!
Friday, June 26, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
A couple was buying a house. The real estate agent told them a problem with the house was that it was near the train, rumbling noisily by every night. It would take the first two weeks to be able to sleep through it. "No problem, said the couple, we'll spend the first two weeks in a hotel."
An opening line of last Friday's Fast Fitness was, "How long does it take to stop slouching, or stop herniating a disc, or stop paying money to eat food that is bad for your health? It takes as long as you want to continue injurious ways."
The letters came in. Some missed the whole point, hoping for magical externals to do it for them: " Can I use a posture brace until it works? … Is it until my shiatsu starts working? … My body worker says it takes 6 weeks for massage to make me aware of my body… My yoga teacher said the pain has to be worked through so I bend wrong to get used to it… OK, bending right does fix my pain, but every time I go back to bending wrong the pain comes back. I do the exercises 10 times. How long until the exercises work?... "
The "martyrs" blamed externals: " It is not possible to control how I stand or sit, I am fat/ weak/ large chested/ too thin to have muscles/ old/ young/ a person of privilege… You're wrong, the slouching just comes back by itself. … You're wrong I have gone to a chiropractor three times a week for years and I have to go or the pain comes back, that proves he is helping me and I can't change the pain…Another blog said to get a thousand dollar mattress and that will fix it… "
Some of the whining was comical: "You can't expect me to actually try to remember that… You're wrong, my body FORCES me to slouch… I have read all your posts and you didn't mention posture or answer readers when they asked (for new readers, you can fall over laughing at that)… Don't you know that it hurts my back to sit at a desk to read your book on fixing pain?..."
Excellent readers sent the brains: "You expect me to actually get free exercise using my muscles to make my own life better?? Congress will hear about this!… I can move my own body? Shocking!… Burn more calories, free, and be healthier and stop disc pain by sitting so that my back does not hurt? I won't, I won't, I WON'T!!!..."
The moment you bend right, you will stop injurious forces on the discs and knees. Keep good habits, and they can heal. Stop tensing your body and it will not be tight and tense any longer. Relax does not mean slouch. The moment you change to healthier sitting habits, you will be able to sit more comfortably.
No exercises, no séances, no pills, no mattresses make you bend right and stand in the kitchen preparing meals with healthful stance, breathing not grunting, shoulders back, not hunched, smiling and contented instead of poisoning your body with stress chemicals that you generate yourself through hurtful behaviors.
The method you choose to fix your injuries depends on your view. If you don't like to have it free, quickly, and in a way that uses your own body to get exercise as part of your life, then of course go to another method and comment there about your pain. It seems to be a 'sign of the times' to do pills and blame. Time for change to something healthier (if you want). This Fitness Fixer and all my other methods are for people who would be embarrassed to whine, and want direct, intelligent ways to get their own life back. Be prepared to have fun and use your brain.
Where to Start (if you want to, no one is making you):
www.DrBookspan.com/books. Read the descriptions if you want the right book for your injury or life goals. Up to you.
--- Read and contribute your own success stories of these methods. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. LimitedClass spaces for personal evaluation. Top students may apply for certification -DrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more with Dr. Bookspan's Books,
Fast Fitness - Better Standing Hamstring, Achilles, and Inside Leg Stretch
Friday, June 12, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Fast Friday Fitness - get a better stretch for the hamstring of the standing leg when stretching the other leg to the side:
When you stand with one leg stretching to the side, notice the leg you are standing on. It is common to stand with the foot turned outward and the hip rounded under you.
Instead, turn the standing leg to face directly ahead. Knee and toes straight forward. Not turned out, not even a small amount. Stand straight.
Notice the stretch move to the back of your leg.
My student Leslie is pictured above at age 68. I snapped this shot of her while she was waiting for one of my classes. The position of the foot on the standing leg isn't visible, but she is straight ahead. I had to snap the photo quickly before the club manager told us to stop.
Stand straight without leaning over, rounding your upper body, or letting your hip round under you. This is different from the way most people are used to.
The straighter you stand, the more stretch, while training the function of healthy posture - a functional stretch. You need to be able to lift one leg without being so tight that your back rounds and your hip rolls under. Think of stairs, kicks for dancing, aerobics, martial arts, stepping over things, stairs, much real life. If you are not only using bad mechanics for daily life, but training unhealthful tight mechanics with conventional bent over stretching, what are you accomplishing?
If you can't stand straight, lower your leg to where you can. There is little point stretching for health while practicing unhealthful ways.
What has happened in a year? She can now do 40 push-ups. We just don't have a video camera. While we get one, click the link to do your push-ups with her each morning while it is still only 30.
Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from fun ones. Before asking more, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, or in the Fitness Fixer Index.
Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books. Get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy.
Fast Fitness - Develop Ankle Stability Sense While Stretching
Friday, June 05, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Fast Friday Fitness - prevent a common source of overstretched lateral ankle ligament, which is one contributor to repeated sprains - turning the ankle when stretching:
When you stretch your hip and legs, or sit cross legged or in yoga poses, notice if you allow the foot to turn, increasing stretch on the outside ligaments of the ankle - too much supination. Reader Liz demonstrates in photo 1 below.
Straighten your ankle, Liz photo 2, below.
You may notice you get more good stretch from your hip to make up for the motion you were getting by turning your ankle. Holding straight gives better stretch in the hip, and better ankle stability training.
Avoid turning ankle, overstretching outer ligament, demonstrated by Liz in photo 1 above /\
Then remember to use the sense and knowledge of ankle straightening when you stand, run, take stairs. Lying down to stretch will not train stable ankles. The idea of this post is not to make ankles worse with your stretches. Not all things are good to stretch. Avoid the unhealthful practice of lengthening the side ankle ligaments, shown again in the photo below:
Ligaments are like a briefcase latch. They attach the top bone to the bone below it. Like a latch, a ligament is not supposed to stretch, but hold position, so that the briefcase hinge (your ankle joint) does not rattle and the briefcase does not pop open (side of your ankle sprain). While sitting cross legged, straighten the ankle so that it does not turn up.
Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from fun ones. Before asking more, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, or in the Fitness Fixer Index.
Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books. Get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy.
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Healthy photos thanks to Liz of New Zealand Ligament stretch yoga ankles by Than Tan
Fast Fitness - Built in Upper Body and Core Exercise Carrying Children
Friday, May 29, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - get better exercise and stop aching back and shoulders when carrying children (or anything else) in backpack carriers or by piggyback:
Put on the carrier (and baby for a fun practice ride or use groceries, etc). Look sideways in a mirror.
See if you round your upper and or lower back forward. See if you lean your upper body backward under the weight. Notice if you increase your lower spine inward curve, are tilting the hip out in back to hold up the carrier.
Straighten upper and lower body segments. You will feel a strong pull on your abdominal muscles when you reduce overarching in the lower spine and prevent leaning the upper body backward. You will feel an upper back workout when you don't lean or round forward.
Use straighter positioning all you can:
It may be "natural" to try to offset loads by hunching and contorting your body, but it still hurts.
Overarching the lower spine makes carrying feel easier because it shifts weight to the spine joints (facets) and surrounding soft tissue, and off the ab muscles. Rounding forward feels easier as it shifts weight to the discs and off the back muscles.
Get more exercise and less joint trauma with neutral posture.
Looking downward with good neck dynamics: Holding healthful position does not mean never look up or down to see where you are going. It means to get natural, built-in upper body exercise, burn calories, and enjoy your time going places with the kids - Tax Preparation Health
Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from fun ones. Before asking more, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, or in the Fitness Fixer Index.
RSS feeds are still going down - Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books. Get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy.
Fast Fitness - Quick Refreshed Perspective Every Day
Friday, May 22, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Fast Friday Fitness - strengthen appreciation. Appreciation increases happiness, lowers blood pressure and stress chemicals, and reduces resentment, an unhealthy state of mind:
When you turn on a water faucet, notice that you get water. This is more than several millions of people have. Real people, as deserving as everyone else, walk miles and pay criminally inflated prices for water that is sometimes too dirty to drink.
When you turn on an electric light, notice that you get light and have electricity. In every room. At all hours. In many part of the world, even in major cities, they do not have electricity more than a few hours and sometimes, none in non-public areas.
If you are reading this, you may have a computer or other electronics. Even if it is in a library and you waited in line, you have these luxuries to browse for life enhancing ideas.
Right now, there are people carrying loads and walking miles just to dig for food and water, or carrying all their belongings on their back and living in tent refuge cities to escape persecution, sieges, physical attacks and worse, and have been for years. Not complaining doesn't mean to not change things. Do something about it:
It is fantastic bounty to have water and electricity. Try to notice it, and be happy for it. It is also true that Western water is full of unnecessary chemicals, and destructive pharmaceuticals. We can reduce polluting and taking unnecessary drugs. Don't pollute and litter without thought. Work to change the lives of all the many without basic rights and privileges. Show children that you appreciate, and don't destroy. Lead by example.
Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from fun ones. Before asking more, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, or in the Fitness Fixer Index.
Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books. Get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy.
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - by special request of martial arts students starting my summer semester university class this Tuesday - Make a quick soreness relief rub at home:
Cut open hot red peppers and remove the seeds. If you have sensitive skin, use gloves.
Crush the seeds using a mortar and pestle. If you don't have that, try a mallet or any pounding tool. More seeds makes a hotter rub. Experiment sensibly. Crush in some pulp of the red pepper (or a green one) to add substance and color.
Add oil to preferred thickness. Coconut oil is great, and becomes solid in cool temperatures. Or try sesame or olive oil, whatever is healthy and handy in the kitchen. Rub on sore areas.
Some commercial preparations contain petroleum products, like Vaseline, unhealthy for bodies like the Earth and you. Some contain methyl salicylate. Even though these are natural plant substances, poisonings and overdoses are common. Other soreness balms contain any number of toxic substances. Fresh, healthful hot pepper rub is quick and good.
**Wash your hands well with soap before touching your eyes or using the bathroom to avoid burning the touched areas. Be sure to remove hot pepper traces before handling contact lenses.**
Make sure it is your muscles that are sore from good honest effort, not joint injury:
Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from fun ones. Before asking more, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, or in the Fitness Fixer Index.
Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books. Get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy.
Here is Fast Friday Fitness - Bend right and pull one of the highest nutrition garden items, free, even if you have not planted a garden:
Find dandelions. You can tell them by their jagged leaves. The leaves gave them their name, from the French for 'dents de lion' (tooth of the lion).
Use good bending, with squat or lunge, to pull free nutritious food. Many people will let you have theirs free.
You can eat the green, the flowers, even the roots. USDA Bulletin #8, "Composition of Foods" (Haytowitz & Matthews 1984) ranks dandelions in the top 4 green vegetables in overall nutritional value.
Dandelion has long been known as a top nutritional food and even medicine. The official name, Taraxacum officinal, comes from the Greek, 'taraxos' meaning 'disorder' and 'akos' meaning 'remedy.'
Eat the greens as salad, sautéed like other green vegetables, or make juice. Greens are best fresh and young, just before the plant flowers. Greens have bitter taste (like coffee and beer) that is said to aid digestion. People who are accustomed to junk sweets may not like them at first, then they taste better over time, and mixed with nuts, spices, and vinegar.
Dandelion flowers are pretty in salads and on vegetables, or use them to make wine (to be covered in posts to come). Dandelion root contains inulin, a soluble fiber which does not raise blood sugar or triglycerides, making it helpful to people with diabetes. Dig roots in early spring or fall. You can eat them as is, or soak them in a jar of brandy or vodka for four weeks (or more) to make a tincture.
Now you can stop using poisonous and expensive chemicals on your lawn too. Better not to add these substances to the water system, or to yours.
The good news? Even when you pull them to eat, they come back to make more free nutritious garden without work.
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Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from fun ones. Before asking more, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, or in the Fitness Fixer Index.
Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books. Get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy.
Fast Fitness - Double Arm Strength, Endurance, Balance, Stability, and Free Inversion Table
Friday, May 01, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Fast Friday Fitness - build on the handstands you have already been doing with Fitness Fixer.
Do a handstand against a wall. An easy way is to stand with your back about a foot or so from a wall, crouch down and put one foot, then the other, high on the wall.
With feet still against the wall, begin to lean your weight until you are holding yourself up on only one arm.
Hold as long as you can. Breathe normally. Leave shoulders relaxed, not tight. Switch to the other arm.
"Sorry my video requires a lot of phone power so I had enough to snap a shot before I have to charge it. Angle is kinda odd as it is on a "tv" with my wallet ingeniously holding it in a position so it can see me instead of the floor lol. I need to go and buy a camera.."
If you like lifting weight overhead for upper body strength, you don't need to wait to go to a gym, or to get weights or equipment.
How to get started with a wall handstand - Wall Handstand Success With Liz. Use your brain before trying this. Be safe and careful, obviously.
--- Read and contribute your own success stories of these methods. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal evaluation. Top students may apply to certify throughDrBookspan.com/Academy.See Dr. Bookspan's Books. ---
Fast Fitness - Pro-Social Behavior Improves Health of All
Friday, April 24, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - Doing selfless good is not only for the benefit of the receiver. Move your body and brain to make a happier world, passed on like a game of tag.
Lily is one of my martial arts students. She writes:
"In my Psychology class called “Child and Adolescent Development” my teacher asked each of us to do simple acts of kindness throughout the semester.
"Pro-social behavior is the opposite of antisocial behavior. The ideas behind doing simple acts of kindness are as follows: behavior is contagious, we model behavior for others, and we become what we do. Acting in kind ways toward others is positive behavior that we model for others. It is valuable to model this kind of behavior for children. (The Behaviorists say that behavior is learned). It is important to teach children about kindness, because children’s brains are developing, and experiences hardwire the brain.
"Each week at the beginning of class, my teacher would ask her students to please share a simple act of kindness. Examples (some are mine, some are others'):
“I held the door for someone.”
“I gave a friend who doesn’t have a car a ride to school today.”
“I cooked my mom dinner.”
“I helped my mom stretch her legs in ways she normally could not, to help relieve her pain.”
“I helped a stranger change their tire.”
“I was about to pull into a parking spot, but let another person, who was obviously in a rush, have the spot. They thanked me.”
“I e-mailed a classmate the homework assignment when they had missed class.”
“I helped a very drunk girl find the bus stop and gave her a token to get home.”
“I helped my little brother with his homework.”
“I call my grandmother regularly now, just to talk, when before I only called her if there was a specific reason.”
“I helped someone fix their printer, even though I was initially unsure how to.”
Try some. Move your body and brain. Make health contagious. Send in your own successes doing small things that pass happier ways on. Click the label 'spirit' for Fitness Fixer ideas.
Lily's Posts:
Lily demonstrates a better lunge stretch and gives a no-cook delicious recipe: - Lunges and Beans
Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from selected ones. Before asking, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, and archives at right.
Fast Fitness - Add Balance, Stability, and Portability to Military Press - Handstand Pushups
Friday, April 17, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Fast Friday Fitness - If you like lifting weight overhead for upper body strength, you don't need to wait to go to a gym, or to get weights or equipment.
Get more exercise, practice balance, and shoulder and arm stability, with handstand dips:
Do a handstand against a wall. An easy way is to stand with your back about a foot or so from a wall, crouch down and put one foot, then the other, high on the wall.
With good judgment, do upside down pushups (dips).
Vary the depth of each dip, speed of each, speed you can do a number of dips, and distance of your hands from the wall to vary the exercise.
Robert Davis sent in his video of how to do handstand pushups. Blogger is still having trouble uploading visuals. Click this link to watch it:
he writes, "I replaced the military press with this. It is portable for one! Ever notice how pronounced male gymnasts shoulders and arms are? They do things like this:) "
Robert was a weightlifter who hurt his back with conventional lifting (bad bending and overarching the lower spine). He rehabbed quickly with Fitness Fixer techniques and has been sending in his success stories one after the next. He writes:
"This was not a very problematic exercise as I had been used to destroying my shoulders with mega high weight LOL. But this is different because of the engagement of muscle groups that control stabilization.
"But yeah, I have been doing that in place of military press and see how it is more beneficial as the stabilizers have to kick in more then being benched or using a machine.
"Once again thank you and I think people should really listen to you. I am glad I did because I have no need to go in to get scanned or be told I need surgery or something silly ;)
"Like I said I am not into pro body building, I just did it to stay "fit" and look fit as I thought it was. But after going thru this, it is not all that functional to pound out reps of heavy weight and not be able to do a plank or walk/sit straight. I lifted enough just to have "lean muscle" but not to be huge. But I realize now this is easily done safely with your methods and I do not need a gym."
--- Read and contribute your own success stories of these methods. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal evaluation. Top students may apply to certify throughDrBookspan.com/Academy.See Dr. Bookspan's Books. ---
Fast Fitness - Better Legs and Pain Relief Comes From You Not The Exercise Ball
Friday, April 03, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - Be healthful when you do health activities. What a concept.
How fit is it to use fitness equipment in unhealthy ways?
When you pick up and put down an exercise ball, or any exercise equipment, how do you bend? Unhealthfully? During an activity you use to improve your health?
Robert Davis sent in this change of bad bending to good bending . Good bending shifts weight and leverage off lumbar discs and onto leg, hip, and back muscles.
Robert Davis wrote. "I had to use my cell phone on timer so the pictures are not the greatest quality."
Here is the ouchy
Here is the squat
Robert Davis was a weight lifter with a painful back injury from conventional lifting. He fixed his back pain with Fitness Fixer, intelligently applying principles of healthful movement for everything during exercise and also daily life. He wrote:
"I took a picture of what was causing "ouchy" because it is so normal in America *for adults!*.. (upper photo of forward bending). Then ouchy started to go away the more I did, 'ah much better' (squatting)... Pretty soon ouchy was gone from the bad forward bending.
"I am now doing a complete head to toe revision... Point was that my back stopped hurting, and as you said, heals when I let it, with better movement.
"I am glad there is someone out there like you who tells you how it is. It gives encouragement and hope. I have seen people my age already with a few surgeries (and they are in the 20s to 30s!). They were from injuries, and sadly they never had a chance to find that they didn't need it.
"I was encouraged by others' stories and with your statement, "don't let them scare you" because I was a bit scared. I have never been injured before with that much pain. But, I was more then willing to try this because I did not want limitation as I had seen in my friends who had surgery. Some multiple times. "
Mr. Davis has been sending in success stories one after then next. Here are some of his Inspiring Functional Fitness:
--- Read and contribute your own success stories of these methods. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal evaluation. Top students may apply to certify throughDrBookspan.com/Academy.See Dr. Bookspan's Books. ---
Fast Fitness - Straighten and Stretch Hip While Strengthening Core, Arms, Legs, and Balance
Friday, March 27, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - Increase strength and muscular endurance of your body working as a whole, and learn to keep neutral spine and good hip position against resistance.
From a pushup position, turn to the side, raising one arm overhead, holding legs and body straight.
Raise your top leg. Notice if you increase the inward curve of your lower back (overarch to hyperlordosis) and if you bring the leg forward - demonstrated in the upper photo.
Instead, hold straight. To feel position, practice against a wall - demonstrated in the lower photo. Bring the back of the raised leg against the wall. Press your lower back closer toward the wall instead of letting it overarch from the weight of your leg pulling the spine.
The idea is to use the wall as a guide to learn positioning, then use your muscles and sense of positioning to hold straight without the wall from then onward.
Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from selected ones. Before asking, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, and archives at right.
Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right.
Fast Friday - Oblique Core Strength and Balance on the Ball
Friday, March 20, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - develop strong side abdominal and back muscles, and train balance at the same time:
Put both hands on the floor and step one foot up onto an exercise ball of any size
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.
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.
At first, you may need help to steady the ball. Practice until you can steady it with your own muscles, balance, and stability.
Instead of sitting on an exercise ball, remember that you might already sit much of the day. Get up and use an exercise ball for more functional, active, and healthful things.
Send in your photos of your fun successes using the ball in ways that train function. Exercise ball success story already in progress from Robert Davis. See his first story - Fixed Injuries, Got Strong, With Functional Exercise.
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Fast Fitness - Even More Core With No Forward Bending
Friday, March 13, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Fast Friday Fitness - build on a previous Fast Fitness for increased strength of body and core. Strengthen almost everything with this fun move.
Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from fun ones. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Read inspiring success stories of these methods and send your own.For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books. For personal evaluation take a Class. For top students, certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy.
Hold a straight pushup position. Extend one leg 90 degrees out to the side. Your foot and knee point straight to the front.
Keep that leg and foot parallel to ground, not sagging downward to the floor.
Do pushups keeping the leg held straight out to the side and off the floor.
Keep your back straight (demonstrated center) in neutral spine. Don't allow lower spine or neck to droop under your weight, to prevent compressive spine sagging (gray t-shirt right foreground). See how in Fast Fitness - Strengthen by Changing Your Plank.
Readers - send in your mpeg movies of doing this and all your other successes.
--- Read and contribute your own success stories of these methods. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. LimitedClass spaces for personal evaluation. Top students may apply for certification -DrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more with Dr. Bookspan's Books,
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - learn how to use your abdominal muscles for what they need to do in real life - hold your spine in neutral position, even against resistance:
Lie flat, face up. Legs out straight, as if standing up. Hold a weight a few inches above the floor with arms outstretched, elbows by your ears.
Lift the weight a few inches up and down, using your abdominal muscles to prevent your ribs from lifting up and to keep your back from leaving neutral position.
Keep your lower back close to the floor. This is the key to making this into an effective and functional abdominal retraining exercise. Also prevent the weight from touching the floor (don't drop baby on head).
This video was made by David from Belgium with his baby Aiko, born one year ago today, Feb 27th 2008. Happy Birthday Aiko!
Click the arrow to run. If the video does not load, here is the URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8k4zDwce7bE
Watch how David bends well with heels down and upright body to pick up baby Aiko, and gets up again without using hands.
Press your lower back toward the floor and feel your abdominal muscles working strongly. The point of this retraining drill is to have fun learning to hold your spine stable against resistance, learn how to reduce an overly large lower back arch using the floor as a guide, then transfer that knowledge to standing and lifting overhead. This is how your abs are supposed to work in daily life when standing - to prevent the spine from overarching (overextending backward).
For more on using neutral spine in real life see the third expanded edition of The Ab Revolution™.
--- Read and contribute your own success stories of these methods. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal evaluation. Top students may apply to certify throughDrBookspan.com/Academy.See Dr. Bookspan's Books. ---
Use you brains and hand motor skills to install it on your bicycle wheel with your kids, or family, or a friend, or alone.
Get more exercise pushing against the generator while making the power for your bike headlight or safety light.
Beside powering a light for your street bike, think of exercise machines. It seems wasteful to use treadmills and stationary bicycles that require electric power to operate. Encourage manufacturers to make equipment of all kinds that run on self-generated power, and gyms to stock them.
Use shaker and wind-up flashlights instead of battery flashlights, hook up a bike to run the television, or a treadmill to power a capacitor to run lights - power to and from the people.
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Partner 1 (white uniform) does biceps curls and other lifts using partner 2's weight.
Partner 2 uses core and whole body strength and endurance to hold straight positioning. Partner 2 can face up, down or sideways, in each case using appropriate muscles to maintain straight position. Breathe normally.
This Fast Fitness can be done with willing friends, children, pets, and furniture.
Partner 1 uses core and abdominal muscles to stand with neutral spine rather than leaning backward, and whole body strength to support weight of partner 2.
It is a myth that you must lean back to offset a carried load. You get intense and functional abdominal muscle workout by using them to pull you forward to neutral standing position.
I once used this exercise of holding straight horizontal position (partner 2's part) while helping out a friend who is a stage magician. I filled in for his absent assistant for the floating lady illusion. I was too tall for the apparatus. It usually holds your body out flat using struts reaching from head to thigh. It reached only to my midback. I wound up holding my weight myself, from hips to feet - high above the stage - while trying to look hypnotized. More on this, someday, in another post.
I make posts from fun mail. Before asking more questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. Try fun stuff, then contribute! Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy. ---
Fast Friday - Functional Oblique Abdominal Muscle Practice - Holding Straight
Friday, February 06, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - use your oblique abdominal muscles functionally - to hold yourself straight against resistance:
Stretch out on the floor. Turn to the side, standing on one hand and one foot
Hold straight as long as you can. Don't sag. Feel how to hold yourself straight and relaxed.
For more, raise the top leg. Keep body straight, instead of bending forward at the hip. Don't increase the inward curve at the lower spine when you raise the leg. Keep neutral spine.
Photo is of one of my students, Dr. Hanley Owen, a physician from Fairbanks Alaska, who took a workshop with me at the Wilderness Medical Society meeting 2008. Check my web site CLASS page for workshops this summer - DrBookspan.com/classes.
Instead of curling forward and sideways to exercise abdominal muscles, this drill retrains oblique abdominal the way you need them in real life - to keep you straight instead of slouching to the front or side when carrying shoulder bags and other loads, including yourself.
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Fast Fitness - Better Back and Leg Exercise When Vacuuming
Friday, January 30, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - Prevent lumbar disc degeneration, and strengthen and stretch your legs without needing a gym, trainer, or exercise equipment, or even changing your clothes:
Notice if you bend wrong - pictured at right with red X. It may stretch and feel good, but over time pushes discs outward to the back (herniates them).
Stand upright and bend both knees in a lunge - pictured center with green check mark.
Instead of only doing lunges as an exercise 10 times and paying for a trainer or a gym (right) use it hundreds of times a day for real life bending. That is functional exercise.
Good bending will not hurt your knees. Keep front knee back over your ankle (left and middle photo with green check mark). Healthy positioning keeps your body weight on your muscles and off your knee joint.
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Fast Fitness - Fixing Arches, Knock Knee, and Knee Pain Without Orthotics
Friday, January 23, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Fast Friday Fitness - Stop one major source of inward-turning knees (knock-knees). Click the movie arrow to run:
Look at your bare legs in a mirror with feet facing straight forward.
See if the knees turn inward to face more toward each other than forward.
Feel how the muscles can pull outward to gently move (not force) knee position. These muscles like to be used correctly, not left unused.
Often, knees turned inward are a simple case of letting body weight sag downward onto the inside of the leg and arch of the foot, not a case of unchanging anatomy. Pain often comes from letting the knees and ankles twist, rotate, and sag. Restoring neutral position can stop this source of pain.
Orthotics are hard inserts that hold your foot in a certain position. Orthotics are different from cushion inserts that make a softer landing for each step. You can control leg and foot position without orthotics. That doesn't mean orthotics don't work, just that you can do it without them. It's cheaper and you get a free leg muscle stability workout at the same time.
Remember, don't force. If it hurts, it's wrong. Creating new strain instead of restoring function is not health or good thinking. All you are doing is restoring muscle length and using that to learn how to stand neutral, not tilted so much that you compress your joints.
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Fast Fitness - Hip Stretch and Spine Stability Training When Stretching Legs
Friday, January 16, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
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:
Keep your standing leg straight. Don't bend at the knee and hip, as pictured.
Don't round your back or let your pelvis and hip round under you, as pictured.
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.
Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from selected ones. See if your answers are already here by clicking labels below posts, and links and archives. Read success stories of these methods and send your own.
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Fast Fitness - How Abdominal Muscles Prevent Hyperlordosis When Carrying
Friday, January 09, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - How to use your abdominal muscles to maintain neutral spine when carrying babies, and other things held and carried.
When you hold loads in front, notice if you lean your upper body backward - right-hand photo marked with red X. Leaning backward from the waist increases lumbar lordosis (hyperlordosis) which pinches the lower spine, causing aching after long standing.
Instead, stand upright - middle and left photo. The muscles that pull your spine forward to straight position against the load are your abdominal muscles. Upper spine angle will be a little more upright than pictured (center).
It is a myth that you must lean back to offset a carried load. You get a free abdominal muscle workout and increase abdominal muscles endurance by using them (not tightening) to change from painful to healthful standing position. Breathe normally.
David from Belgium is pictured at left. David has made many contributions to Fitness Fixer through photos, movies, success stories fixing his own pain and of his yoga students, translated many of my articles into Dutch, and has developed a healthier yoga style which he premiered at a world yoga congress last year
He did all this during the time he and wife (pictured center and right above) were expecting their first baby, arriving early last February. Thank you David and family from all of us.
Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from selected ones. See if your answers are already here by clicking links and archives. Read success stories of these methods and send your own.
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Fast Fitness - High Core Strength For The New Year
Friday, January 02, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Fast Friday Fitness - a quick fun one to fulfill New Year's Resolutions for increased strength of body and core. Strengthen almost everything with this fun move that my students affectionately call "peeing dog" -
Hold a straight pushup position. Keep elbows slightly bent, not locked.
Lift one leg straight out to the side, as if over a bicycle. Hold as long as you can. Jump to switch other leg out to the other side.
Hold neutral spine throughout (pictured at center). Don't let lower spine or neck droop under your weight (gray shirt second from right). This post shows how - Fast Fitness - Strengthen by Changing Your Plank.
Send your photos or short movies of your successes doing this. Coming soon - an even more fun and challenging maneuver once you can do this one.
Photo is from my workshop at the 2007 International Black Belt Hall of Fame.
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Here is Fast Friday Fitness - Strengthen your breathing muscles for easier breathing.
Blow up balloons instead of using a pump this New Year's Eve and through the New Year.
Inflate some with the quickest breath you can do. Inflate others with long slow breath.
Don't overbreathe or hyperventilate to become dizzy or force breathing or strain, which can increase blood pressure and pressure in the brain and eye. Stay healthy.
Your lungs don't have muscles, but you have inspiratory and expiratory muscles in your chest and diaphragm. They are muscles like any others that improve with training and decline without regular workouts. Breathing muscle exercise is now accepted scientifically as helpful to patients with various respiratory conditions, asthmas, and allergies.
Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from selected ones. See if your answers are already here by clicking links and archives, and labels under posts. Read success stories of these methods and send your own.
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Fast Fitness - Don't Shorten Hip When Stretching Hamstring
Friday, December 19, 2008
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Fast Friday Fitness - Get a more functional hamstring stretch, and a built-in posturally helpful functional stretch to the front of the hip at the same time.
When lying on your back to stretch your hamstrings by lifting one leg:
Lie flat. Keep the leg you are not lifting flat on the ground, not bent at the knee and hip, or with upper body curled and neck craned, as pictured.
Don't let your pelvis and hip round under you. Don't let your backside curl up off the floor.
Keep your hip, leg, back, shoulders, and head relaxed, flat, straight, touching the ground.
It is a myth that you must bend your knee to protect your back. If you must bend your knee to protect your back, how are you supposed to stand on one leg and lift the other in real life to climb stairs, kick, and even run and walk, without curling into bent over, old-looking, tight, injury-producing position?
When stretching your hamstrings, remember function. Why practice a position that is rounded, tightening, and detrimental to how you move when you stand and extend your legs. Get stretch by lengthening you body enough to be able to straighten out.
Send me your photos of fixing this stretch. Doing is the best learning. I will publish the photos in a reader success post to come.
Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from selected ones. See if your answers are already here by clicking links and archives. Read success stories of these methods and send your own.
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The Shinobi no Mono, or the Ninja of old Japan, were renowned for their running speed and endurance.
Running drills called "ashi" (foot or feet) were an important part of Ninjutsu physical training. Try this basic Ninja ashi, or running drill:
Put a straw hat on your chest.
Run without holding the hat with your hands or other fastening.
Run so fast that the hat does not fall - this requires keeping a minimum speed for the duration of the ashi drill.
Where is the photo? He (or she - there were female Ninjas) must have run by so fast you didn't see. We are still working on the problem of photos not uploading. Healthline staffer Jerry has been helping to upload several photos for posts to come. Thankyou Jerry.
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Fast Fitness - Reduce Holiday Driving Stress, Increase Human Connection
Friday, December 05, 2008
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Fast Friday Fitness - Instead of cursing crowds, delays, weather conditions, and other drivers, spend your commuting and errand time every day in the car learning with audio books:
Find your local library.
Check the audio book section.
Find audio books that teach you valuable things you would enjoy.
Children in the car can become engaged in listening and learning instead of withdrawing to personal video games, and texting devices. From the content of the audiobooks, you can restart dialog and develop skills of talking to each other.
Large numbers of interesting audio books can be checked out on line.
Click the labels for more ideas in each topic. Add your suggestions here.
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There are still people around the world, by the millions, without basics.
Blake Mycoskie created TOMS footwear to, "Produce stylish, comfortable, and practical footwear while improving the lives of children around the world."
TOMS press kits states they adhere to "No Sweatshops…ensuring both fair labor practices and minimal impact on the environment."
Mycoskie writes, “Inspired by a traditional Argentine shoe and challenged by continent’s poverty and heath issues, I created TOMS with a singular mission: To make life more comfortable. TOMS accomplishes this through a unique shoe and commitment to match every pair purchased with a pair to a child in need…no complicated formulas, it’s simple…you buy a pair of TOMS and TOMS gives a pair to a child on your behalf.
Privileged Western children may benefit from, even enjoy, practicing this type of gift giving, over spending on junk food and indulgent status items for themselves.
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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:
Take the board you made, or make one now.
Hold a pushup position with feet on the floor and both hands on the board.
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:
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.
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Here is Friday Fast Fitness - Strengthen and increase endurance of hands, fingers, and forearms.
Farmers Carry - Hold a heavy briefcase, suitcase, bucket, grocery bags, or other weights with a handle. Hold arms down at your side (or out to the side to add shoulder exercise.) Babies and children love to be swung (safely) forward and back in slings and other inventive carriers held in farmers grip.
Finger Carry - Hold (non-living) items down at your side, to the front, and out to sides with four fingers, three, two, then each one. Don't tighten your hand. Learn to apply strength in relaxed manner. When lifting with one arm, stand straight and get built-in core stabilization exercise, instead of leaning to the other side. You don't need to lean to counter balance the weight - use your muscles instead.
Pinch grip - Increase different grip ability by holding the weight pinched between the pads of your fingers instead of resting the weight inside the curled fist. Hold a book or heavier weight down at your side with 'pinch grip.'
Photo uploads still not loading. Several posts and reader stories have been postponed. Grip techniques on today's Fast Fitness are (hopefully) easy to visualize. Click the photo credits to see them on Flickr.
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Here is Fast Friday Fitness - practice patience and peel pomegranates for hand dexterity, and the antioxidants and fiber you can't get from juice.
It's pomegranate season. For the next few months, look for red, round fruit with edible seeds, called arils, prized for health benefits:
Cut each end off thinly, enough to reach white pulp without cutting into the arils
Score the peel into quarter cuts with a knife, enough to reach white pulp without cutting into the arils. The idea is to make it easy to break open into four quarters.
Finger the arils from the cut sections into a bowl. Discard the whitish sectional pulp into a bowl or compost heap.
Photos still not loading. Please use imagination exercise.
It may take as much as 5 minutes to patiently tease out the arils. Good for practicing breathing, and good posture while standing over a counter.
Eat the sweet, slightly tart arils with a spoon. They are crunchy and juicy.
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Here is Fast Friday Fitness - Encourage health, not disease on Halloween.
Instead of junk candy, what about:
Give "Pledge to be Drug Free" stickers. If you don't have preprinted stickers, easily make some with blank stickers or labels, colored markers, and help of children (yours or neighbors).
Give small toys, available inexpensively in bulk. One choice is small blocks of modeling clay with a list of suggestions what kids can make - sculpt your dream profession, favorite person, flower... Toy, office, and hobby stores sell pre-packaged boxes of small cans of clay at economical prices. (Use some to make your high tech balance trainer.).
If you don't distribute treats this year (or any year) put a sign on your gate or door to Trick or Treaters with a healthy message - "Be drug free," "Always say 'please and thank you,'" "Please look both ways before you cross the street," or other good message.
If nothing else, not giving junk candy may cut down on visitors to your house :-)
(Photo for this post is on the way as soon as we figure out the problem with uploads. Brain exercise.)
If you are dressed as something scary, show kids that even scary things act well and do good. Try healthy Halloween games to teach manners, such as, "You've Been Boo'd" with a good deed. In this game, you say something nice to someone or let someone in line ahead of you, tell them they have been "boo'd" and they are next to pass it on.
Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from selected ones. See if your answers are already here by clicking links, labels below, and archives at right. Read success stories of these methods and send your own.
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Fast Fitness - Make Your Own Balance, Agility, and Leg and Ankle Retrainer
Friday, October 24, 2008
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
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.
Put a sturdy board on a rock or hard, fairly round object like a solid ball.
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.
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.
--- Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from selected ones. See if your answers are already here by clicking links and archives. Read success stories of these methods and send your own.
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Fast Fitness - Strengthen and Stabilize Upper Body and Core Without Increasing Neck Tension
Friday, October 17, 2008
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - learn how to use and strengthen arm, shoulder, upper body muscles, and abdominal and back muscles without hunching, tensing, and tightening:
Have a friend stand in front of you with arms crossed over their chest. Grasp their arms or elbows, like holding a steering wheel of a car or bike
While they resist, try to "drive" and turn the wheel right and left. Both of you keep the body upright and straight.
Notice if either of you hunch shoulders, tense the neck, or strain your breathing. Practice moving strongly without clenching. Keep breathing.
This can be fun to do with kids - they can "drive" you, then you can pick them in the air and "drive" them. To try this solo, hold a doorway, sturdy pole or pipe, or other hard to move object.
It is common to tense and hunch the shoulders and neck out of bad habit while doing arm strengthening exercises, and while using arms for daily life activities like driving, hanging up clothes and putting groceries on high shelves. Tightening leads to faulty muscle use, and increased blood pressure at the moment. These habits can contribute to headaches, bad postural and breathing habits, and poor mood.
Train relaxed habits instead of tightening muscles. Transfer relaxed good posture to daily movement.
More to train arms like these in the book Healthy Martial Arts - without special equipment or supplements.
Here is Fast Friday Fitness - learn a long-known, little talked-about world crisis encompassing health, politics, economics, pollution, and human rights. See the movie Flow to quickly learn several global practices that improve your health to know:
Water is the third largest global corporate-profit industry after electricity and oil, leaving surprising pollution, disease, graft, and social destabilization in its wake. Corporations seize local waters for resale, leaving the world's poorest without access to unpolluted water to drink and bathe, and frequently without any water at all. Over 1 billion people do not have safe drinking water, resulting in millions of sicknesses and deaths per year, including several millions of children and infants. Even Westerners are affected. Possibly 116,000 human-made chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and hormones are already identified in public water supply, consumed in the West through drinking and through the skin in washing. Known health effects range from stomach illnesses frequently mistaken for "flu," food-poisoning, or bowel problems, and breathing difficulties.
Be aware that you can turn on a tap and get water. An average American uses 150 gallons of water per day. Billions in developing countries walk miles and still cannot get more than five gallons. Staggering numbers of people around the world have total income averaging $2 (two American dollars) a day, and are being charged to travel distances and lift and carry water that was once available to them without charge.
When you buy expensive bottled water know that it is frequently ordinary tap water resold in deception, various pretentious "fitness waters" are not as healthful as eating ordinary fruit, and the bottling results in avoidable large scale pollution.
Fast Fitness - Prevent Death and Disfigurement, Save Lives and Property
Friday, October 03, 2008
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Fast Friday Fitness - Make yourself and your community stronger with one practice:
See if you are strong enough to refuse the alcohol or the car keys.
It isn't as tough, or strong, or cool to "hold your liquor" as it is to turn it down before driving.
Strengthen your resolve, your self respect, your civics, your individuality, raise your status to hero, be a role model, show off your discipline, be cool.
Is your arm strong enough to put the drink down before driving? What about other bad habits?
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - how to get healthy, fun, functional natural exercise, get fresh air and needed sunshine, break out of old ruts, laugh, feel young, strengthen arms, legs, hands, practice balance, try something new, all at no charge:
Go to a playground.
Hang, swing, pull up, jump, climb, balance, laugh. Use muscles, balance, breathing, coordination, imagination, Get fresh air and sunshine.
Have fun.
Use your brains and observe common sense safety. Test movements and equipment slowly first, check height of each apparatus compared to the ground and your head, make sure of your footing, grip, bone density, and landing skills before launching into the air, don't use children as landing pads, etc. Use good manners learned (or should have learned) as a small child.
If you do nothing more than hang from a bar or rings to start, you will strengthen hands, arms, and wrist.
When you are ready for more, make your own parcours (pronounced par-koor, and also called Free-Running) - Parcours - Old Fun Is New Exercise.
Here is Fast Friday Fitness - strengthen forearm, hand, and wrist while practicing a useful skill (functional exercise).
Use a screwdriver to push in and turn a screw into a block of wood. Then drive two more.
Using the same hand, reverse direction and undo all three.
Repeat with the other hand
Use hand and forearm muscles to power the turning, instead of letting the effort concentrate on the wrist.
Start with soft wood and work up to harder materials.
With your improved skills, you can go from making your wrist better to helping fix and build things to make your community better.
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Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal feedback. Top students may apply for certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
Here is Fast Friday Fitness - quick vitamin and fiber-rich sweet drink helpful before and after exercise:
Put fresh watermelon slices in a blender, seeds and all.
Blend to a sweet smooth drink.
Depending on your blender, you may need to push the slices down to the blades with a wooden spoon. If you don't have a blender, get arm exercise mashing the slices to sweet juice in a bowl.
The seeds provide good nutrients. Watermelon has high levels of several vitamins including lycopene. Replaces muscle glycogen, blood electrolytes, and other helpful nutrients. No chemicals or refined sweeteners.
Healthline has requested that we don't add labels to the posts, for now. To see easy sources of good tasting healthy recipies and sports food, see my books page, www.DrBookspan.com/books.
--- Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certifiedDrBookspan.com/Academy. ---
Here is Fast Friday Fitness - prevent a common habit that weakens your character - judging others.
After talking to someone, passing them on the street, leaving a party, interacting with them on a checkout line, meeting, internet site, or telephone, do you inventory their perceived faults? Do you pass your poor temperament to others by retelling the list? Notice if you harm yourself with this habit, and instead, decide to leave an interaction with clean character:
Never think you know someone well enough to judge them.
This truth comes from my black belt student Christopher Emmolo.
Fast Fitness - Balance and Ankle Stability in the Dark
Friday, August 22, 2008
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
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.
Stand on one foot.
Balance on that foot with eyes closed. Switch feet.
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.
Friday Fast Fitness - Partner Achilles Tendon Stretch
Friday, August 15, 2008
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is fast Friday Fitness - relax, have fun practicing stretching and cooperating with a friend, and have a nice - Achilles stretch:
Stand facing a partner at arm's length. Hold each other's hands or arms. Keep arms straight.
Each partner leans and pulls back with straight arms while bending knees keeping heels down on the floor.
Bend only as far as is fun and feels good. Keep leaning back. Keep heels down.
The point is not to squat to the floor, the point is to stretch the Achilles and learn healthy movement habits that you can use for real life. Keeping heels down when bending knees accomplishes the point. If someone is tight, they don't have to bend as far to get a big stretch. Raising heels loses the stretch and the point. Don't squat all the way with heels up, keep heels down.
Whenever you stretch, remember the point of a stretch instead of straining to an arbitrary endpoint.
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - learn some Chinese for the Olympics.
The Olympic ceremonies start at 8:08 p.m. on the 8th day of the 8th month in 2008. Eight is an auspicious number for the Chinese. Whether you agree or disagree with politics in the world, use learning about someone's language as a step to peace:
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:
Shift your weight to stand on one hand. Grasp a hand weight in the other hand
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.
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - Dips upside down holding a handstand, for shoulder and arm strength, balance, agility, and fun.
Readers Dave, Nine-Volt Terry, and others asked about dips. You don't need weights and equipment to increase strength. Body weight can be used in many fun ways. Fitness Fixer has shown how to do an easy handstand, then last Friday featured a short movie to learn a regular handstand - Fast Fitness - Step Up To Handstand.
This week - use the handstand for more:
Hold a handstand the way you are safe and comfortable.
Bend your elbows to lower toward the floor like a pushup, then push to straighten.
Increase how deep you can dip and how many you can do and push back up again.
These dips are safer for the anterior (front) shoulder than conventional dips which are done by leaning or hanging on hands while upright, and bending elbows behind you to lower and raise. They can work like a Safer Overhead Military Press. Make sure you don't have glaucoma or uncontrolled high blood pressure before doing these. Breathe and stay relaxed instead of tightening.
To increase skills, work until you can do handstand dips without a wall.
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:
Stand close to a secure surface.
Plop both hands on the floor about a foot from the wall and swing one leg upward
Use momentum of putting hands down and swinging leg up, to swing the other leg upward to the wall.
Click the arrow to run the short movie. Three of my students demonstrate three stages of learning this handstand:
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.
Listen to native pronunciation of the Word of the Day in a list of languages.
The same page has a free registration link, or clickwww.travlang.com/wordofday/register.html to e-mail you the Word of the Day each day it comes out. Choose as many languages as interest you from the list. Change your free subscription any time.
Speaking and learning language, exercises several brain centers and widens world view and skills.
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - Remember freedom for all people and for Earth on America's Independence Day.
Reduce toxic waste from discarded batteries. Jacqueline Meier of Switzerland is creator of the Clean Planet Association. Part of this work is the Clean Kaïlash Project.
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - Train children's balance and grip strength, use your legs, and have family fun.
Have young children sit on your feet, and hang on (sensibly, parent's permission, and all that). Babies are born with a grasping reflex and are stronger than you may expect.
Do any variety of walking, marching, dancing, and range of motion, while standing, or sitting, while they act as natural strength and endurance trainers and floor dusters.
Teach sharing, enjoyment, physical skills, personal interaction, and all the good you can think of.
Outside of all the debates of whether leg weights are helpful or not, fun activity with your family can develop many strengths.
Fast Fitness - NoCost Hand Strength and Rehab Equipment
Friday, June 20, 2008
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Fast Friday Fitness -hand exercise without rehabilitation equipment.
One of the exercises against repetitive strain syndrome is to exercise the muscles that open the hands. There are expensive commercial devices you can buy for this. One consists of a special glove with weights and pulleys to resist your ability to open your hand. Or you can:
Hold the fingers of one hand closed with your other hand
Open the hand against the resistance of the hand holding it closed
Do as many as comfortable. Repeat with the other hand. Vary intensity and number.
If you want to go high-tech, put a rubber band around the fingers instead of using your other hand. Push each finger in a variety of ways.
Fast Fitness - Fixing Yoga Warrior and Lunge Exercise to Neutral Spine
Friday, June 13, 2008
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Fast Friday Fitness - quickly change your posture to change your luck on Friday the 13th. Hyperlordosis (swayback posture) seems to be unlucky - it causes lower back pain. You can do this in seconds to make a certain change to healthier spine for yoga or practicing the lunge. If you don't believe in luck, you're lucky. It's just good posture and simple anatomy.
Reader David from Belgium demonstrates in this 20 second movie that he made for us:
First ten seconds - he steps into a yoga pose called Warrior pose, but allows overly arched lower spine. He also demonstrates leaning more weight forward of center line, which is a different issue.
Note how the belt line tips downward in front and the lower spine overly curves inward - more than a normal curve.
At second 11 he levels the hip to bring the posture to neutral spine. Then he kindly demonstrates overarching when raising the arms further. Instead, hold neutral spine and raise the arms from the shoulder, not the lower back.
To prevent shoulder impingement when raising arms, keep shoulders down and back, don't just chin and neck forward, keep them gently in. A forward head posture compresses the rotator cuff when lifting arms. See Safer Overhead Military Press.
I never expected repeated requests to see how to do neutral spine in different activities. It is the same. Just apply the same neutral spine and that’s all. I thought one post would do it, but will post each activity readers ask about. I am aware that there are yoga and fitness places which teach to overarch the spine as part of the move. Teaching swayback does not seem to be as helpful as teaching neutral spine. Changing lunge and Warrior pose to neutral also improves the stretch to the front hip muscles of the back leg. Lucky.
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - How to know what heart rate will give you a cardiovascular training effect.
Several formulas calculate exact heart ranges and "target heart rates." There are a variety of commercial (expensive) heart rate monitors. Arguments in sports medicine continue on which is the right formula and if heart rates in water or at elevation can be calculated the same way. These issues will be covered in posts to come. For now:
Your body is smart. Heart rate generally follows "perceived exertion." If you feel your running or other exercise pace is moderate, your heart rate is likely to be at a moderate training range. If it feels light, then heart rate will likely be too low to give much training effect.
Find something you enjoy enough to continue more than ten minutes at a time.
Keep a pace that you feel is moderate to hard, depending how you like it.
If your running or other exercise pace feels moderate, it is also moderate for your cardiovascular system. If it feels hard, your heart and body and mostly likely working hard for your current level If it feels light, then it is too light to give much training effect.
--- Read and contribute success stories of these methods. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books. For personal evaluation take a Class. Top students can apply to become certifiedDrBookspan.com/Academy.
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - get in shape with true fitness:
"For attractive lips, speak words of kindness. For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people. For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry. "
- Audrey Hepburn (1929-1993) British Actress
--- Read and contribute your own success stories of these methods. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal evaluation. Top students may apply to certify throughDrBookspan.com/Academy.See Dr. Bookspan's Books. ---
Here is Fast Friday Fitness - easy, good tasting, healthful food you can grow yourself in your kitchen. Sprouting seeds can be fun to do with children to teach them many things about food, responsibility, biology, and more. Mung beans are a good easy bean to start with:
Spread a bunch of dry beans on a plate. Add enough water to wet the beans. Leave out on a sunny counter.
Rinse beans and plate daily, and return beans to the plate with fresh water.
Within a week, you will have fresh sprouts.
Above photo is a plate of mung beans a few days after sprouting
Sauté lightly in a pan with balsamic vinegar, a slight amount of olive or grapeseed oil, and season with any variety of healthful spices that you like - curry, pepper, fresh lemon, etc. Scramble the sprouts into whatever vegetables or other good food you are cooking.
If you eat the sprouts when they are barely sprouted, it will taste nuttier. If you wait until the sprouts have grown long, they will taste more like greens.
Sprouted sunflower, clover, broccoli, radish, lentil, mung bean, and pea sprouts taste good and have many vitamins and disease-fighting phytochemicals. Sprouting seeds and grains reduces the amounts of phytates in the food, which in turn, increases absorption of minerals like calcium.
The post Junk Food Through Your Skin? told how sprouts contain sulphoraphane, which activates cancer-fighting enzymes in your own cells throughout your body, making sprouts healthy not only when eaten, but when used as part of homemade sunscreens.
Fast Fitness - Fixing Your Handstand to Neutral Spine
Friday, May 16, 2008
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Last week's Fast Fitness showed a movie of how to step up into an easy handstand and get back down. This week shows a common pitfall - letting your lower spine sag under gravity - and how to fix it and hold neutral spine.
My student Dennis, Olympic medalist in wrestling, demonstrates:
Step your foot up behind you high onto a wall, then the other.
For the first 5 seconds of the movie, Dennis allows the lower spine to overarch (increase the inward curve) under the pull of gravity, a bad posture called hyperlordosis. It is not the normal inward curve, it is an easily changed bad posture.
At second 5 he changes the tilt of the hip and lower spine back to neutral spine. The action is like doing an abdominal crunch to bring the spine and torso just forward enough to be straight.
This technique practices the muscles and positioning for straight standing, making it better than just a handstand. If you want to gain abdominal strength, using neutral spine uses those muscles. An important difference in Fitness Fixer exercises is that they are not only exercises alone. All the techniques I developed are supposed to be used to train muscle function and positioning for when you stand up and walk away.
Use neutral spine, not only for handstands, but all you do. Examples are in Prevent Back Surgery.
Fast Fitness - Easy Handstand for Balance, Upper Body Strength -The Movie
Friday, May 09, 2008
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
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:
Stand with your back about a foot in front of a wall, and crouch to put your hands on the floor (avoid slippery surface)
Put one foot high up on the wall, then lift the other foot up too
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.
Fast Fitness - How to Feel Change to Neutral Spine
Friday, May 02, 2008
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - Use a wall to learn neutral spine while standing, to know how to stop a major source lower back pain during standing, walking, and running.
Many people learn pelvic tilts lying on their back in physical therapy or fitness classes. What does that do? Little. The purpose of learning the pelvic tilt is to know how to do it during real daily life so that you do not overarch (hyperlordosis) and create back pain. My student Dennis, Olympic medalist in wrestling, demonstrates learning a functional pelvic tilt (he is holding his shirt away with hand so you can see better - you can relax your arms at your sides):
Stand with your back against a wall. Touch heels, hips, shoulders, and the back of your head.
If you allow a large arch in the lower spine there will be a large space between lower back and the wall. Press your lower back toward the wall.
Don't touch or force your lower back to the wall. Just learn how to tilt the hip so that the lower spine comes closer to it and reduces in arch.
Use a wall often to practice, then the idea is to hold neutral spine without the wall during the rest of your day.
Reducing a large arch back to neutral stops the painful lower spine compression on soft tissue and facet joints during standing activities (and bad pushups and handstands).
Fast Fitness - Sprain Prevention and Rehab Training
Friday, April 18, 2008
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
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:
Stand with feet parallel and look in a mirror where you can see your feet, or just look down.
Rise to toe and hold
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.
Here is Fast Friday Fitness - straighten out first thing in the morning and help your back feel good.
Instead of sitting on the bed first thing in the morning, which loads the discs, try this:
Before getting out of bed, turn face down propped gently on elbows
Hold briefly
Get out of bed without sitting.
Don't droop your head downward, jut your neck or chin forward, hunch your shoulders, or fold back sharply at the lower spine. Find a low gentle position that makes your whole back feel good. The idea is to feel better and straighter, not strain, force, or make your posture worse. That would be silly.
Also do this several times throughout the day. Feels good after long sitting and physical work.
For most people this stretch works well. If it hurts your lower back, go to a lower position. If you flatten completely straight and still feel pain or pinching in the lower back, then how can you stand up straight without the same problem? Don't use this First Morning Stretch until you find why it is not comfortable. One common reason is front hip tightness. Try the Quick Relaxing Hip Stretch.
--- Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from fun ones. Before asking more, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, or in the Fitness Fixer Index.
RSS feeds still down - Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books. Get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy. ---
Fast Fitness - Fix Flat Feet, Pronation, and Fallen Arches
Friday, April 04, 2008
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Fast Friday Fitness - feel how your own muscles work to hold arch support, so that you can have healthy arches without artificial shoe arch supports or orthotics, which weaken the supporting muscles from disuse:
Stand with feet parallel and look in a mirror where you can see your feet, or just look down.
Pull outward (straighten) until your arches rise and restore to neutral position, and your ankles are straight.
Learn to feel neutral position. Don't hold rigidly or roll outward. You gain built-in muscle strength and arch stability with each step you take.
Click the > arrow to see the short movie made for us by reader David from Belgium:
First he allows his weight to shirt inward, pushing his arch flatter toward the floor. At seconds 3 to 4 in the movie, he uses the outer muscles to pull to straight neutral ankle position. At seconds 8 to 9 he allows the arch to sag again, then restores and holds healthy arch from second 13 onward. The "exercise" is not to roll back and forth. It is just to learn to feel what allowing sagging too much feels like, and how to restore neutral position.
During walking and running, there is a small natural inward drop (slight pronation) that is part of the spring and propulsion. Allowing exaggerated sagging is like rounding your shoulders too much. Legs and feet have posture that you can control yourself. Use your own muscles and get free built-in exercise and arch support all day, and stop painful poor positioning.
Some people with existing abnormality or growths in the ball of the foot will roll inward (or outward) to get the pressure off the deformed area because standing straight hurts. See your doctor first. Remember, don't force. If it hurts, it's wrong. All you are doing is learning how to stand neutral, not tilted so much that you compress the joints. The concept is to hold your feet in the same healthful position that shoe supports would. It is like an ice skater holds their skates straight at the ankle, not angled.
--- Read and contribute your own success stories of these methods. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books. Limited Class spaces for personal evaluation. Top students may apply to certify throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. ---
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.
Crouch down near a wall (avoid slippery floor)
Put one foot high up on the wall
Lift up the other foot
To add a nice stretch on the hamstrings, lift one leg away from the wall into a wide split position in the air, as below.
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.
Here is Fast Friday Fitness - instead of eating junk food and playing violent video games, try a fun game to build your English vocabulary and help impoverished areas.
For each correct definition, FreeRice donates 20 grains of rice to the United Nations World Food Program.
If your definiftion is correct, the next word is harder. If incorrect, you get an easier word. In this way, FreeRice adjusts to your vocabulary level.
According to their site, FreeRice runs the site at no profit. The rice is paid for by the advertisers, and distributed by the United Nations World Food Program (WFP). They give this warning: This game may make you smarter. It may improve your speaking, writing, thinking, grades, job performance...
Put down your junk food. Feed your brain and the hungry.
Fast Fitness - Stronger Arms and Chest, and Core, Hip, and Leg Stability With A Friend
Friday, March 14, 2008
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
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:
Partner 1 lies face up with bent knees
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.
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.
Read inspiring success stories of these methods and send your own. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and The Fitness Fixer Index. For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. Limited Class spaces for personal feedback. Top students may apply for certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
Here is Friday Fast Fitness for the intercalary year (Leap Year) - Leap to develop ankle and knee stability, leg power, and balance.
Leap to a point in front of you. Then leap back again:
Leap forward, landing on the other foot with soft shock absorption. Don't land hard, which jars joints.
"Stick" your landing, without wobbling or setting the first foot down.
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.
This skill is good fall reduction training, and ankle sprain prevention for many terrains.
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.
Fast Fitness - Plyometric Partner Bench Press for Valentine's Week
Friday, February 15, 2008
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - Have fun together as you strengthen arms, shoulders, chest, back, wrists, and core, while practicing neutral spine, speed, teamwork, and cooperation in a fun plyometric partner bench press.
Lie face up with both arms held upward (white karate uniform) to support partner (black karate uniform).
Partner (black uniform) rests shoulders on your hands and holds straight body position on toes. Partner (black uniform) uses abdominal muscles to hold neutral spine without letting the lower back sag.
Push your partner up and down with your hands in a bench press motion. To add plyometric training, push partner strongly and quickly into the air (right). Catch them lightly, bending your elbows upon contact. Switch places and repeat.
Use common sense and springy light touch to reduce unhealthful impact in both partners. You can improve strength and speed without hurting joints and connective tissue. I will post more on plyometrics in articles to come.
--- Read and contribute your own success stories of these methods. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal evaluation. Top students may apply to certify throughDrBookspan.com/Academy.See Dr. Bookspan's Books. ---
Fast Fitness - Prevent Wrist Pain During Pushups and Cooking
Friday, February 08, 2008
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - Learn to use strength and good joint positioning instead of compressing the wrist joint during activities that put weight on a bent wrist.
Good positioning and strength is more effective than splinting wrists straight and restricting activity:
While sitting or standing, press your right wrist and hand backward strongly using your left hand. Feel the right wrist compress under the weight of the other hand.
Now use your right hand and forearm muscles to press forward against the left hand. You should feel the compression come off the right wrist.
Hold a pushup position. Use this technique so that, regardless of your weight, instead of letting your weight compress your wrists, you use your hand and forearm muscles. Keep weight distributed across your hand, not just on the heel of the hand.
Use this whenever you use your wrists - for weightlifting, for standing on your hands, for typing, driving, biking, playing piano, and during cooking and cleaning.
--- Read and contribute your own success stories of these methods. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal evaluation. Top students may apply to certify throughDrBookspan.com/Academy.See Dr. Bookspan's Books. ---
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - make rowing good exercise, not bad sitting:
Don't round your spine forward (left). Rounding pushes discs outward. Left drawing shows disc pushing outward by bending the vertebrae to that they open in back. Rounded sitting with chin forward shown in 1st and 3rd rower in left photo.
Chin in.
Stay straight during the pull (right drawing and photo).
--- Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy.
Fast Fitness - Core Hip & Body, Posture Strength & Balance
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - training and challenging abdominal muscles to hold neutral spine. Use this, not as an exercise to "do," but to use to retrain neutral spine. Reader Mike, who did a A Whole Big Fix sent this photo to illustrate:
Hold a plank.
Lift one arm straight in front.
Figure out which is the opposite leg and lift that one. Keep straight spine
Mike writes:
"Here's some more feedback on your exercises: it seems the more planks I do with opposite arm/leg extended, the less my hip pops, so I'm doing those every morning for about 4 sets of 10 sec. holds on each side, along with the side planks. Those seem to set my posture off right for the rest of the day. I'm using my hand and wrist muscles to take weight off the bones, as you've said, and my wrists, are getting stronger.
"BTW: my daughter's badminton coach has a PhD in exercise physiology and she's also a big fan of your site."
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - fixing painful swayback to neutral spine.
If you have lower back pain after standing, walking, or running, or feel that you need to bend forward or lift one leg to relieve lower back pain, you may stand with too large an inward curve in your lower back (hyperlordosis).
Stand with hands on hips, thumbs in back
Roll hip under so that thumbs and the back of the hip come downward (not forward)
Use the neutral spine position for normal posture.
Reader David from Belgium made us this short video of correcting overarching (hyperlordosis). At first he is standing with the front of the hip tilted forward and the upper body leaning backward. Both actions increase the lower back curve. Then he tucks the bottom of the hip under to neutral position, correcting the hyperlordosis.
Don't tighten your abs to do this. Just use them to move your lower spine out of unhealthful arching to neutral spine. Breathe.
"By the way, I'm still doing well and have been referring many people to your website. In general, I've had much less tension in the shoulders and neck and for the first time in decades, feel like neck stiffness does not have to be chronic. One very useful suggestion you gave was to start observing others to see how problems can begin/continue to manifest themselves in real life. I actually feel bad for them as I witness them creating all of those problems. Thanks again - I will continue to be a testament to the great healing work you do. Rich Tarpinian"
Rich generously provided his websites - darlarich.com and www.myspace.com/darlarichjazz offering, "If someone wishes to ask me a question about my new found wisdom, they'll have an email address."
Reader Dennis, Olympic medalist in wrestling, says he notices his shadow for posture reminders when biking. His inspiring story of fixing injuries and improving training to Olympic levels will be posted (Dennis, get your photos finished :-)
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - fun challenge for body stabilization, strength, speed, and balance with a friend.
Stand facing a partner
Stand on one foot, pressing the other against your partner's raised foot.
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.
Click archives at right for more, links in the articles, and labels under each post. Have The Fitness Fixer e-mailed to you, free, using the button at top right (looks like a trumpet).
Lie over a bed or bench with hips right at the edge and legs dangling
Feel wonderful stretch in front hip muscles
If your lower back hurts, you are probably arching your lower back, as in the left photo, Click and read this post - Innovation in Abdominal Muscles. Correct it by tucking your hip (by flattening lower back) toward the bed - right photo.
Reader Bernie, age 80, supplied these photos. He had registered for my Fix Your Own Back Pain workshop but skipped it to do surgery instead. He returned to me in worse pain two years later. His story how we successfully fix the worsened situation is posted in:
--- Read and contribute your own success stories of these methods. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links and replies in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certifiedDrBookspan.com/Academy.
Fast Fitness - Stabilization During Speed and Directional Change
Friday, December 14, 2007
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
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:
When one partner has to touch down, change feet.
When the other loses balance, game over.
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.
Fast Fitness - Upper Back, Shoulder, Triceps, Arm, Wrist, and Hand Stretch
Friday, December 07, 2007
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - nice stretch for hands, upper back, and everything in between.
Stand with your back about a foot from a solid surface
Reach upward and backward to place both hands on the wall, all fingers facing downward
Press, lifting upward, keeping the stretch in your chest and upper body.
Vary the stretch by straightening elbows more.
Do not pinch your spine backward like a soda straw at the lower back, which increases lordosis (causes hyperlordosis). Tuck hip to neutral to stop compressive pain in the lower back. Here is how.
Breathe. Smile. Feel good stretching your upper back out of forward-rounded posture.
Fast Fitness - Functional Agility, Flexibility, Strength
Friday, November 30, 2007
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
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:
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - aloe vera fresher and cheaper, and probably more effective than bottled, to help cell repair.
Cut a one or two inch chunk from a whole aloe leaf. Ethnic markets may be more likely to have some.
Remove the side spines
Peel the skin and scoop the cool gel. Be careful cutting the slippery insides.
Add a chunk when making fitness water and sports shakes, and rub the inside of the peel on your face and hands, or apply to cuts and small wounds. Dries without stickiness.
Aloe is promoted as aiding cell growth and repair, as an anti-inflammatory, and helps move slow digestion on through. Promotes fitness inside and out.
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See various versions of the poem at www.noogenesis.com/pineapple/Kristone.html
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Use conscious control to prevent inversion sprains and turns by not allowing the ankle to invert (turn sideways) when rising to toe during push-off in running and jumping, and coming down during landings. Watch for healthy ankle and knee stability and placement throughout the team season.![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=7f3cda12-f181-4c7a-9393-ff9d7b56df77)
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