A number of conventional standardized fitness tests, surprisingly, are not accurate. They do not test what they claim to test. To get real answers that you can use, it is important to know if you are doing what you think you are doing.
An example of a test that does not test what it claims is the "Sit and Reach" test. Sit and Reach is assumed to test hamstring flexibility, but is more a measure of how much you can round your spine. Many people can pass the Sit and Reach with little hamstring flexibility and an unhealthful angle at the hip - tilted back (shown by shorts side seam) rather than vertical. The Sit and Reach is required testing for numerous military, corporate, and school fitness programs
Another standard fitness assessment uses crunches or sit ups, supposedly to test abdominal muscle function. Bending or curling forward does not give a predictive measure of how well you can use your abdominal muscles to adjust your spine position for spine health, for sports ability, to prevent back pain, in short, to move in healthy ways in real daily life and work where you need it most.
A test may be reliable, which means it gives the same answer each time you test the same thing. For example, a scale should measure the same item at the same weight each time. A reliable scale may not be accurate. That means, it may be wrong by the same amount each time. But it does give the same answer reliably. Having a reliable test does not mean it will be accurate. Accuracy and reliability are both necessary components of devising tests that are actually helpful.
I worked years researching more prognostic and beneficial tests for several common fitness measures. If your military or police division, school, or industry wants to hire me to train you in simple new reliable and accurate tests, let me know.
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 Fitness Fixer 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 - 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.
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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:
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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.
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Reader Robert Davis has been enthusiastically sending in success story after success story. He sent his first story of fixing a painful back injury from weightlifting - Fixed Injuries, Got Strong, With Functional Exercise.
Since getting the idea of using healthy daily movement instead of injurious movement during daily life and exercise, Robert stopped major causes of his injuries. He has rapidly been getting strong using fun functional exercise, and improving function. He has been taking ingenious photos using his camera phone. His stories and photos will be posted. He is sending them in fast and furiously. I enjoy hearing how he experiments with each thing, and sees and understands how they work so he can incorporate the concepts into daily movement, not just going thorough arbitrary motions and calling it exercise.
We are still having problems uploading photos and movies for you - since October. It has been a time-intensive and difficult process to get any photos at all uploaded for these posts. It has changed and delayed a few of the articles I wanted to write for you. When Healthline staff can help, they will. Robert generously made a page to store visuals so you can link and see them. Start with:
Watch how he uses a healthful squat for real life, not just 10 times in a gym.
Robert writes:
"Make a mess and pick up only one item at a time via a squat. If you need to clean the house only pick up one item at a time. The constant up/down motion of the squat etc should get the heart rate up for a good cardio workout. Why not kill two birds with one stone? Tired of the stationary bike? Do this for a half hour:)"
Good bending is natural built-in cardiovascular exercise, leg strength and stretch, Achilles tendon stretch, hip strengthener, warm-up for stretching, and back pain prevention, since it stop one major cause of back pain - bad bending (bent over at the waist or hip). Done properly, good bending strengthens knees and does not cause knee pain. The Related Posts below explain more. For all Fitness Fixer articles on each topic, click the labels under this post - for example, "Achilles 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, 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. SeeDr. Bookspan's books.
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.
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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.
Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from selected ones. See if your answers are already here by clicking labels below posts, links, and archives. Read success stories of these methods and send your own.
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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 - 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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Readers Carol, Don, Teresa, AJ, and others asked about strength, and knee pain and placement when descending stairs.
Physical trainer Teresa wrote:
"Hello Dr. Bookspan, "The post on "Better Exercise on the Stairs" from July 2007 contains the following statement: 'When descending stairs or hills, bend your knees when landing for soft shock absorption. Don't step down on a straight, locked, knee.'
"Some clients I work with have the habit of descending stairs on one leg because they can land straight-legged on the "weak" leg. Pain or fear of pain keep them from having the confidence to bend that "weak" leg sufficiently to support themselves for a soft landing on the other leg, but the "strong" leg will let them land softly on the "weak" one. When I get them to practice it, they find the proper motor pattern that is pain-free, but end up falling back on the old motor pattern that creates pain.
"Do you have any ideas on this one since descending usually requires more use of the toes than climbing the stairs does?
"I keep recommending your site to loads of people because you are sooo right. It's about motor patterns of moving our bodies, not just "exercise." Thank you for your time and assistance!" Teresa Merrick, M.A. ACSM HFI, NSCA-CPT/CSCS, NASM CPT Master Trainer
Climbing stairs is a functional (real life) skill. Not having the strength to support your own body weight is serious weakness:
It is not healthy to land straight-legged with a locked knee on either a weak or strong leg. The functional life skill needed to descend the stairs is similar to what is needed for simple daily healthy bending (right drawing). Bending knees to retrieve and reach is something everyone needs to do many times a day. How many times a day do you think you bend for ordinary actions? Click How Good Would You Look From 400 Squats a Day - Just Stop Unhealthy Bending
Use the simple built-in life activity of healthy bending using the half squat (right drawing) to train your legs for the strength and mobility needed to descend stairs in a healthful way.
When you bend in the half squat, keep both heels down and your weight shifted back over the whole foot (right drawing), not just the toes (left-hand drawing). Pull back more to the heels if you slide forward.
No need to increase the inward curve, called hyperlordosis, or overarch (left). Hyperlordosis pinches the spine and can cause impingement and mystery back pain (Prevent Back Surgery). Overarching is sometimes taught to weightlifters because it shifts some of the effort onto the lower spine joints called facets, making the lift easier. It is healthier to keep the weight on the muscles and not overarch. Keep neutral spine (right drawing).
Keep heels down for bending using the half-squat, instead of lifting the heel. Keeping heels down shifts weight to the thigh and hip muscles and off the knee joint. Enjoy the free, built-in Achilles stretch with each bend. Specifics on this in the post Free Exercise and Free Back and Knee Pain Prevention - Healthy Bending.
Descending the stairs should not be a toe-intensive maneuver. Your body weight belongs on the strong muscles of the thigh and hip.
Once you have the idea of the healthy bending you need for daily life bending, transfer that healthy movement to the stairs:
Keep more weight on the leg on the upper stair, instead of flopping and stomping all weight down on the foot that is stepping down.
Keep your weight back more toward the heel on the upper leg.
Keep heel down longer on the upper leg, instead of lifting the heel right away. Get the free, built-in, functional Achilles stretch.
Bend knee slightly upon stepping down instead of landing straight-kneed. Remember this is the same strength and skill that you need and have been developing (or should have) for ordinary daily bending, which totals many dozens every day.
Use good shock absorption from the thigh muscles of the leg stepping down.
Instead of dong artificial leg exercises like leg raises, use legs for real life to get automatic built in exercise in the way you need to move. The movement gives built-in strengthening and stretch and movement patterns. The built-in strengthening and stretch and movement patterns directly improve daily function.
More will come in future posts. Have a real life of activity and fun, and enjoy.
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 in the comments, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, or in the Fitness Fixer Index.
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"My Yoga teachers uses that, but you hold you legs at a right degree angle to the floor. It forces your back to be straight. Seems to me it sets you up for more shoulder action. I don't think I'll ever be able to do a handstand without the wall."
The handstand against the wall can be done with legs straight or bent as Ginger describes, or a variety of other stretches. However bending the legs at right angle, or any angle, does not "force" a straight back. Rounded back can still occur. Many people with tight hamstrings wind up rounding the back doing this stretch as Ginger describes because the back is the only place they can get the stretch from and they do not know how to transfer the stretch to the hamstrings. The shoulders also can be in any posture or level of "action" from good to bad depending on how much you know about posture and allow to happen.
The photo at right shows five of my students demonstrating the easy wall handstand in both positions. First at right in the foreground is Diana who hold straight good neutral spine. Next, also in good neutral spine is 67 year old Leslie who starred in the post Are You Stronger Than A 67 Year Old Lady? Click the post to do your pushups with her every day. Third in the middle, Johanna demonstrates right angle (photo taken just before reaching parallel to floor). This can be a fun stretch for hamstrings without loading the lower back.
Most important, use a straight handstand position in neutral spine to train straight body position against resistance, then transfer that knowledge to daily life. If you use the right-angle pose alone you do not learn that.
All my exercises are developed to be more than exercise alone. Instead of just "doing a move" or "holding a pose" use them to train how to move out of bad positioning into healthy position for everything you do.
The post Fast Fitness - Fixing Your Handstand to Neutral Spine shows a short movie of letting spine sag in the handstand and how to fix it so that you can train what to do when you are walking around, running, lifting weights, and just enjoying life. Instead of "doing" exercise, restore real life.
For doing handstands without the wall, it’s just real life balance and stretch training - a post soon will cover how.
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.
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Reader Joe Blatt recently celebrated his 63rd wedding anniversary. He was a Broadway choreographer and dancer.
He demonstrates how to keep good flexibility and balance through the ordinary daily activity of standing to put on shoes and socks, and tying your shoes.
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.
We are here working in Asia. Everywhere, we see schoolyards with kids playing sepak takraw. Modern sepak takraw is played on a court with three players on each side. Players don't use their hands to volley. They use feet, legs, shoulders, and head to keep the ball in the air, volleying back and forth. Main features of sepak takraw are acrobatic mid-air kicks to keep the ball in play, and the athleticism and speed of the players.
Sepak takraw has been played in Southeast Asia for hundreds of years. The word "sepak" is Malay for kick and "takraw" is the woven ball. In Thailand, the game is often simply called Takraw. In 1984, a Thai inventor revolutionized the sport with a synthetic takraw to replace the slower traditional rattan ball.
Takraw has roots in Malaysian, Chinese, and other national games. In Bangkok Thailand, there are wall paintings at the Wat Phra Kaew (Temple of the Emerald Buddha) of Hanuman, the Vanara (Monkey-like) Hindu god, playing takraw in a ring with his monkey troops. The game developed into teams competing across a court with a net, about the size of a badminton court. This modern-day version is a Southeast Asian specialty.
Thailand wins most of the gold medals at the Asian Games. Here is a motion clip of just 48 seconds of playing Takraw. Click the arrow to watch.
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 - 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:
Fast Fitness - Balance, Strength, Stretch, and Socks
Friday, November 02, 2007
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Friday Fast Fitness with a new debut - web movies!
Fitness Fixer reader David D of Belgium has been making us many helpful mpegs. This one shows how to get several important physical skills and daily built-in fitness as a lifestyle by simply standing while dressing:
Stand with one ankle crossed over opposite knee
Put on your sock while balanced, safely.
If you want more, stay balanced and retrieve your shoe from the floor and put that on too. Stand to put on trousers and other clothes instead of sitting. The more you use balance, the more balance will develop.
Don't strain or force or round your back or make anything go pop. The idea is to learn to move in healthier ways, not unhealthy ones. The post Ancient Shoe Exercise for Hip Stretch and Balance explains more. Breathe. Have fun.
After reading about success with exercise and stretching over various posts including Monday's Getting More From a Hip Stretch, reader Dr. Alan, sent this photo at right of his mother Pearl, age 97, stretching her hip. The straighter upright you sit, and the farther toward the ankle the leg is placed over opposite knee, the greater the stretch. If you are at your desk, try putting ankle over opposite knee, keeping the lifted knee under the desk. More stretch when low desk height keeps your knee down. Pearl also does the "ankle over knee" hip stretch while standing.
Pearl gets regular leg exercise through good bending as she goes about her busy days - she bends well with one foot in front of the other - the lunge, and with feet side by side - the half-squat. This post tells why this kind of bending gives better exercise, maintains mobility, and prevents various knee problems.
This post tells the Hip Stretch story started with Inspirational Ivy in August. In that post, Ivy tells how she used healthful body mechanics to fix a serious and extended attack of sciatica and foot drop the year before. Several posts since, have given fun updates. Here is the fun that the Hip Stretch started:
Feb 2006, Ivy from New Zealand wrote to me,
"My hips are tight, particularly the right side that being the side I had the severe attack of sciatica. I have worked so hard on my hamstrings and my "dropped" foot, the bonus being that I am winning. Now it is time to put the same amount of work into my hips."
"I am jumping for joy. No, I haven't won a million dollars.
"After having been doing the posterior hip stretch lying down for the past 21 months twice a day, I can now do the same stretch sitting. My hips have always been so tight and there was no way that I could get my ankle across the knee - this has been my goal and I have done it. I have to be honest, I have not got it to perfection, that being my next goal. I wonder if that will take another 21 months. It just shows that a little persistence pays off in the end. I trust that all is well with you."
Twenty-one months - what a dedicated learner. It was a joy to work with enthusiastic Ivy. I wrote back saying it should not take so long, and asked if she did the stretch standing up to put on shoes and socks to make it real life, not an artificial stretch. Ivy wrote back,
"I have tried standing to put my sox on and cannot quite make it YET (note the yet), that will come. I do, however, ensure that I always stand to remove my sox, and the like. Also to put them on except for the sox. I also stand when I moisturize my legs and feet - I do this so as to improve my balance."
I wrote back encouraging putting socks and shoes on and off while standing. The point of stretching is healthy function, not to "do a stretch" just to have a greater range. The benefit is from applying the stretch to ability to stand steadily on one foot and have muscle stretch and length to put on shoes standing .
Four hours later Ivy wrote back:
"Wow, I did it. I have just returned from a 30 minute walk, did some lunges as a further warm up and thought I would give it a try. I cheated, instead of shoes, I used slippers - I thought it would be easier. Tomorrow I will try shoes.
"Dr Jolie, you are my inspiration, you asked if I could do it and that set me a challenge. I must NEVER SAY CAN'T. As you are probably aware, I am a very motivated woman, however, there is no one to spur me along - you have done that and again, I can only say a huge thank you."
The next day this arrived,
"I am very pleased with myself. I just needed that push. As I said yesterday, I must never say can't again.
"Again, all I can say is a huge thank you. A huge hug from me."
Readers, stand with safe balance to dress. Send me your fun photos, mpegs (short computer video) and stories of using healthful range of motion for daily life.
Ivy is a great-grandmother! (and a pretty great person too). She says,
"I guess I am very much like my late father who was a quiet achiever who used to tell me to 'stand tall and be proud of who you are' - I pass this advice on to my kids all the time."
Fast Fitness - Better Posterior Hip, Iliotibial, and Piriform Stretch
Friday, September 21, 2007
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - Quickly improve a common stretch for the back and side of the hip.
Note step 2 and 3 which slides the supporting leg sideways. That change makes it different from the usual ankle over knee stretch:
Lie face up. Bend one knee to put one foot on the floor or bed, comfortably close to your backside. Other ankle crosses knee.
Notice which direction the raised foot is facing. Slide the other foot (the one on the floor or bed) and knee in that direction. Reader David demonstrates. In the left photo, the raised foot faces left. Move the whole leg on the floor to the left. Feel the stretch increase in the raised leg.
Switch sides. Right photo shows raised foot facing right. Slide supporting foot and knee sideways to the right.
This stretch is often called a piriform muscle (or pyriformis) stretch, but it stretches other hip muscles more. The piriform muscles are external rotators (turn the leg outward). More external rotation with the usual ankle over knee does not stretch it much. The changed foot position helps, and future posts will cover more on piriform.
Don't make this stretch hurt or send pain down the leg. The point is to relax and loosen the area, not tighten, constrict, and impinge. Breathe.
This is another 'ooh' stretch. As soon as you do it right, it feels good and you say ooh.
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - Quickly strengthen and straighten the upper back, improve balance, and learn better shoulder position for reaching.
Last Fast Fitness Friday started this one for a strong base. Now that you have practiced, add the upper body:
Stand on one foot. Lift the other leg in back and bend at the hip until your body is perpendicular to your leg as in the photo, like the top bar in letter T. See how the body is straight in line with the brown field in the photo?
Hold both arms in front of you, parallel to the floor, hands level with, or above your head. Lift from your chest, not neck. Keep your shoulders down and back. Don't hunch or round your shoulder or it will impede raising the arms.
Hold straight as long as you can. Switch legs. Hold straight as long as you can.
Work with a mirror or friend until you can tell straight positioning on your own. Want less? Raise only arm. Breathe. Enjoy.
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - Quickly strengthen lower back and backside muscles, improve balance, stretch your legs, and learn straighter positioning:
Stand on one foot.
Lift the other leg in back. Bend only at the hip until your entire body is parallel to the floor (like the top bar in letter T) as in the photo. Do not droop your leg down in back or droop your chest in front. Do not jut your chin forward. Chin in. Look in a mirror until you can tell straight positioning on your own.
Hold straight as long as you can. Switch legs. Hold straight as long as you can.
Fast Fitness - Great Hip, Side, Leg, and Iliotibial (I.T. band) Stretch
Friday, August 24, 2007
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Friday Fast Fitness. Stretching the side of the hip and ilio-tibial (I.T. band) does several good things. Here is a fast, healthy way to do it:
Lie flat, face up.
Place legs like clock hands, one to 10 o' clock, the other to 2 o'clock (or wider).
Bring one ankle over the other, leaving the other at 10 (or 2 o'clock). Keep hips flat against the floor, don't tilt or twist. Legs straight. Hold. Switch.
This is an "ouu" stretch because when you do it right, you say "ouu." If you don't feel an instant great stretch, pull both legs more to the side. Ouu.
Strengthen Legs Without Knee Pain - Standing Lunge
Thursday, August 02, 2007
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Many people know they need to bend "right" but don't because it hurts their knees.
Bending right will not hurt knees. It will help fix one of the things that has been injuring them - bad bending habits which pressure and grind the joint.
Good bending will also give your knees the exercise they (and you) need.
Some knee patients are told to never "bend right" with a half-squat or lunge because it is bad for the knee. There are specific things about bending and straightening the knee that can increase certain kinds of pain, to be covered in future posts. Use your brain and try the following gently and safely. Done right, it should reduce knee pressure, not increase it.
How To Lunge:
Stand with one foot far in front of the other. Both feet face forward. (Left photo.)
Feet remain normal width from side-to-side, not directly in line front-to-back.
Lift your back heel. Don't turn the back toes outward. Look at your back foot and check.
Tuck your hip under (click "neutral spine" label for posts explaining how). You will feel a far better stretch and strengthener.
Bend both knees to lower straight downward. Don't touch back knee to the floor. Use leg muscles. Watch your front knee and keep it over your front heel, not sliding forward. (Right photo.)
Don't let your front knee sway inward.
Keep upper body upright and straight. (Right photo.)
Lower and rise several times, then switch legs. Keep feet still, not stepping forward and back.
Tips:
To keep healthy knee positioning for the front knee, peek downward to see your front knee and foot.
You should be able to see your front toes all the way through the bend.
If your knee slides forward covering your toes, you are shifting weight to your knee joint and off your leg muscles. This is one of two common ways to increase knee pain while bending. Letting the front knee sway inward is another.
Keep front knee steady over your front ankle, not sliding forward or inward. You will strengthen and stabilize your knees and legs instead of hurt them. You will feel more muscle use when you keep healthful positioning.
Lunge is a Lifestyle, not an Exercise to "do" 10 Times:
No need to go to a gym to do lunges. Use the lunge for daily bending around the house. It will add up to many lunges every day, built-in as fitness as a lifestyle. The posts How Often Should You Be Healthy? and Bending Right is Fitness as a Lifestyle give ideas of how to use healthy bending for normal daily life.
Benefits of the Standing Lunge:
Strengthen leg muscles
Strengthen the knee
Stop harmful forces on the knees from bad bending
Stretch the front of the hip of the rear leg
Stretch the Achilles tendon and foot of the back leg
Learn knee stabilization
Practice balance
Retrain healthful bending for daily life - transferring to function instead of just being an arbitrary exercise - free exercise all day
Retrain straight upper body position for bending - more functional exercise
Provide beneficial general exercise, warming which makes further movement easier, and healthful body movement.
Have fun practicing this now. You will need the standing lunge for tomorrow's Fast Fitness - Quick Warm Up. Enjoy.
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To get a better lunge stretch and stop pressure on the medial knee (the side facing the other leg), don't turn your back leg outward (left photo). Turn your back foot parallel, and face forward (right photo)
The previous post Hip Stretch While You Strengthen Legs shows a key move to position the hip to get a great stretch on the front of the hip and feel a better strengthener for the legs as you lower and rise in standing lunges.
One of my students, Lily, demonstrates good hip and leg position for the lunge (second photo at right). Instead of tilting the hip forward in front and out in back, you tuck the bottom of the hip to maintain it vertical from the top of the leg (hip joint) to the middle of the waist. Note the stripe of the side of the pants compared to the vertical line in the wall behind her. On occasion, Lily makes me a wonderful bean dish and brings it to class in a glass container. The glass is a thoughtful healthy touch to avoid whatever may leach out of plastics into food. My students and I try to do this with food and drinks carried to work and class. Here is her recipe. Just throw it all in a bowl:
Lily's Wonderful Beans
Cup or two of cooked black beans Cup or two of corn 1 jalapeño pepper, diced 1 red onion, chopped 1 red pepper, chopped 2 tablespoons cumin powder 1 bunch fresh cilantro, chopped salt and pepper to taste sprinkle of olive oil, just enough to blend ingredients squeeze 1 fresh lime over the top
Some people with celiac omit the corn. Celiac causes various discomforts after eating wheat and related products.
Good bending gives free exercise and stops a major cause of several chronic pain syndromes (muscle strain, disc degeneration, disc herniation, and sciatica) at the same time. Click the labels under this post for related posts. If you use the lunge and squat around the house for all the things you need to bend for instead of bad bending, you will stop a major source of back pain back, and get hundreds of free leg exercises a day. Enjoy healthy eating and healthy lunging.
When you lunge to get a stretch, to strengthen, and to bend to reach or retrieve things, keep your hip vertical instead of tilting forward. You will feel a better strengthener for your legs and a wonderful stretch for the front of your hip.
Neither photo, above left, shows straight hip position. The left and right photos both show the hip tilted forward. The stripe in the pants tips forward between the top of the leg and the middle of the waist-band.
The photo below right shows straightening the hip. The moment you tuck the bottom of the hip under to straighten the hip, you will feel the stretch move to the front of the hip. If you use the lunge for bending and leg exercise, keep the hip tucked and vertical as you lower and you will feel a far better stretch and strengthener. One way to do the hip tuck:
Put your hands on each hip, thumbs in back, fingers in front.
Roll your hip down in back so that your thumbs roll down in back.
The front of the hip and upper leg will feel very good when you do this right. You will feel the large arch reduce and the front of the hip stretch. The front of the hip is an area often overly-maintained in bent and shortened position from hours of sitting, then exercising with the hip still bent, as in the top-left photos.
These two posts show the key to position your hip so that your lower spine returns to neutral position and the hip stops tilting. You get a nice stretch with the benefit of stopping one kind of lower back pain that comes from going around all day with your hip tilted forward.
Bending the legs with one foot in front of the other is one of two healthy ways to bend for all the daily bending around the house. Click here to see it. The half-squat with feet side by side is another. Click here to see it.
The lunge is not an exercise that you do ten times then bend wrong for the rest of the day. It is one of several ways to do healthy bending for all you do. Use the lunge, not as an exercise, but a retraining for healthy body function and easy fitness as a lifestyle.
A few weeks ago, I attended a lecture on forensic anthropology. In general, this is the study of things you can tell from human bones in a crime setting. How old was the person? Were they male or female? How big were they? What was their probable race or ancestry?
Why was I there when my work is with the living? Two main reasons. I am the science officer for the Vidocq Society, an international forensic society. I might evaluate data, for example in an aviation disaster, whether someone might have been conscious at each point when undergoing G-forces or different temperatures and amounts of oxygen after a depressurization at various altitudes. In a scuba death, I might advise on physical changes that occur with different situations. The second reason was to learn more about bones. Bones are remarkable. Your bones know a lot about you. What was your health like? Were you active? What kind of activity did you do? When I was small, I read about an archaeological dig in ancient Rome. The bones of a girl were recovered. The account stated they could tell she carried loads too heavy for her, and was therefore (in conjunction with other evidence) probably a servant or slave. I was riveted. How could they know that? I spent years after that learning more about telling how someone moved from looking at their bones.
Throughout your entire life, when you exercise you stimulate growth of new bone cells. The physical pull of muscles thickens your bones where the muscles attach. Using your arm muscles thickens arm bones. Using your legs strengthens leg bones, and so on. This is a main mechanism of how exercise prevents osteoporosis. Without exercise, you don't stimulate enough new cells to counter the normal loss as old ones break down. Your bones thin no matter how much calcium you eat. The post Exercise is More Important Than Calcium Supplements for Bones tells more about this. Bone demineralization is rapid and serious in astronauts in microgravity (Collapsing Astronaut Gives Healthy Reminder).
How you use your muscles causes them to pull differently, giving evidence about the kind of habitual motion. More interesting is that when you are active, your bones grow and shape themselves to facilitate your motion. An example of interest to readers following the posts on squatting is that people who habitually sit for normal daily life in full squat grow "squatting facets" on their lower leg bones. These are small areas on the bone that quickly grow to make squatting more comfortable. At one point, it was a debate in anthropology that squatting facets were a marker of someone of Asian ancestry, until it was found that others who squat also grow them, and that squatting facets disappear when the person adopts a Western sitting habit of chairs and no longer squats. Babies of all races can have them.
Someone who habitually slouches can change the shape of their bones, eventually deforming them. This can occur in the spine, knees, hips, ankles, shoulders, feet, toes - everywhere you pressure your bones. Changing positioning habits to healthier ones can, in many cases, reshape the bones back to healthier shape. Think of braces on your teeth. It's human bonsai. In cases of extreme dystrophies of the muscles, someone who sits without function of their trunk muscles to hold the spine upright, can eventually deform their spine until their ribs sit on their hip bones. How are you sitting right now? The recent post What Does Stretching Do? explained a bit of why stretching isn't reducing injuries. People are stretching, then exercising and going about daily life in bent over positions that rub and grind the joints and soft tissue.
You literally shape your own health. Use the posts throughout this Fitness Fixer blog to do healthy exercise in healthful positioning so that your bones will only tell good tales about you.
Last week at the sports medicine conference, I talked to a researcher from Kuwait University. Dr. Jasem Ramadan presented a lovely little study called Bioenergetics of Islamic Prayers, measuring the amount of oxygen and calories the physical movements of the prayers burned.
Five standard prayers (Salat) are mandatory every day for every adult male and female Muslim. Each prayer has a continuous sequence of body movements (Rakkas) consisting of standing, bowing, kneeling and sitting. Each Rakka lasts between 3 and 6 minutes. Dr. Ramadan looked at the energy cost of two and four Rakka prayers in thirty-two male and female adults. He found that Salats have a positive effect on metabolic function. For an 80 kg person, energy cost of daily prayers was about 80 calories a day, and could be considered a form of physical activity that enhances fitness.
Dr. Ramadan told me, "The prayers have been done for thousands of years and no one thinks about it as physical exercise." I told him I think that often. I told him that Russian Orthodox prayer was pretty physical. A liturgy lasts hours, done standing and continuously crossing yourself from the floor in a squat to high overhead. Everyone including the oldest people do this, up and down, and up and down, and up and down, stretching and squatting, reaching and bending. I always thought it was group community health activity, probably found long ago to be protective against many ailments (and attributed divinely). The original yogas were the same, reaching upward to exalt the heavens, bowing, kneeling, prostrating, rising, over and over.
I told Dr. Ramadan that many Westerners aren't comfortably able to do the kneeling Rakka shown in Healthy Toe Stretches or rise to a stand without using their hands, as in the post Quick and Easy Strength and Balance Exercise, not only the elderly, but the rest of the population too.
He seemed surprised and interested. I told him I believed that this lack of basic human movement for real daily life was a major contributor to the epidemic numbers of people who are too weak and unstable to get up unassisted, to walk without canes and walkers, have trouble taking stairs, have poor balance, and for much knee and hip pain and degeneration. Dr. Ramadan said that elders in his country do not suffer knee and hip arthritis in high numbers, and can easily rise from the floor into their old age. I told him that many Westerners are familiar with a device that is worn, with a button to press for help if they cannot get up from the floor or chair. At this point, he was sure I was kidding.
If you cannot get up from the floor or low chair easily without using your hands, you likely have dangerously decreased leg strength and balance. Use good bending to strengthen your legs and knees many times a day and improve your fitness, explained in the post How Often Should You Be Healthy? Use healthy movement every day to sit, rise, bend right, clean, garden, give thanks, stretch, take stairs, and play to get healthy functional exercise, and prevent common joint pain. That is fitness as a lifestyle.
Stretching has been shown in some studies to prevent injuries or pain, or improve athletic performance. Based on this, gyms are filled with people stretching - often in tight, unhealthy ways that re-emphasize the rounded forward postures that caused the pain and injuries in the first place. Other studies cast doubt on benefits of stretching for injury reduction, or indicate that stretching reduces muscle tensile contraction. Based on that, there are athletes who say they won't stretch at all. This is where I wind up back in the lab for more years to find out where the discrepancies lie and what to do about them.
The problem seems to be how people stretch, then how they then go exercise and incur their injuries. Another key issue is how they go about their real life outside of the gym and their stretching routine.
For many, stretching means producing a greater range of motion for any given joint, and bending forward to touch the toes. Many of these same people don't have the flexibility to comfortably lie flat without a pillow under head or knees, or stand with their back against a wall with the back of their head touching the wall without craning their neck or lower back. Their back and shoulders are too rounded forward. Their hip is too tight in front. Tight chest, shoulders, and anterior hip contributes to round-shouldered, bent forward posture. The average person is often too tight to just stand up straight. Consequently, they stand, walk, and do all activities at joint angles that impinge, grind, rub, and stress. This is functional tightness.
It is not a mystery when populations don't become more flexible or prevent injuries through conventional stretching routines. The idea of stretching needs to be reframed as specific retraining to restore healthy length to your muscles, so that you no longer stand, sit, and move with strained unhealthful positioning.
Stretching needs reform.
Several posts have introduced how ingrained unhealthful stretching is in popular fitness. Start with the following, plus the links I put in each, to see how to retrain your muscles and brain to stretch in ways that restores and retrains healthy positioning, rather than distort it:
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Sitting in full squat with heels down can be healthful and useful. Squatting for daily life is a built-in Achilles stretch, more effective and functional than the standard "lunge and lean stretch" against the wall, or lowering one heel from a step or ledge. Better Achilles Tendon Stretch shows one Achilles tendon stretch that is effective and quick. Sitting in a full squat is another. Rising from the squat adds functional leg muscle strengthening and balance.
I took the photo, above left, in an airport in Asia. The man was easily sitting to work on his laptop during the hour before boarding. Others were similarly sitting with laptops and mobile devices to get work done. Elders squatted that way to rest.
Achilles Stretch in the Bathroom introduced the full squat as a functional normal daily action used in many countries for resting, washing, gardening, working, washing, toileting, chatting on the phone, and other activities, and gave an idea of how to try it. Save Knees When Squatting explains how keeping the heels down rather than lifting heels to rest on the ball of the foot is safer for the knees. Reader Mim supplied a wonderful link in the comments for a great little film of the Asia squat. More Fun Squatting tells a funny squatting story. People new to squatting may find their Achilles tendons are too tight to bend in this normal manner. Reader Ivy of New Zealand offered to demonstrate one easy way to practice this stretch in a safe way, and sent the photo at right.
Keep both heels down while holding something sturdy in front. Straighten your arms and lean back to shift weight away from the knee joints.
Squatting can be a nice stretch for your lower back too. I have been working, off and on, for some years on the interesting finding that slight forward spine rounding when just sitting on your heels in the squat (no weights) does not load the spine to the extent of sitting on your behind in a chair. Be smart about trying it or not if you already have damaged knees. When rising, make sure to keep knees back over your feet, not sliding forward, which loads the knee joint, or inward at an angle (narrower than your feet), which can twist the joint. Either action can grind against the meniscus and cartilage.
Done properly, it should feel good on the Achilles and calf, lower back, be good exercise, not hurt the knees, and become an option for a functional stretch and even normal sitting ability.
Bending over from a stand to touch the toes may "work" to stretch the hamstrings, but puts degenerative forces on the discs, whether you keep your back straight or rounded. It is also not a functional way to stretch. It is not done in the manner your body moves in regular life and does not train healthful movement.
One of my students, Vikki, demonstrates a nice, quick, and effective hamstring stretch, done standing straight, photo at right, that you can easily do during your regular day:
Stand facing a wall (or tree as in the photo) just about arm's length away.
Make sure both feet are facing forward, not turned out.
Lift one foot to press the heel against the wall at about hip height.
Peek down to see if your standing foot is straight, and has not rotated outward, not even a small amount.
Lift your upper body to stand straight.
Don't let your hip curl under or your back round.
Smile and breathe.
Hold a few seconds and switch legs.
Vikki and co-worker Cindy are State Paramedics. Cindy is the Director of Services and Vikki is in charge of Search and Rescue. They support firefighting crews in the field. When there is a large fire in their service area, they are posted at strategic spots near the fires, and might treat 1-2 firefighters a day with various injuries, dehydration, hyperthermia, and difficulty breathing due to smoke inhalation. During the rest of their daily work, they do a lot of heavy lifting and carrying.
Cindy and Vikki use the back pain reduction techniques, and the exercises and stretches of this blog and my classes for their work.
Here is a hamstring stretch that is relaxing to do, more effective than bending over to touch toes, and doesn't pressure the lower back or neck discs. The doorway hamstring stretch trains healthful positioning that makes straighter posture feel natural in daily life when standing up and gives a better stretch while lying down. Reader Ivy from New Zealand sent in the photo at right of doing this stretch so well. Thank you Ivy.
Lie face up in a doorway.
Lift one leg up to rest against the wall or doorjamb.
Keep your body, shoulders, head, and other leg relaxed comfortably flat on the floor.
Keep both hips flat on the floor. Don't let your hips round under you. Don't let the leg on the floor get lifted upward along with the leg you are stretching. If it raises, that often indicates a tight hip. Gently keeping the leg down on the floor stretches the hip, giving additional benefit.
Relax and breathe. Smile. Hold for a few seconds, then switch legs using the other side of the door or wall.
For more stretch, move your whole body further into the doorway.
To add stretch for the back of your calf and bottom of your foot, pull your toes back and downward, using your shin muscles, a towel, or your hand if you can reach.
It is not the case that you must bend the other knee to protect your back or prevent muscle strain. It is not harmful to keep the leg on the floor comfortably straight and stretched flat against the floor. Keeping the leg down makes the stretch more functional and transferable to daily life movement. Several Fitness Fixer articles cover why - here is one, Fast Fitness - Don't Shorten Hip When Stretching Hamstring. Relax and enjoy this stretch.
Readers, send me your photos and success stories showing healthy movement during real life. Don't be shy.
Read more success stories of these methods and send your own. 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. 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.
Readers have e-mailed for more upper body strengtheners.
Increasing upper body strength helps many things. The post Quick and Fun Arm and Body Strengthener listed several benefits to your health and daily activities, and gave a quick, fun upper body strengthener that needs no weights or equipment, no trip to the gym, can be done in the home or office, and improves balance at the same time. It is not as hard as it looks.
Consult the post link and exercise your brains and common sense first:
Crouch down in front of a wall (drawing 1).
Put one foot up high on the wall (drawing 2).
Raise the other so that both feet are on the wall (drawing 3) to produce a quick and easy to do handstand.
Hold yourself steady. Relax and breathe.
The above link explained how to use this easy handstand to do various other exercises to progressively strengthen.
To add an effective leg stretch:
While holding the wall handstand, gently, carefully, lower one foot on the wall, then lift the other foot far away from the wall
Open legs overhead into a wide split (drawing at left)
Hold, breathe, relax, enjoy
Switch legs to stretch the other side.
This stretch feels great and is fun to do. As far as I have been able to determine, it is good for the shoulder (as long as you don't fall on it or do something not intended in this stretch).
Hold weight on your hand and forearm muscles instead of only mashing your wrists back to keep this move a good strengthen for the wrist, which is often needed to prevent wrist pain.
This fun exercise improves balance and is effective to improve your ability to hold body positioning steady - two important skills for health. Use your muscles to hold your torso straight, without letting it sag and sway.
Have fun and develop fun healthy movement with this combination stretch, balance exercise, and strengthener. This stretch and others for all ability levels is in the book Stretching Smarter Stretching Healthier.
"The public has an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except which is worth knowing." - Oscar Wild
April 1 seems to be a day to notice, more than usual, if things in the news are not facts but April Fool. On other days, urban legends and other stories are still popular, sometimes more popular than what is really going on.
The observation that the Earth is flat seemed obviously true at one time until we had more information. It used to be a taught as a medical fact that the cause of epilepsy was masturbation. When I was in school, one of my medical books stated that you don't need to eat calcium since you can "get all you need from your bones." It is true that you pull calcium from your bones when you don't eat enough, although with unhealthy results.
The post Forensic Science told of two crime-science myths, often still taught in forensic books and popularized in television shows, which were never true. Following are more posts hoping to replace myth with information, so that you can get stronger and do more, without the injuries or restrictions in activity that are part of many fitness or injury rehab practices.
We are on the long trip south to Malaysia. The next posts will tell the interesting story of why. The previous post Unhealthy Yoga Ankles showed how you can reduce the good stretch on the hip and increase a bad stretch on the ankles by letting your ankle bend inward instead of keeping the ankle joint straight when sitting cross legged.
Look at the photo, at left, of the good positioning of the people, sitting to chat, in the morning of the overnight train ride. Besides their good upright sitting positioning, note the straight ankle position. They do not turn the outside of ankle, but get the needed stretch to sit with knees out, from the hip - a better stretch.
Good positioning is common in people of all ages here in Asia. People of all ages, even aged people, sit easily this way to eat, travel, or read the paper. Fitness as a lifestyle is not difficult and does not require exercise machines or gyms or trainers.
American baseball catchers have the occupational risk of meniscus tears in their knees. Yoga practitioners of certain squatting moves like "the eagle" and the hindu squat are more likely to get the same meniscus cartilage tears and early joint wear and tear. Asians who routinely squat for so many activities of daily life don't get these injuries. The difference is keeping your heels down and your feet facing in the same direction as your knees.
Sitting in a full squat with your heels down and your weight back does not pressure the knees the way squatting with heels up does. Keep both heels down and keep your weight back on your heels.
People who are not accustomed to squatting often find that they are too tight in the Achilles tendon to sit all the way down. Many of these same people do Achilles tendon stretches every day, or at least they do a motion commonly taught as an Achilles stretch, but which barely stretches the Achilles. The "lunge and lean," is the least effective Achilles stretch. The post Better Achilles Tendon Stretch tells why and gives a better stretch to do instead. The squat is another good Achilles tendon stretch. It is a lifestyle stretch for the Achilles and lower back, and a hip, leg, and shin muscle strengthener. You get healthful natural exercise from regular daily life. Even if you can't get down to full sit, bend properly with both heels down for daily bending and you will get a free Achilles tendon stretch every time you bend, which is many many times a day. Holiday Leg and Abdominal Exercise tells more on this.
The trains here in Thailand have the luxury of a bathroom, including a squatting bowl. You can tell new tourists here. They are afraid of the bathroom. When we lived in Japan, even the gleaming modern Bullet train, the Shinkansen, had a spotlessly clean squat fixture. Train bathroomsgive you balance practice too, swaying with the train as it takes you to the next adventure.
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There is more information in the replies already here to the many reader comments below this post. Before asking more, see if your answers are already here. Also click labels under each post, links in posts, and archives at right. Read success stories of these methods and send your own.
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The previous post, Achilles Stretch in the Bathroom, explains how and why the squat is a functional lifestyle exercise, good to stretch the Achilles tendon and get strong, shapely leg muscles. By keeping both heels down and your weight off the front of your foot, it can be safe for the knees. The large amount of built-in leg exercise you get from routinely sitting and rising from sitting this way strengthens the hip, thigh, and knees.
At the left is a photo of a sign that is common here in Asia. The sign instructs people who are accustomed to squatting how to use the strange seat. The drawing marked with an X shows someone standing with both feet on the seat and squatting over the bowl. That is marked as incorrect use. The user is instructed to sit touching the seat. I asked some of the locals what they thought of the "sit and touch the seat" method. They shuddered, pointing out how silly that was.
Beside strengthening and stretching the legs, squatting is a cleaner way to sit, since only your feet touch the surface. It is common to see people waiting for a bus at the street curb, sitting, not with their behind on the curb, but sitting in a squat so that only their feet touch.
Squat toilets vary, but are often clean. You leave your shoes outside and wear bath shoes. Even some public toilets have public rubber shoes thoughtfully provided.
Western sit-down fixtures are becomming more common, as more wealthy tourists demand them and locals adopt less physical lifestyles. Our friends living here told us the story of a family who decided to convert their shining clean indoor squat facility to Western plumbing. They purchased a standard raised bowl and seat. They left on a short tip while a workman installed it. When they returned, the man was proud of his installation. He excitedly told the people it had been strange at first, but he did a fine job. He led the people to his finished work and said that at first he was puzzled by the height of it, but figured out to dig a deep hole. He buried the new, shiny toilet exactly up to the seat to become the familiar floor level.
In the airport, an obvious tourist arriving here in Asia proudly waved a travel pack of toilet seat covers and claimed to be ready for the germs of travel. Another tourist nearby announced that it was a problem for him that women couldn't go to the bathroom outdoors. I asked him why he thought they couldn't. He said it was because they can't stand up to go, and someone needed to invent a tray so that they could. I asked him if men sat to pass their bowels. He seemed surprised when he realized that everyone does natural things the same way. Both men and women have been sitting to "go" for thousands of years before plumbing and raised seats were invented.
All over Asia, Africa, India, the South Sea continents and islands, and even in places in Europe and the Americas, men, women, and children routinely and easily sit in full squat to eat, wait, talk on the phone, rest, relax, wash, and do other activities of life. The tourist with her seat covers may quickly find that squatting is cleaner than touching a seat. Many people who first encounter Western sit-down plumbing think it is unclean and barbaric. The squat is a functional and excellent leg strengthener and Achilles tendon stretch. People in their 80s and older who routinely squat have strong legs and healthy good knees, and can easily rise from the floor.
Would you like to try the squat? (Use your brain to be safe to try things or not, if you have damaged knees):
Keep both heels down (right drawing) as you bend both knees, which protects your knees.
One way to practice the squat if your Achilles tendons are too tight, is to hold something in front of you, like a counter or sink, and bend both knees as much as you can with both heels down.
While holding the support in front of you, lean back with both arms straight so that your weight stays over your whole foot and heels, which moves your weight off your knee joints and back onto your leg muscles.
Try to balance and sit without holding on. If you find yourself falling backward, or if your heels come up (left drawing), it is likely that your Achilles tendons are too tight for this normal activity. Put one or both hands behind you to lean on (not in the squat bathroom but just to practice).
Every time you bend around the house, use a small squat with both heels down, described in Bending Right is Fitness as a Lifestyle and Free Exercise and Free Back and Knee Pain Prevention - Healthy Bending. You will strengthen your thighs and hip, develop healthful bending that stops knee pain, strengthen your shins, and stretch your Achilles tendons each time. As this routing bending strengthens and stretches your legs, progress to lower and lower bending until you can comfortably sit in a squat. Have fun.
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Thai boxing (Muay Thai) kicks are among the most devastating and effective kicks in the world. Thai fighters spend hours a day kicking heavy bags and posts, and years toughening their legs and shins for kicks and blocks by bashing them with pipes and against coconut trees. A blow from a Muay Thai fighter's leg is like a blow from a club.
When you practice moves that lift the leg for martial arts training, for self-defense, for dancing, or for exercise in an aerobics class, watch for several bad habits that increase strain on muscles and joints, and reduce effectiveness of the kick. It is not the point to kick someone else and wind up injuring yourself.
1. Look at the photo, above left. The teacher is holding his hip and neck straight. The blocking student is not. The orange arrow at the student's leg shows how, when the student lifts the left leg, the right leg pulls forward instead of remaining straight at the hip. This is a sign of tightness at the hip and poor technique. He needs to stretch the front of his hip and retrain kicking and blocking technique to prevent this common bad habit. Read more on this in the posts, Is Bad Martial Arts Good Exercise? and Common Exercises Teach Hip Tightness When Kicking, Stretching, and on the Stairs.
2. Next, check the white arrow at the student's belt line. It is tilting up in front. The teacher's hip remains level as the leg is raised. Curling the back and letting the hip roll under, as shown by the white middle arrow is another sign of tight hip muscles in the front and back of the hip, and poor movement habits. When you raise one leg to kick, block, prepare to kick, do a knee strike (whatever), check if you curl your hip or round your back. Hold your back straight and upright for more exercise, a built-in hip stretch, and more effective technique.
3. Third, note the black arrow showing how the student rounds the upper back and neck forward, instead of holding straight. With practice, the student will learn to hold the neck straight as the teacher is doing.
For all the exercise you do (kick, block, ascending stairs, whatever is done raising one leg), keep healthful positioning. Yes, rounding the back is taught, and done for fighting, but you will be beating yourself up in the long run. You can still be an effective fighter and at the same time, prevent hurting yourself with common strains from unhealthful technique, plus get more exercise with healthier ways.
See all martial arts articles, or other topics that interest you, by clicking labels under this post.
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We have just gotten home to Thailand after over 40 hours of flights. It would have taken longer to walk here, so we are happy. We unfolded husband Paul, just under seven feet tall, from the seat. During the next month and a half we will travel on 14-hour overnight trains and ferries to places we need to be. Paul will practice good bending almost everywhere as he tries to fit under low Asian doorways, roofs, and bus ceilings, bow lower than the old people, and stand and sit with his head lower than the head of the monks, as is respectful.
Most people sit a great deal even without long travel. Sitting puts higher pressure on the back and spine than standing. Long sitting pressures the back far more. Sitting also means keeping the hip bent forward at the crease of the leg. The muscles in front of the hip shorten and tighten. When most people exercise, their exercise is usually more bending forward. The result for most people is that the hip stays bent almost all the time. Much tightness results that prevents normal hip function, and reinforces the same tight, bent positioning that is so hard on the spine.
Long airline flights sometimes provide a video or printed message encouraging in-seat exercise and stretching. Often the advice is forward bending. That is the last thing most people needs. Instead, try the following:
Stretch your back and shoulders backward, not forward. Pull your chin in while pushing your upper back backward against the seat back. Stretch arms overhead. Breathe.
Lean the back of your head and upper back against the seat, press your feet on the floor, and raise your hips, trying to straighten your hip at the "crease" of the leg. Don't bend your neck forward; leep it straight. You will feel your thigh and hip muscles working to do this.
Turn in your seat to each side to brace your elbow against the seat back for the pectoral stretch, shown in Fixing Upper Back and Neck Pain.
Stretch the back of your legs by straightening your knees and pulling your toes back using your shin muscles.
Increase leg circulation by pressing both feet against each other, then cross your ankles and pull both feet outward against each other, then cross your ankles the other way and repeat. Try it again with both legs out in fron, as in the stretch above.
Get out of your seat as often as you can. Restore length to the front of your hip with the hip-tilt quadriceps stretch shown in Instantly Better Hip and Quadriceps Stretch.
With one foot far in front of you and the other in back (lunge position) tip your hip under you to stretch the front of your hip. As soon as you tilt your hip under, you will feel the difference. While holding the hip tilt, bend both knees to dip straight down almost to the floor, then up. Do many, then switch legs and do many more.
It is easy and unobtrusive to do wall stretches while waiting for the rest room: Rest your head, heels, hip, and upper back against the wall, described in the post Breasts Causing Upper Back Pain is a Myth. Bring both arms overhead, hands touching the wall. Lean your body far to one side then the other. Keep both hands touching the wall. When Paul does this one, his head is often either against the ceiling or he can't stand up fully at all, depending on the type of aircraft. He bends knees and grasps each elbow overhead, keeping elbows touching the wall behind him. For other people short enough to fit standing up, just stand straight.
Then stand a step away from the wall and stretch arms overhead and back to touch the wall, fingers pointing downward. Straighten elbows as much as comfortable and keep the stretch coming from your upper back, not lower back.
Many people are taking down Christmas trees even as the Russian and other Eastern Orthodox families are putting theirs up for Christmas, coming this Saturday Jan 6th. The Russian Snow Girl (Snegurushka), and DedushMoros (Father Frost) have already come to visit. S nastupaiushchim Novym godom i s Rozhdestvom Khristovym - Happy New Year!
Here are two lifestyle strengtheners (and a free Achilles tendon stretch) to build into your fitness as a lifestyle for 2007:
If you would like to get strong legs for the New Year, don't bend over wrong to lift things (upper drawing, left). From now on, make all your bending the way that strengthens your thighs and at the same time prevents back and knee pain (upper drawing, right). Keep your upper body upright and bend your knees. Prevent knee pain and get better use of your leg muscles by keeping both knees down and back over your heels. Each time you keep both heels down while doing healthy bending, you will also get a built-in Achilles tendon stretch. The post How Often Should You Be Healthy? tells more on good bending.
If you want to stop "mystery" lower back pain for the New Year, check to see if you lean backward when you reach upward (lower drawing, left), carry things, or when you are just standing. Leaning back creates overarching of the lower back called hyperlordosis, which pinches and pressures the soft tissue and joints of your spine. People with this kind of pain feel they need to lean over forward or sit to relieve the pain. Instead of doing remedies for pain, it is smarter and healthier to stop the cause of the pain.
The "hip tuck" or "pelvic tilt" to reduce overarching and straighten the spine (lower drawing, right) is described in the post Throw a Stronger Punch (or Push a Car or Stroller) Using This Back Pain Reduction Technique. The muscles you use to move your spine out of unhealthy overly arched position and into straighter position are your abdominal muscles. By simply standing and moving with a healthier spine position, you get free exercise for your abdominal muscles. "Tightening" the abs is not what exercises the abs or prevents back pain. Tightening also does not let you breath or move properly. Tightening is not how to have healthy abdominal function. Instead, use the abdominal muscles to stop overarching and maintain healthy position while going about your daily life and exercise. The post, If Better Abdominal Muscles Are Your New Year's Resolution, Try This, shows how.
If your New Year's Resolution is to have a healthier low back, Achilles tendons, and abdominal muscles, you can do that all at once during your regular daily activities.
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Readers have been asking what happened to the weekly reports of my martial arts classes. Others wanted to hear about my other classes including yoga. My martial arts students continued becoming skilled and disciplined. Next semester I will post some of the fun drills they do to build natural strength, discipline, and flexibility using themselves and each other instead of weights and equipment. In my yoga classes we learn that the poses themselves are not what gives good posture and focus. We learn what healthy positioning is, then apply it to how to move for daily life after walking out of the class.
In my sports medicine practice, I regularly see yoga teachers as patients for back, knee, and neck pain. That is because several yoga moves are not good for anyone - just as not all food is healthful. Many moves are fine, but other traditional poses injure joints, even when done "right" (or especially when done right), like bending over from a stand or a sitting position, whether the back is rounded or straight. We omit those moves and use others that are better stretches without the degenerating forces on the lower back and neck discs, for example, Healthier Hamstring Stretching. You don't have to injure yourself to get exercise. Fitness is supposed to be healthy.
This week in yoga we did a fun, effective hip stretch. We stood on one foot and reached for the other ankle crossed over the bent standing knee (drawing at left). When we do this, we practice the daily healthy position of keeping the upper body upright and straight, with the chin in, not craned forward. One new student was not happy with my class. She was used to sitting on the floor in classes she ordinarily took. She was peeved that we did so much standing. Although people call yoga "mind and body," she didn't like that we used the body. Although people frequently say that yoga is about understanding and light, she whined and complained and cursed me under her breath for most of the class. She wanted to know why I was making everyone do an extreme and bizarre movement.
I told the class it was healthy and happy to do this move every day. I pointed to my crossed foot and spoke the name of this ancient move - "Putting on shoe."
I hope you will try this too, to get a normal and healthy hip stretch and better balance everyday. Remember that most of the world stands to dress - the ones lucky enough to have shoes. Stand up now and try it. You will get free balance, healthy hip stretch, and leg strengthening every day from daily life. When you get good at this fun move, keep your ankle crossed and bend the standing leg enough for you to reach to the floor to retrieve your other shoe or sock. Keep your chest up and your back straight to prevent practicing unhealthful rounded position. Even though this one bends over, it does not transfer the pivot force to the lower discs for several reasons.
Have fun adding new healthy movement to your New Year. Write your stories and take photos of how you make your life better by fixing your fitness to be functional and healthy. Send link to your photo sharing site of your examples, and I can put you up in lights as a role model for healthier life.
--- 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.
I often hear from trainers, and read in exercise books, that you cannot get stronger without lifting weights. They say that body weight is not enough. Then I watch the trainers and read what the exercise books say to do to strengthen. Often the weights they teach to lift are far lighter than the resistance your muscles get from moving your own body during a real life activity.
I see women in exercise classes lifting little two and five pound hand weights, then bend over wrong to put the weights down and bend over wrong again to hoist up their 20-pound handbag. I see knee pain patients in rehab centers with two and three-pound weights strapped on their ankle, sitting down to do little leg raises. Or, they pull stretchy bands with their leg. Then they get up and walk away with injurious body mechanics, letting their knees and ankles sag inward because they are not using their leg muscles to stop it. The unhealthy sagging grinds away joint cartilage and prevents full use of the leg muscles. They don't understand why their knees, ankles, and feet still hurt even when they "Do their exercises."
Your body weight is the most important thing you need to lift. Following are things to start with, to strengthen without a gym or equipment. The main idea of these activities is not to "do" them as an exercise 10 times, but to use them to retrain your muscles how to hold your body in healthy position, then use that healthy positioning for all daily life:
1. Hold a pushup position, called the plank, described in the post Change Common Exercises to Get Better Ab Exercise and Stop Back Pain. Understand that the point of the plank is to learn how to hold your spine straight without sagging under your body weight. I see people doing the plank all the time in gyms and fitness classes, with their bottom hiked up in the air and their low back looking like a hammock, sinking under their body weight. That is not the normal lower back curve. It is injurious overarching. Done poorly this way, the plank does little to strengthen and just pressures your lower back. Done well, the plank is excellent to strengthen your wrist. The wrist is neglected in fitness, and the resulting weakness is a common source of injury. I will post more about wrists. Do the plank every day - that is how helpful and important it is. If you can't even hold up your own body weight, you may have serious weakness.
2. Use the squat for daily bending, described in the post How Good Would You Look From 400 Squats a Day - Just Stop Unhealthy Bending. The point is to use this healthy bending all the time instead of bending wrong. In posts to come, I will show another way for healthy bending using a lunge position with one leg in front and the other in back.
3. If you can't sit and rise from the floor without your hands, you are too weak and tight for ordinary daily life. Try Quick and Easy Strength and Balance Exercise. Also practice getting up from your chair (safely) without using your hands or leaning forward.
5. Hang from a chining bar, a branch, a pipe, a doorjamb, or any secure overhead. Don't worry if you cannot do full pull-ups, just hold on and hang. When you can do that, hang for as long as you can from a bent-arm position, and begin trying to raise yourself (do a pull-up). Maybe you will need to start by stepping up on a box to help raise yourself, and letting yourself slowly lower without using the box. Work up to full pull-ups. If that is easy, use fewer fingers to hold on.
When the above body weight activities become too easy, do them carrying functional weight, such packages, children, books, and other common things. It is crucial to health and independence to be able to lift and move your own body weight. In posts to come I will show you how to do more with these body weight activities for more strength and fun being active. Until then, do these every day and send your photos and stories of how you got stronger and happier.
Make it your New Year's Resolutions to be strong for real life in real ways.
Upper body strength is important for health, making daily activities easier, and other benefits including preventing osteoporosis of the upper back and wrist, two major sites of bone loss in both men and women. It is often said in gyms and fitness articles that body weight is not enough to strengthen, and that you need weights and equipment. Fortunately, that is not true.
Here is a quick, fun, upper body strengthener using your own body weight. It has the added advantages of also strengthening core muscles plus training a fair amount of balance. It also gives many benefits of a tilt table or inversion machine. You can use this fun exercise anywhere you have even a small wall space. It is fun and not as hard as it looks. Be brave, and (safely, carefully) try this:
Stand with your back about a foot in front of a wall (face away from the wall).
Crouch down and put both hands on the floor - drawing #1 at right.
Put the bottom of one foot high on the wall - drawing #2.
Lift your other leg to the wall so that you are standing on your hands with both feet up on the wall - drawing #3.
Hold as long as you can. Keep breathing.
When you want to come down, just step one, then both feet back down to the floor the way you started in drawing #1.
Avoid this one if you have uncontrolled high blood pressure or problems with pressure in your eyes or brain. To keep this exercise fun and safe, when you are upside down standing on your hands, don't let your lower back sag into an arch. Keep your hip tucked to straighten your back and you will get free core strengthening while you do this. Don't let your body weight pressure your shoulders. Use your upper body muscles to maintain shoulder position instead of letting your shoulder joints grind under your weight. Don't fall down on your face. Use your arm strength and hold yourself up. Keep breathing and don't tighten and strain, which increases blood pressure.
Don't think of this as an extreme exercise. It can be simple; don't be afraid to try it daily. My Grandmother "downgraded" to this one in her 90's from full handstands (without the wall), because it is easier and safer.
When this exercise becomes too easy, rock side to side so that you stand with weight first on one hand, then the other, as if walking on your hands. Keep your feet against the wall for balance, at first. When this becomes too easy, stand only on one hand for increasing periods. Start doing small dips, like upside-down pushups. Increase until you can dip your head almost to the floor, then push back up to a handstand again. Work until you no longer need the wall.
You do not need to lift big weights in a gym to strengthen. Your body weight provides fun, effective strengthening, with no machines, gyms, or extra weights needed.
Reader Tries This and Shows How To Get Started, Even if You Think You Can't:
Read success stories of these methods and send your own. See if your questions 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.
The purpose of the quadriceps stretch is to lengthen the front hip muscles. It is often done in ways that do not stretch the front muscles. The standing quadriceps is done by bending one knee to clasp the foot in your hand behind you (or rest it on a chair if you can't reach). If you increase the lower back arch and keep the leg bent forward at the front of the hip (top drawing at left), not much stretch occurs, and the purpose of the stretch is lost.
Instead of "doing" a stretch, get the purpose of the stretch. Try this:
Look at the top drawing, then the second drawing at left.
Stand and begin the stretch.
Tuck your hip under to reduce the lower back arch, as if you are starting an "abdominal crunch."
Don't curl your upper body forward; just tuck the lower body at the hip.
When you tuck the hip correctly, you will immediately feel the stretch move to your thigh.
Straighten your arm away from your body and push your knee downward and backward.
Allow your lower back to arch again, and you will immediately notice the stretch will lesson or stop.
Tuck your hip under again and you will feel the stretch return to the front of your thigh.
I have seen a poster hanging in various gyms of "dos and don'ts for exercise and stretch." The poster shows this quadriceps stretch and says you should not pull your foot away from your body in back because that makes you arch your back. However, it is not pulling your foot away that makes you arch. You allow the arching if you do not tuck your hip - using your muscles to straighten your spine. The post Throw a Stronger Punch (or Push a Car or Stroller) Using This Back Pain Reduction Technique shows how to reposition your spine using the tucking technique. Then you can pull your foot away to increase the stretch all you want. You can control whether you arch or not.
Many people start this stretch by lifting their leg forward at the hip, bending over forward to reach their foot, then pulling the foot behind them. The point of the stretch is to lengthen the front of your hip, not bend it. Instead of bending forward to reach your foot, stand straight, lift your foot behind you, and reach back. If you are too tight to reach your foot, place it on a chair or bench behind you. Work up from there. If your balance is too poor to do this stretch, stand near something for safety, but do not hold on. You will quickly improve balance by simply practicing it. You will not improve balance by holding on.
Remember - don't "do a stretch" - do the purpose of the stretch. Use this stretch with your upper body upright and straight. Keep your hip tucked under, your shoulders down, and get a nice stretch and balance exercise in one.
--- I make posts from fun mail and success stories. Read success stories of these methods and send your own. 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. See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certifiedDrBookspan.com/Academy. ---
I heard a radio program about yoga for senior citizens. The yoga program directors made the usual statements about yoga helping strength and balance. Then they said something that seemed at odds with their goal. They said, "If your balance is poor, do the moves sitting down or hold on to the wall." The very thing that you need to improve your balance is to practice standing and (safely) not holding the wall. If you sit and hold on, you prevent practicing balance.
Balance that helps your normal daily life is easy to improve at any age. All you need is to stand up and balance. Balance is quickly lost with sitting and disuse.
How does balance practice help you? You have receptors in all your joints that sense positioning. They can tell if you are about to fall. They tell your body to send signals to your muscles to steady you. If you don't use your balance sensors with balance practice, they become slow and unable to sense positioning well. You may tip over far enough to fall before your receptors sense it and can tell your muscles to pull you to upright position. Balance practice also improves your muscles. Without balance practice, your muscles become too slow and weak to prevent you from tipping over and falling. If you have let yourself become tight, brittle, and weak from lack of general exercise, you may strain, tear, or break something from a fall that would not have otherwise caused any harm.
Years ago when I left working in the hospital to go into private practice in sports medicine, I found that by making house calls you learn the reasons for people's pain and injuries that you will never see in a hospital or clinic exam setting. It was the first time I ever saw anyone have to sit to put on or take off their shoes. Here are a few quick, functional (real life) ways to improve balance:
Stand up when you put on your socks or hosiery.
Stand up to put on your pants. Lift one leg in front of you, keep your upper body comfortably straight and upright, and slide on each pant leg.
Stand up to put on your shoes. Try two ways: holding the foot in the air front of you to place the shoe, and by crossing the ankle on the opposite knee.
For more balance, after putting on one sock or shoe, remain standing on one foot and do a small squat on one leg to reach the other sock or shoe on the floor.
If you can't stand to dress yourself, and you have at least one working leg, you may be too tight and weak and unsteady for healthy normal life. To get started:
Practice standing on one foot without holding on to anything. If balance is poor stand near a wall for safety to get started and have a skilled friend help. Practice standing for 10 counts without holding on. Increase how long you can balance.
Stand on one foot and swing the other forward and back, side to side, without holding on or touching down. Safely.
If you use a cane, practice walking holding it off the ground. Use your brain to do this intelligently and safely to improve balance and reduce dependence on the cane.
Balance is "use or lose" and can be quickly improved with safe smart practice. You don't need to go to a gym or "do exercises." Use balance skills as part of your daily life.
Reader Dr. Zoe Eppley e-mailed, "I have been trying to apply your "bending right" approach to my daily activities. I find my tight leg and hip muscles seriously limit my ability to squat. Could you please recommend some stretches that will help?"
I receive this inquiry often. People are realizing that they are too tight to move in healthy ways for normal everyday life. I hear it from instructors of aerobics, yoga, Plates, personal trainers, and many others. This is an important epiphany. If you are too tight to move in healthy ways, then it is likely that you spend every day of your life moving in tight ways that create pain and perpetuate tightness.
The good news is you do not need to "do" stretches and exercises. Keep bending right and you will get exactly the stretch and strengthening you need. My most important message that I stress in all my work about exercise is not to "do exercises" but get crucial, functional, effective exercise by moving in healthy ways during normal everyday life.
People spend fortunes on treatments for pain, gadgets, potions, pills, prescriptions, adjustments, and ongoing medical scans and tests. Tightness and body pain is often made to be a mystery because it persists even after surgery and exercise programs. The reason is that they don't stop the cause. My successful techniques for fixing pain, even the most resistant back, neck, knee, and other musculoskeletal pain, emphasizes that you don't "do exercises" but simply stop the source of the injury by stopping unhealthy injurious movement patterns, and using healthy ones. Many people do ten repetitions of an exercise and hold each stretch for 30 seconds, then go back to unhealthy moving, sitting, bending, walking, exercising, and everything else that caused their pain and tightness in the first place.
If you are too tight to use your legs to bend down and get back up without using your hands or getting help, you need the hard realization that you lack normal function. It may be common in Western society to not be able to lift your own body, but it is dangerously unhealthy weakness.
Dr. Zoe e-mailed me a second time and mentioned watching an Indi-pop movie. She noticed the healthy posture and flexibility of the actors and how easily they squatted. She wisely reflected that she had probably lost much flexibility by not using normal bending and from "spending my life in chairs."
Keep bending right with your heels down, knees back, and your body upright. You will stretch your Achilles tendon and hip, and strengthen your thighs and knees hundreds of times a day - every time you bend.
One fun way to greatly help your bending is not a specific stretch or exercise but another normal daily activity: apply the same healthy positioning to ascending any set of stairs. I will post more about stairs, as it is interesting and enlightening. Until then, any time you go up stairs, notice if you tilt forward and let your heels lift. Instead:
keep your heel down as you step up,
keep your knee back over your ankle as you step up, instead of sliding your knee forward,
keep your body upright.
Use healthy positioning for both bending and stairs and you will quickly gain functional and healthy strength and flexibility.
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.
Several readers sent e-mails about the last post, asking about being able to sit on the floor. Many said they are so tight and weak that it is hard for them to get down, and not comfortable to sit comfortably and straight, as in the photo at left. Others wrote applauding that I am getting the message out that sitting comfortably on the floor is a normal ability, not strange or extreme.
First, don't be shy about posting replies and comments on this blog instead of e-mailing me privately. Next, sitting comfortably on the ground or floor is not an advanced athletic contortion. It is an entry-level physical ability that is crucial for normal physical function of your body.
If you don't have the stretch, strength, and balance to do this most basic of movements, you have severe weakness and tightness. It is not just people who don't exercise. I have seen aerobics instructors and personal trainers who cannot sit comfortably straight on the floor. Their hip is so tight from all the forward bending exercises they do that their hip rolls and rounds under them, which shifts their body weight to their discs and lower back. They may do artificial gym exercises, but cannot easily get down to the floor without using their hands because they have not trained movement that is useful to daily life, called functional exercise.
For a quick exercise to improve strength and balance, try this:
Stand up.
Easily and lightly, sit down on the floor without using your hands to get down.
Sit by crossing your ankles and lowering into a cross-legged sit, or by squatting straight down, or lightly and softly kneeling on one knee then sitting. Experiment until you can do all three ways.
Don't thump down hard on the floor. Use your leg muscles to lower softly with shock absorption.
Sit straight without rounding your back forward or curling your hip under you.
Stand up again without using your hands to get up.
Do this "sit and rise" exercise several times in a row. It is more useful and effective than doing little leg raises or presses in a gym. Don't be put off if you can't do this right away. Practice (safely) and you will quickly get stronger and more flexible, with better balance. When your strength improves so much from practicing sitting and rising from the floor that your body weight is not enough to give you exercise, sit and rise from the floor holding children or packages.
You can sit and rise from the floor ten times a day as an isolated exercise then spend the rest of your day sitting in a chair, but it makes more sense to sit and rise from the floor for real life. Sitting on the floor is not a strange or rare thing only done in poor villages far away. It is done in a great part of the world's countries, even in developed cities, and in our home. When you come to eat with us, you will sit at a low table on the floor by the fire. It's nice.
Sitting and rising from the floor is one of the many ways that much of the world gets built-in leg exercise and protects their hip joints from stiffening, arthritis, and bone loss. You will see grandparents easily lifting grandchildren, and other loads. They get bone-building strength, flexibility, and balance every day through their real life, and don't need to buy little machines or go to trainers to do ten little repetitions of an artificial movement. So can you.
Conference on Aging Dec 2, 2006 in Midtown New York
Friday, November 24, 2006
Healthline
The Greater New York Chapter of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) will hold a conference on aging on Saturday, December 2nd, 2006 at the Flatotel, 135 W. 52nd Street between 6th & 7th Avenue, in New York City.
In one fast moving day, there will be nine lectures by authorities on metabolic changes of aging, cardiovascular changes and the benefits of exercise, exercise in older patients with heart failure, neuromuscular training for the older population, psychosocial aspects, physical training for older clients with special conditions, and nutritional needs of older populations. I will be giving a lecture called "Three Quick Techniques for Three Musculoskeletal Problems Confused for Aging."
Many of the declines that come with doing less are often confused with aging. A stiff and rounded upper back, for example, is not necessarily aging, but practice. Are you sitting rounded forward reading this right now? Do you spend your day rounding over your desk and steering wheel, then go to the gym and bend forward for crunches, leg lifts, Pilates, and toe touches? Do you bend your neck down to do biceps curls? No wonder it's hard for you to straighten out. How long will you practice unhealthy bent forward position before you get stuck that way? There is no need to exercise in the very way that is not healthy when you do it sitting at your desk. There are better ways.
Much of the loss of strength and balance over the years is from disuse not aging. Many people do not use their legs for the hundreds of times each day they need to bend. They bend wrong, throwing their weight on their spine. Their back hurts and their legs and hips tighten and weaken. Eventually they find they are unable to sit comfortably on the floor, and more worryingly, cannot rise from the floor, or even from their chair without using their hands. This is debilitating weakness, and a dangerously unhealthy cycle of use or lose. It is not aging. In cultures where sitting and rising from the floor is a daily activity, people of 90 have the strength and balance to do it. They do not suffer the rates of falls, osteoporosis, arthritis, and cardiovascular disease of less active populations.
My lecture will cover three easy techniques to maintain and improve spine health and muscle strength. Come say hello. The meeting is designed for allied health practitioners, but is open to the public, with reduced registration fees for members of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) New York Chapter. Contact Felicia D. Stoler, MS, RD (732) 946-4436, or e-mail fstoler@att.net
Fitness and Health as a Lifestyle for Thanksgiving
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Healthline
If you think you won't have time to exercise over the Thanksgiving holiday, here is good news. This post will show you how to move in healthy ways so that you have healthy exercise built-in to all the cooking, shopping, furniture moving, and social interactions. Here is more good news. You don't have to go to a gym to work off the stress and eating too much of the Thanksgiving holiday. Life is not supposed to be a poison that you deliberately take, then need an antidote to offset.
Here are four of the healthiest, quickest ways to make your Thanksgiving into fitness and health as a lifestyle:
To pick up chairs, babies, and grocery bags, to move furniture, and for lifting things from the floor, bend your knees, keeping your weight back toward your heels, and your body upright.
To carry chairs, babies, grocery bags, furniture, and any loads in front of you, don't lean back. It is a common bad habit to lean the upper body backward, increasing the lower back arch. Leaning backward shifts the weight of the load off your core and arm muscles and onto your lower spine. Get free, built-in exercise for your abs and arms and save your back by standing straight. Don't lean and arch backward to carry things.
Notice all the times you round and hang forward over things that you can easily reach by standing upright. Check your upper back positioning when standing over counters, sinks, grocery bins, vacuum cleaners, cribs and baby-changing tables, and when setting food tables. Don't let your body weight hang over and forward. Stand upright, chin in, and just tilt your head downward in relaxed manner to see what you are doing. Relax shoulders downward. Smile. Breathe.
Preparations and family interactions are no excuse to do unhealthy behaviors out of habit like smoking, overeating, and arguing, then blame it on stress. The bad habits are even more stress on body and mind. If something is wrong, see about fixing it in a good way. Don't suffer in silence with people telling you that you have to be happy just because of a holiday. Make your home healthy for yourself. There is no place it matters more:
Get exercise cleaning the house of junk and clutter. Take the extra clothing, toys, and household items to a shelter. Carry the bags with healthy positioning to the people who need it.
Make a healthy meal with family or alone, without television or phone. Carry the meals to shut-ins and isolated elderly in your neighborhood, and the homeless on the street.
Volunteer at a soup kitchen. Do grocery shopping, cooking, and vacuuming for those who are too sick or disabled or alone to do it for themselves. If you think you don't have time because you have young children, take them with you to help carry things and to teach them healthy ideals, and how thankful they can be for the home you provide.
Don't smoke, drink soda (diet soda is just as unhealthy) eat junk food (even if it has marketing words like "organic" on the label), or undo the health benefits of fruit and vegetables by junking them with cream, sugar, and cornstarch. Add up all you spend on cigarettes and junk food that take a healthy body and give it health problems. Take the money and give to the poor. With what you save on prescriptions and treatments for all the pain and jitters you cause yourself, you can feed a village and still take a vacation.
When you eat the Thanksgiving meal, say thankful things. Taste your food. Turn down seconds. Breathe. Smile. Help clean up. Shoulders back. Enjoy the roof over your head. That is health as a lifestyle.
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Readers asked for more pictures of healthy bending around the house and workplace during daily life. They've been getting excited about the idea that daily life is the way to physical ability and health, instead of stopping life to do a bunch of exercises. People spend time and money for endless treatments and gadgets for back and knee pain and tight Achilles tendon. Healthy bending prevents the commonest sources of all of these.
A major predisposing factor of knee and hip arthritis is weak thighs.
A major risk factor of hip osteoporosis is lack of weight bearing exercise.
A major risk factor of falls is weak legs and poor balance.
The Achilles tendon gets a natural stretch with each time you bend right with heels down, and loses this constant normal source of stretch without good bending.
The most important contributor to making a lumbar disc degenerate, or slip out of place (herniate), and press on nerves causing sciatica, is bad bending forward.
The biggest contributor to upper back and neck pain is keeping the upper body rounded and bent over forward.
If you would like to reduce risk of falls, osteoporosis, bad discs, sciatica, achy upper back, and arthritis, get a built-in Achilles tendon stretch, and get strong shapely legs all at the same time, just use your legs with good body position for daily healthy bending.
Why go to the gym or to physical therapy to do knee bends to strengthen your legs, then spend your "real life" weakening your legs and degenerating your lower back discs with bad bending, and say, "I don't have time to exercise."
You will get free built-in exercise just moving in life. My friends and family in Asia are astonished when I tell them I teach Americans how to bend to look in the refrigerator, and that Americans tell me it is too much work to bend right to load dishes in a machine that washes for them. Then they pay money to go to a gym or buy equipment to exercise their legs.
Here is a fun way to change mindset to exercise as a lifestyle:
Count how many times a day you bend and how many times you can choose to harm yourself or help yourself.
If you would like to try "fitness as a lifestyle," this is the best place to start. Think of it:
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A UK Times article featured a physician musing that as medical students they were not taught in school to identify the cause of medical problems, but to treat symptoms (and give electric shocks to decerebrate frogs). The cause of the problem would still remain.
He mentioned how you may go to the doctor with painful tonsils, and be given a "diagnosis" of tonsillitis. He educates the reader that "Tonsillitis, for example, is not a disease but a symptom - of something else that caused the tonsils to be infected." He continued with how you may go to the doctor with pain down your leg, and be given back a "diagnosis" of sciatica, which just means "pain down the leg" but not what is causing the sciatica. A disc may be pressing on the nerve, but what is making the disc press? The sciatica and the bad disc are the symptoms. They are not the cause. Unfortunately, he stopped there, and for treatment said to go back to your activities with light rest. Nothing about what caused the disc to degenerate (break down) or protrude (herniate or slip) in the first place.
Understand The Causes:
Bad sitting and bending are main causes of disc degeneration and herniation.
Rounded sitting (photo on left) compresses the space between vertebrae in front and opens the space between them in back and squeezes the disc gradually backward into that space.
Bad bending (right) levers the weight of your upper body plus whatever you are lifting onto your lower back discs, whether you keep your back straight or rounded.
Strengthening your back will not stop you from sitting and bending wrong. Stretches or massage that feel good for the moment will not stop you from sitting and bending in the way that rounds the spine forward, pushing and squeezing the discs until, finally, give break down and squeeze out to the back (herniate).
A bad disc is not the diagnosis. It is not the cause of the problem. It is the result of what is causing the disc go bad.
You can treat the disc pain with pills, exercises, massage, and shots, but not remove the cause. When you continue the cause, the pain often comes back. You can undergo surgery to remove the disc, but of you do not remove the cause and continue injurious sitting, lifting, and bending, you continue harming your other discs.
What to Do:
To stop the damage, stop the cause. Then it can heal.
It is easy to prevent and heal back pain when you simply stop the cause.
There is more help and information in my replies to many reader comments right under this post. Before asking more questions, see if your answers are already here.
--- Read and contribute your own success stories of fixing pain with 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 feedback. Top students may apply to get certifiedDrBookspan.com/Academy.
A reader thoughtfully sent in the photos at left to help readers recognize unhealthy bending, and asked, "What is your advice when someone is having to bend to put dishes in the dishwasher? It just seems so uncommon to think to squat while loading the dishes."
There is no better time to bend in healthy ways than your real life. The whole point of fitness as a lifestyle is that your daily life is healthy movement - not to change clothes to do squats at a gym three times a week, then change clothes again, go home, and bend wrong all day. Healthy bending is for every time you bend. How often is that? The post How Good Would You Look From 400 Squats a Day - Just Stop Unhealthy Bending showed how we estimated that you bend an average of 400 times every day for ordinary activities. Why harm your back and miss free exercise for your legs hundreds of times a day? Most people know and repeat, "bend your knees" if you quiz them on healthy bending. Bending knees slightly, as in the above photos, does not make bad bending healthy. Bending over forward pressures your lower back discs, whether your back is rounded (photo above left) or straighter (above right). You are still bending over and the leverage point is your lower spine. Bending right is simple:
With feet side-by-side, comfortably apart, bend knees, keeping your torso fairly upright - as if not wanting something to fall from a shirt pocket (right drawing).
Keep both heels down and shift your weight back to your heels.
Pull your knees back over your heels. Don't let them droop forward under your body weight. When you shift your knees back, you will feel the effort shift away from your knee joint to your thigh muscles.
Don't stick your backside out or exaggerate the lower back arch.
Unless you are moving in healthy ways for your real life, it is not a lifestyle and it is not healthy. Healthy bending is easy and life changing. It is free exercise and injury prevention. When should you do it? Each time you want your daily life to be healthy.
More photos and description of bad sitting and bending that causes back and disc damage and what to do instead - The Cause of Disc and Back Pain
Check the exercises you do for the same body positioning that would be recognized unhealthy if they were not renamed "exercise" - Are You Making Your Exercise Unhealthy?
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A frequently seen stretch for the calf muscles and Achilles tendon is the "lunge and lean" pictured at right. It is one of the least effective ways to stretch your calf and Achilles. Although many people spend much time doing this stretch, they often get little or no stretch:
Bending over forward reduces the stretch and trains the same bent forward position that you already know is poor posture when you sit like that at your desk or steering wheel.
Sticking your hips out in back reduces the stretch on the Achilles tendon.
Turning your back foot outward, even a small amount, reduces, and often eliminates the stretch completely.
The "lunge and lean" is not highly effective, even when done "well," and is often done in the ineffective ways listed above. This is one reason why Achilles tendon stretching doesn't seem to be cutting down on injuries as hoped. Instead of the "lunge and lean," following is a quick, effective way to stretch your calf and Achilles tendon:
Stand facing a wall at about arm's length away.
Stand with both feet facing straight ahead - parallel - not turned out, even a small amount.
Put one foot on the wall at knee height. Press that heel toward the wall.
Look down and see if the foot you are standing on is facing directly ahead. Make that standing foot straight, not turned out; not even a little.
Do not lean toward the wall. Lift your chest until you are standing straight.
Don't let your hip curl under or your standing knee or hip bend.
Smile, relax shoulders, and breathe.
Hold a few seconds and switch legs.
Many people are so tight, that as soon as they raise one leg against the wall, their standing foot turns out without their even noticing it, and they round their back. Don't stretch wrong, allowing the tightness to perpetuate.
The closer you press your heel toward the wall, the more stretch. If you are tight, you will get substantial stretch just getting close. The purpose of this move is not to touch the wall by any means possible, but to get a functional stretch and not automatically go to unhealthful positioning. Do the purpose of the stretch - to retrain the same healthy positioning you need for real life.
Stretching is supposed to be healthy. When you stretch, don't practice bad bent over posture habits. Stretch in ways to make your daily life healthier.
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Common Exercises Teach Hip Tightness When Kicking, Stretching, and on the Stairs
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
Healthline
Tuesday night my martial arts students showed they had improved. When I came in they were waiting in two neat rows. I still had to cue them to sit up straight.
In the post Is Bad Martial Arts Good Exercise? I mentioned showing the class not to let their neck, back, and hip round forward when kicking. By straightening, strength and stretch are built into regular movement.
Several readers e-mailed me that they noticed for the first time that they let one leg pull forward when lifting the other (notice the standing leg in the left-hand photo, at left). They said they felt a good difference when they straightened (right photo).
If the front muscles of your hip are tight, when you lift one leg high you may find that you round your back and bend the other leg. Watch for this during kicks in martial arts and aerobics, when lying on your back raising one leg overhead to stretch the hamstrings, and ascending stairs. The common practice of allowing the other leg to bend forward perpetuates a tight anterior hip, which in turn, contributes to walking bent forward and back pain.
In martial arts, you don't want your standing leg completely straight. That is an invitation for your opponent to kick your knee, snapping it backward. But for both health and effective martial movement, you don't want to bend the leg more than a small amount. Bending the back, hip, and leg when kicking decreases force of the kick, pressures your discs, and reduces stretch on the hip and hamstrings. The rounded-under hip position keeps the hip tight, a hidden cause of groin pulls. It also looks weak and unskilled. For lying hamstring stretches with one leg overhead, it is often taught to keep the second leg bent to "protect the back." However, keeping the leg (and body) flat on the floor give a far better stretch and is healthier for your back. Even in slow easy motions of stair climbing, leaning forward and allowing the second leg to pull forward reduces the normal hamstring and hip stretch, decreases the exercise on your hip and leg muscles, and reduces the back muscle activation for holding the straight position you need for health and back pain prevention.
It is said the martial arts gives you discipline and strength. It won't if you practice unhealthy habits. When raising one leg, hold your neck and back upright. Prevent the other leg from pulling forward. You will get a built-in hip stretch, one of the places you need to stretch most. You will get back and hip exercise in the way you need to move in real life, and prevent tightness and weakness that leads to poor movement and pain. You will change from kicking like a bent over old lady to a young strong athlete. Exercise as a lifestyle is not something done "for body parts." It is built into your normal movement to make it healthy movement.
Free Exercise and Free Back and Knee Pain Prevention - Healthy Bending
Monday, October 02, 2006
Healthline
If you think that not having time to exercise is the problem, here is good news. Thinking that your life and your health are two separate things is the problem. You don't have to stop your life to get exercise.
Look at the drawings, above left. The left-hand drawing shows bad bending - letting weight rock forward, heels lifting, and overly arching the lower back. The right-hand drawing shows healthy bending - keeping weight back, heels down, and the lower back in healthy position, not rounded and not overly arched. Look at the right-hand drawing and try it:
Keep your upper body as upright as you can, instead of rounding over forward
Keep both heels down as you bend your knees (right drawing).
If you find you lift your heels, use your leg muscles to deliberately pull your knees back so that your weight shifts back over your heels. Shifting your weight back keeps your weight on your leg muscles and off your knee joints. There should be no knee pain with good bending.
Keep your knees back toward your ankles. If you just let your weight flop, the knees will come forward past your toes. Don't allow your knees to shift forward.
Don't overarch the lower spine (overly sticking your behind out in back). Keep neutral spine. If you overarch, tuck your hip (tailbone) under you just enough to prevent having a too large arch (inward curve) in your lower back. Although it is often taught in exercise and weight lifting classes to stick far out and overarch, increasing the arch increases pressure on the joints of your vertebrae, called facet joints, and the soft tissue of your lower back. Overarching is a major hidden cause of lower back pain and injury.
Use good bending every time you bend - even to look in the refrigerator and get in and out of your chair. Don't use your arms to lean on the arm rests to sit down and get up; use leg muscles. If you need to use your arms, or you lean your body forward to sit or rise, you need to improve balance, Achilles tendon stretch, and leg strength. Bending properly does all that for you. (Practice safely. Don't fall down.)
Have a friend (or a camera set on timer) take photos of you from the side as you stand and bend, showing how you fixed your bending from unhealthy to healthy during whatever you do all day for work and at home. Write a fun summary and e-mail your photos and stories to me. If you can, put the photos on a photo sharing site. That is easier for me to retrieve and post on Fitness Fixer. I can put the best photos and most fun stories up in lights.
Realize that a big part of your health is the way you move in real life. Make a conscious decision to change your idea of exercise, fitness, and health from stopping life to "do exercise" to how you live. Have fun - the best health.
--- 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. ---
How Good Would You Look From 400 Squats a Day - Just Stop Unhealthy Bending
Friday, September 29, 2006
Healthline
Imagine how good your legs would look if you did 400 squats and lunges a day, and how many calories you would burn. Using your legs would strengthen them and reduce risk of both osteoporosis and arthritis. It has been found that a major predisposing factor of knee arthritis is weak thighs.
Now remember how many times a day you bend for ordinary household and work activities. It is more than you think. Some time ago I did an intensive tracking of how many times a day the average person bends. I also put my graduate students on this as a formal study. This kind of counting is a grad student specialty. Many of my other students wanted to count also. We all found about the same thing. The average sedentary person bends an average of 100-200 times a day just getting things out of the refrigerator, dishwasher, closets, washing, and doing other little things around the house or workplace. The average nonsedentary (but still not active) person bends 200-400 times a day. The average fidgety and active person bends over 500 times a day.
Now realize how many times a day you are hurting your back and missing free exercise by bending over in unhealthy ways, as in the photo, above left. Leaning over all day is also a factor in neck pain. If you only burned half a calorie each time you bent properly, keeping your body upright, and bending knees, you would get a lot of exercise. You would not have to change clothes or go to a gym or pay a trainer. You would not have to take pills because you make your back ache. You would not have to do anything except live your life. You life is supposed to be healthy. You are not supposed to stop your life to go "do exercise." It is a sad thing to see people do squats and lunges in a gym, then bend over wrong to put their weights down, and bend wrong again to pick up their things to leave.
When you bend, keep your upper body upright. When you are bending with feet side by side (squat bend), keep both heels down and your weight back over your heels to keep your weight on your leg muscles and off your knee joints. Don't stick your behind far out in back. In these ways, healthy bending saves your back and gives much exercise without going to a gym, and helps, not hurts, your knees. Healthy bending is life changing.
This week marked several beginnings. The equinox began the journey of the sun away from the northern hemisphere bringing longer nights. The festivals of Ramadan, St. Sophia, Navarati and others celebrate origins and understanding. The university semester began, including the full-to-capacity martial arts class I teach on Tuesday nights at Temple U's Center City campus.
When I arrived, students were sitting on the floor waiting. Some sat in bad rounded posture that you know is unhealthy at your desk. They straightened when I asked them to. In past semesters there were students who refused. Once, one stormed out shouting she didn't understand why she had to sit straight when class hadn't started yet. She didn't know that class is always in session.
Students got their equipment - bending wrong to yank weights out of bins. I told them, "Healthy bending. This class is for health." Some didn't understand the connection. Others tapped those still bending wrong, "Teacher says bend your legs." Several looked surprised. One said, "I'm getting leg exercise before class even begins." I told her that class is always in session. I reminded students to use healthy bending at home and work for every time they bend (Disc Pain - Not a Mystery, Easy to Fix). I showed them how to get more exercise by helping others who came in late.
We began stances. Students sometimes have a stereotyped idea, sometimes learned from aerobic boxing classes. They stand with shoulders hunched up, upper back rounded, head and chin jutting forward, and their behind tilted out in back. I mimicked them. They giggled at how bad it looks. I told them, "You don't look tough. You look ninety." It's true that you use shoulders to block some strikes, but you are not supposed to hunch. Don't do things to harm your neck in order to protect your neck. Overarching your lower back so that your behind tilts out in back is a frequent cause of back pain in daily life (Fixing the Commonest Source of "Mystery" Lower Back Pain) and injury when giving or receiving a blow. It's silly to go to boxing class and beat up yourself.
Look at the photo above. It shows terrible positioning that injures, and perpetuates the tightness that causes more troubles. When you lift one leg to kick (or stretch or take the stairs), notice if your other leg pulls forward. That shows tightness in the front of your hip. Instead, stand straight and keep the standing leg from pulling forward. Don't round your body to lift your leg. You will get built-in anterior hip stretch, one of the places you need to stretch most, and prevent several problems that I will cover soon.
The point of exercise is to improve life. It is missing the point to exercise in unhealthy ways, training unhealthy habits. If you are interested in learning how to retrain healthy movement in martial arts or aerobic boxing classes that you transfer to daily life, let me know and I will post more on what my students learn.
Book:
Healthy Martial Arts - www.DrBookspan.com/books. Winner of the Black Belt Hall of Fame Readers Choice Award.
--- 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. ---
Sitting Badly Isn't Magically Healthy by Calling It a Hamstring Stretch
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Healthline
You already know that sitting bent over your desk, steering wheel, and computer is unhealthy for your back. Then you go to the gym and sit bent over to touch your toes to stretch. It is the same bad bending. It is not magically different or healthy because it is called a stretch.
Sitting and leaning forward to touch toes, even with your back straight, is a common contributor to lower back pain. It may stretch your back and legs, but sitting, especially sitting bent forward puts high forces on the discs of your lower back.
The sitting hamstring stretch also practices the same bad bent forward posture that you already are probably overdoing at your computer, desk, and other daily activities. Modern lifestyle predominantly favors being bent forward, overstretching your back and tightening the front of your body until it becomes natural to slouch forward and uncomfortable to stand straight. Lower back discs become increasingly squashed and pressed outward from all the forward bending. It starts feeling “normal” to stand and move with your back rounded in unhealthy position.
Sitting and bending forward is not even the most effective way to stretch your hamstrings, even though it is a common stretch, and has been done for many years. Many things that are common and traditional are also not healthy, like smoking and hostility. Use healthy ways instead. The previous post Healthier Hamstring Stretching shows one easy effective hamstring stretch. Posts to come will show many more.Check back often.
Every day in my Sports Medicine practice, I see patients who are instructors of yoga, Pilates, and aerobics with ongoing back pain from doing bad stretches. They say they need the stretch because their back hurts. Then they learn that much of their pain is from the stretch. When they realize this, they smile, stop the bent over stretches, both sitting and standing. I show them more effective hamstring stretches to do instead. They quickly become more flexible from the better stretches, and the pain stops that they were getting from pressuring their discs and lower back with sitting bent forward. Have fun using your brain for stretching, and putting health back into fitness.
Healthy Martial Arts - for all athletes, not just martial artists. Healthier smarter training for everyone.
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One of the most common stretches for the hamstrings is bending over from a stand to touch the toes. You already know that bending over with straight legs to pick up a package is unhealthy for your back. Bending over to stretch is just as unhealthy. Forward bending puts large forces on the discs of your lower back, and is not even a highly effective stretch for your hamstrings. Bending over to touch toes is a common contributor to back pain, whether you keep your back rounded or straight. I will show you more about exactly why in future posts.
Instead of bending over to stretch, or standing with one foot propped up on a bench or chair, an effective way to stretch the hamstring is to stand facing a wall and press one heel against the wall at about hip height.
Keep your standing foot straight, not turned out; not even a small amount.
Look down and see if your standing foot is facing straight ahead.
Move your foot so that it is straight, or you will lose the stretch. As soon as you turn your standing foot straight, you will feel the stretch improve.
Lift your chest and stand straight.
Don't let your hip curl under.
Smile and breathe.
Hold a few seconds and switch legs.
Stretching is supposed to be healthy. When you stretch, don't practice bad posture habits by rounding your back, and don't practice things you know aren't healthy like bending over so that your body weight hinges on your lower back.
Stretch in ways to make your life healthier.
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An example of a test that does not test what it claims is the "Sit and Reach" test. Sit and Reach is assumed to test hamstring flexibility, but is more a measure of how much you can round your spine. Many people can pass the Sit and Reach with little hamstring flexibility and an unhealthful angle at the hip - tilted back (shown by shorts side seam) rather than vertical. The Sit and Reach is required testing for numerous military, corporate, and school fitness programs
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