Fast Fitness - Handstand Rows

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Fast Fitness - 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

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Fast Fitness - Step Up To Handstand

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

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

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

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

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

More on handstand:

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

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

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Fast Fitness - NoCost Hand Strength and Rehab Equipment

Here is Fast Friday Fitness -hand exercise without rehabilitation equipment.

One of the exercises against repetitive strain syndrome is to exercise the muscles that open the hands. There are expensive commercial devices you can buy for this. One consists of a special glove with weights and pulleys to resist your ability to open your hand. Or you can:

1. Hold the fingers of one hand closed with your other hand
2. Open the hand against the resistance of the hand holding it closed
3. Do as many as comfortable. Repeat with the other hand. Vary intensity and number.

If you want to go high-tech, put a rubber band around the fingers instead of using your other hand. Push each finger in a variety of ways.

Labels: fast fitness, fix pain, hand, repetitive strain, strength

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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

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Mr. America Urges Goodness and Responsibility

Mr. Jim Morris is the 1973 AAU Mr. America and 1996 Mr. Olympia Masters Over 60. He is now 72. Mr. Morris is a vegan bodybuilder who reminds people that body building involves selflessly looking outward to do good, rather than focusing only on appearance and commercialism. He urges real nutrition through healthy food, rather than artificial chemically produced supplements, and healthy movement rather than harming yourself to gain physical looks or heavier lifts.

Mr. Morris looked over my Ab Revolution book, and wrote to me that he wanted to order several copies for his clients. He wrote, "You are the first person I know of to finally get it right."

Later, after reading Health and Fitness in Plain English he wrote, "I have a copy of "Health and Fitness in Plain English" I just received and every page I open to, I say, 'I wish I said that,' and then add, 'I have been saying it for years.' Glad someone finally put it all into print and in one volume. Thanks, Jim Morris."

• Mr. Morris' web site - gymmorris.com
• Posts with vegan and vegetarian information - World Vegan Day is November 1 and World Vegetarian Day.

Labels: abdominal muscles, aging, education, nutrition, readers inspiring story, spirit, strength

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Forearm, Upper Body and Hand Exercise

During the part of the year that we live in the United States, we have a luxury - a washing machine. You put clothes in it, and it washes them for you. You come back later, hang out the clothes, and the Earth dries them for you. Luxury.

Recently the old washing machine could not wash any more. I always appreciated the machine, but I rediscovered something else. Washing clothes by rubbing them on a washboard, and wringing water from heavy canvas work jeans and martial arts uniforms is vigorous hand and arm exercise.

Occasionally, sources for arthritis information state that if you have arthritis of the hands or wrists, avoid wringing clothes and instead, purchase a tool that squeezes the cloth to remove the water for you. However, it is not use of the hands or a wringing action in itself that causes arthritis pain. Use of the hands improves function, improves joint health, improves the strength that allows you to accomplish more without strain, and is an important part of arthritis prevention and management.

Good use and exercise of the hands does not mean to move the area no matter how much it hurts. Misuse - bad movement habits - is often the culprit in wear and pressure on the area. Instead of craning the wrist and fingers back and levering the wringing action on the finger joints, wrist and base of the thumb, use the muscles of the hand and forearm, as well as the entire arms to power the wringing action. Start with fun gentle squeezing, let the hands warm through real life use, and continue to improve function through use.

There is no need to keep straight wrists or splint them to keep them straight. Splinting may temporarily reduce pain, but reduces strength and function which often leads to bigger problems. It is not a healthful or useful solution to, "limit the patient to limit the pain." Use your body, have fun, be active, and be able to move for normal daily function. Use healthful body mechanics and the actions will be far more likely to build you than injure.

More posts on strengthening the hands are on the way.

More on distributing weight on muscules of the arm and hand instead of compressing the joints:

• Fast Fitness - Prevent Wrist Pain During Pushups and Cooking
• Fast Fitness - Upper Back, Shoulder, Triceps, Arm, Wrist, and Hand Stretch
• Stronger Pain-Free Wrists When Biking
• Fast Fitness - Quick Wrist and Forearm Stretch

Also click the labels under posts for more on each topic.

Labels: arm, arthritis, hand, spirit, strength, wrist

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Fast Fitness - Get in Shape with Good Deeds

Here is Friday Fast Fitness - get in shape with true fitness:

Labels: fast fitness, performance enhancing modality, strength, weight loss

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Kettlebells Without Spine Injury

Reader Dan wrote:

"Hello, I'm writing as someone who has incurred a training-related lower back injury and who has great interest in your words on hyperlordosis. I am hoping that you might shed some insight on how to achieve a neutral spine while doing "kettlebell swings." This is the exercise that has caused me back pain, and I would love to return to working out with kettlebells, but am not sure how to do so without creating too much lordosis. Any ideas? I appreciate any assistance you can provide and thank you for your contributions! Take care,
Dan L"

Kettle bells (also called kettle balls and many other names) are usually ball-shaped weights with a handle. A variety of sizes is shown in the photo below, along with a medicine ball for comparison. Kettle bells were long used in various martial arts and cultural festivals and contests before being rediscovered for modern weight lifting. In general, you lift, swing, and move them to do various weight lifting exercises.

When lifting and swinging kettlebells (and any weights) overhead, don't lean your upper body backward (photo below left). Leaning backward is often mistakenly done to "balance the weight" and make the lift easier. Another common body movement to make lifting overhead easier is changing the tilt of the pelvis (hip) so that it juts forward in front and outward in back (same photo below left). Leaning the upper body back and tilting the pelvis are not necessary to balance a load - your own muscles can hold the load, and in fact, that is the point of lifting the weights. Not only are they not necessary, they increase the inward curve of the lower spine. Increasing the small normal small inward curve (lordosis) to a large curve (hyperlordosis) increases compression on the joints (facets) and soft tissue of the lower spine. The same overarching is the hidden cause of back pain in women who lean back and/or tilt the hip trying to offset the load of a pregnancy - Back Pain in Pregnancy - and Why Men Can Get It.

The photos of spine position swinging the heavy medicine ball are from the book Healthy Martial Arts. My black belt student Christopher demonstrates. This is a similar overhead motion as swinging kettle bells by the handle. In the left photo, Christopher allows the hip to tilt forward in front (and out in back) and his upper body is tilting backward relative to the lower spine. In the right photo, he holds neutral spine. In the right hand photo you can see the change to reduce the overarching to neutral spine. The belt line changes from tipped downward in front to level.

Leaning backward and overarching are not helpful adaptations as sometime thought, are not unavoidable, and are not limited to pregnant women. Overarching (hyperlordosis) is a common bad posture, and an often missed source of back pain. It can be easily prevented by using your muscles to hold neutral spine. The post Prevent Back Surgery shows photos of hyperlordosis compared to neutral spine during many activities.

Neutral spine while exercising with kettle bells is the same as neutral spine during anything else - just hold your spine position. Holding neutral spine is the same as not slouching your shoulders or not letting your mouth hang open. You just voluntarily move to and hold desired position.

Neutral spine is not done by tightening or clenching any muscles. It is done by moving your hip and lower spine the same way you move your arm to scratch your nose - without tightening, just moving it to where you want it.

Helpful posts to see and learn neutral spine while swinging kettlebells, babies, and all other fun weightlifting:

• Prevent Back Surgery
• Overlooked Ab Muscles in Overhead Lifts
• Neutral Spine in 5 Seconds
• Fast Fitness - How to Feel Change to Neutral Spine
• Back Pain in Pregnancy - and Why Men Can Get It
• Using Abdominal Muscles is Not Tightening or Pressing Navel to Spine

The book Healthy Martial Arts (www.DrBookspan.com/books) has a section on lifting and swinging kettlebells, medicine balls, and other weights. Keep breathing, smiling, and have fun. You can swing weights to be stronger and healthier, without injury.

Labels: exercise ball, facet joints, fix pain, kettlebells, lordosis, lower back, martial arts, neutral spine, performance enhancing modality, pregnancy, strength

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Fast Fitness - Fixing Your Handstand to Neutral Spine

Last week's Fast Fitness showed a movie of how to step up into an easy handstand and get back down. This week shows a common pitfall - letting your lower spine sag under gravity - and how to fix it and hold neutral spine.

My student Dennis, Olympic medalist in wrestling, demonstrates:

1. Step your foot up behind you high onto a wall, then the other.
2. For the first 5 seconds of the movie, Dennis allows the lower spine to overarch (increase the inward curve) under the pull of gravity, a bad posture called hyperlordosis. It is not the normal inward curve, it is an easily changed bad posture.
3. At second 5 he changes the tilt of the hip and lower spine back to neutral spine. The action is like doing an abdominal crunch to bring the spine and torso just forward enough to be straight.

This technique practices the muscles and positioning for straight standing, making it better than just a handstand. If you want to gain abdominal strength, using neutral spine uses those muscles. An important difference in Fitness Fixer exercises is that they are not only exercises alone. All the techniques I developed are supposed to be used to train muscle function and positioning for when you stand up and walk away.

Use neutral spine, not only for handstands, but all you do. Examples are in Prevent Back Surgery.

Labels: abdominal muscles, arm, fast fitness, handstand, lordosis, lower back, neutral spine, posture, strength, video/movie

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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How Strong Is Your Arm? - Readers Find Out

Readers have been writing in since the post How Strong Is Your Arm? They wanted me to know that they first thought they were strong because they lifted weights or went to exercise class, then realized for the first time that they thought they can't improve what they say, do, think, or eat, and were not strong as a human being.

Reader Dean e-mailed that he had previously thought that stress made him eat, and that it was "just natural." Then he realized that he was eating on purpose because he was angry, and thought it was his only way of showing he could do anything he wanted. Then he realized that doing that wasn't strength and control, but lack of it.

Reader Ivy wrote:

"Once again, I am back at the farm house/animal sitting for a few days. Little did I know that my "strong arm" was going to be put to the test. Last night while preparing my evening meal, I opened the pantry door and what do I see but a chocolate/rocky road cake covered in M & M's. I quickly shut the door then, after a few minutes, temptation took over. I decided that maybe I could have just a little wee bit, knowing full well that one piece would not suffice, I would want more - once a chocoholic, always a chocoholic. Who should come into my mind but you Dr Jolie and your post "How Strong is Your Arm" plus the fact that I had (replied to that post with a comment) telling the world that my arm is strong. Needless to say, the cake stayed where it was. On reflection, I still cannot believe that, after all this time, I would even consider eating such food. I would like to assure you and your readers, that should I have given in to temptation, I would be standing up and saying that my arm is not as strong as I thought."

Ivy had also written me in the past asking what to do when people insist that you should eat their unhealthful cooking at get togethers or give her gifts of unhealthy junk food. When Ivy politely refused bad food and explained she wanted to be healthy, the people were not understanding or enlightened, but disrespectful and insistent. I e-mailed Ivy that she could try accepting the bad food with a smile and a sincere thanks for caring to give a gift, and give it away to someone who wanted it. Ivy sent this update:

April 4
"I thought this little story might interest you. It is amazing how ones life can change.

"Marrianne, a friend of mine has just phoned to tell me that she has become a vegetarian. She is a little younger than me (note - Ivy is 71) and has not long returned from a trip to Nepal. She told me that while there she ate with the people and you would be aware that these people are vegetarian. Since returning to New Zealand she made the decision to change her way of life. She now appreciates the difficulties I have come up against these past two and half years, by that I mean re well meaning friends who make negative comments etc. I gave her the piece of advice that you gave me re being given food that you don't want to eat - accept it gracefully and give it to someone in need.

"I was also able to pass on advice re foods she needs to eat to keep healthy which pleased her. As I mentioned to you a week or so ago, healthy food has become my passion.

"Tomorrow we are having a get together here in the village. It is to be held out doors so hopefully, the weather will be kind. No doubt there will be lots of cakes, muffins and scones to eat plus wine to drink. I am going to make up some snacks of walnuts, raisins and blueberries. As I said to Marrianne, one has to harden up when people make rude comments re what one eats. I, personally, make no remarks re what others eat, I would like to think that others give me the same respect.

"Finally, over the past few weeks, on two separate occasions, women who I have not seen in over a year, have made remarks just how well I look. One of them said and I quote "Ivy, you exude health." This, of course, pleases me."

This e-mail arrived after the get-together:

April 5
"There were 27 residents at the get together and not one of them tried my walnuts and blueberries. Instead, they ate the pastries, cakes, pavlovas, desserts etc.. In saying that, I will say this "no wonder we have such a high obesity problem in this country."
"Hugs Ivy"

Then this:

April 9
"I truly believe that I have beaten my addiction to chocolate. This morning I am feeling a little distressed re the news that my dear friend Joan who will be 87 in a couple of months time, had a fall. She will be fine, her only injuries being bruises plus a grazed elbow. One of my neighbours called by to give me a couple of chocolate cookies her words being, "You will be feeling upset about Joan and I know how much you love chocolate." I took your advice and thanked her then, (did not eat them).

"In the past, those cookies would have gone straight in my mouth. Even though I was tempted to eat chocolate cake a couple of weeks ago, I truly believe that I have the addiction under control, in fact, I am patting myself on the back. Just had to share my little story."

Fitness does not mean going to a gym, then going out slouching, smoking, to eat unhealthful food, and thinking unkind things about other people. Fitness means making the many aspects of your person clean and healthy. Don't harm yourself with bad thoughts, deeds, actions, and taking in unhealthy things in your body.

If you want self control, exercise it to become strong.

Next post on this exercise - Health Can Occur on Weekends Too

Labels: mind, nutrition, readers inspiring story, spirit, strength

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

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

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

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

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Fast Fitness - Easy Handstand

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

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

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

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

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

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Gluteal Muscles Myth - Shaking The Dog's Paw

The post Spotting Back Pain During Running and Walking - What Do Abs Have To Do With It? showed the common and painful bad posture of standing with too much inward curve in the lower back, called swayback and hyperlordosis. A reader mailed me an article about gluteal muscles and asked what gluteal muscles have to do with it.

The article shows one kind of hyperlordosis, with the hip pushed forward. The drawing at right shows that hip-forward hyperlordosis position (right figure) compared to neutral spine (left figure). The article stated that the hip-forward posture was due to weak gluteal muscles, and that strengthening the muscles would fix the bad posture. The article gave a strengthening exercise of lying on your back and squeezing the "cheeks" of the backside together as if squeezing a coin between them.

Knowing muscle action will help you know why it doesn't work that way:

1. Your gluteal muscles are muscles of your backside. One function is to pull your upper leg backward, for example, when walking, to pull each leg behind you. The distance between the back of your hip and the back of your upper leg shortens.
2. If you use your gluteal muscles while standing (not tighten them, just use them to bring about movement) your hip will push forward. That is the opposite of correcting a hip that is forward in bad posture.
3. Squeezing the "cheeks" of the gluteal muscles together is training a different movement direction than either pushing your hip and leg forward or back.
4. Another fallacy is that tight gluteal muscles pull the hip so that it pushes forward into bad posture. It is true that tight hip muscles in front will change the tilt of your hip. People with anterior tightness cannot easily bring the leg behind them, which hurts stance and gait. Gluteal muscles cannot get that tight unless you have tetanus. Gluteal tight enough to push the hip forward a few inches would be so tight that you would not be able to sit down. You would tear your backside like splitting your pants.

The key point is that strengthening a muscle does not make it move your body or change your position. If you strengthen your arm, for example, your arm does not automatically wave around or raise over your head. Your arm only moves when you make it move. Strengthening your gluteal muscles will not move your hip for you. Even if strengthening did make any body part move on its own, gluteal muscles would cause a forward hip, not correct it.

Think of asking a dog to shake hands with you. If you want the dog to move his paw up to shake your hand, you do not strengthen his leg and paw. You train the movement and the voluntary desire to bring about the action.

Standing, walking, and running in hyperlordosis is a major cause of lower back pain. Some people stick the backside out in back and others tilt the upper body back with the hip thrust forward. Both increase the inward curve of the lower back and painfully pinch the lower back structures. Although some fitness information and advertisements represent overarching as attractive, even something to deliberately do, it is an unhealthy and weak posture, making it unattractive and undesirable.

Strengthening muscles is good and helpful and fun and healthy, and so on. Strengthening gluteal muscles or any other muscles will not automatically make you stand in healthful position. Stronger muscles do not make you move. You can change to healthful position right now without strengthening. These posts show how:

• The post Friday Fast Fitness - Neutral Spine in 5 Seconds shows a quick movie.
• Prevent Back Surgery shows places to look for overarching and why it is so important to prevent it.
  
• Neutral Spine or Not? shows two kinds of hyperlordosis to watch for, with links to photos how to stand in neutral spine.
  
• For a stretch for the anterior hip: standing - Hip Stretch While You Strengthen Legs and lying down - Fast Fitness - Quick Relaxing Hip Stretch
  

When you hear that you need various strengthening exercises to correct posture, think of shaking a dog's paw.

Labels: abdominal muscles, fix pain, lordosis, lower back, myths, neutral spine, posture, running, strength, walking

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

Here is Friday Fast Fitness - strengthen inner legs, thighs, arms, and core, while practicing neutral spine with a friend. Better than putting hands up on a bench or exercise ball My students Johanna (1) and Diana (2) demonstrate:

1. Partner 1 lies face up with bent knees
2. Partner 2 does pushups on Partner 1's knees while holding neutral spine, not letting the lower back sag and arch downward. Partner 1 holds legs stable and does not let knees wobble.
3. Switch and repeat.

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

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

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

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Are You Stronger Than A 67 Year Old Lady?

My student Leslie is 67 years old. She has been working with me for several years. Click the arrow of this 30 second movie to watch her knock off 30 pushups.


At around the 25 second mark of this short movie, enjoy the reaction of the student who will appear at right.

Leslie holds straight neutral spine position. She does not let her lower spine sag, or her head and neck sag downward. To see a movie to practice how to change overarched hyperlordotic sagging spine to neutral spine for pushups, click Fast Fitness - Strengthen by Changing Your Plank.

Leslie says hello to all the readers and that she is strong with such great positioning due to my classes and emphasis on being able to hold up your own body weight in healthful positioning for regular daily life. I hope to post more of Leslie's and other students' happiness and strength.

Bookmark this post. Open it every day and do your 30 pushups with Leslie.

Labels: abdominal muscles, aging, arm, hip strength, neutral spine, readers inspiring story, strength, video/movie

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Fast Fitness - Plyometric Partner Bench Press for Valentine's Week

Here is Friday Fast Fitness - Have fun together as you strengthen arms, shoulders, chest, back, wrists, and core, while practicing neutral spine, speed, teamwork, and cooperation in a fun plyometric partner bench press.

1. Lie face up with both arms held upward to support partner (white karate uniform).
2. Partner rests shoulders on your hands and holds straight body position on toes (black uniform). Partner uses abdominal muscles to hold neutral spine without letting the lower back sag.
3. Push your partner up and down with your hands in a bench press motion. To add plyometric training, push partner strongly and quickly into the air (right). Catch them lightly, bending your elbows upon contact. Switch places and repeat.
   

Use common sense and springy light touch to reduce unhealthful impact in both partners. You can improve strength and speed without hurting joints and connective tissue. I will post more on plyometrics in posts to come.

Labels: abdominal muscles, chest, elbow, fast fitness, hand,