Upper Body Built in Functional Fitness

Reader Vietanh asks:

"I enjoy the all day exercises using squat and lunge for my daily activities. Thank you for sharing your philosophy.

"However, those exercises are mainly for lower body. I would like to ask if there are good all day exercises for upper body parts i.e., shoulder, neck.

"I found some stretches for shoulder and neck that you introduced.

"Thank you and best regards,
Vietanh"

This is a great question and understanding that fitness is something that you do during real life. In gyms and health centers, even therapy settings where people are going there for the purpose of fixing and increasing function, they sit waiting in terrible unhealthful positioning - photo at right - waiting for a class or activity for health.

I have read fitness books saying the posterior shoulder is "difficult to target." Hold your shoulders straight, rather than letting them slump forward. You will get built in upper body functional exercise. Apply this to exercise, to lifting, sitting, sewing, all you do.

Look at your many hours each day of real life - when you prevent round shoulders with retraction to neutral, you are getting upper back extension exercise. When you sit and bend and lift right instead of rounding forward, you get healthful, functional upper and mid range back extension. When you use neutral spine to walk, run, kick, and jump, by extending at the hip instead of allowing the lower spine to increase in arch passively into hyperlordosis, you get healthful lower back extension and abdominal exercise at the same time. It is the abdominal muscles that will flex you forward to straight, rather than overarched. They only do this when you deliberately use them. Strengthening alone does not create movement to healthful position. Healthful positioning strengthens and gives exercise. Look at the photo above again and see that how you really live, not a gym, is your exercise and health.

Apply upper body muscle use for function in daily life:

Prevent Neck Pain and Get Upper Back Exercise Carrying Backpacks
Upper Back Exercise and Neck Pain Prevention Too
Common Exercises Teach Upper Back and Neck Pain
Fast Fitness - Prevent Back Pain When Rowing
Overhead Lifting, Reaching, and Throwing - More Part I
Fast Fitness - Built in Upper Body and Core Exercise Carrying Children

Use arm and hand muscles instead of compressing wrist joints:

Fast Fitness - Prevent Wrist Pain During Pushups and Cooking
Forearm, Upper Body and Hand Exercise

Have daily active upper body fun:

Fast Fitness - Make Your Own Device to Strengthen Arms, Upper Body, Balance, and Core Stability
Fast Fitness - Easy Handstand for Balance, Upper Body Strength -The Movie
Pushups and rows at the same time - Strengthen Many Places at Once
Handstand and rows at the same time - Fast Fitness - Handstand Rows

Using upper back muscles to prevent rounding forward in round shoulders gives continuous built in exercise. This is not forcing, just mobile, comfortable muscle use. How are you sitting while reading this?

There is more to this excellent question. Will come in future posts.

Labels: arm, endurance, neck, posture, shoulder, sitting, strength, upper back

Permalink | 2 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Fast Fitness - Built in Upper Body and Core Exercise Carrying Children

Here is Friday Fast Fitness - get better exercise and stop aching back and shoulders when carrying children (or anything else) in backpack carriers or by piggyback:

1. Put on the carrier (and baby for a fun practice ride or use groceries, etc). Look sideways in a mirror.


2. See if you round your upper and or lower back forward. See if you lean your upper body backward under the weight. Notice if you increase your lower spine inward curve, are tilting the hip out in back to hold up the carrier.


3. Straighten upper and lower body segments. You will feel a strong pull on your abdominal muscles when you reduce overarching in the lower spine and prevent leaning the upper body backward. You will feel an upper back workout when you don't lean or round forward.

Labels: abdominal muscles, children, fast fitness, fix pain, neck, partner exercise, perceived exertion, shoulder, upper back

Permalink | 0 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Pectoral (Chest) Stretch - The Most Common Mistake in the Best Shoulder Stretch

Mike Benson has sent several Fitness Fixer inspiring stories. In response to reader requests, he made us this photo set showing, "The most common mistake in the best stretch - How to not get any stretch from the pectoral stretch." I asked him to demonstrate this, because I see this mistake so often. People often "do" a stretch without "getting" a stretch.

Why is this stretch so good? Round-shouldered posture is a main contributor to neck and upper body pain and rotator cuff injury. Round-shouldered posture feels comfortable and natural when the front chest muscles are tight. A common mistake is to stretch the shoulder joint, which does not address this problem.

The purpose of the pectoral stretch is to lengthen chest muscles so that healthier positioning feels natural and comfortable. If you merely hold your elbow to the side, little lengthening can occur - shown in first photo:




Second photo below - changing the position to get the purpose - lengthening anterior (front) muscles that go across the chest. One way is to use a wall to help you press your elbow back.

• Turn your body and feet away from the wall.
• Your elbow is behind you, no longer out to the side.
• Raising the elbow higher or lower changes the stretch.
• Experiment until you only feel a stretch in the front chest and no pain or pinching anywhere in the shoulder:

• Keep shoulder down and relaxed
• Do not make any pain anywhere. The idea is to make things healthier, not to strain, push, force, tighten, grunt, and call that a health promotion activity.
• Understand the purpose first. The purpose of this stretch is to lengthen front chest muscles so that tightness does not pull you into feeling that round-shouldered position is the norm or that it is uncomfortable to straighten. Feel the stretch in the intended area.
  
• Use a mirror to help you connect what the position looks like with what it feels like.
• Use your brain.

Related:

Fix One Pain, Don't Cause Another
What Does Stretching Do?
The Stretch You Need The Least

More to Stretch the Anterior Chest:

Stretching With a Friend - Partner Pectoral Stretch
Pectoral Stretch was first introduced in Fixing Upper Back and Neck Pain
Quick, Feel-Good Upper Back and Chest Stretch

Mike Benson's Success Stories:

A Whole Big Fix
Fast Fitness - Core Hip & Body, Posture Strength & Balance
Flasher Exercises Not Best for Shoulder Pain
Healthy Youth Parties - Fun Exercise, No Junk Food

Labels: arm, chest, fix pain, posture, readers inspiring story, rotator cuff, shoulder, stretch

Permalink | 3 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Fast Fitness - Add Balance, Stability, and Portability to Military Press - Handstand Pushups

Here is Fast Friday Fitness - If you like lifting weight overhead for upper body strength, you don't need to wait to go to a gym, or to get weights or equipment.

Get more exercise, practice balance, and shoulder and arm stability, with handstand dips:

1. Do a handstand against a wall. An easy way is to stand with your back about a foot or so from a wall, crouch down and put one foot, then the other, high on the wall.
2. With good judgment, do upside down pushups (dips).
3. Vary the depth of each dip, speed of each, speed you can do a number of dips, and distance of your hands from the wall to vary the exercise.

Robert Davis sent in his video of how to do handstand pushups. Blogger is still having trouble uploading visuals. Click this link to watch it:


Robert was a weightlifter who hurt his back with conventional lifting (bad bending and overarching the lower spine). He rehabbed quickly with Fitness Fixer techniques and has been sending in his success stories one after the next. He writes:

"This was not a very problematic exercise as I had been used to destroying my shoulders with mega high weight LOL. But this is different because of the engagement of muscle groups that control stabilization.

"But yeah, I have been doing that in place of military press and see how it is more beneficial as the stabilizers have to kick in more then being benched or using a machine.

"Once again thank you and I think people should really listen to you. I am glad I did because I have no need to go in to get scanned or be told I need surgery or something silly ;)

"Like I said I am not into pro body building, I just did it to stay "fit" and look fit as I thought it was. But after going thru this, it is not all that functional to pound out reps of heavy weight and not be able to do a plank or walk/sit straight. I lifted enough just to have "lean muscle" but not to be huge. But I realize now this is easily done safely with your methods and I do not need a gym."

Good brain and body training Robert!

Related Posts:

• How to get started with a wall handstand - Wall Handstand Success With Liz
• Safer Overhead Military Press

Robert's Success Stories:

• Fast Fitness - Better Legs and Pain Relief Comes From You Not The Exercise Ball
• Fixed Injuries, Got Strong, With Functional Exercise
• Cardiovascular Cleanup

Labels: arm, endurance, fast fitness, handstand, readers inspiring story, shoulder, strength, upper back, video/movie

Permalink | 2 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Flasher Exercises Not Best for Shoulder Pain

In A Whole Big Fix Mike fixed several injuries and made the interesting statement, "I stopped cycling to improve my health."

Back in December, I asked Mike if he wanted to get back to cycling and about his shoulder. While we were working on his story, reader requests piled in by the hundreds. Stay with us and questions will be answered. If I only answer them in order, it will be hundreds more posts before I get to questions arriving today, so make your questions fun and helpful.

Mike wrote his update:

"The cycling didn't cause pain at the time, but created bad posture habits and muscle tightness (shoulder rounded forward after separating collarbone in a crash, tight psoas muscles and hamstrings) which led to pain later. I'm walking more human-like now. Also, the air and traffic around here has gotten worse because of the housing and population boom, so I was having horrible coughing fits. Now I don't, without the aid of any medicine and, I believe, by following your diet recommendations.


"Shoulder: The physical therapist had me doing the trench coat type exercises you've described in your books as not as effective or needed, in many different ways (pictured at right), especially the "closing of the trench coat" which didn't make sense to me because they said I was overly tight in the front and too flexible and weak in the back. The visits there didn't work.

"Instead, I used the two stretches shown by your husband - right angle elbow with hand in air in Fixing Upper Back and Neck Pain, and the hand in the opposite pocket behind the back while leaning sideways, in Nice Neck Stretch."

Standard physical therapy exercise for rotator cuff consists of keeping the elbow close to the waist and rotating the forearm inward and outward, like a flasher opening and closing a trench coat (photo). There are almost no daily activities that need this specific motion, not even opening a door. No one uses their muscles this way (unless you are a flasher I guess). People do these exercises then go back to daily bad overhead reaching and re-injure their shoulder, or wonder why it never heals.

The rationale for doing the trench coat exercise is that strengthening the rotator cuff will heal the injury. Strengthening is not the main issue in most shoulder injuries that I see. Misuse of the shoulder is the root cause. A common counterproductive scene is people "doing shoulder exercises" with their head and neck slouching forward, upper body rounded, which injures the shoulder with each arm lift.

Slouching the upper body forward when raising arms for any daily activity, stretch, yoga, or weightlifting will continue to injure the shoulder. What improvement are you making to your shoulder to do exercises in a way that will injure?

Mike wrote:

"I'm also concentrating on keeping my thumbs facing forward when arms are down in order to help prevent my shoulders from rolling forward. I'm feeling more upright and balanced when doing everyday activities."

I told Mike that the idea is not to hold thumbs forward. The idea is to get the purpose of the stretch so that the chest muscles lengthen enough so that the arm bone is not pulled into inward rotation. The post on this topic is listed at the end.

Mike was also "doing" one of the key stretches but not getting the stretch needed, so no benefit was occurring. He was going through a set of motions to achieve the set of motions instead of to achieve the purpose, which was to restore resting length to the chest muscles. Mike made us some photos of how he was originally doing the pectoral stretch and how he fixed the motion to get the purpose. I will post them soon so everyone can see the difference.

• It is common to stretch in ways that does not achieve the purpose, or are done in injurious ways. Then news stories report on studies that stretching doesn't improve physical performance or help prevent injuries, and no one knows why. It is not difficult to see why: What Does Stretching Do?

• What do thumbs have to do with shoulder and neck pain? - Thumbs Can Show Tightness That Leads to Upper Back Pain

• Notice upper body positioning when exercising: Are You Making Your Exercise Unhealthy?

• Avoid rotator cuff and shoulder impingement and injury when raising arms: Overhead Lifting, Reaching, and Throwing - More Part I, and Overhead Lifting, Reaching, and Throwing Part I - Shoulder and Rotator Cuff Injury.

• Avoid neck and shoulder pain when looking upward: Gaze Perseid Meteors Without Neck Pain

• Learn how to avoid injurious movement habits and how to have healthier daily life and exercise: Health & Fitness in Plain English new THIRD edition - How to be Healthy Happy and Fit for the Rest of Your Life.

Labels: biking, fix pain, impingement, injury, posture, practice of medicine, readers inspiring story, rotator cuff, shoulder

Permalink | 1 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Overhead Lifting, Reaching, and Throwing Part I - Shoulder and Rotator Cuff Injury

The photo at right shows one main contributor to shoulder and rotator cuff pain, and one for lower back pain. Can you see them? Can you see why the person in red is not getting as much stretch in the shoulder as they think?

I see patients for shoulder pain all the time. Their chart says, "normal range of motion at the shoulder," or the chart reads with a number of angle degrees corresponding to directly overhead reach. I ask the person, "Reach up for me please." They lean their upper body backward, increase the inward curve of the lower back, and their hand points directly overhead. Often they do this while tilting their neck and head forward, which puts the shoulder at a position of compression when the arm is raised. I show them how to straighten the upper body upright, reduce the lower back over-arch, and return to neutral spine. I ask them to reach up again. They can't. They shoulder is too tight to reach directly overhead. They were never stretching their shoulder when they thought they were. They were getting the motion from their lower back, not shoulder. They were only leaning backward, adding compressive load to their lower spine joints, called facets. This will be covered next in Part II.

In the photo, note that the head is forward, a major contributor to rotator cuff injury during overhead arm motion. Lifting your arm with the neck and head tilted forward mashes the upper arm bone against the shoulder bones. This compresses the soft tissue between them, including the rotator cuff and nerves that go down the arm. Each small pinch can eventually saw at the area until a rotator cuff tear begins.

Rotator cuff injury is common, even in people who do no overhead athletics, like pitching, martial arts, or kayaking. Reaching upward is common around the house and for exercise. Starting in the morning, you wash or comb hair (or polish a bald head). You pull clothing on and off overhead. You reach in cabinets, wave goodbye, shield your eyes from the sun, open car trunks and hatches, put things up on racks, shop for groceries and put them away in cabinets, lift children, clean curtains and tub walls, put work in overhead shelves - many reaches, all day, every day. At the gym there are overhead lifts, stretches, and arm motions.

Compressing the nerves that pass through the area and go down the arm sets is called impingement. Impingement is not a disease. Someone with a diagnosis of impingement does not have a real diagnosis. Impingement is not a cause of pain, it is a result. If you stop the mechanical cause, then you can stop the resulting impingement. No drugs or surgery or repeated therapies are needed:

• Notice your neck and head position when lifting overhead and don't let your head and neck sag or jut or tilt forward. To see if you have the health and flexibility just to stand straight, try seeing of you can stand comfortably with your back and back of your head against a wall. If not, try some posts on upper body flexibility, such as Fixing Upper Back and Neck Pain. Don't force. Breathe. Smile. Relax. It's all for health.

• When you lift arms upward, check if you lean your upper body backward (photo above) or tilt your pelvis out of upright neutral position. To see how to prevent the resulting overarched lower spine, and restore neutral spine, click Kettlebells Without Spine Injury, and to see short movies, see Fast Fitness - Fixing Yoga Warrior and Lunge Exercise to Neutral Spine and Friday Fast Fitness - Neutral Spine in 5 Seconds.
  

• More on the forward head and how to fix it - Breasts Causing Upper Back Pain is a Myth and associated links.

• More on back and shoulder during reaching - Change Daily Reaching to Get Ab Exercise and Stop Back and Shoulder Pain.

• Overhead weight lifting - Safer Overhead Military Press.

• More photos and situations for safer daily and exercise overhead movement, click Overhead Lifting, Reaching, and Throwing - More Part I.
  

Labels: fix pain, impingement, injury, repetitive strain, rotator cuff, shoulder

Permalink | 4 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Fast Fitness - Handstand Rows

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Permalink | 2 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Fast Fitness - Handstand Dips

Here is Friday Fast Fitness - Dips upside down holding a handstand, for shoulder and arm strength, balance, agility, and fun.

Readers Dave, Nine-Volt Terry, and others asked about dips. You don't need weights and equipment to increase strength. Body weight can be used in many fun ways. Fitness Fixer has shown how to do an easy handstand, then last Friday featured a short movie to learn a regular handstand - Fast Fitness - Step Up To Handstand.

This week - use the handstand for more:

1. Hold a handstand the way you are safe and comfortable.
2. Bend your elbows to lower toward the floor like a pushup, then push to straighten.
3. Increase how deep you can dip and how many you can do and push back up again.

These dips are safer for the anterior (front) shoulder than conventional dips which are done by leaning or hanging on hands while upright, and bending elbows behind you to lower and raise. They can work like a Safer Overhead Military Press. Make sure you don't have glaucoma or uncontrolled high blood pressure before doing these. Breathe and stay relaxed instead of tightening.

To increase skills, work until you can do handstand dips without a wall.

Labels: arm, fast fitness, handstand, shoulder, strength

Permalink | 0 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Using a Handstand for More Than an Exercise - Real Life

A reader wrote about the handstand against wall in the post Fast Fitness - Easy Handstand for Balance, Upper Body Strength -The Movie. GingerB said,

"My Yoga teachers uses that, but you hold you legs at a right degree angle to the floor. It forces your back to be straight. Seems to me it sets you up for more shoulder action. I don't think I'll ever be able to do a handstand without the wall."

The handstand against the wall can be done with legs straight or bent as Ginger describes, or a variety of other stretches. However bending the legs at right angle, or any angle, does not "force" a straight back. Rounded back can still occur. Many people with tight hamstrings wind up rounding the back doing this stretch as Ginger describes because the back is the only place they can get the stretch from and they do not know how to transfer the stretch to the hamstrings. The shoulders also can be in any posture or level of "action" from good to bad depending on how much you know about posture and allow to happen.

The photo at right shows five of my students demonstrating the easy wall handstand in both positions. First at right in the foreground is Diana who hold straight good neutral spine. Next, also in good neutral spine is 67 year old Leslie who starred in the post Are You Stronger Than A 67 Year Old Lady? Click the post to do your pushups with her every day. Third in the middle, Johanna demonstrates right angle (photo taken just before reaching parallel to floor). This can be a fun stretch for hamstrings without loading the lower back.

Most important, use a straight handstand position in neutral spine to train straight body position against resistance, then transfer that knowledge to daily life. If you use the right-angle pose alone you do not learn that.

All my exercises are developed to be more than exercise alone. Instead of just "doing a move" or "holding a pose" use them to train how to move out of bad positioning into healthy position for everything you do.

The post Fast Fitness - Fixing Your Handstand to Neutral Spine shows a short movie of letting spine sag in the handstand and how to fix it so that you can train what to do when you are walking around, running, lifting weights, and just enjoying life. Instead of "doing" exercise, restore real life.

For doing handstands without the wall, it’s just real life balance and stretch training - a post soon will cover how.

Labels: handstand, leg stretch, shoulder, strength, yoga

Permalink | 0 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

Permalink | 3 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Fix One Pain, Don't Cause Another

When you stretch and exercise, especially if you stretch and exercise to improve your health, remember that the purpose is not to recreate unhealthy movement habits.

Two similar letters came in recently.

Reader Tina wrote:

"Thanks so much for your posts on stopping upper back pain. I have stopped my upper back pain. But, when I pull my neck and shoulders back, I get pain in my lower back. Which stretches should I do to stop this pain?"

Alicia wrote:

"I recently stumbled upon your articles on the Internet about how to reduce back pain. Thanks so much for providing this information! I am experiencing less pain for sure already… but I have a question. When I am keeping my neck back and shoulders back and correcting the lower back arch, I get a pinching sensation in the middle of my back. What am I doing wrong?"

Tina was doing a common unhealthy movement habit. She didn't need stretches to fix the pain; she needed to stop old injurious movement habits. Tina was leaning her upper body backward thinking she was pulling her shoulders back. Leaning backward is not correcting rounded forward shoulders, even if it seems to move the shoulders rearward. The shoulders have not moved at all just stayed rounded while the upper body pinched backward at the lower spine.

The photo at left is a performer who had just finished a trapeze performance. All the exercise and stretching she did every day didn't change her bad positioning habits.

Leaning the upper body backward (shown in the photo, left) increases the inward curve of the lower back, making a sharper angle between the pelvis and the lower spine. That increases the normal lordosis (inward lumbar curve) to hyperlordosis (too much inward curve as in the photo), which put painful pinching compression on the area. Look at the strip on her leotard. It tilts forward at the front hip and back at the back of the hip. It should be straight up and down, which is part of holding neutral spine.

The photo also shows shoulders and upper back rounded forward, and the neck and head jutting forward.

Slipping into familiar unhealthy ways of moving may be habits that occur without thinking. You need to think a bit.

Alicia was just pulling back so tightly that she pinched the area between the shoulder blades. There are sources that say that you should squeeze shoulder blades as if holding a penny between them to fix posture, but of course, that is painful and too tight.

Alicia wrote back:

"Thanks! That helps actually. The pinching was in my upper back, but it's gone now! Thanks so much for responding to me. I look forward to your class in July.
Alicia"

Pinching back does not fix posture or stop upper back pain. Instead, stop the causes of the rounded shoulders and the pain.

These three posts help understand and fix the causes:

1. First read and try Fixing Upper Back and Neck Pain.
2. Then the second stretch is Nice Neck Stretch.
3. The third stretch to help restore upper body positioning is Friday Fast Fitness - Better Shoulder and Triceps Stretch.

Don't exercise one area and hurt the next:

• The post Change Daily Reaching to Get Ab Exercise and Stop Back and Shoulder Pain shows a photo of the common bad habit of leaning the upper body backward when raising the arms.
• The post Prevent Back Surgery shows several photos of how people learn the upper body back or tilt the hip out in back during several common exercises, stretches, and daily activities. Both increase the pinching compression on the lumbar spine.

Remember to think and watch for causes instead of just *doing* exercises and stretches.

Labels: fix pain, lordosis, lower back, neutral spine, posture, practice of medicine, shoulder, upper back

Permalink | 2 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Fast Fitness - Easy Handstand

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

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

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

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

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

Permalink | 0 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Is Your Drinking Hurting Your Neck?

A reader sent me this Hauku:


The photo above shows an injurious positioning called "a forward head." A forward head position presses cervical (neck) discs outward, causes upper back and neck pain often called "upper crossed" syndrome, and can press the nerve going down the arm, leading to arm pain and hand/finger numbness. Jutting the chin upward with the neck forward can, over time, create a spondylolisthesis (vertebral shifting). Raising the arm with the shoulder rounded and the neck forward adds to shoulder and rotator cuff injury.

Check yourself for a forward head position when eating and drinking (and on the phone):

• Corner of the jaw is far forward of the shoulder
• Neck tilts forward
• Jaw juts forward
• Neck pinches backward, with high compressive force
• Shoulder rounded

Don't round your back or jut your chin forward. Instead, keep chin in when you eat and drink and talk on the phone. To look upward, get the upward motion more from straightening your upper back, and not from one joint in your neck. The neck is not a hinge joint.

Don't rely on, "Keep ear over shoulder" thinking that is straight posture. You can see in the photo that the ear is over the shoulder, but the neck is craned badly.

Use healthful positioning for built-in upper body muscle exercise and easy pain prevention. Check yourself sideways in a mirror. Watch other people eating and drinking for an easy reminder. Happy Holidays.

For More Healthy Neck Motion:

• For looking upward, click Gaze Perseid Meteors Without Neck Pain.
• For neck and upper back health looking downward over desk, click Tax Preparation Health.
• For drinking and biking, with drawings of fixing neck and upper back while looking up, click Fast Fitness - Stop Neck Pain From Biking

Labels: fix pain, impingement, injury, neck, rotator cuff, shoulder, upper back, yoga

Permalink | 2 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Fast Fitness - Upper Back, Shoulder, Triceps, Arm, Wrist, and Hand Stretch

Here is Friday Fast Fitness - nice stretch for hands, upper back, and everything in between.

1. Stand with your back about a foot from a solid surface


2. Reach upward and backward to place both hands on the wall, all fingers facing downward


3. Press, lifting upward, keeping the stretch in your chest and upper body.

Vary the stretch by straightening elbows more.

Do not pinch your spine backward like a soda straw at the lower back, which increases lordosis (causes hyperlordosis). Tuck hip to neutral to stop compressive pain in the lower back. Here is how.

Breathe. Smile. Feel good stretching your upper back out of forward-rounded posture.

Labels: arm, fast fitness, hand, lordosis, neutral spine, shoulder, stretch, upper back, wrist

Permalink | 2 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

A Whole Big Fix

This is the first part of a great reader story. Mike has been fixing many things. Pain started with a local radiating pain, then became much other pain. Mike looked for something to fix the first area, then ably used other techniques.

Mike writes,

"I'm sorry it's taken so long to write back. Along with teaching and family time I've been taking a graduate class and I've just finish my final project for the class. Now I have time. Here goes.

"Back in 1983 I developed a deep pain and spasms in my right buttock along with radiating pain down my leg. I had been running 40-90 miles per week as a high school and college cross-country/track/road runner. For the past 20+ years this pain has come and gone every week while lying down, walking, and mostly sitting, making it very difficult to work at a desk, sit at a class, and drive. I've assumed it was a type of sciatica and read and tried everything I could for relief.

"The only temporary relief I found was in cycling, which stopped the pain for up to 48 hrs after rides, so I ended up cycling for 20 years, including racing for a team for 2 years. All that cycling caused other problems including a slumped, impinged shoulder from a separated collarbone in a crash, tight hip flexors, allergies from all the car exhaust and desert riding, and too many close calls from SUVs with drivers calling, texting etc. in heavy traffic. I was eating far too many simple carbs for energy on these intense rides. I stopped cycling to improve my health, decrease my risks of collisions, and to save money on all that equipment.

"The pain and spasms in my rear and down my leg increased in frequency and duration. My shoulder was not improving despite a month of visits to a physical therapist. Through searching in the internet I came across Dr. Bookspan's Fitness Fixer and books in early 2007. The logical stretches and strengthening moves worked much better than anything I had tried before. One time during a long class my rear and leg were killing me, so I applied a stretch (I learned from one of the books) while sitting in the chair without anyone knowing. The pain went away for the rest of the class. (Since applying Dr. Bookspan's shoulder retraining) my shoulder rarely bothers me and I've gone months without any pain in my rear and down my leg.

"I've also been enjoying Jolie's books for the sections on nutrition, spirituality, mental focus and general health and exercise advice. Working on all the parts at once seems to help the individual parts even more. I'm now working on walking comfortably without orthotics (it's getting better) and figuring out why my left knee and right hip pop so much. I'm very fortunate that I'm without pain now though, thanks to Dr. Bookspan's advice.

"I've attached some photos of the (hip) moves and stretches that work for me. Thank you! Mike "

Just as I was uploading this post today, Mike wrote me:

"Just wanted to let you know that my wife had a lot of pain and tightness in her hip yesterday from squats without warming up enough and possibly poor technique. She was very uncomfortable in any position, even lying down. I showed her how to do the hip stretch that worked for me, from your book, and it IMMEDIATELY, stopped the pain and tightness and she still feels great the next day! Mike"

I asked Mike about his statement, "I stopped cycling to improve my health." His story will continue, I hope next week.

Labels: biking, computer, hip, orthotics, readers inspiring story, running, sciatica, shoulder, squat

Permalink | 7 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Friday Fast Fitness - Better Shoulder and Triceps Stretch

Here is Friday Fast Fitness - Quick shoulder and triceps stretch, without adding new bad positioning. Use this instead of the usual stretch of pulling elbow overhead with the other hand, which usually results in leaning the head forward and arching the lower back.

Instead:

1. Stand diagonally in front of a wall.
2. Raise elbow (the one closest to the wall). Lean arm, armpit, and body against the wall
3. Breathe. Relax. Smile. Switch sides.

Do not arch the lower back or tighten any part, or it will hurt and not be right or healthy. That would be silly.

Labels: arm, fast fitness, lower back, neutral spine, shoulder, stretch, upper back

Permalink | 6 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Better Stretches for Swimming - Cook Strait Update

The September equinox was this weekend. At the moment of the equinox, the center of the disk of the sun crosses the equator. The northern hemisphere comes into Fall while the southern hemisphere begins Spring. For the day before and after that moment, the entire apparent disk of the sun passes the equator, and night and day are approximately equal length all over the world.

Japan celebrates three days before and after the equinox as a time for life reflection, looking forward and back. A Mid-Autumn Festival of the second of three fall harvests is celebrated in many East Asian communities around this time on a varying lunar calendar. The full moon closest to the Autumn equinox is the Harvest Moon, lighting long evenings of harvest work. The moon all during the month of the Autumn equinox is the Wine Moon, a good time for grape harvest, occurring (usually) around September in the northern hemisphere and March in the southern hemisphere.

With this equinox, the weather is warming in the Southern Hemisphere, meaning increased swim training for New Zealander 'Dr. Ernie' (blog name).

He is training to swim the 16 miles of the Cook Straight, introduced in May's post Sixteen Miles of Cold Water and updated in Getting Fitter in 50 Degrees.

Dr. Ernie sent the photo at left and wrote,

"This phase has been one of knuckling down. So here goes:
"Cook Strait Swim: Phase II
"Now it gets serious.....

"On June 6 I completed my last open water swim in Wellington Harbour in water temps of about 14 C: It felt really cold, the coldest I've experienced. The swim lasted 45 minutes and I noted that afterwards I didn't shiver at all -- a clear sign of acclimatization. I was advised by all to start serious swim technique and endurance preparation in the pool.

"I met with Phil Rush -- the man who has crossed the Strait seven times (including a double-crossing) and who holds the world's record for a triple crossing of the English Channel. He will be piloting the support boat for my attempt, which will hopefully be in February 2008. His advice: swim, swim, swim -- get up to 40 km/week by December (approx 25 statute miles or 21.6 nautical miles), and then be ready to take a 6-hour test in early January. In the test I will have to demonstrate that I can sustain at least a 3 km/hour pace for the 6 hours (a little under 2 miles per hour, a mid-training pace).

"Since July, I've been meeting with my coach, a former Olympian (I'll not mention his name until I've made it successfully across the Strait) and it's been hard going. But very necessary. What I assumed I could do on my own proved to be incorrect. For one, basic aspects of technique have been clarified and my entire stroke has been reworked in the past two months -- a good thing because I don't have a competitive swimming background and I've been doing lots of stuff to create drag. If' I' m to make it across the Strait I'll have to be extremely efficient. And I'll have to be able to keep up pace to stay warm. So my coach had done several important things: first, he's forced me to realign my body position, stressing posture, line and balance; second, he's pushed high-intensity sprint and interval training in addition to long distance swims. I plan to continue weekly lessons through the end of the year."

One of the things Dr. Ernie and I have been working on is better swim stretches.

Good shoulder range of motion helps swimming. Some experts regard the extra range as always destabilizing for the shoulder joints.

I investigated this over several years in the lab, and found that much of the problem is unhealthful stretches, not the range achieved.

You can have a mobile strong shoulder without developing instability or injuring the shoulder joints and surrounding cartilage and soft tissue.

One counterproductive stretch for most people is pulling one arm across the front of your body. It is usually The Stretch You Need The Least. Click the link for more about why.



A better way to stretch your shoulders is to stop doing this less healthful stretch and do three healthier ones:

1. Front chest (pectoral) muscles, taught in Fixing Upper Back and Neck Pain


2. Nice Neck Stretch. To make sure you get the stretch as intended and not lean or round forward, do the Nice Neck Stretch (trapezius stretch pictured at right) with your back and the back of your head against a wall so that you do not bring your head forward of the wall as you slide down to the side.


3. Fast Fitness Friday this week will add a third stretch that is more effective than the common practice of pulling the elbow overhead with the other hand - Friday Fast Fitness - Better Shoulder and Triceps Stretch.
   
   

Related Fitness Fixer:

• Dr. Ernie's story continues next week - Nutrition for Endurance Swim Training.
• Post from last year's equinox - Is Bad Martial Arts Good Exercise?
• More to understand what makes a good stretch - What Does Stretching Do?
• Click labels under this post for more Fitness Fixer about each topic.

Labels: arm, holiday, readers inspiring story, shoulder, stretch, swimming

Permalink | 2 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Fast Fitness - Stronger, Straighter Upper Back

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

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

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

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

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

Permalink | 7 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Inspirational Update from Bill

In May, blog reader Bill (Lieutenant William Slabonik) sent an inspiring story - Freed From Pain, He Rides Again. Bill had been told by several sources that surgery and disability retirement were his only options. He used Fitness Fixer information to change a future as damaged as x-rays of his spine, to the active life he loves, without pain. He used information from the upper back and shoulder posts, among others, to learn how neck discs, upper back muscles, and other structures are damaged with mal-positioning, and how to employ healthy muscle use so the discs can heal and arm numbness stops, even riding long bike trips, lifting heavy gear, and in his demanding work as a pilot. He fixed low back chronic pain with the simple neutral spine repositioning away from a hyperlordotic (over-arched lower spine) when standing, shown in Prevent Back Surgery and all the posts on neutral spine.

In the May update, Bill told how he fixed the injuries and rode the Pennsylvania State Police Memorial century ride. Last week Bill reported in:

"My goal of riding the 200 km night ride down the Jersey shore was a success. I rode from 10pm 'til 9am with no problems covering the distance of 125 miles. I actually felt like I could go on a lot further. I have also completed a 2-day 200-mile ride to visit my brother-in-law in Maryland. I now can get on my bike on any day and reasonably crank out a hundred mile ride. No serious pain or discomfort noted. Only the usual slight soreness in the rear end and hands and elbows that seems to come with any long ride. The neck, shoulders and back did incredibly well, - I constantly checked my position while on the bike and did some "Healthy Stretching" whenever I was off the bike. Mission accomplished."

Note to readers - I will cover hand and arm soreness with biking in posts to come. I already worked with Bill to prevent local hand numbness from compressive leaning on the wrists, which Bill put to immediate use. I asked Bill to take photos for you of his simple changes in biking positioning to change damaging neck, shoulder, arm, and hand use to healthy ones.

Bill says,

"My son has promised to help me with the photos. I must ride herd on this project and get back to you soon.

"My confidence and health have skyrocketed. My daughters are leaving for college and I am looking forward to an empty house soon. They have thanked me for being there when they needed me and asked me why I just don't go and do something I would love to do. I am applying for retirement this morning and have completed an interview for a job flying in mainland China. I have two other airlines trying to get me to interview. Wish me luck on my next amazing adventure. And thanks for your help and encouragement."

Bill - Free Man

Bill, all hats off to you. Keep flying high. More good things are still to come. Keep us posted.


More from Bill:
Bill demonstrates wrists for biking - Stronger Pain-Free Wrists When Biking
Next update, with Captain's bars - Reader Successes Endure.

More inspiring stories coming next from readers Jill and Ivy.

Labels: biking, hand, neck, neutral spine, readers inspiring story, shoulder, spirit, upper back, wrist

Permalink | 0 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Fast Fitness - Strengthen Many Places at Once

Here is Friday Fast Fitness - quick strengthener for arms, shoulders, body, legs, hands, feet. Healthier than bending over for rows (hard on discs) and more functional strengthening than lying on a bench:

1. Hold a tucked pushup position - tuck shown in Prevent Back Surgery
2. Lift a weight or other object 10 times.
   
3. Lift with the other arm 10 times. Try various lifts - front, back, sides.
   

Want more? Add a pushup, lifting the weight on the way up. More? Lift one foot. More? Use an unwieldy barbell for balance challenge or pinch grip to strengthen hands.

Tuck your hip to straighten your lower spine to strengthen abdominal and back muscles too. Hold your head up with neck straight to strengthen neck and upper back muscles the way they need for healthy straight standing.

Breathe. Smile.

Labels: arm, fast fitness, leg strength, lower back, posture, shoulder, strength, upper back

Permalink | 1 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Freed From Pain, He Rides Again

Reader Bill Slabonik had sports injuries, motorcycle and bicycling accidents. He was a good exerciser and hard worker, doing all the conventional exercises and ways of lifting during his regular workouts, long hours sitting as a pilot, and vigorous work in the Coast Guard. I know these things because I've seen his x-ray and MRI reports.

Bill writes:

"After two years of waking every couple hours with extreme pain in my shoulders and both hands completely numb, I sought relief from the medical community. Thinking that something was wrong with my shoulders, I was very surprised to find out that I had degenerative disc disease in my neck and spine. I was scheduled for epidural injections and advised that if they did not help, surgery was the only alternative. I was advised that I might consider disability retirement.

Not being pleased with my choices, I was able to get a script from my family doctor for physical therapy. Two months of therapy gave encouraging if small improvements. Back spasms stopped and pain diminished somewhat. Encouraged by this I continued to search online for neck and back pain fixes until I was fortunate to find a website maintained by Dr. Jolie Bookspan. The articles made logical sense to me and I soon ordered her book "Fix Your Own Pain." I noticed rapid improvement as soon as I began to practice her methods. Encouraged by these results I chose to attend one of her clinics held at Temple U.

I have returned to an active, athletic life. Waking due to pain is a thing of the past. I am setting and achieving physical goals that seemed impossible only a year ago. I am hiking farther and riding faster than I could have dreamed of. I am using post-it notes in my car, at my desk and on my flight kit for the airplane as reminders to maintain good position.

The photo is my neighbor Ken and myself taking a break from the year's Pennsylvania State Police Memorial century ride. He is also putting your principals into good use. We rode 50 miles that Saturday morning without pain or discomfort. Ken is 61 years old and I'm 55. The amazing part is that I had over 180 miles for the week without pain. Ken and I have made a goal of riding together on each of our birthdays, the number of miles matching our age, i.e., a 62 mile ride this fall for Ken's birthday. Oh, the ride was from Hershey, PA to Mount Gretna, PA and back. A nice loop through the central PA farmlands. Thanks again for your encouragement and books. I am feeling fantastic today!

Your work has not only provided hope but is putting life into my years. I want people to know that there is help.

I normally shy away from putting myself out on display like this, but if it encourages others to fix their pain then it was worth it. Thanks again Doc. I'm out mowing the lawn by hand.. two hours..no pain...riding my bike to work tomorrow 42 mile round trip.. I'm not going to stop."

Sincerely,
LT William M. Slabonik
US Coast Guard (Retired)

Fun note: the surname Slabonik means "Free Man." Bill now signs his e-mail updates to me as Free Man

Read Bill's continuing adventure in Inspirational Update from Bill
And how the Lieutenant became the Captain in Reader Successes Endure - Next Update From Bill.

Labels: biking, disc, fix pain, injury, readers inspiring story, shoulder, spirit, upper back

Permalink | 1 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Books with more:

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

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

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

Permalink | 3 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Upper Back Exercise and Neck Pain Prevention Too

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.

More From Fitness Fixer:

• Is Bad Martial Arts Good Exercise?
• Throw a Stronger Punch (or Push a Car or Stroller) Using This Back Pain Reduction Technique
• Improve Stretch and Strength With Better Kicking
• Muay Thai in Her 90's
• Muay Thai Monks on Horseback
• Rocky Movie Computer Fight Simulation
• Rocky IV and Head Injury
  
• 2006 Black Belt Hall of Fame - Black Belts and Black Tie
• 2006 International Martial Arts Association Weekend
• 2007 Black Belt Hall of Fame

Labels: fix pain, injury, martial arts, neck, partner exercise, posture, shoulder, spirit, upper back

Permalink | 8 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Improve Stretch and Strength With Better Kicking

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.

Previously:

• Thai Boxing

Related Fitness Fixer:

• Fast Fitness - Hidden Source of Groin Pulls
• Fast Fitness - Don't Shorten Hip When Stretching Hamstring
• Black Belt Hall of Fame - Black Belts and Black Tie
  
• Muay Thai Monks on Horseback
  
  

Labels: disc, fix pain, hamstring, hip, injury, knee, leg strength, leg stretch, lower back, martial arts, neck, partner exercise, posture, shoulder, spirit, upper back

Permalink | 5 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Quick, Feel-Good Upper Back and Chest Stretch

Today 37 new students were waiting when I came in to teach yoga. I was their New Year's Resolution. Most were sitting bent over forward, rounding their back to stretch. When I walked through the gym to get to the teaching room, I walked past a gym full of New Year's Resolutions, all bent over forward straining to stretch, bent over their stair machine and bent over their treadmill. They were lying on the floor face-up rounding forward and they were standing bent over, face-down. Many were doing The Stretch You Need The Least. Everyone looked like the same unhealthful, bent-over posture that you already know causes back pain if you do it over your computer and steering wheel. I mentioned that bending over forward to stretch and exercise, although popular, and ingrained, and dogmatically and almost universally taught, is not what they needed.

Previous posts have shown how this bending does not give the best exercise or stretch: Sitting Badly Isn't Magically Healthy by Calling It a Hamstring Stretch and Common Exercises Teach Bad Bending, and is not healthy during daily life: How Often Should You Be Healthy? and promotes the same bad bent forward habits you started with that cause pain: Breasts Causing Upper Back Pain is a Myth.

What is needed is to get used to holding the body in healthful straighter ways during daily life and during exercise and stretching. In the post Better Achilles Tendon Stretch I showed how to get a better leg stretch without bending forward. Following is a nice upper spine stretch you can do while lying down to relax. Try this:

• Lie on your back over a pillow or an article of clothing comfortably placed under your upper back between your shoulder blades. Start with your hands by your sides.
• If this hurts, stop and see what to do in the following three paragraphs.
• Don't put the pillow under your head or neck, just your upper back.
  
• Let your upper back drop backward toward the floor.
• Notice the feeling of the upper spine no longer rounding forward.
• Relax and breathe. The stretch should feel good.
• To increase the stretch, bring both arms by your ears. You should be able to raise your arms without arching your lower back or feeling pinching in the shoulder.

If you are not able to lie on your back without lower back pain, the usual reason is tightness in the front hip muscles. Do the Instantly Better Hip and Quadriceps Stretch on each leg to loosen the front of the hip.

If you are not able to lie on your back without upper back or neck pain, the usual reason is tightness in the front chest muscles and over rounding in the upper back. Do the pectoral (chest muscle) stretch described in Fixing Upper Back and Neck Pain.

If you have osteoporosis check with your doctor before doing the pillow stretch. One of the intended benefits of this stretch is to help prevent the rounding that contributes to the tendency to fracture already thin bones.

Many people spend so much of their life rounding forward, that their spine loses the mobility to bend backward, or even, in many cases to straighten enough to just lie flat and stand straight. The point of this stretch is to "unround" the upper spine and get it to relax and extend backward (arch safely) in the other direction. This stretch helps to "undo" the constant forward rounding that tightens the upper body and contributes to many pain syndromes. It is important to regain the normal flexibility to be able to straighten the upper spine enough to stand and sit and exercise in healthful straight position.

Drawing copyright from the book Stretching Smarter Stretching Healthier

Labels: chest, fix pain, neck, shoulder, stretch, upper back, yoga

Permalink | 1 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Safer Overhead Military Press

Two weekends ago we were in Virginia on a medical consult with colleagues. One of the docs is an osteopath and collegiate team doc who really knows his orthopedics. I enjoy our discussions of the best techniques to retrain healthy muscle use. He mentioned that he discourages his team members from the overhead military press (lifting weight directly overhead with both arms). He mentioned the frequent, serious shoulder and neck injuries this exercise often produces. The numbers show that he is correct.

I asked his opinion on my view that these injuries usually only occur when allowing mal-positioning, such as the forward head and rounded shoulders, and overarching the lower back. Read how these positions produce injury in the posts Breasts Causing Upper Back Pain is a Myth and Change Daily Reaching to Get Ab Exercise and Stop Back and Shoulder Pain.

My colleague reminded me that the military press is not usually functional, which means that except in cases like my carpenter husband Paul who lifts substantial objects overhead all day at work, people do not lift overhead for daily life. Given the large number of injuries the overhead press causes, he'd rather people strengthen in other, more functional ways.

It is true that most lifting overhead is not directly over the shoulder, as in the military press. However, most people need to lift things overhead as part of daily life, and often use the overhead press during recreation, as in the photo, at right.

Here is how to do the overhead press in ways that I believe can keep it healthy, and how to transfer that healthy positioning to lifting laundry, groceries, babies, and other daily weights:

1. Before doing lifting, use the quick check in Thumbs Can Show Tightness That Leads to Upper Back Pain.
2. Do the pectoral stretch described in Fixing Upper Back and Neck Pain.
3. Make sure not to arch your lower back to lift your arms, as explained in Change Daily Reaching to Get Ab Exercise and Stop Back and Shoulder Pain

Keep your shoulders down and your chin in, then lift. By keeping head and shoulder position from drooping forward, you will prevent the shoulder bone from squashing your rotator cuff and other soft tissue when you lift your arm. Use the healthy shoulder, neck, and lower back, positioning in #1,2, and 3 (above) for every overhead lift, from pulling off a shirt, to putting away groceries, to lifting children, putting things on shelves or overhead racks, to lifting weights. You will get better exercise and prevent injury.

Labels: arm, injury, lordosis, lower back, neck, neutral spine, shoulder, strength, upper back

Permalink | 2 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Getting Stronger Without a Gym

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Photo by quailwood

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

Permalink | 0 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Change Daily Reaching to Get Ab Exercise and Stop Back and Shoulder Pain

When you lift your arms, do you lean back and increase the arch of your lower back? It is unhealthy body mechanics if you do - photo at right.

Arching your back to raise your arms reduces the stretch and exercise on the shoulder, and increases loading on the lower spine joints and soft tissue.

Do you arch your back to raise your arms? Try this to tell:

• Stand and reach as high as you can overhead.
• Notice if you lift your ribs and lean your upper body backward.
• Check if you stick your backside out in back, or do the opposite and push your hips forward. Both increase the lower back arch which increases load on the joints and soft tissue. You may feel a familiar pressure in the lower back.

Increasing lower back arching may occur automatically, and may seem "natural," but it is not healthy. Wetting your pants is natural too, but you have to learn to control it. To reduce the unhealthy overarching:

• While standing arched, bring ribs back down to level, and tuck your "tailbone" under you to straighten your hip.
• The motion is like doing an abdominal crunch standing up. Don't bend your upper body to the front, just "crunch" (or flex) the lower spine to reduce the overarching.
• Your lower back moves backward, and your "tailbone" tucks straight under you so it is not tilted out in back.

Now reach up overhead again holding the new straighter position. Feel how the reach needs to come from your shoulder instead of your lower back. Keep shoulders relaxed downward, and don't crane or tense your neck.

It is common for people to push their hip forward, thinking that is what is meant by "tuck the hip." That makes arching worse. Don't push your entire hip forward, just roll the bottom under. This motion is also called a "pelvic tilt." See the tilt in the photo in post Throw a Stronger Punch (or Push a Car or Stroller) Using This Back Pain Reduction Technique.

Watch other people when they reach overhead for exercise and daily life, and notice fitness magazines picturing overhead moves. See how often they increase the arch of their lower back. It is important to be able to tell when positioning is unhealthy, not just follow a bunch of strange rules about how to stand and exercise.

The next time you are in the shower washing your head, notice if you are leaning backward, and remember this article and concept. Reduce the overly large lower back arch back to normal/neutral, using the tucking/tilting move described above. Feel how the pinching pressure is reduced in your lower back. The muscles that work to flex your lower spine forward enough to reduce over-arching are your abdominal muscles. By preventing unhealthy over-arching each time you reach up, you will get built-in abdominal exercise and better shoulder stretch, and stop the source of much "mystery" lower back pain.

See more helpful info in:

• Fixing the Commonest Source of Mystery Lower Back Pain
• What Abdominal Muscles Don't Do - The Missing Link.

Labels: abdominal muscles, arm, facet joints, fix pain, lordosis, lower back, posture, shoulder, strength, stretch, upper back

Permalink | 0 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Are You Making Your Exercise Unhealthy?

Most people know that sitting badly at your desk, as in the left-hand photo, is unhealthy.

• It is easy to see that he is rounding his back forward.
• He is not sitting up.
• His ear is far forward of his shoulder (even with his shoulders so rounded that the shoulders are forward too).
• He is jutting his head and chin forward.
• The weight of his head is straining on the muscles and joints of his upper back.

The post Breasts Causing Upper Back Pain is a Myth explained how the bad body ergonomics of rounding forward is a common cause of upper back and neck pain, often mistaken for "stress," even contributing to pain down the arm as you slump the weight of your upper body on nerves that go down the arm, compressing them. The post Disc Pain - Not a Mystery, Easy to Fix showed how the forward bend to the spine squeezes your discs of your neck and lower back, gradually degenerating them and forcing them outward, which is called herniation.

Now look at the right hand photo of the bicyclist. The rounded forward positioning is the same. It does not magically become healthy because you are calling it an exercise. It is just as unhealthy whether you are at your desk, on a stationary or real bicycle, on an exercise ball, motorcycle, or in the car.

What to do instead is simple. Sit up. Don't round your back. Are you rounding forward reading this right now? In a chair at your desk:

• Pull your chair in closer to the desk.
• Put your hips all the way back against the seat back.
• Lean your upper back against the seat back, not your lower back.
• Gently bring shoulders and chin back.
• Have your chair far enough in to rest your arms on the desk. Don't crane your wrists to type. I will write more about wrist pain. It should not come from keeping arms comfortably on the desk, which keeps the weight of your arms from hanging forward on your neck.
• Don't push your lower back against the seatback. Many seat backs are rounded outward so that you have to sit bent forward if you rest your back against them. If the seat back is concave, put a small cushion (or loosely rolled towel or shirt) about as small as your forearm in the space between the seat back and your lower back. Do not press against the roll - that makes the useless to stop back pain.
  

Don't tighten and strain to sit straight. It is common to be so tight from a lifestyle of forward rounding that sitting straight is not comfortable. Do the pectoral stretch in Fixing Upper Back and Neck Pain, then use the wall test in the same article to check if the stretch worked. On a bike, unless you are in a high level race, straighten up. It is simple. Healthy.

Why exercise in unhealthy ways? Watch people at the gym and in life. Notice how often fitness publications ask you to practice being bent over forward. Instead, get free built-in back muscle exercise and prevent strain and pain just by sitting with healthy positioning.


More on lumbar rolls and how to make sitting comfortable, in the book Fix Your Own Pain Without Drugs or Surgery

Labels: disc, hip, lower back, neck, posture, practice of medicine, shoulder, sitting, upper back, wrist

Permalink | 6 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Thumbs Can Show Tightness That Leads to Upper Back Pain

Healthy body position should be a natural easy part of daily life, not something you stop work to do as an exercise.

Unhealthy body positioning is more ingrained in daily life than many people realize. How can you tell your own positioning? Watch other people. See how many spend all day rounding their shoulders forward over their work and steering wheel, then further round their shoulders to stretch by bending forward, and do the unnecesary stretch of bringing one arm across the front of their body, then exercise by bending forward for crunches and leg lifts. The result of all this chronic forward bending is overstretching the back muscles and tightening your anterior (front) muscles. Many patients who come to see me, even those who can touch their toes and put one foot behind their head are so tight that they can't comfortably stand or sit straight. This is not just a problem of looking bad. It affects the health of your joints and muscles.

The post Breasts Causing Upper Back Pain is a Myth explained how overstretched back muscles and tight anterior muscles can promote the "forward head" and bent forward position that causes so much muscle strain and damage to the discs and joints of the back, shoulder, and neck. Many people "do neck exercises" never understanding that the exercises do not solve the problem of the chest muscles being too tight, and do not address how to hold healthy position. They stretch, believing that stretching prevents sports injuries, or that it is for doing contortions, but never know that the point of healthy stretching is to restore normal resting length just to stand and move in everyday life. They stretch in ways that exacerbates the problem they started with - rounding forward.

Try this to see if you round your shoulders:

• Use the photo, upper left, for reference.
• While standing with arms loosely at your sides, glance down at your hands.
• Do your thumbs face each other, as in the photo, instead of facing forward? That shows that tightness in front of your chest has rotated your arms inward (round shoulders).
• Does it feel awkward and unnatural to pull shoulders back so that your thumbs face forward? The point is to make it comfortable to be right, not force good positioning, which makes more strain.

To fix the problem, try this:

• Check your thumb positioning while standing comfortably.
• Do the pectoral stretch, taught in the post Fixing Upper Back and Neck Pain.
• Right after doing the pectoral stretch, drop your arms loosely by your sides and glance down at your thumbs again.
• If you did the pectoral stretch right, your thumbs should now be facing more forward because you fixed the tightness that rounds shoulders and rotates arms inward.

During the day, notice your thumbs when standing to see if you are rounding. Notice other people's thumbs. Watch their upper body positioning when they sit and stand and let it remind you to use healthy straight habits so that you do not get tight in the first place.

Recommended Book:

• Fix Your Own Pain Without Drugs or Surgery

Related Fitness Fixer:

• How Doctors Use The Wall Stand
• Nice Neck Stretch
• Fixing Upper Back and Neck Pain
• Quick, Feel-Good Upper Back and Chest Stretch
  
• What Does Stretching Do?

Labels: arm, chest, disc, fix pain, hand, neck, posture, shoulder, stretch, upper back

Permalink | 1 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

The Stretch You Need The Least

Probably the most common stretch I see in gyms and fitness classes, beside hurting your discs by bending "wrong" to stretch hamstrings, is bringing one arm across your body in front, pictured at left. Although this posterior shoulder stretch is one of the most common stretches, it is one of the least necessary.

You probably already have over-stretched the back of your shoulders by slouching all day over your desk, steering wheel, and other work. Sitting and standing with rounded shoulders wears on the neck and shoulder joints and is a common source of upper back and neck pain. One of the most unnecessary things you can do is to further stretch the back of your already overstretched shoulder. Going to a gym to do it does not magically make it healthy.

The best way to stretch your shoulders for health is to skip the posterior shoulder stretch. Instead, stretch the front chest (pectoral) muscles, shown in Fixing Upper Back and Neck Pain to help straighten and "unround" your shoulders and upper back.

Here is a check for how well you can straighten your shoulder positioning for healthy standing and sitting:

• Can you put your hands on your hips and bring your shoulders back?
• You should be able to pull your shoulders back without tilting your shoulders forward, or arching your lower back, or jutting your head forward.
• When you can pull your shoulders back easily with your hands on your hips, try pulling your shoulders back with your hands clasped together behind your back. Keep chin in and shoulders back.

Occasionally I give my cerebral palsy patients the posterior shoulder stretch (above left illustration) if they have an overly pulled-back position. More helpful to these patients is The Ab Revolution, a method I developed where you move your spine from an overly arched lower back, so common in many people, to a less arched position, reducing much back pain. The muscles that bring the lower spine forward are the abdominal muscles so you get a free ab workout going about your day just keeping healthy straighter spine position. The post Fixing the Commonest Source of Mystery Lower Back Pain shows how easy this is.

It is rare to need the posterior shoulder stretch. Yet, notice how often you see it in fitness publications and gyms. Instead of doing stretches to practice rounded posture, use stretches like the pectoral stretch to restore healthy position. Then use the healthy positioning as a free built-in stretch for all you do so you don't get tight in the first place. That's fitness as a lifestyle.


Illustration and more ways to change stretches to be healthy are found in the book Stretching Smarter Stretching Healthier

Labels: abdominal muscles, arm, chest, fix pain, hamstring, lower back, posture, practice of medicine, shoulder, sitting, stretch, upper back

Permalink | 0 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Fixing Upper Back and Neck Pain

The post Breasts Causing Upper Back Pain is a Myth explained that a tilted-forward position of the head and neck, called a forward head, is not the normal tilt to the neck. It is an avoidable slouch that causes much upper back, neck, and shoulder pain, and pressures the discs of the upper spine.

Do you have a forward head? Here is a test, called The Wall Test:
If you can't put your back against a wall and comfortably touch the back of your head to the wall too without overarching your back or raising your chin, that usually indicates that the muscles in front of your chest are so tight that they restrict normal standing. The resulting bent-forward position of your neck creates large forces on the muscles and joints of your upper spine as it strains to hold the weight of your head forward of the supporting spine instead of above it.

Being too tight to stand and sit upright instead of slouching forward is common, even among people who stretch regularly. The reason is that they usually practice stretching forward, rarely stretching the front muscles by stretching back. In turn, holding your body bent forward instead of upright perpetuates tightness.

To lengthen the front chest (pectoral) area needed to stop the slouching-tightness cycle, use the photo above left for reference and try this:

• Use the photo above as a guide. Stand facing a wall. Bend one elbow out to the side and put the inside surface of that arm against the wall, as in the left-hand photo.
• Turn your whole body and feet away from the wall, letting the wall brace your bent arm behind you, as in the right-hand photo.
• If you are doing this stretch right, you will feel a nice stretch in the front of your chest.
• Keep your shoulders down and relaxed. Breathe. Smile.
• Hold a few seconds, breathe in, change arms, and breathe out while stretching the other side for a few seconds.
• Now drop both arms and turn to stand with your back against the wall again. If you did this pectoral stretch right, standing straight with the back of your head touching the wall should now feel more natural and comfortable and no longer a strain.
• When you walk away from the wall don't slouch forward again out of habit. Hold the easy new healthy positioning for everything you do.

Remember that the wall test (checking if you are straight against a wall) is a test - it is not an exercise that fixes anything, it tells if you are doing the pectoral stretch and two more stretches to correctly restore anterior muscle resting length. This pectoral stretch is one of three techniques to stop upper body tightness that prevents standing and moving in healthy ways.

Three stretches together help more. After doing this pectoral stretch and seeing the results with the Wall Test, add the next two stretches to restore resting length to be able to stand comfortably:

2. Nice Neck Stretch - trapezius stretch
3. Friday Fast Fitness - Better Shoulder and Triceps Stretch

After each stretch, check yourself again with the wall test to see if you did them in the way intended - to work. Then, remember that head and body position is voluntary. Hold your head up and shoulders back softly all the time. The stretches just make it possible YOU are the one to hold it there and retrain your body. No adjustments or bracing does that.

Do the pectoral stretch first thing every morning and several times every day to learn healthy positioning. Then check yourself with the wall test to see if you did it in a way that worked. Use this pectoral stretch and the two other stretches (nice trapezius stretch and better triceps stretch) instead of the stretch where you stand in a doorway or corner to stretch both arms at once, and instead of pulling your straight arm(s) behind you - what I call, The Stretch You Need The Least.

The three stretches will stop pain for the short term. In fact, if you don't feel improved right away, you're doing them wrong. Then for the fix, use them to allow you to hold healthy upright positioning. By not letting your head hang forward all day, you will no longer need constant pills, adjustments, or treatments for pain. You will stop the cause.

If You Have Questions:

• Photo and details and complete sequence of restoring healthy body position, in the book Fix Your Own Pain Without Drugs or Surgery - What to do to fix many sources of pain and injury, step-by-step.
• Post to get the purpose of this pectoral stretch - Pectoral (Chest) Stretch - The Most Common Mistake in the Best Shoulder Stretch
• How Doctors Use The Wall Stand Test
  
• Click the labels under this post for all Fitness Fixer posts about that topic, for example, for posts about neck pain, click "neck," for healthy sitting, click the label "sitting." For all posts explaining discs or fixing pain, click those labels.
• Even more information is in the replies to the many reader comments below this post.Before asking more questions, see if your answers are already here
  

Labels: chest, disc, fix pain, neck, posture, shoulder, sitting, stretch, upper back

Permalink | 38 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Breasts Causing Upper Back Pain is a Myth

A news report in the MMD Newswire echoed a prevalent but luckily, false belief, that breasts cause back pain. The good news is that means you do not have to be forced into back pain, and there are things that you can try quickly to relieve it yourself.

Many of my patients who come to me with upper back pain say that their doctor or other health care practitioner told them the reason is the weight of their breasts. I show them how they can stop the pain by checking and correcting other factors that are the real underlying cause.

One of the biggest mistakes in science is confusing correlation for cause and effect. There are so many people with back pain that it is easy to blame anything happening at the same time, like having breasts or a big belly in front, or carrying backpacks in back, or groceries on the side.

1. Men have the same or higher incidence of the same upper back pain.
2. Women who are smaller, or have had breast reduction and double mastectomies can have the same pain.
3. If straps are binding or cutting into your neck, that can obviously be uncomfortable, so check and fix that.
4. However, the specific cause is not the breasts, since men and smaller women can get the same kind of pain.
5. If you round your shoulders, spend time with the upper body bent or rounded forward, or have a forward head, the shifted weight is a common contributor to upper back pain.

Look at the photo, above left. Letting your neck tilt so that your ear is forward of your shoulder, as in the photo, is called a forward head. It is not the normal tilt to the neck. It is a weak and injurious bad posture. The angle of the jaw should rest comfortably above the center-shoulder. The forward head is the source of a surprisingly large percentage of upper back and neck pain. The classic distribution of this pain is across both shoulders, up the neck, down the upper back, sometimes causing numbness or tingling down the arm. Do you have a forward head? Here is a quick test:

• Stand comfortably with your back against a wall or doorway.
• Touch your heels, your behind, and your upper back against the wall.
• Does the back of your head touch easily?
• If your head is forward of the wall, it is likely that you have a forward head.
• See if you have to crane your neck to bring your head back to the wall.
• See if you round your shoulders
• Check if you lean back to try to straighten up. Straightening should come from the upper body, not by increasing the inward curve of the lower back (hyperlordosis), which can hurt - Fixing the Commonest Source of Mystery Lower Back Pain.
  

If you have to force or crane your neck back to touch the back of your head to the wall, or you lean backward to try to straighten, you are too tight to be straight. That means you may walk around all day, and exercise, and sit, and do all you do with bent forward positioning, which can cause pain.

Often, people who think they "stand up straight" find that they are straining their beck and shoulder back, which causes upper body pain. The problem is that they are too tight to stand with healthful position. Strained straightening and the many postures that are mistaken for straight but are not will hurt as much as slouching.

If you did the wall test, see if you are slouching forward from the forward head, or from the upper body, or both. See if you have to lean backward to straighten up. See if it is an effort to stand roughly straight, instead of normal comfortable muscle length. Those are more causes of pain, mistaken for the size of the chest. In posts to come I show two quick techniques to lengthen the front chest muscles to let you stand straight easily and comfortably. Then you will not have a forward head or rounded shoulders:

1. Here is the first thing to try to restore resting muscle length to make standing straight possible and comfortable: Fixing Upper Back and Neck Pain.
2. Here is the second - Nice Neck Stretch
3. Try those two gently, with the aim of restoring ability to straighten out comfortably, then use the straighter position, so bent forward position does not hang on your upper back muscles, making them hurt. The stretch does not fix the pain - using them to be able to straighten out during the rest of the day is the key.
4. To help unround a rounded tight upper back, gently experiment with Fast Fitness - First Morning Stretch and Quick, Feel-Good Upper Back and Chest Stretch
5. Check if you spend much time rounding or bent forward - Are You Making Your Exercise Unhealthy?
   
6. Check to see if you lean back instead of straightening - Neutral Spine or Not?

The idea is, that no matter your size, use your own muscles to prevent uncomfortable positioning. By restoring healthier upper body positioning and use, you will get built-in back muscle exercise all day. Standing straight instead of allowing your upper spine to compress under your weight will stop your pain plus give free calorie burning exercise.

If you find that lifting your chest with your hands takes the strain away, then you can do the same with your upper body muscles. It is free exercise to use your muscles to prevent your own body weight from squashing you. Pull your chin inward and shoulders back in a relaxed way by unrounding the upper back. Then weight of your head and upper body will not pull forward on your upper back muscles, making them ache.

The same applies to carrying a grocery bag, a child, or any load. Don't slouch under the load, use muscles to keep healthy comfortable position.

Fitness Fixer reader Ness left a comment on the post Fixing Upper Back and Neck Pain:

"I am very large breasted and have always been. It's a very difficult thing to find a comfortable bra. For the past few months, I've been having upper back pain. I felt like I needed to "crack." Every night I complain, and nothing works!

"Except this. haha, you have NO IDEA how pleased I am that this "fixing upper back and neck pain" stretch works.

"Now, I'm not going to pretend that I think I'm perfect now because I've been sitting straight for about 10 mins and it is starting to get a little tiring.
"But, I don't feel ANY pain.
"I'm amazed.

"Was that it?? Really my DDDs have nothing to do with it???"

See the wall test - How Doctors Use The Wall Stand.

No exercise is more important for your joint health than holding up your own body weight, no matter what or where it may be. Your size does not force you to slouch. It does not require long or repeated treatments or sessions or teams of professionals.

I run classes for motivated, bright participants who want to empower themselves - see my web page for CLASSES - www.DrBookspan.com/classes.

There is specific helpful information in my replies already here to the many reader comments below this post. Before asking more, see if your answers are already here in the comments below.

Labels: chest, fix pain, myths, neck, posture, shoulder, upper back

Permalink | 20 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Is Bad Martial Arts Good Exercise?

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.

Labels: hamstring, hip, injury, knee, leg strength, leg stretch, lower back, martial arts, neck, posture, shoulder, strength, stretch, upper back

Permalink | 12 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment