This weekend we will attend the Black Belt Hall of Fame event hosted by the Eastern USA Martial Arts Association. Paul and I are honored to be invited back this year, and receive awards for Instructor of the Year. I will teach a workshop on Stretching Smarter for Martial Artists.
Why stretch smarter? Many standard stretches work to increase flexibility but don't improve martial arts or other sports, and aren't good for the joints.
Martial artists and other athletes often develop injuries from years of bad stretches. It's understandable to put yourself in harm's way to carry children and elders from a burning building, or suffer cold and hypoxia rescuing a stranded mountaineer. It's silly to injure yourself doing stretches and exercises you think are for your health. In martial arts you can harden your body to withstand blows through difficult and uncomfortable training, but it isn't the point of martial arts or other sports and activities to beat up yourself. I cover the difference between toughening the body and injuring it in the seminar and in my book Healthy Martial Arts.
My workshop teaches functional flexibility - changing your body to work better in real ways needed for daily life and fighting arts.
The hall of Fame event is by invitation only. Contact:
Executive Director Soke Kanzler Eastern U.S.A. International Martial Arts Association 1 (800) 456-3872 EUSAIMAA@aol.com P.O. Box 9642 Pittsburgh Pennsylvania 15226 USA
Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer - Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal feedback. Top students may apply for certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
Reader Success With Functional Fitness Training - Stronger Ankles, Better Balance
Thursday, October 01, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is a good start to October. I had invited readers to send in names for my group Functional Fitness Training program (tentatively named FFT) and success stories using it. Reader Paul J sent in both. He wrote:
"I don't think I can come up with a better name than FFT.
"Some ideas….let's see,
"Simple Training Big Benefits. (The toe balance training is great; I suppose a success story is in order.) Bookspan's Basic Training. Bookspan's Body Basics. Basic Fitness Training Basic Functional Fitness Jolie's Joint Jewels (That has a nice ring to it, it might be good for something like a list.) Functional Physical Training.
"Well, what do you think, any keepers?"
Readers - votes? The "Basic Functional Fitness" name has the advantage (as does "Bookspan Functional Fitness") of the initials BFF, young person lingo for "Best Friend Forever."
Paul J. continued with his success story:
"I have been doing your toe balance training and have noticed some interesting things. Before I learned your toe balance training I would usually stand on one foot to put my sock on and had decent balance from martial arts, but felt my ankles were weak. I even bought a BOSU and it may have helped, but you have to be on it, to get a benefit from it. I remember the first time I tried your technique and how quickly my right foot tried to roll out.
"Thanks to your simple do-anywhere training my ankles are stronger and my balance is much better. The other day stepping out of the tub I had such an odd sense of stability when standing on just my right foot, I looked at my ankle. My general balance has improved too. I have a folding bike with 20” wheels and for the past 3 years hands free was a very bad idea, just the other day it was quite easy. All though to some this may still be a bad idea, it was done in a nice low traffic neighborhood.
"May your favorite physiologist have a fun Friday afternoon. : ) "
--- Read and contribute your own success stories of these methods. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certifiedDrBookspan.com/Academy.
Want mind and body? ChessBoxing is a sport from Germany that combines "the number one thinking sport with the number one fighting sport." Fighters go 6 rounds of chess and 5 of boxing in 11 alternating rounds. ChessBoxing decision is by checkmate or knockout.
Competitors must have an ELO chess rating of 1,800 or above and have fought a minimum of 20 real boxing matches. (Elo rating, named for creator Arpad Elo, is one of several chess rating systems.)
Click the > arrow to watch a short video of ChessBoxing.
ChessBoxing origin is attributed to cartoonist Enki Bilal from his 1992 novel Froid Équateur. Dutch artist Lepe Rubingh was inspired by it to hold a live tournament
ChessBoxing spokesman Bill Schneider says, "The most difficult part of the game is making the transition from the ring to the board. “Your pulse is not a problem, but the adrenaline certainly is. It makes you want to play a far more attacking game of chess than you ordinarily would, and that often leads to mistakes.”
--- Before asking questions, see if your answers are already in labels and comments under posts, links in posts, archives, and the Fitness Fixer Index. For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. 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.
My husband Paul and I had trained in the martial arts together since our teens. Years later, we were both black belts, teaching martial arts. One day I asked Paul what was his life dream. He told me he wanted to train in Japan. I found work there teaching at a medical school, getting the chance to do some interesting comparative orthopedics, found a place to stay with people we had once helped, and arranged to train at the Japan Karate Association, the JKA. Eleven days after arriving, we suddenly had no more place to stay, and were standing on the street needing to immediately speak more Japanese than karate and medical words.
We landed on our feet, getting a small apartment in northern Tokyo, and training daily. We were invited to the training camp of a Japanese living treasure, and left our little place to head south.
After the training camp ended, we traveled in the coastal areas of the renowned Diving Women of Japan. I had heard of them since I was very small, studied them in graduate physiology classes, and wanted to know if the stories were true.
We were invited to stay with the Ama diving women in several villages. "Ama" literally means "sea woman" in Japanese. When you spell 'ama' you use two kanji characters, 'sea' and 'woman.' In Japan, they are more properly called Ama-San; "San" is an honorific suffix. The Japanese have long held these professional diving women in high regard for their hard-working life.
The SeaWomen have breath-hold dived in chilly waters for perhaps thousands of years to harvest shellfish, seaweed, and other food. They were the major providers for their villages. At one time, the Ama-San were the world's largest fleet of commercial divers. Now there are few left. The youngest are in their 50's. The oldest working divers are now 70 and 80 years old, and even older. The daughters move to the cities, not wanting to train in the cold waters with their mothers to become Ama-San. Soon there may be no more.
In the West in the 1960's and early 70's, there was a sudden scientific interest in studying the mammalian dive reflex. Many studies centered on the Ama. Scientists wanted to study how deep they dived and for how long, to measure slowing of heart rate and redistribution of blood from limbs to the core, representative of the dive reflex. Studies were also initiated to estimate oxygen saturation and decompression stress. It was often conceded that the real interest in the Ama was because they dived nearly naked.
--- Questions come in by hundreds. I'm bailing the ocean with a bucket. I make posts from fun mail. Before asking more, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. Why not try fun stuff, then contribute! Read success stories of these methods and send your own.
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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:
--- Questions come in by hundreds. I'm bailing the ocean with a bucket. I make posts from fun mail. Before asking for more, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. Why not read and learn, then contribute! Read success stories of these methods and send your own.
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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.
Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books. Get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy.
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - by special request of martial arts students starting my summer semester university class this Tuesday - Make a quick soreness relief rub at home:
Cut open hot red peppers and remove the seeds. If you have sensitive skin, use gloves.
Crush the seeds using a mortar and pestle. If you don't have that, try a mallet or any pounding tool. More seeds makes a hotter rub. Experiment sensibly. Crush in some pulp of the red pepper (or a green one) to add substance and color.
Add oil to preferred thickness. Coconut oil is great, and becomes solid in cool temperatures. Or try sesame or olive oil, whatever is healthy and handy in the kitchen. Rub on sore areas.
Some commercial preparations contain petroleum products, like Vaseline, unhealthy for bodies like the Earth and you. Some contain methyl salicylate. Even though these are natural plant substances, poisonings and overdoses are common. Other soreness balms contain any number of toxic substances. Fresh, healthful hot pepper rub is quick and good.
**Wash your hands well with soap before touching your eyes or using the bathroom to avoid burning the touched areas. Be sure to remove hot pepper traces before handling contact lenses.**
Make sure it is your muscles that are sore from good honest effort, not joint injury:
Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from fun ones. Before asking more, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, or in the Fitness Fixer Index.
Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books. Get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy.
Partner 1 (white uniform) does biceps curls and other lifts using partner 2's weight.
Partner 2 uses core and whole body strength and endurance to hold straight positioning. Partner 2 can face up, down or sideways, in each case using appropriate muscles to maintain straight position. Breathe normally.
This Fast Fitness can be done with willing friends, children, pets, and furniture.
Partner 1 uses core and abdominal muscles to stand with neutral spine rather than leaning backward, and whole body strength to support weight of partner 2.
It is a myth that you must lean back to offset a carried load. You get intense and functional abdominal muscle workout by using them to pull you forward to neutral standing position.
I once used this exercise of holding straight horizontal position (partner 2's part) while helping out a friend who is a stage magician. I filled in for his absent assistant for the floating lady illusion. I was too tall for the apparatus. It usually holds your body out flat using struts reaching from head to thigh. It reached only to my midback. I wound up holding my weight myself, from hips to feet - high above the stage - while trying to look hypnotized. More on this, someday, in another post.
I make posts from fun mail. Before asking more questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. Try fun stuff, then contribute! Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy. ---
Surgery for Knee Arthritis, Meniscus, Not Needed To Stop Pain, Restore Function
Monday, January 19, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Good news. If you don't like or want knee surgery for most arthritis or meniscus injury, you don't have to have it. Lack of need for surgery has been demonstrated over many years in rehabilitation populations, and in a mostly ignored older clinical study. Recent studies confirm you can stop most pain and restore function just as well without surgery through good physical rehab.
Millions of Americans undergo arthroscopic surgery for knee pain every year. Over the last 30 years, arthroscopic surgery has been routinely accepted and prescribed for knee pain without undergoing rigorous evaluation.
Even when a 2002 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) found that results of arthroscopic surgery for knee osteoarthritis were no higher than medicine and physical therapy alone, the surgical community "remained unswayed."
Dr. Brian Feagan, co-author of a study in the Sept. 11 2008 issue of the NEJM stated, "It really didn't change practice that much. That's why this second [study] was really important."
Feagan's randomized, controlled trial involved 178 patients, average age 60. All had moderate-to-severe osteoarthritis of the knee. Half underwent arthroscopic surgery plus medical and physical therapy. The other half used medical and physical therapy alone. After two years, both groups' scores on a measure of arthritis severity were about the same.
A second study also published in the same journal issue, found that meniscal tears are common in the general population and, "may not, in fact, be responsible for painful symptoms." That means that if you have knee pain, and have scans and imaging which show a meniscus tear, it may not even be the tear that is causing the pain.
"There's going to be a swing in practice," said Dr. Feagan.
Study authors stated that meniscal tears detected on MRI may confuse matters and lead to unnecessary therapy. This is a similar finding to back pain where patients with pain are shown to have a herniated disc, stenosis, or other finding, but the pain is not from the anatomical finding, but the same bad movement habits, slouching, and lack of good movement that make anyone hurt. Discs also often appear herniated, and spines compressed by stenosis on scans of people with no back pain. Don't base your treatment and future on a picture. Scans are not tea leaves.
Poor knee stability increases risk of developing arthritis, and increases wear on the meniscus. Studies tracking results for years following surgery are finding that surgery "adds no benefit over rehabilitative training alone." That means you don't need the surgery to fix or prevent possible future arthritis.
--- 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. For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy.
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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This weekend, we will be at the International Black Belt Hall of Fame. Top martial artists and their students attend from all over the world.
I will teach a seminar on Stretching Smarter. Research is increasingly showing that conventional stretching is often not preventing or helping heal injuries. My seminar covers state of the art changes to stretch methods to restore function rather than doing artificial movements for arbitrary range of motion. Stretching Smarter workshops for the general public and medical personnel are planned for the Spring of 2009. Through cooperation of the International Academy of Functional Fitness, we hope to have certifications in place. See information on workshops on my website CLASS page.
Grandmaster Kanzler and Kim Harper and staff work tirelessly all year to make each year's Hall of Fame event. Photos are still not posting to show Hall of Fame training and the seminars. Hopefully will follow. For now, it's a martial arts visualization exercise. Paul and I were inducted into the Black Belt Hall of Fame several years ago and have been invited back each year as teachers. I am back in a white do-gi (karate training uniform). I left karate years ago to compete, train, and teach in other styles. This year, Paul reopened our karate dojo (training hall) after many years. I have returned to karate as his student. Check the CLASS page if you want to study karate with Paul at the new center. Scroll down to the karate class description.
I won't have e-mail for a few days to answer questions. Several posts are having technical trouble posting my replies to comments anyway, as part of overall temporary difficulties with the Blogger. Blogger needs a rest too, why not. I am preparing some of the reader questions as posts to come.
The Hall of Fame event is by invitation only. To attend or stop by and say hello this weekend, contact the International Headquarters of the International USA Martial Arts Association, 1-800-456-3872. Tell them I referred you.
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Beijing Olympics & Martial Arts Class Teach Common Sense Cooperation
Monday, August 11, 2008
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
The opening ceremonies of the Beijing Summer Olympics were a quiet, powerful reminder of mutual cooperation as path to strength, beauty, and peace. Thousands danced in metaphor for healthy society - that we cooperate to create a masterpiece, and each individual is significant. Responsibility and support flow both ways.
Paul and I were in China in 2001 for a martial arts competition. I hope to post training stories with some of the motivating photos from there. Discipline and eagerness to do good were all around us. We haven't been back to China yet, although we live in other areas of Asia for part of each year. In many places where we live there, human, animal, and machine-powered vehicles of every description overflow the roads, in all directions at once, often with no traffic lights or signs to guide. Both lanes may flow in either or both directions at once. Turns occur any place needed at the moment. Problems are infrequent because people are taught cooperation from early age. It is an Eastern philosophy, way of life, discipline, and virtue. Words are not needed. Westerns who are not aware that cooperation and thoughtfulness is taking place mistake this highly evolved order for disorder. When tourists see someone coming their way, they may not not cede way or cooperate, but insist that others are in their way. Traffic accidents frequently involve tourists.
When I teach martial arts classes in the US, I teach beginning students something that startles them. If a blow is coming toward you, don't stand there and get hit. Move out of the way. Some students first insist on trying to bat my arm/leg/head out of the way with theirs. I tell them not to do that. If two arms hit each other, whose will win, theirs or the other person's? You don't know? Better to get out of the way instead. What if it is an incoming baseball bat. Or weapon. Or an opponent you have gravely misjudged,even if they only seem to be an old lady. In Zen the concept is called, "Don't be there." In common sense it is called "duck." Some beginners insist the air is theirs to stand in and they want to meet an incoming object with their body. Instead of ducking, or at the least, deflecting it without damage to any party (or maybe training some discipline and arm hardening techniques), they throw their arm up to meet mine, then depart class cursing and exaggerating to administration that they broke their arm, and that they were right to deliberately disobey the teacher who was teaching a valuable lesson called, don't hurt yourself or others. In class, I give the students a moving drill. They practice a specific footwork drill to keep them moving. I walk around the class - right in their way, one student at a time. They are confused. Some try to push or hit me to get me out of *their* way. Some try to stand still to resist, but get deflected off balance. This continues until one student remembers the point of the lesson. They get the smart idea to go *around* me. The message - polite, cooperation. No confrontation. No hitting someone in your way, or believing no one owns the ground but you. Just smile and say excuse me. It seems to be a titanic message to some.
Click the arrow to watch group traffic cooperation in this short movie from a street in Vietnam.
Paul and I are comically (to locals in the street) co-occupying a tiny front basket of a bicycle rickshaw. Locals routinely travel by pedicab, but our height and Paul's epic shoulders blocking the driver's view and feet at the same time caused so much merriment by on-lookers that it won us many new friends that day. The driver looked to weigh no more than 100 pounds (45 kilos), pedaling a steel bicycle weighting at least 200 pounds (90kg). In another post I will tell of Paul's and my ride on an Olympic bobsled on an actual competition track. A professional driver took first seat of the 4 man sled, and we put Paul in second seat, as it was the only place for his long legs. For new readers, Paul is almost 7 feet tall (2 meters, 13cm). We were supposed to have a 4G ride (4 times the usual pull of gravity on earth), but Paul's giant feet, it turned out, prevented the driver's elbows from moving enough to steer the 15 sharp turns. We got quite an extra ride - the wildest the driver said he ever had. To be continued in a future post on g-forces.
China posts to come - Athletes are afraid of the squat toilets, why some Chinese citizens wear masks, Eastern societal practices that promote physical health through advanced age, answers to reader questions that pile in, and more on Olympics and human potential.
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"Hello, I'm writing as someone who has incurred a training-related lower back injury and who has great interest in your words on hyperlordosis. I am hoping that you might shed some insight on how to achieve a neutral spine while doing "kettlebell swings." This is the exercise that has caused me back pain, and I would love to return to working out with kettlebells, but am not sure how to do so without creating too much lordosis. Any ideas? I appreciate any assistance you can provide and thank you for your contributions! Take care, Dan L"
Kettle bells (also called kettle balls and many other names) are usually ball-shaped weights with a handle. A variety of sizes is shown in the photo below, along with a medicine ball for comparison. Kettle bells were long used in various martial arts and cultural festivals and contests before being rediscovered for modern weight lifting. In general, you lift, swing, and move them to do various weight lifting exercises.
When lifting and swinging kettlebells (and any weights) overhead, don't lean your upper body backward (photo below left). Leaning backward is often mistakenly done to "balance the weight" and make the lift easier. Another common body movement to make lifting overhead easier is changing the tilt of the pelvis (hip) so that it juts forward in front and outward in back (same photo below left). Leaning the upper body back and tilting the pelvis are not necessary to balance a load - your own muscles can hold the load, and in fact, that is the point of lifting the weights. Not only are they not necessary, they increase the inward curve of the lower spine. Increasing the small normal small inward curve (lordosis) to a large curve (hyperlordosis) increases compression on the joints (facets) and soft tissue of the lower spine. The same overarching is the hidden cause of back pain in women who lean back and/or tilt the hip trying to offset the load of a pregnancy - Back Pain in Pregnancy - and Why Men Can Get It.
The photos of spine position swinging the heavy medicine ball are from the book Healthy Martial Arts. My black belt student Christopher demonstrates. This is a similar overhead motion as swinging kettle bells by the handle. In the left photo, Christopher allows the hip to tilt forward in front (and out in back) and his upper body is tilting backward relative to the lower spine. In the right photo, he holds neutral spine. In the right hand photo you can see the change to reduce the overarching to neutral spine. The belt line changes from tipped downward in front to level.
Leaning backward and overarching are not helpful adaptations as sometime thought, are not unavoidable, and are not limited to pregnant women. Overarching (hyperlordosis) is a common bad posture, and an often missed source of back pain. It can be easily prevented by using your muscles to hold neutral spine. The post Prevent Back Surgery shows photos of hyperlordosis compared to neutral spine during many activities.
Neutral spine while exercising with kettle bells is the same as neutral spine during anything else - just hold your spine position. Holding neutral spine is the same as not slouching your shoulders or not letting your mouth hang open. You just voluntarily move to and hold desired position.
Neutral spine is not done by tightening or clenching any muscles. It is done by moving your hip and lower spine the same way you move your arm to scratch your nose - without tightening, just moving it to where you want it.
Helpful posts to see and learn neutral spine while swinging kettlebells, babies, and all other fun weightlifting:
The book Healthy Martial Arts (www.DrBookspan.com/books) has a section on lifting and swinging kettlebells, medicine balls, and other weights. Keep breathing, smiling, and have fun. You can swing weights to be stronger and healthier, without injury.
Important festivals of new beginnings fall around this time of year. The Lunar New Year began this week. It is a big festival. It is New Year to many people. Lent began for Latin rite followers, and the Triodion that marks the Lenten start for Eastern Orthodox will fall on Feb 17 this year. This past week was marked by wearing ashes in several cultures. Ash is deeply symbolic of endings, transience, and transformation.
Ash begins black with substance and turns white with formlessness, a symbol explained last year in The Story of the Black Belt. Ashes are used to clean bodies and spirits. They symbolize wisdom that remains when all else is burned away. All things eventually become ash. Catholics wore ashes last Wednesday. Hindus used bhasma, the sacred ash, at the recent festival we attended to learn more about wound healing, told in this post - Thaipusam - Exercise of Body and Spirit.
In the North, February is a harsh month. Through the cold and dark, the first plants begin to bud and animals show growing signs of spring births to come. The first signs of returning life inspired the February 1st Imbolc festival of Brigid (the Bride) a Celtic goddess. The Church later replaced this festival with Candlemas on February 2, dedicated to the Virgin Mother Mary. Both festivals are marked by candles and fire, a mark of the coming end of winter and the return of crops. Shinto followers celebrate this as Setsubun Sai.
To help your New Years resolutions (or remind you to start) here is a link to a post with labels that will give all posts on the label topic: New Year's Resolutions Made Easy.
Walk Lightly - Shock Absorption for Happier Joints
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
"Your tread must be light and sure as though your path were upon rice paper
"This rice paper is the test Fragile as the wings of the dragonfly
"Clinging as the cocoon of the silkworm When you can walk its length and leave no trace You will have learned" - Master Khan to Grasshopper in the 70's TV series Kung Fu
Walk, run, jump, and move lightly.
Banging down with each step is not good for your body. It increases risk of joint pain and plantar fasciitis.
I tell my students to stop banging and stomping when they walk and move and jump. One day, a student asked me "How?" Here are some things to try:
1. I asked the student to stomp his foot. Then I asked him to place his foot down lightly. That is how.
2. Use an analog bathroom scale. Step on heavily and see the numbers go up high. Then step on again lightly and see that the last number reached is a lower number. In sports medicine, we use force plates to measure ground forces when an athlete jumps or runs by.
3. While walking, try not to make noise. It doesn't mean to tip-toe, but to walk with regular heel to toe gait, but lightly.
4. Try walking with a full-to-the-brim cup of hot coffee or any liquid. Don't tip-toe, just walk softly without spilling any.
5. Practice jumping in the air and landing softly. Bend your knees when landing. Increase the height of the jump, maintain soft landing. Work up to jumping down from increasing heights without making a sound, or much sound.
Photo by Jolie taken at a Malaysian backpackers hostel
As you read this, we have been traveling for work and are again on several days of flights back to Asia, with a few errands on the way. For the next two months in Asia, I will check in and post from Internet cafes as we make our way through work and travel on overnight trains and ferries. Here is the link to the post and photos from last year on our way back.
I won't have access to Internet or e-mail for the next week. If you have questions, I won't be able to receive them until after that. Check for posts already here on Fitness Fixer. The post New Year's Resolutions Made Easy gave a list of labels that access all posts with each topic. I drafted a post on long sitting that Healthline staffer Jerry will post for you on Wednesday, thank you Jerry.
If you send photos, send small jpgs so that my e-mail does not fill, and so that I can directly upload them without finding a graphics program to resize them for posts.
Later this month, at the full moon, we hope to be learning more about wound healing at the Thaipusam. Then back to the north to the Muay Thai Monks on Horseback, and training at several places in Thai Boxing.
On our travels through Thailand we hope to see our friends, including an eagle who adopted me.
These ladies are in their 80's and 90's. Last year we all went to the King of Thailand's flower exposition. They wore their best clothes. When friends arrived with their truck, the ladies easily climbed up the tailgate over the side of the truck bed. I thought Paul and I should ride outside and let them sit inside. The daughter took my arm and said, "No. She stronger dan yooou!" They explained that the Grandmothers had sat outside all their lives, and walked before they had rides.
We will stay for some time at a school that has become a home to us. The cook there, named Ahn, escaped from desperate conditions in Myanmar (Burma). Earning a few dollars a day in Thailand, working long days without time off, is riches by comparison. One year I got her a children's ABC book to learn to read English. I was thrilled when she took the arm of another Burmese helper and sat with the book, writing in page after page. She worked on it for days. She proudly presented it to me - translated all in Burmese. She thought I wanted to learn Burmese and spent her only free time to do this as a present for me.
A few years ago, before leaving the US for Asia, some of my students asked if they could donate to help her. About 150 students enthusiastically agreed. They signed a card, that we translated into Burmese. They all put money in a hat, totaling strangely, only about $50. I matched it to make a $100 gift. This is more than a month's salary for Ahn. We could give her much, put her niece through school, with so little.
I put it in a drab little purse and wrapped it as a present. Ahn graciously received the gift of what she thought was an ugly cheap bag. She smiled and thanked us and bowed low. I told her, "Look inside later." The next year, we found that she donated the entire amount to the temple to ask for blessings - for us.
At the same school, the Grandmother there is a feisty funny lady. We came to love her quickly and look forward to seeing her every year. She is in her 90's. I am not sure exactly, but maybe more than 95. She loves to joke and tease. In the photo above she is sitting at lunch that Ahn brought. She sits easily in full squat and rises easily.
Once as we were entering the school, she squatted down fully to rummage through her purse to get her keys. I tried to get her photo. When she saw me raise a camera, she bolted up and ran to a table with Western style chairs, and sat there, upright, with legs crossed and hands on her knees. She said she didn't want her photo "sitting like a farmer." Nothing I could manage to ask in my best Thai convinced her to let me show the world how strong and great she is.
Last year, while visiting them, the subject of Muay Thai came up, a martial art which is the national sport. She once ran a Muay Thai school. The next thing we knew, she was giving us lessons. I trained and competed in Muay Thai in the Netherlands and Thailand, and know that she gave us all a tough training. Then she grabbed her friend, a lady in her late 80's and sat her on the floor for a lesson too. Look how easily they bend and sit on the floor in this photo.
Here is a short movie of the last 30 seconds of her giving a lesson. Click the arrow to play. Watch how easily they both rise to a stand at the end. We hope you feel happy and inspired by her, and try it too. Last summer, she passed away, strong to the last.
Grunting in the gym made recent news. A member was forcibly removed from a gym when others complained. The article told of factions arguing who was right if grunting and other loud vocalizations when exerting for exercise were helpful or needless annoyance.
Exercise is supposed to be healthy and build discipline of mind and body. Antagonism and disputes are not healthy for mind or body. Moreover, both sides have missed the point.
Breathing out, either quickly or slowly in coordination with effort can help. It can be done silently - by exhaling without vocalizing. You can have both, the exhale and the peace. This quiet but forceful exhalation practice is used in many high exertion fields from martial arts to warfare to meditation.
Fighting ninjas were legendary for both focused effort and silent tactics. No sense making a war cry until it was needed for its better purpose - to increase tendency to submission by the other party on the receiving end of the cry. In other words, to be scary.
For exercise, focused exhalation can increase acceleration at specific points of the move to increase power. For heavy moves, it can help lessen increases of pressure in the chest cavity and blood vessels, depending how it is done. Sometimes, people put so much pressure into the exhalation that they increase internal pressure instead of prevent problems. Done either quickly or slowly, it can be used to strengthen the move by including expiratory muscles. Often in martial arts and yoga classes, we (teachers) use noisy breathing just to remind students to breathe at all. It is a cue until they remember to breathe on their own (quietly) instead of holding their breath.
In the war dances and drumming in many countries, in martial arts, and in meditation arts, a concentrated exhalation coordinated with effort is variously called kiah, kiai, hihap, battle cry, and other terms. Each school is certain that their own different translation and beliefs about these terms is the "right one." The exhalation can be vocalized in a short yell, a loud breath, or silent. In group efforts, from martial arts to hauling sheets on tall ships, to chain gangs, to exercise classes, it helps unify mood or keep cadence. Done without coordinating effort, it is called yelling, and sometimes it is just vocalizing in corny ways.
More about breathing, the kiai exhalation, and exercise for any sport are in the book Healthy Martial Arts.
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The 2006 Sylvester Stallone movie Rocky Balboa featured a scene where a computer simulation estimates the outcome of a hypothetical fight. Stallone's character Rocky is a retired heavyweight boxer. While watching ESPN news, Rocky is startled by a broadcast. It features a computer simulation depicting a fantasy fight, and predicts the outcome of how he would have fought in his prime against the movie's present-day heavyweight champion Mason Dixon. A real pro boxer plays Mason Dixon's character. Antonio "Magic Man" Tarver is a southpaw from Florida, and former light heavyweight world champion.
Computer generated fights that generate real probable outcomes in real time 3-D are not yet possible outside the movie industry.
An actual "fantasy fight" computer simulation was done in 1970. It was the SuperFight between Muhammad Ali and Rocky Marciano. Rocky (Rocco) Marciano was heavyweight champion of the world from 1952 to 1956. Muhammad Ali was three-time World Heavyweight Champion in the 1970s. Marciano and Ali fought in different eras and never fought an actual bout.
To make the SuperFight, probability formulas were entered into a computer. No drawings, just numbers. Ali and Marciano met in real life on a filmset to film numerous short segments showing possible parts of a fight. Marciano was already retired 13 years and wore a toupee. The short segments were then spliced together to match the already done computer outcome to make a movie that looked like a real fight or computer-generation of one, but was not. The predicted outcome had already been generated by computer, but the fighters and movie were the real people, not computer generated. The outcome may or may not have reflected actual ability of the fighters or the real outcome.
In the mid 1980s, I was investigating which differences in human movement determined injury potential and athletic performance. In one study, I wanted to know what made the difference between the punch of a black belt martial artist and the same punch by an athletic person without training.
In present day, a camera can be hooked directly to a computer, which picks up the locations of the person's joints at each point in time, generating a computer image of the person as they move in real time. Software automatically calculates, draws, and records the image on the screen. When I started, we didn't have any of that. I did it all manually.
I filmed two subjects using 16mm high speed filming. An athletic man who had never done martial arts was subject #1. My husband Paul, who had earned his black belt a few years before that, volunteered as subject #2. I put markers over the center points of their major joints, and bands around joints which initially faced the camera but would rotate during the punch, so that the joint center would still be determined. Both executed a front reverse punch with their dominant arm. (Paul had to use traditional hyperlordotic position to match the untrained subject, rather than healthier neutral spine position, just for this comparison. We have done other studies comparing my neutral spine adjustment and found it to be a stronger punch - try it here.)
After waiting a week for film developing, I went into a darkened lab and used a film projector to throw the image of each of the thousands of frames, one by one, against a large computer digitizing tablet hung on a wall. I then digitized each joint point of each projected image, in each frame, of both subjects, frame by frame, with a digitizing Graf-pen. I sent data points from each frame by (300 baud acoustic coupling) modem to a text editor on a mainframe in another building at the University's new computer center. I wrote my own FORTRAN programs to generate data summaries and used packaged International Mathematical and Statistical Libraries (IMSL) cubic spline programs and subroutines for data smoothing. This was all to get each knee, hip, ankle, shoulder, wrist, elbow, neck and other filmed joint points into a computer to see exactly where and how fast they moved. Projecting each frame against the wall also allowed me to trace the subjects' outlines to make series of line drawings of their punch, and to make stick figures showing joint center placement. Here are some data and the actual drawings I made:
The untrained subject is at left. Paul is on the right. Paul is left handed so I had to reverse the images to make exact comparisons.
Below are comparisons of the angular velocity (left) and acceleration (right) of each subjects wrist, elbow, shoulder, and hip
Below are some center of gravity calculations
Not long after, with improvements in automating this process, action video games were flourishing. I was invited to a computer-generated imagery (CGI) development studio to be their "movement representation figure." They put the dots on my joint centers and filmed me using high-speed 3D computer graphics modeling as I did martial arts and tumbling moves. Not just one punch, painstakingly done, but jumping, spinning, flying all over the studio, and up and down walls.
The software automatically generated a mathematical, "wireframe" 2-D representation of my three-dimensional form. From it they animated a wild female warrior action figure for their fighting/mission genre arcade and video gameplay. They also used skeletal animation for when I would morph (on-screen) into various animal forms. I never got royalties but it was fun.
This is a big fun topic. For more, click the label "martial arts" under this article. I can write more about motion capture analysis of various sports if anyone is interested. The Great Muhammad Ali has been diagnosed with "Pugilistic Parkinson's syndrome" of tremors, muscle rigidity and slowness - with the possibility, still not fully determined, if due from the damage of a boxing career. See Rocky IV and Head Injury.
--- Read and contribute your own success stories using Fitness Fixer 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 feedback. Top students may apply to get certifiedDrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more with Dr. Bookspan's Books.
This week is the 20th annual Eastern USA International Black Belt Hall of Fame event. Hundreds of martial artists and instructors will attend from all over the world. Soke John Kanzler and Kim Harper work all year to prepare each event. In the best spirit of the martial arts, they make a welcoming and healthful atmosphere of friendly learning. My husband Paul and I were honored to be inducted into the Black Belt Hall of Fame several years ago and have had the privilege to attend each year as teachers.
Seminar teachers come from all over the world. In the past there have been fearsome Russian techniques and calm Chinese ones. This year a grandmaster from Iceland will present on the national martial art of Iceland - Glima. The post Black Belt Hall of Fame - Black Belts and Black Tie tells about some of the seminars and events. The post International Martial Arts Association Weekend tells more about the Hall of Fame and their work.
Paul and I will be teaching The Ab Revolution core training, an entirely different concept in use of core muscles from conventional ab exercises. It uses no forward bending, which reinforces bad posture and is hard on the spine, and instead retrains all body movement using the abdominal muscles the way they actually function during movement in daily life and exercise.
A friend of ours will teach a seminar of a martial art that he developed. Sean Martin has developed a style he named Kagedo-Essensu, (Shadow Essence). Kagedo is a surprisingly effective new technique that does not require specific poses and positioning to master. I am a 4th degree black belt and spent years trying to understand some of the martial arts that claim to be "the weak over the strong," but when I try them I find they only work well if you are strong, or have no injuries, or learn painstakingly exact techniques. Master Martin has synthesized a highly workable system that, so far, anyone can apply quickly. For information about learning this effective technique, contact him at EPallack@gmail.com.
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November 1 is World Vegan Day, and all of November is celebrated as Vegan month.
Vegans are vegetarians who don't eat, and often don't wear, any products from animals. The idea is no more unusual than not wanting to hurt, wear, or eat your pets. Vegan living can be healthier, and vegan diet can fuel both endurance and strength athletes.
Vegans and vegetarians have been found to have lower body fat on average than non-vegetarians, and lower risk of diabetes. A new study by The World Cancer Research Fund making big news as "a landmark study" found that keeping slim is one of the best ways of preventing cancer, and that evidence is stronger than previously realized that eating meat, and processed meats such as ham and bacon, increase risk of colorectal cancer. The report makes 10 recommendations including getting exercise every day, drinking water rather than sugary drinks, and eating fruit, vegetables, and fiber. There is no fiber in meat, dairy, or eggs. Vegan meals can provide enough calcium to prevent osteoporosis. See Exercise is More Important Than Calcium Supplements for Bones and Stomach Acid Drugs Increase Osteoporosis and Hip Fractures.
Vegans may promote farm sanctuaries and work for better ways than vivisection (hurtful testing on animals). The argument is not if you would rather that a child not get needed medicine rather than test on an animal, the quest is for neither to suffer, and find smarter, healthier ways for all. Significant examples exist of tests based on animal physiology that were ineffective or injurious when applied to humans in need.
Vegan bodybuilder Kenneth G. Williams is pictured above and at right. His web site is www.VeganMusclePower.org.
In the tradition of fighting monks, Chris Price is a vegan Muay Thai and mixed martial arts fighter. His web site is http://www.veganfighter.com/
Helpful Book: Healthy Martial Arts - Healthier training for all sports, featuring vegetarian and vegan athletes. Chapters on strength, endurance, speed, balance, nutrition, performance enhancement, injuries, building the spirit and the mind.
The third harvest is here in the Northern Hemisphere. The Hunter's Moon is bright in the sky.
The last harvest of fall is a time of endings and beginnings. More than a commercial holiday of destruction and gruesome death, the approaching winter was historically a time to reverently mark departure of the living and life-giving fields, and be thankful for the harvests they gave. Revering of elders was observed in analogy.
The first and most important precept of thousands of years of yoga and martial arts is ahimsa. Ahimsa means non-violence, non-harm, non-destruction. Ahimsa was reaffirmed in recent times by the Mahatma Gandhi, and in the West by Martin Luther King, Jr. In all the classes I teach, I remind the students that ahimsa is something you incorporate in all your actions. Don't harm yourself by sitting in injury-producing bad slouching. Don't harm yourself with bad exercise. Don't harm yourself by destructive thoughts and actions. Don't harm yourself with unhealthful food and drink. Don't harm yourself by hunching your shoulders to stress through preparing meals, when you can relax your shoulders, straighten your back, breathe, and use each stoke of washing, cutting, and preparing food as beautiful meditation in the same amount of time. Don't harm others with spiteful words, deeds, and thoughts. Don't cause others fear or pain. Don't cause yourself fear and pain.
In many of the countries where we have traveled and lived, lovely short public service announcements occur daily with kind messages of doing good. Television and radio commercials are paid for with no other purpose than to give specific positive examples of helping each other for a better world. Where we have lived in the US, continuous messages of spiteful and worse behavior are common as entertainment.
Several centers in your brain process self-control. They need exercise like anything else. Studies of imaging these brain centers in people who overeat, showed that with retraining, the centers changed in level of activity when pictures of food were viewed. "Exercising self-control" is more than an expression.
Children, and even adults, need consistent positive examples. It is good and crucial exercise. It is easy to destroy, and takes (but also gives) energy to be good. Instead of "Mischief Night" tonight, do good. Instead of spending money on destroying property with thrown eggs and toilet paper, have fun learning a healthful recipe that you can enjoy for years to come. Learn to stand on your hands safely. Paint or draw a picture of a good wish. Talk about how it can come true. Design and construct inspired homemade costumes. Help the community. Volunteer at a shelter. Exercise your spirit. Develop a fun, beautiful positive public service announcement for your home, or a commercial project, that reminds to uplift spirit and behavior. Teach a child something. Don't wait until they are already doing bad. Teach them consistently, before they know to do either, so that they will more often know to choose good and why.
The average American spends nearly $15 on Halloween candy - more than $1 billion total on unhealthful refined sugar and hydrogenated fat candy - just for Halloween. This is not parental love. It is the same as giving them cigarettes or addictive drugs. Change that. Parental love is giving them beautifully functioning self-control brain centers. Halloween story and ideas in Exercise Common Sense Discipline - Turn Down Halloween Junk Food.
Positive behavior is too important to leave up to only the schools, the entertainment industry, the government, the Internet, the home. We all add ahimsa.
Many chapters of ideas for happy bountiful living are in the book Healthy Martial Arts.
Photos of Paul Creating Good on Halloween. Can you find Jolie in the photos?
For the next two weeks, I'll have uncertain access to Internet, mail, or messages, to read or answer comments. I stored some fun posts for you. New Healthline staffer Leigh is scheduled to put them online while we make our way 'out West' during the week before the meeting. Thank you Leigh.
With each trip out to this part of the US, we work to document and preserve various martial arts systems of Native American Indians, as much as they want us to have. Will also make our way through the Rocky Mountains.
For going off-trail, we don't carry a tent or sleeping bag, let alone a computer. Simpler. There are still things to carry. The post Healthier Backpack Carrying to Get Better Exercise and Stop Back Pain explained the role of using abdominal muscles to prevent one kind of back pain from carrying backpacks. It is not by tightening the ab muscles, but using them to position the lower spine forward enough to reduce an overly large lower back arch, and stand with neutral spine. Strengthening exercises, whether for abdominal or back muscles do not make the spine attain neutral position in place of overarching. That is why strengthening core muscles does not stop this kind of pain. You get better and more functional core exercise by preventing overarching when carrying loads than by doing crunches or exercises for any specific back muscles. When you hold neutral spine, a small inward curve remains, just not the large one with the "backside-stuck-out-in-back" tilt that damages the lower back.
The post Throw a Stronger Punch (or Push a Car or Stroller) Using This Back Pain Reduction Technique gives a quick effective way to feel how to move your hip and lower spine using your abs away from arching to neutral. This Friday's post should cover preventing upper back and neck pain when carrying backpacks. In pretty much any terrain, we don't wear hiking boots or fancy cross-training shoes. I wear roomy, cheap (ten or fifteen dollar range), discount store sneakers (usually in tatters). A shoe should not be what holds your foot in position - it is better when your own ankle, leg, and foot muscles do that. For me, shoes are more to avoid hookworm, other parasites, tetanus, and bites. The posts Arch Support Is Not From Shoes and Which Shoes Help Exercise, Fall Prevention, and Ankles? show how to hold healthy foot and arch position, and give ideas for better gait and balance. In technical climbs, tight shoes are often worn. I'm not much of a climber, but decline tight climbing shoes for bare feet, and enjoy feeling the rocks. For daily wear, tight shoes are not healthful: See, Are Your Shoes Too Tight? My near-seven-foot-tall husband Paul does the same, in his size 17 sneakers or flip-flops (approx size 52+ European).
We don't bring "sports food," commercial hydration drinks, or energy bars and drinks. Refined sugar is not health food. Unfermented soy in many of these products is increasingly documented to promote unhealthy over-estrogenic effects for both men and women. The post Is Your Health Food Unhealthful tells hidden dangers to avoid. The posts Healthy Mother's Day and Independence Day for Fitness give a few quick, good-tasting, healthy foods and drinks to try instead. If you don't have a blender, mash ingredients by hand for arm exercise. Dehydration is important to prevent, and can be done with healthy food and drink.
We hope to arrive in Snowmass by Saturday for the toxicology symposium before the meeting. Then interesting lectures, my two workshops (come take them) and other workshops. The WMS will present the first Fellows of the Academy of Wilderness Medicine. I have been advanced to Fellow, along with Wilderness expert and Medicine for the Outdoors blogger Paul Auerbach, and others in the field. Dr. Auerbach could have easily been "grandfathered" to Fellow status for his stack of achievements, but he went through the exacting point system along with the rest of us. You set the bar high Boss, wow, thank you.
I will try to get to the conference Internet café during the meeting. For the week after, will again be outback without access. If you comment or e-mail, I may not have access to reply. Check existing replies to posts for answers already there. Look for fun posts until then. Hope to see you at the meeting.
"Utility is when you have one telephone; luxury is when you have two, and paradise is when you have none."
Heavyweight boxing champion Shannon Briggs was in the Black Athlete Sport Network news for getting sessions in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber. According to the news, Briggs stated he believed the treatments would help him improve physically and get in better shape for his upcoming fight to undefeated heavyweight Sultan Ibragimov. What is hyperbaric oxygen treatment and what is the basis for use?
"Hyper" means more or above. "Baro-" comes from a Greek word meaning weight or pressure. Some words that use this word root are barometer, an instrument measuring atmospheric pressure, and bariatrician, which is a physician who manages obesity. In general, hyperbaric oxygen treatment consists of breathing 100% oxygen while inside a dry treatment chamber that is pumped to a pressure higher than you are breathing now.
Hyperbaric oxygen treatment is used to treat two kinds of scuba diving accidents - decompression sickness and air embolism, which can result from rapid pressure reduction if you come up too fast. Hyperbaric treatment has also been found effective for treating wounds that do not heal because they do not have enough oxygen, certain infections of problem wounds, diabetic ulcers, and other conditions to be covered in future posts.
Hyperbaric oxygen is a documented modality in treating problem wounds which have a poor blood supply (are hypoxic). Bringing additional oxygen to the deprived area makes the body better able to repair itself. There is no current evidence that hyperbaric oxygen speeds healing of normal injuries, sore muscles, or that it improves physical ability. In sports injuries there is no lack of oxygen. Often the opposite problem occurs. For example, an area that is hot and swollen may have plenty of oxygen and blood supply. Adding more oxygen would not make it heal faster. There are occasional debates about using treatment chambers for athletes. As evidence becomes available, I will add it here. There is heated debate whether hyperbaric treatment is applicable to conditions such as vascular headache, brain injury, neurologic conditions, and others.
For a sick patient with problem wounds, diving injuries, carbon monoxide poisoning, or gangrene, hyperbaric treatment can be life and limb saving. Regarding athletes who believe it will make them a better athlete, and feel they should use hyperbarics regardless of hard evidence, there are minor side effects to hyperbaric treatments. Without the ability to heal regular muscle soreness or improve athletic performance, the side effects would not be helpful, and could be potentially detrimental to the athlete.
See books about hyperbaric chamber treatment, and becoming credentialed on my web site books page, www.DrBookspan.com/books.
The BBC news reported this week that, Kickboxing 'causes brain damage.' The news story stated that a recent study showed: "Kickboxing can cause damage to the part of the brain which controls hormone production." However, it is not kickboxing, but receiving blows to the head.
Recently I posted about the fun exercise training in the movie Rocky IV - Rocky IV and Healthier Exercise. After training to become healthier and stronger, the movie depicts Rocky sustaining severe head strikes as a symbol of determination or disciplined fighting ability. It is higher fighting skill not to receive these hits. It is hopefully not a surprise that it is also healthier not to get hit in the head.
The Turkish study that the above news item was based upon compared pituitary hormone function in twenty-two kickboxers who had boxed in national and international championships (16 men, 6 women) compared to controls of the same age who did not box. Levels were lower in the kickboxers (Tanriverdi F, Unluhizarci K, Coksevim B, Selcuklu A, Casanueva FF, Kelestimur F. Kickboxing sport as a new cause of traumatic brain injury-mediated hypopituitarism. Clin Endocrinol (Oxf). 2007 Mar;66(3):360-6). A previous study by the same group found the same results in eleven actively competing or retired male boxers (Kelestimur F, Tanriverdi F, Atmaca H, Unluhizarci K, Selcuklu A, Casanueva FF. Boxing as a sport activity associated with isolated GH deficiency. J Endocrinol Invest. 2004 Dec;27(11):RC28-32).
Studies like these, that compare groups, cannot tell if boxing lowered the hormone levels without measuring a "before and after" or including number and severity of head strikes sustained. Without more information, these studies would not be able to conclude if the boxing caused the low levels, head strikes caused the injury, or it was the case that the people started out with low levels then became successful competitive boxers. However, it is documented in the literature that head blows that lead to traumatic brain injury produce anterior pituitary dysfunction (Agha A, Rogers B, Sherlock M, O'Kelly P, Tormey W, Phillips J, Thompson CJ. Anterior pituitary dysfunction in survivors of traumatic brain injury. J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2004 Oct;89(10):4929-36). The previously mentioned Turkish researchers had earlier reported on a case study where they observed a boxer who received a head strike then suffered specific anterior hormonal effects (Tanriverdi F, Unluhizarci K, Selcuklu A, Casanueva FF, Kelestimur F. Transient hypogonadotropic hypogonadism in an amateur kickboxer after head trauma. J Endocrinol Invest. 2007 Feb;30(2):150-2).
Previous studies looked at neurophysiologic and neuropsychologic function and did not find long term damage in these areas (Haglund Y, Eriksson E. Does amateur boxing lead to chronic brain damage? A review of some recent investigations. Am J Sports Med. 1993 Jan-Feb;21(1):97-109) so it is new and helpful to localize that hormonal damage may be occurring from head blows.
Growth hormone is one of the hormones affected. The post Human Growth Hormone shows how it works and how to boost your own levels naturally and safely.
Aerobic kickboxing is not the kind of kickboxing where the studies are finding brain damage. The issue is strikes to the head and subsequent brain damage. Blows to the head can happen in any contact-style martial art, not just kickboxing. Head injury is also an in issue in motor vehicle accidents, falls, and domestic violence to family members of any age.
I will write soon about avoiding head injury in boxing and fighting arts, and other exercise. I am glad that the top competitors I faced in the ring didn't manage to land any head blows during my own full-contact martial arts and kickboxing bouts (or none I remember :-). To their credit, they managed other worthy hits. It is still not known what damage choke holds may produce, and is a topic of ongoing investigation.
The idea of the martial arts is to get out of a fight not into one. Fighting arts, as sport or entertainment, can be done, and won, without permanent damage to the other person, if all understand and fight for a greater good.
"To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the highest skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the highest skill." - Sun Tsu, The Art of War
Scorn, anger, name-calling. Not good for the heart. The best warrior wins without hurting others or himself.
The Thais call it "jai yen" - cool heart. The secret is to not make anger a negative force. They keep kindness in their voice. Jai yen is central to Thai social and business interaction. It illustrates the mind and body of the experienced warrior. Jai yen is part of Muay Thai boxing training. In Thai martial arts, respecting teachers and elders is foremost. Every fight begins with the Ram Muay, a spirit dance to show respect and thanks to parents, and ask blessings from the Kruu Muay Thai - the teachers. In Japan it is "fudoshin" - unchanging heart. A person with fudoshin is more stable and light-hearted when things happen that they don't agree with.
How do you get good at being heart-healthy? Practice it like exercise. Unlikable things happen every day, so we all have the good luck to get much chance to practice. It's healthy exercise. In the novel Shogun, James Clavell, wrote:
"To think bad thoughts is really the easiest thing in the world. If you leave your mind to itself it will spiral down into ever increasing unhappiness. To think good thoughts, however, requires effort. This is one of the things that discipline - training is about."
Discipline is the mental exercise of self-control to direct your behaviors. With discipline you brush your teeth everyday, and do exercise, and refrain from bad habits, and breathe and smile when someone is rude. The other person may continue injuring their own health with negative behavior, but you won't sadden yourself and injure your body with the unhealthy chemicals generated that can hurt your health and heart. If your kindness and understanding calms and comforts the other person, that is twice healthy. Breathe. Get outside in the sunshine every day. Be happy.
E-mails have come in since I posted that we were on our way to the Monks on Horseback in the northern Thai mountains. Readers wanted to hear about our stay.
We live in Asia part of each year. We traveled north to visit our friends and teachers who are relatives and former teachers of the Phra (monk) Kru Ba Neua Chai who heads the monastery. Our friends live in the village of Baan Mai Kom, not far from there, close to the Burmese border. We took the bus north to there. There is no station - the driver dropped us on the road after dark, and we walked into the cool night to the mountain.
Nearby in Myanmar (Burma), drug traffickers from ethnic and government groups move vast amounts of opium and heroin, and more recently, methamphetamine, into Thailand for local and world distribution. For generations they have torn through villages, murdering adults and forcibly recruiting children into their militias. Drug use in the area further damages and destabilizes families and lives through drug illnesses, kidnapping, prostitution, and land control.
Drug wars, shooting, bombings, terror, international involvement and dollars have not stopped the destruction. The Thai monarchy, caring for the welfare of all involved, started a program for poppy growers to have income from other crops and industries beside opium. Thai soldiers in the region asked local monks to combat the drug menace by taking dharma (duty to behave righteously) to the hilltribe villagers. One monk was Kru Ba, a former soldier and Muay Thai (Thailand style martial arts) champion, known to boxing fans as Samerchai, and graduate of Ramkamhaeng University in Bangkok. To serve his land better, he became a monk. Another Thai man who wanted to do good gave the monastery a horse. Kru Ba took in more horses and orphaned hilltribe boys, and ordained the boys as nen (novice monks). Many of the nen had seen their families murdered by drug guerillas. Kru Ba taught the nen discipline, calisthenics, caring for the horses and other living things, the life of doing and saying good, and Muay Thai martial arts. Soon more fully ordained monks and nuns became part of the monastery. Then Kru Ba started new monasteries. Today he has 10 monasteries in the northern hills. Except during periods when monks observe certain restrictions, they train Muay Thai outdoors, in the jungle, or in their thatched boxing ring each early morning and night.
Khru Ba and the monks and nen ride through local areas to show traffickers and locals they can stop contributing to drug addiction. Khru Ba says, "When we meet the Wa (one ethnic group involved), I try to engage them in dialogue, 'Why do you do this?' I ask them. 'How would you feel if these drugs were being consumed by your own sons and daughters?'" On occasion, Kru Ba has used his Muay Thai to protect his nen and the monastery. As daily training, they incorporate the discipline of doing good into the physical discipline of their training. Kru Ba says, "Boxing for me is something which frees the body and releases the soul from barbarianism. When I box I use every single part of my body and my mind. Buddhism teaches you not to harm or take advantage of people which some may find to be in direct opposition to an aggressive looking sport like boxing. For me, boxing helps me to become a better Buddhist. I learn to control my emotions. I find beauty and peace and stillness in boxing. I get rid of my animal instincts and control them to the point that they become beautiful, an art form for sport, for education, for the discovery of truth. The word "Thai" means freedom and when I practice Muay Thai I feel free - free from my emotions, from anger."
A documentary made on the lives of Kru Ba and the nen has been called, "a heroic undertaking to create a better world." See more on www.BuddhasLostChildren.com. I will post more in the future about our part there.
Even before Actor Sylvester Stallone made news this week for stating he used the performance-enhancing drug growth hormone, I was preparing a post about him. His movie Rocky IV was on television. Not long after this movie came out in late 1985, I saw it in the theater when I moved to the U.S. to study another graduate exercise physiology degree. It was the first Rocky movie I saw. I loved it for poking fun at exercise science, all the artificial movement used for training popularized in the 80s, and at my own Soviet Russian heritage (and our interactions with Americans). In the movie, the supposed stereotypes were personally familiar - Russians were stunningly physiqued, disciplined, straight-postured, stern, and humor-challenged. The Americans were comically rude, indulgent, hostile to foreigners, and flamboyant.
Dolph Lundgren (born Hans Lundgren in Sweden) played Soviet boxer Ivan Drago. The movie spotlights Drago and Rocky's training for their epic match in Russia. Drago has teams of lab-coated trainers pushing him on dozens of beeping machines with blinky lights, and hints of performance enhancing drugs. He runs on motorized treadmills and uses shiny equipment to simulate activity. Rocky runs through deep Russian country snow and clambers up freezing mountain slopes. He rescues horse carts stuck in ditches, heaves rocks, and chops wood. These activities train his muscles and outlook in the real ways he needs for fighting, while Drago is made to simulate movement in artificial conditions that did not directly prepare him, and lead to his on-screen loss of confidence and the match itself.
In real life, Lundgren knows real training. He was a full-contact karate champion, and looks it. He holds a 3rd Degree Black Belt in Kyokushin Karate. Lundgren also has a master's degree in chemical engineering and attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on a Fulbright Scholarship. Mind and body.
I received an e-mail asking why the previous post was named Human Growth Hormone even though the injectable form is not human growth hormone (made from humans), but synthetic which has a different name. Human growth hormone for medical use was originally extracted from human pituitary glands (from cadavers), and abbreviated "hGH." By 1985, concerns about transmitting incurable fatal brain diseases like Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease led to replacing pituitary-derived hGH with synthetic growth hormone. Human growth hormone (hGH) is no longer used in medicine or sport doping. Instead, biosynthetic human growth hormone is used, called recombinant human growth hormone (rhGH), somatropin, somatotropin, or somatotrophin, to remind of the pituitary cells called somatotrophs where the human form is made. If products are marked "HGH" they would contain no growth hormone (and you would not want them to). Also know that the underground market of performance enhancing drugs is known for having many fake (counterfeit) drugs for sale, including fake growth hormone.
The post was named Human Growth Hormone because the point was that you can make your own Human Growth Hormone in your own body, safely, easily, and cheaply. You can be younger, leaner, and stronger without injections, through the three main things that stimulate human growth hormone - healthy exercise, sleep, and eating right, described throughout this Fitness Fixer blog.
Rocky IV was one of the highest-grossing sports movies ever. At the end, Rocky spoke to the crowd, saying that fighting in the ring was better than war between countries, and stressed respect over animosity. Remember to use the message of real training through real activity, not artificial movements in a gym. The crowd, including Politburo, stood and cheered when he declared, "If I can change and you can change, then everybody can change!"
Effective, fun exercise, stretch, and improvement for body and mind, performance enhancing foods and drugs, avoiding injuries: Healthy Martial Arts.
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Actor Sylvester Stallone made news this week for being found with the drug Jintropin. Jintropin is a brand name for the drug growth hormone (GH).
Growth hormone is naturally made in the pituitary gland of your brain. It does several things, including stimulating protein to make muscle. Various bodybuilders and athletes get injections of synthetic growth hormone hoping to get bigger. Actors and models use growth hormone injections to look more muscular and lean, and some cosmetic procedure doctors promote it as a drug against various signs of aging. Growth hormone use is not yet detectable by drug testing.
In children, one function of growth hormone is to stimulate bone lengthening. When the pituitary doesn't produce enough, children don't grow enough, causing one form of dwarfism. Occasionally, with too much, a child can grow to a giant. An adult taking growth hormone will not increase long bone length, so cannot get taller. Instead the forehead, hands, feet, and jaw may elongate.
Growth hormone "doping" is expensive, and must be done for a long time before results occur. For bigger results, some bodybuilders and athletes combine, or "stack," growth hormones with anabolic steroids (body building hormones). Some users add the dangerous practice of injecting insulin in combination with growth hormone (and/or steroids) for bigger muscles, more veins showing, and the appearance of exceptionally thin skin, looking as if shrink-wrapped over the muscle (believed a desirable look by some). Insulin doping can cause serious, long-term illnesses.
Growth hormone use does not seem to cause the serious health problems produced by steroids (as far as known). Problems from GH can include joint pain, wrist pain, carpal tunnel syndrome, joint swelling, facial swelling, facial elongation, and increased blood pressure. Using large doses can decrease thyroid function and increase risk of diabetes. Sadly, users may think these are signs of aging, so they take more growth hormone believing it will stop this "aging." If the user already has cancer, it can increase growth of the tumor. Growth is what this hormone does. There is no need for too much of it.
Growth hormone is naturally produced in your body all your life. Older people produce less growth hormone, but they still produce it. Some advertising for GH tries to persuade that older people are somehow at a disadvantage without a lot. Remember that older people (above the age range of puberty) need less because they are not growing, although they still need enough for strength and tissue repair.
Aging alone is not what makes you not have enough growth hormone. Four main practices reduce your body's levels:
Lack of exercise. That makes sense, because without exercise your muscles, bones, and other tissues have no reason to rebuild; you aren't using them, after all.
High blood sugar from dietary sources - such as eating too much and eating junk food.
Already high levels. Your body reduces its growth hormone levels if it already has too much. Growth hormone stimulates your liver and other tissues to secrete "insulin-like growth factor-I" (IGF-I), which is the real factor behind most of the effects of growth hormone. Having high blood levels of IGF-I decreases secretion of growth hormone as a normal regulatory function.
Anti-inflammatory and immune-suppressive medicines called glucocorticoids (such as prednisone, dexamethasone, and hydrocortisone). Ongoing dosage with these can lead to osteoporosis, muscle weakness, delayed wound healing, and increased infection risk. This should be kept in mind by people taking them for injuries and pain.
How do you get more natural growth hormone in healthy amounts without side effects? Three main agents stimulate GH secretion:
Exercise. Getting exercise in healthful ways, described throughout Fitness Fixer blog posts, boosts GH at all ages.
Deep sleep. With good exercise, you will sleep well at night too.
Low levels of sugar in your blood. It is shown that both high fat and high refined-sugar diets increase blood sugar. It is not rocket science to eat less junk and more fruit and vegetables to be healthier and to lower high blood sugar.
Related Fitness Fixer: There is more to growth, metabolizing fat, or building muscle than taking hormones. Click these posts on safe "natural" training for a healthy muscular body:
My book Healthy Martial Arts has a chapter on performance enhancing foods and substances, good and bad, and chapters on effective fun exercise, stretch, and improvement for body and mind. Not just for martial artists, it is for everyone who wants to move in healthier ways.
A recent New York Times article quotes aerobics teachers and devotees saying they now have painful, chronic injuries from years of aerobics classes. Why did this happen?
I receive frequent e-mails from aerobics instructors, many only in their 20s and 30s, saying they are too old to continue teaching because of pain and injuries from teaching. I am older than their parents. At the schools and clubs where I teach classes, teachers and trainers are often absent, or replaced, because of herniated discs.
The Times article quotes major aerobics spokespeople, attributing the injuries to jumping on "concrete floors in bad tennis shoes," and related how former well-known-names in the aerobics industry now teach low impact classes. The article continued, "A lot of people doing aerobics back then can no longer do any jumping whatsoever. They have problems with their backs, feet and hips."
Conventional "impact activities" are not the problem.
In the years I spent in the lab studying injuries, seeing patients, and teaching students, I have found that the problem is not that impact must be avoided. I see patients who are instructors of Pilates, stretch, yoga, rowing, martial arts, and Alexander technique for degenerating joints. It is simple misuse.
It is not that people are doing the exercises "wrong" but the movements themselves.
If you saw someone bend over at the waist or hips to hoist a suitcase or child, you know it is bad bending and it hurts the back. The same people will bend over the same way to lift weights in a gym or do yoga stretches. It is the same disc-injuring bending in all cases.
The post CommonExercises Teach Bad Bending gives interesting examples from a class that is "low-impact." Wear occurs on the lower back and neck discs regardless of how expensive and engineered the aerobics shoes.
The post Are You Making Your Exercise Unhealthy? shows you how to put the knowledge of bad positioning together in your mind with how people are exercising, to realize it is not rocket science when people have pain, even though they "do their exercises."
You can run, jump, walk without jarring impact
Many people walk with higher impact than a good martial artist will kickbox.
Many people are unnecessarily restricted from favorite sports and told to walk instead, based on the fallacy that running or tennis is necessarily higher impact, instead of looking at how heavily they clomp around letting spine, hips, knees, and ankles sag and grind.
Many of my obese patients with knee pain stand and walk with their knees in sagging positions. This is not a consequence of their body weight.
When I show them to simply hold their knee from knocking inward (or outward) by using their own muscles to hold straight, the pain quickly goes away. They say that they can then, for the first time, *do* any real exercise to lose weight.
Lightweight people can have the same knee and other pain. They may move heavily without good shock absorption or hold joints in angled painful ways.
The post When Did Health Become Thinking Out of The Box? explains more of why you don't have to have pain from exercising or even long sitting while studying (or watching TV). I don't take people away from their favorite activities when injured. I even use their sport as rehab, showing them how to do it in healthier ways so that they can do more, lift more, and run more than before, not less. Health care should not be "Limit to the patient to limit the pain."
Read Inspiring Patient Stories on my web site - how patients fixed their own pain and could do more than before.
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Often the simple act of breathing is made into a complicated ritual. People take classes to learn how to breathe in this nostril and out that nostril and four times slowly this way, and eight hundred times quickly that way. All you need is to remain simple. In. Out. Try a nice breath now. This is often more than many people do. Check yourself when at work, opening mail, putting things away. Do you hunch your shoulders and hold your breath, straining or breathing shallowly and quickly, just to hurry through and get it done? Keep breathing normally in and out.
It was previously thought that lung function declined steadily with each passing year after age 30. It also used to be thought by some in exercise science that respiratory muscles could not be trained, or that the highest amount of air moving in and out with exercise would not change except to diminish with aging. Now it is established that the breathing muscles of the chest and abdomen are muscles like any other. You need to exercise them. You can improve function at any age.
Exercising your respiratory system through healthy breathing is important to reduce many respiratory problems, and is part of staying in shape and able to do normal activities without getting out of breath. How do you do this? To exercise your respiratory system, following are three main things to try:
1. Exercise your whole body with biking, skating, skiing, running, skipping, hiking, dancing, and other fun ways to move.
2. You can exercise your breathing right now while sitting or standing:
Close or purse your lips loosely (draw them together at the sides) and breathe in against the resistance.
Breathe out slowly without resistance. Repeat several times.
Try the above, breathing in more and more quickly.
Allow enough time (a few seconds) between each resisted breath so that you do not become dizzy.
As you get better at this over time, increase resistance by how firmly you close your lips together.
You can buy expensive respiratory muscle trainers in fitness catalogs to provide resistance for breathing muscle training. You can also get the same effect yourself by breathing in through pursed lips or trying to breathe through your sleeve (pressing your mouth against your forearm). Resistance breathing exercises have been long practiced in the martial arts in exercises of "sanchin," yoga, and some forms of chi kung breathing, which tighten the throat (or hold the nose) for resistance instead of the lips. Some scuba-divers and breath-hold free divers practice various techniques, hoping to increase breathholding endurance and underwater time. Not all of these practices are a good idea for divers, to be covered in future posts.
3. Periodically see how much air you can breathe in and out in one breath, both with and without resistance:
See how quickly you can inhale fully.
Then how fast you can exhale fully.
Regularly exercise heavily so that you need to breathe hard for extended periods.
Don't "overbreathe" (hyperventilate) by taking huge breaths in and out while at rest. That changes your body chemistry, which can make you dizzy or cause temporary limb tingling. The dizziness from hyperventilation is often taught in yoga, martial arts, and meditation breathing classes as something healthful. However, it is not physically beneficial.
Healthful breathing patterns are important when not doing strenuous exercise. When chopping vegetables for dinner, do you hunch your shoulders and hold your breath during the knife stroke? Instead, make the rhythmic chopping a meditation and an easy exercise with healthful body positioning. When you hang up laundry or put away groceries, notice if you tense up and hold your breath? When you move during any action, check to see if you tighten muscles and hold your breath trying to get it done. Lower your shoulders. Untense your muscles. Enjoy the task. Breathe.
For healthful breathing during life activities, remember to let your belly expand to breathe in. Don't just raise your shoulders and chest. Don't pull your belly inward when breathing in; let it come outward as air fills your lungs. Take a full breath in now and try it. Relax and feel good.
There are many claims for massage, some real and some exaggerated or false. I searched for methods that provide real benefit. I studied sports massage in India and Nepal, and in certification programs of Shiatsu in Japan, TuiNa in China, and Nuad Borarn, (which is Thai for "ancient massage") in programs in the United States and Thailand. We are here in Thailand now, working on many projects.
Thai massage has been called "Yoga Done For You." You rest comfortably on the floor on a soft mat, clothed, except for bare feet. There is no rubbing as in Swedish massage, but pressing and wonderful stretches.
The person associated with founding or codifying Thai Massage was Shivaga (or Jivaka) Komalaboat. Some practitioners in the United States call him Dr. Zhivago, like the main character Yuri Andreyevich Zhivago in the Russian epic by Boris Pasternak. But that is just a funny mispronunciation.
The "Father Doctor" or "Hermit Doctor" Jivaka is reported to have been born in northern India, and became a doctor of traditional medicine. According to some sources, he was a contemporary, even advisor, of The Buddha and great kings. He moved to what is now Tibet. His teachings came to Thailand and Burma over a thousand years ago. Father Jivaka is so important to traditional medicine throughout all these areas that he is also called the "Thrice Crowned King of Tibetan medicine." Drawings and statues of him, many with small shrines, are common in massage and medicine schools and pharmacies.
Many Thai massage stretches and movements are used in traditional Western sports medicine to reset resting muscle length, and find and relieve unhealthy muscle and joint tensions. I learned these techniques in school in the United States when I studied orthopedics. When I first came to Thailand to train and compete in martial arts, I was surprised to find they were established techniques for massage, and helpful for boxers recovering from injuries and strenuous training and matches. The photo, to the left, shows a nice stretch for the front of the hip. Several past posts explained how important it is to stretch the anterior hip. Most people keep the hip bent forward in a shortened position all day for sitting, then only bend forward more to exercise with crunches, pilates moves, toe touches, and others. A tight, shortened anterior hip contributes to many pain syndromes, and results in not being able to use hip and leg muscles properly when walking and exercising.
Many Thai massage moves are helpful. There are a few Thai massage moves that can be unhealthy. When I give or teachThai massage, I omit the unhealthy moves. When I get Thai massage at home in Thailand, it is an art to politely manage to stop the tiny practitioners from holding you in an iron grip to calmly apply these moves. I will cover what is beneficial in Thai massage and what to avoid in posts to come. If you want to come study Thai massage with me in the States, see my web site.
The next post will be in a few days (or I will send it for someone to post for me). We won't have internet access. We will be in a remote northern mountain area near the Thai-Burmese border where the monks of the Archa Tong forest monastery ride horseback.
The abbot is a former Muay Thai kick boxing champion. He leads the young monks and villagers to fight opium trafficking with rightness instead of rifles. Many of the young monks have come to the monastery having seen drug henchmen murder their parents and family. Abbot "Khru Ba" teaches the novice monks discipline, horsemanship, monastic ways, peace, humanity, and Thai boxing.
Abdominal Muscle Exercise - Better, Different, Not What You Think
Friday, January 19, 2007
Healthline
Many medical fitness programs, health and exercise classes, and kickboxing and martial arts practices have a complicated and ritualized belief structure that the abdominal muscles have some magic or central function. They try to fix back pain or improve posture through abdominal strengthening programs. Usually these strengthening programs use the same unhealthful rounding forward motions that cause high pressure on your lumbar discs, practice unhealthful bent-forward posture, and perpetuate several common pain syndromes.
Here in Thailand, the Muay Thai kick-boxers and training camps do not have any beliefs about the torng, or abdomen. Even so, the Thai boxers are among the world's best-conditioned fighters. You can swing a bat at their abdomen and it would not faze them. In fact, that is part of training in many training camps. Today I have an abdominal muscle training exercise for you that is more fun than that:
The post Change Common Exercises to Get Better Ab Exercise and Stop Back Pain showed how the pushup, or just holding a pushup position, called The Plank is often done allowing the lower back to overly arch and sag under body weight, as in the upper photo at left. This extra arching, called hyper-lordosis, pressures the lower back and means that you are not getting exercise because you are just resting your body weight on the joints of your lower back instead of holding up your body weight in a straighter, healthier position, shown in the lower photo. Try this:
As soon as you tuck the hip, you will immediately feel the load shift off your lower back and onto your abdominal muscles.
Once you can hold a good flat plank position, add lifting one arm as shown in the lower photo. Do not allow your lower back to sag, shown in the upper photo. Do not hunch or round your upper body, also shown in the upper photo. Rounding the upper body will get in the way of your shoulder joint being able to lift your arm.
"Unround" your upper back and lift your chest to straighten your back. This makes room for your shoulder to allow your arm to straighten in line with your body.
Once you can lift your arm, also lift your opposite leg (not the leg on the same side but the other one). You will feel your abdominal muscles working strongly.
Hold as long as you can.
Keep relaxed but straight, and keep breathing.
Work up to being able to jump to switch the arm and leg that is lifted.
This fun abdominal exercise trains you how to hold your body in the same straight neutral spine position you need for standing and walking and reaching overhead without arching the lower back. That means it is functional abdominal exercise. Many people who do hundreds of crunches a day cannot do this exercise at all because they have never trained their abdominal muscles in the way they really need to work – to hold your spine straight without sagging inward (overly arching).
Crunches are not functional, and train unhealthful, forward-bent posture, which you don't need after a day of sitting at your desk or over the steering wheel.
Instead of crunches, this is one of many fun abdominal-building exercise. You will get better more effective abdominal exercise in the way your body, and abs, work for real.
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Western boxers and students of many martial arts are often taught to hunch their shoulders and lower their head to protect their neck. Box-aerobics students (and teachers) also often jut their head forward thinking it looks tough, or more authentic. It doesn't protect the neck as hoped, and conversely produces neck and shoulder problems, some immediately, others over time. It also reduces effectiveness of the punching exercise, and to people who know martial arts, it doesn't look tough, it looks weak.
Look at the photo at left. The student on the right is holding his head severely forward (orange arrow). The teacher at right in the foreground is holding his neck and head properly, relaxed and upright (white arrow). The teacher and student in the background also are holding their neck in position that is healthy for the neck and shoulder, and makes punching more effective.
What are some of the problems of forward head angle and hunched shoulder?
Keeping your head forward brings it closer to your opponent, easier to hit.
In case of a head strike, a tilted angle of the neck to the brain and skull is more likely to result in brain injury.
Hunching the shoulder can injure the neck and shoulder muscles
Hunching results in tight, aching neck and shoulders.
When you keep your head and shoulders forward, it rotates the shoulder bone forward. When you raise your arm with your neck forward, the soft tissue of the rotator cuff gets pinched between the arm bone and the shoulder bone. Eventually the bones can saw away at the rotator cuff muscles trapped between them, enough to get a tear.
The same pinching between shoulder and arm bone can compress the nerve(s) that go down your arm, resulting in tingling, pain, numbness, weakness.
All the above problems can easily stop and reverse when you stop the cause - the forward head angle and hunched shoulder. Start with the post Fixing Upper Back and Neck Pain.
The muscles you use to hold your head and neck upright instead of forward are your upper back and posterior shoulder muscles. It is a free upper back and posterior deltoid and shoulder workout by standing relaxed but straight, and exercising that way too.
When you watch movies of Mohammed Ali fighting, watch for his healthy, straight, graceful neck positioning. For doing martial arts and boxing aerobics, you can protect your chin and brace your neck without hunching and injuring your neck and shoulder. For exercise classes and just moving around the house you get more upper back exercise and stop injuring your neck and shoulder all at the same time by using your muscles to hold yourself upright instead of sagging. Stop neck injury from exercise. Exercise is supposed to be healthy.
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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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Meet your new training partner. This is not box-aerobics. This is Muay Thai, which means Thai boxing. Muay Thai is the national sport of Thailand. It is the devastating "Art of eight limbs" using two fists, two feet, two elbows, and two knees. Muay Thai is considered one of the most physical, strenuous, and directly effective of the martial arts styles. Thai boxers are among the most highly conditioned of all athletes.
We are home in Thailand now, and back to training with the Masters. The government coup continues peacefully and respectfully, as is the Thai way. In Thailand, respect and self-discipline are highly prized and practiced. It follows that their national martial art is not just hitting and kicking. Muay Thai comes from a long tradition of hard work and spiritual values. Typical training in Muay Thai involves not only long hours of physical conditioning and practice kicking and striking heavy bags, practice pads, and sparring partners, but practicing self control, strength of mind, and compassion.
Jai yen, or "cool heart" is part of Muay Thai boxing training. Some people think that martial arts means angrily destroying furniture and retaliating for real or perceived insult. Dramatic movies depict a trainer goading a student into releasing an angry "warrior." But that is not the Thai warrior spirit. Jai yen prevents making anger a negative force or becoming agitated or unkind. It illustrates the mind/body set of the experienced warrior. Jai yen is also central to Thai social and business interaction. It is a good and healthy exercise.
In Thai martial arts, respecting teachers and elders is foremost. The "Wai Khru" (bow or pray to the teacher) is a mark of respect done at every greeting to a teacher and before every training session and fight. Each fight begins with rituals of honoring the teachers, and the Ram Muay, a spirit dance to show respect and thanks, and ask blessings from the teachers - the Kruu Muay Thai, from the ancestors, and the four directions. Thankfulness and respect are strengthening to your own spirit.
Many people come to Thailand to train in Muay Thai. Some are tourists who just want to try it, or say they did it, or as a stunt, or for some exericse. Others study seriously for long periods. This post tells of some of the metal exercise to strengthen the way you live. The next posts will give some of the physical training and how to stay healthy while practicing.
"To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the highest skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the highest skill." - Sun Tsu, The Art of War
Black Belt Hall of Fame - Black Belts and Black Tie
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Healthline
This past weekend, the Eastern U.S.A. International Martial Arts Association held their 19th annual Black Belt Hall of Fame inductions in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Martial artists traveled from nearly every state in the United States and more than 50 countries overseas to attend the weekend of awards and seminars.
The atmosphere was fun and healthy. Top Grandmasters and martial arts legends mixed easily with attendees. Guests at the host hotel enjoyed the site of dozens of martial arts teams going by, each in the distinctive uniform of their martial arts style. The black belts of many of the participants were heavy with stripes of rank, and ragged from years of training.
During the three-day event, there were seminars on teaching skills and specific techniques in Kendo, kickboxing, Jiu-jutsu, and others. Students were flying in all directions as they tried each training exercise.
I taught a seminar of core training that I developed called The Ab Revolution. It is a method of exercising your abdominal and back muscles the way they work in your real life. It uses no forward bending. The forward bending commonly used for core exercise trains unhealthy bent-forward posture, pressures the spine and discs, and is not the way your muscles work when you stand and move in real life. Click here for a synopsis of The Ab Revolution including sample exercises.
Soke Sean Martin, pictured at left demonstrating with his assistant Christopher, taught Kagedo-Essensu, (Shadow Essence) a style that he developed. Kagedo is a devastating defense technique. It does not require strength and conditioning or years of specific poses and positioning to master. For information about learning this effective technique, contact EPallack@gmail.com.
The Saturday afternoon awards ceremony was held for kyu ranking (not yet Black Belt) and youth black belts. Saturday evening saw the banquet for new inductees to the Black Belt Hall of Fame and members of the Hall of Fame receiving distinguished awards (photo, left).
Organization founders Soke John Kanzler and Kim Harper are already at work on next year's 20th year anniversary event. Contact them at the International USA Martial Arts Association, toll free at 1-800-456-3872, or e-mail EUSAIMAA@verizon.net.
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My Tuesday night martial arts students worked hard last night on sweeps, falls, tumbling, and quick recovery to their feet. Each week they also learn a new jump rope technique. They have been getting good at fast skipping, crossing the rope in multiple spins to the front, sides, and overhead, and varied footwork during jumps.
When landing from jumps, it is important not to let your knees knock inward under your body weight (photo at left). It is important for knee health not only when jumping, but descending the stairs, bending for all daily needs, and even getting in and out of your chair.
Letting your weight fall to the inside of your knee joint, instead of holding your weight evenly on your knees using your own leg muscles, adds load and wear to the cartilage on the inner surface of the knee bones, stresses the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in the middle, overstretches the ligament on the inner side of the knee, and can damage a meniscus. A menscus is one of two small cushions in each knee between the knee bones. Letting knees sway inward more commonly damages the medial meniscus (the inner one) although either or both can be stretched or twisted by bad knee positioning. Letting your knees sway inward is not a "condition," and not unavoidable or something you are born to have. It is a posture you can control using your own muscles to hold your legs from swaying inward.
A while back I took a box-aerobics class because I had a coupon for a free week at a local club. The woman in front of me was stomping up and down as she swatted the air. Her knees bumped together every time her feet landed. Her feet were at least ten inches apart yet her knees bashed together, over and over, bending inward at the knee joint. It was alarming.
Don't let your knees (or ankles) sway inward under your weight. Use your muscles to hold knees in position, over your feet:
When landing, land lightly - softly. Don't pound. The only noise should be the whirring of the jump rope, not your feet slamming the ground, transmitting shock to your knees and hips, and up your spine.
Bend your knees lightly when you land. Don't land straight-legged.
When you bend your knees for landing, don't let them sway inward.
Keep kneecaps facing the same direction as toes, not twisting inward.
Land softly, on the ball of the foot first. Quickly bring heels down while bending knees to absorb impact.
Remember healthy knee positioning during all activities. Look at your own knees and other people's knees when they take the stairs, and when bending to reach or retrieve things for healthy bending at home and work. Notice knees when you get out of your chair and sit back down. Don't let knees sway inward. Hold them in line using your thigh muscles, not letting them angle sharply inward.
It is easy to control leg positioning for healthy knee joints while you stand, bend, take stairs, exercise, and jump so that your daily life and exercise is healthy.
Every November they hold an exhilarating weekend of training, seminars, and events for hundreds of martial artists. They also host the U.S.A. International Black Belt Hall of Fame and annual Hall of Fame awards. The weekend event is recognized and respected by the world martial arts community, and attended by representatives from many dozens of countries from around the world from novice to Grandmaster.
The sizeable work to organize and run this event every year is done by Soke Kanzler and Kim Harper. "Soke" is a Japanese term meaning "head master of a style" and is used for those who have risen to such a degree of understanding of the martial arts that they have founded their own martial arts system.
I will be there, learning all I can, and teaching a seminar of core training - The Ab Revolution - a method of training abdominal and back muscles the way they really work for daily life and for exercise. It is better, harder exercise than conventional ab training and uses no forward bending. The many posts of this blog explain how the commonly-used forward bending for exercise only trains unhealthy bent-forward posture and is not the way your muscles should work when you stand and move in real life. You will learn techniques to increase power and to change spine positioning to prevent injury right in the one-hour seminar.
The weekend event is by invitation only. People must be registered guests to attend seminars. To attend or stop by and say hello, contact the International Headquarters of the International USA Martial Arts Association, or call toll free at 1-800-456-3872. Tell them I referred you.
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Exercise Common Sense Discipline - Turn Down Halloween Junk Food
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
Healthline
Martial arts class fell on Halloween night this year. Would students pay lip service to health and discipline in class then go out eating unhealthy junk?
The festival of Halloween, Samhain (pronounced "saow-in") or Summer's end, Hallotide, Saint's day eve (All Hallows Eve), Day of the Dead, and a month earlier as Babye Leto in chilly Russia, is supposed to remember and revere (or at least appease) the ancestors and Saints. The idea wasn't to glorify gore or sickness (or merchandising), but think of those who are gone, just as the life of summer is gone, and thank the last harvests before the coming Winter. Gifts of food, lights, and effigies of those passed on decorate houses and streets.
My students have been learning that self-discipline is a voluntary exercise. To have inner peace, you just stop tensing your body and saying rude things. To stop slouching, you just use your own muscles to move your spine to healthy position. There is no special exercise to strengthen you to do it; you use your muscles to sit and stand straight and that gives you the exercise. There is no special exercise to be able to do the vigorous moves we do in class. You just keep moving and trying, without stopping and without complaining, and that gives you the strength. This week when I came in to teach, students were sitting quietly and comfortably straight. Their equipment was ready and neat. Since class began in September, several quit smoking, at least the day before and of class, to be able to get through class. Two students told me they had stopped binge-and-purge eating because they could not do class as well when they did, even though they had always done it for exercise classes before. They realized a better body and spirit came more from all we do in class than from an eating disorder. Others stopped eating junk because they want to be healthier, and to practice having control instead of acting on every impulse.
Sometimes, people think that training in martial arts means whoever can beat up others the most, or be the most destructive, is the best. The kneeling Zen story before class last night was the story of who is the true master:
Two wizards met on the mountaintop to see who was the greater. The first one shouted, "I control the sun. At the wave of my hand, it burns away all I see. I control the seas. I control the rivers. At my bidding, waves drown villages and destroy crops. I control the beasts of all the worlds to tear apart any who annoy me." He looked at the other wizard and said, "So, what do you do?" The second wizard said, "I eat only when I am hungry. I drink only when I am thirsty. I don't take in anything harmful."
It was clear that the second wizard was the true master - the master of himself. In class, students stayed disciplined to learn rapid hand strikes and jumping kicks. After class I had bags for them of oranges and apples, notepads to write thoughts, sprouted mung beans to mix in snacks, some walnuts to crack for hand strength. When they walked outside in the dark and cold, they seemed to glow like harvest candles, standing straight with warmth and cheer from their hard work.
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My Tuesday night martial arts class students continued transformation to healthy behaviour. Instead of chatting noisily, they sat quietly straight and relaxed. They sat down on the floor without needing to use their hands. Their equipment was neatly arranged. Instead of sitting glumly or chatting idly on cell phones about the usual annoyances from the day, they mentally put them away and were breathing calmly, focusing on what we were going to do in class. Last week we worked on elbow strikes, blocking, and double kicks. This week was triple kicks, faster footwork, and spinning backfist. Each week at the start of class we have a sitting Zen called the zesa or zazen. We kneel and concentrate on a story or parable, a historical lesson, or an inspiration to live life.
This week's story told the story of the black belt. Who wears one? Why? What does it mean? First, who doesn't wear one? Boxers don't. Kickboxers don't. Wrestlers don't. Chinese Kung Fu practitioners wear a black sash from the first lesson, not only when they become accomplished. Some aerobics instructors purchase one to wear like a chef's hat as a costume to look cool for boxaerobics. Anyone can buy one. What does it mean to earn one?
Color belts were not part of ancient martial arts. Dr. Jigoro Kano, founder of modern Judo, applied a system of belt colors in the early 1900's at his school, the Kodokan, in Tokyo. Some say that part of the inspiration was the ranking by color of swimmers in the Japanese military. Dr. Kano wanted to encourage and recognize his different rank martial arts students. The belt color system spread to other martial disciplines. Who wears belts now? Mostly the Japanese arts of Judo, Aikido, and Karate, the several Okinawan Karates, and the Korean Karates like Tae Kwon Do, Hapkido, Tang So Do, and others.
The symbolism for transforming from novice to black belt comes from starting white - blank - with nothing. In old Asia, you would not wear white to a wedding, but to a funeral. White is the emptiness. Black is the fullness. We all start with nothing, represented in our belt. As you work and learn and train, your belt turns yellow with sweat, red with blood, brown with your toil in the earth, and eventually black with the richness and fullness of your learning. Then you know enough to begin. You continue your dedication as your belt begins to fray and grey with age and wisdom, eventually turning white again, full circle. Zen.
I told my students that a black belt is much like a college degree. In many cases, it does not mean anything. It can show you passed time, but does it mean you learned? In some schools, some upper students bully instead of help those learning. They smoke and eat unhealthy food after class. In some schools, students advance belts by ritual exercises not sparring. In other schools, students fight continuously to subdue others, never taming their own mind.
The Founder of Aikido, Morihei Ueshiba, envisioned a martial art that would reject destruction and show strength through compassion. His revelation reversed thousands of years of harsh tradition. He named his art "Aikido," or "the art of peace." Honorably doing right is what all martial arts strive for, and is the true black belt.
I took the photo when we lived and trained in Japan. If you look, you can find Paul. See more photos and stories of how to change exercise to health in Healthy Martial Arts
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Tuesday night is martial arts class. It had rained all day. A few students were absent. They missed class on how to toughen body and spirit because of water? Next time it pours I think I should hold class outside. In fairness, the students who missed class responsibly contacted me that they would be out.
The rest of my students were sitting in two neat rows. They had gotten their equipment out of bins in healthy ways by bending their knees with body upright and heels down. Then they sat down in their rows on the floor without using their hands. Most were sitting up straight. The rest straightened when they saw me walk in.
Each week students practice preventing the bad habit of jutting their head forward of the center line of their body during stances and moves for exercise and sparring (left photo, above left). Healthy position keeps the chin in and the angle of the lower jaw over the center line of the shoulder (right photo).
A forward head is not healthy for daily life or exercise. It results in much neck, upper back, and shoulder pain. Jutting the head forward for kicking, lifting a weight, and other movement is commonly seen in exercise magazines and videos. Watch for it and let it remind you not to do that. The forward head doesn't look tough, it looks untrained and weak and is several inches closer to the opponent making your face easier to hit. It frequently leads to upper body pain, and in case of a blow to the head, a tilted forward angle of the neck in relation to the brain and skull is more likely to result in brain injury.
A forward head is not something you can't control. Just as you can move your arm or leg, you can easily move your neck in a relaxed way into the healthier chin-in position you want. The post Breasts Causing Upper Back Pain is a Myth gave a simple "wall test" to see if you keep your head forward - stand with your back against a wall and see if the back of your head also touches comfortably. If you have to arch your back or jut your chin forward or up to touch the back of your head, you are probably too tight to stand straight and are probably standing and moving all the time in an unhealthy bent-forward position that strains the neck, back, and other areas.
The post Fixing Upper Back and Neck Pain taught the pectoral stretch to restore muscle length to make healthy straight position comfortable. Use the pectoral stretch first thing in the morning and many times throughout the day. Then use your new ability to stand straight. The pectoral stretch (or any stretch) is not what fixes the problem. The stretch makes it possible for you to stand in the way that no longer strains and injures.
In the martial arts and in life, inviting a bad outcome is known as "leading with your chin." Letting your head and chin jut forward, as in the forward head, is inviting a bad health outcome. The martial arts teaches you to stop problems, not cause them. You can easily stop long-term damage through simple repositioning. You will look and feel better. That's using your head.
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.
Throw a Stronger Punch (or Push a Car or Stroller) Using This Back Pain Reduction Technique
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
Healthline
My Tuesday night martial arts students had another good class tonight. At the beginning of class, I showed them how to greatly strengthen their punch using a technique that also stops a common cause of lower back pain. The reason both benefits occur from one technique is that it changes body positioning to shift the effort and leverage of the punch off your lower back and onto the muscles of your abdomen and back. You can use this technique any time you punch, or push anything from a baby carriage to a piece of furniture to a car.
One of the commonest misconceptions in fitness is that you are supposed to stick your behind out in back. It is not cute or healthy. It is a major source of pressure on the joints and soft tissue of your lower spine.
There is supposed to be a small inward curve to the lower back for shock absorption and protection of the discs. (But only a small curve.) When people lose the needed small inward curve by rounded forward sitting, standing, and bending over wrong, it pressures the discs and eventually damages them (Disc Pain - Not a Mystery, Easy to Fix). The problem is that people hear they need a small inward curve, so they make a big one by tilting their hip and/or leaning their upper body backward. This overarches their lower back. You can see this silly-looking and unhealthy over-arching in many fitness classes and gyms, and fitness publications and videos.
By straightening your hip, you will have the healthy small curve without sticking your behind out in back. When standing, your hip should be vertical, not tilted, from the top of your upper leg bone to the middle-point of the crest of your hip. To reduce the large lower back arch, tilt your hip under you as if you are starting an abdominal crunch while standing up. Do not push your hip forward, just straighten your back by changing the hip angle. This is called a pelvic tilt. This is what we did in class. Try this:
Look at the double photo above left, and stand facing a wall as in the photo, with one arm outstretched. Put the knuckles of your curled fist against the wall as if you had just punched the wall. Elbow slightly bent.
Stand badly, as shown in the left-hand photo. Stick your behind out in back. Let your lower back arch inward. Let your upper back lean backward. Press your fist hard into the wall. You will probably feel pressure in your lower back.
Now, keep pressing your fist hard but stop the bad positioning by tucking your hip under you, shown in the right-hand photo. The movement is like a hip thrust or a standing crunch. The arch in your lower back reduces.
The first thing you will notice if you do this right is your back stops hurting. You should also notice a stronger push against the wall and new strength in your arm and upper body. You will feel the muscles in your trunk and abdomen working.
I developed this technique and called it The Ab Revolution, because it uses your ab muscles all the time for real life. Don't stick your behind out to lift weights, to exercise, or to stand and walk. Use your muscles to position your spine so that your weight does not sag on your lower back. You will get free built-in exercise and back pain prevention while doing all your normal activities. You will stop one of the commonest silly-looking mistakes in fitness. You will also be able to throw a surprisingly strong punch.
Which Ancient Exercise Gives Focus and Concentration?
Thursday, September 28, 2006
Healthline
People often meditate by staring at a candle but tense their shoulders preparing dinner and driving, hold their breath to lift things, and are easily distressed when someone cuts in front of them.
My husband Paul and I studied martial arts in several training centers, and in temples and monasteries in Asia. The monks told us a secret. Sitting quietly, starting at something, or nothing, or counting, is the first five minutes of the first lesson. After this simple start, you are supposed to *use* the concentration and focus to do everything else. The fact that some people take years to master the first five minutes, or spend their life doing only this minor introductory part is another story.
Sometimes students come to my classes talking all about how yoga and martial arts gives you discipline, but can't seem to organize themselves to get their paperwork filled out or their things put away off the floor. They claim the Arts give you patience and awareness, then get angry when someone's cell phone goes off during class and when I show them how to bend and sit in a way that helps rather than harms their health. People use the catch phrase "mind-body" then sit in poor posture not using their body, and losing their mind.
Long ago, only the rich and subsidized could sit idly to meditate. The rest had chores to do and families to raise. There are stories of ancient monks who sat and meditated unmoving for years, then got up and ran marathons. Those turned out to be folk tales and fables. The monks actually soon found they had trouble concentrating, trouble sleeping, and that their joints hurt. They needed exercise. They developed systems of using their body while practicing concentrating because they had to defend the temple and their emperor. When bad guys attacked they couldn't say, "Oh I can't work under pressure." They had to unfalteringly see and do frightening things to win bloody defenses. They had to be able to lie down that night and sleep, not lie awake saying, "Oh I'll have such nightmares. How could he yell at me? I am so ruined by what I saw and what happened to me." They had to practice being mentally strong while they practiced fighting. Their meditation was done raking leaves from monastery paths, preparing dinner, chopping wood, and during all their strenuous training.
All exercise is supposed to train focus and concentration. All household chores too. Work too. Use meditative action for all you do. Can you stay healthy and keep your blood pressure from rising in real life when the phone is ringing and the babies (of all kinds) are screaming? Or when nothing is happening externally to make you focus and get things done. Instead of only practicing meditation sitting, get up and get healthy by turning away negative thoughts, staying on track, and breathing easily when doing housework, during interactions with others, and all exercise you do.
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.
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I teach martial arts, yoga, and other classes at gyms on evenings and Saturdays. This morning I watched the class before mine. The music was loud. I remembered the saying "If it's too loud, you're too old."
When you read the following, remember that you already know it injures to bend "wrong," as in the photo at left, with your upper body bent over instead of upright. You know not to pick up a suitcase or child like that. Previous posts explain how that gradually hurts your lower back and discs.
The class ran a circuit:
They bent wrong to pick up a barbell for ten deadlifts, staying bent over while lifting.
They put the barbell down wrong (bending over) and ran to do ten toe touches - more bad bending over.
They ran to do abdominal crunches, rounding their back forward over and over.
They got up and kicked a target baffle, rounding their back and pushing their chin forward like a pigeon with each kick so that each impact transmitted to their spine.
They ran across the room, each footfall landing heavily so that each impact transmitted to their knees, hip, and spine.
Then leg lifts, bending forward at the hip over and over.
Back to bent-over deadlifts, then alternate toe-touches - bending over and twisting side to side (more pressure on discs than just bending over), then sitting and bringing knees to chest, then deadlifts.
They bent over wrong to get dumbbells for bent over triceps curls (healthier when done standing upright.)
Then standing squats by bending the hip forward over and over. The instructor coached them to stick their behind far out in back. This pinches the lower back adding to a second kind of back pain. Posts coming soon will tell more.
They reclined with feet up, putting body weight on their rounded shoulders to bicycle their legs in the air, and so on, rounding, bending, and pressuring discs and lower back structures for the 45-minute class.
They bridged up on shoulder and feet, to "stretch the other way" even though it bent their neck forward.
They ended by hanging forward to stretch and bringing each arm across the front of their body to stretch the back of the shoulder. This is counter-productive. Most people are already round-shouldered from sitting and bending forward all day. The personal trainer outside the room was doing similar exercises.
One of the students said she comes to the class to strengthen because of back pain. The trainer said he also had back pain and that is why he exercises. Hopefully you can now see part of why.
I'm not just an Ivory-tower egghead who wants you to reduce activity, never lift heavy things, or never move quickly or through a full range of motion. Just the opposite. I'm a former full contact kickboxer (undefeated) in the US, the Netherlands, and Thailand. I want to show you how to have a healthier, more fun and active life, where you stop pain and injuries and do more. The exercises I learned in over 30 years of martial arts were all the usual but injurious ones. Many students dropped out with injuries. It was not the martial arts but some of the exercises. But which? I went back to the lab to study until I found why the injuries were occurring and what will train you better than what we were using. If it works better, I want to know and do it.
Watch other people exercising. It will remind you of many things to avoid. Start your way back to healthy movement by noticing what your exercises are really doing.
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Why stretch smarter? Many standard stretches work to increase flexibility but don't improve martial arts or other sports, and aren't good for the joints.
My workshop teaches functional flexibility - changing your body to work better in real ways needed for daily life and fighting arts.
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