We planted a vegetable garden this Spring in my mother's field. Hard exercise changed a rocky ruined area into beautiful food. It's getting cold now. Readers asked how the garden turned out. Here are stories:
We are harvesting. By afternoon it is dark with a large orange moon overhead lightning our work. The hard work keeps us warm.
When we first cleared the area, we filled the wheelbarrow with concrete slabs, pried and dug from the patch. Paul bent to grasp the wooden handles. When he rose lifting the handles, the barrow was so heavy that both handles snapped, scattering everything. Paul is strong.
We sawed and attached new handles. Much good squatting, bending, rising, lifting, and reloading. Paul bent well (upper body fairly upright, knees bent over heels). At almost seven feet tall, he needed to bend low. When he rose, the wheelbarrow handles were so high in the air, the front of the barrow tipped forward so far that contents spilled everywhere.
Hoeing a field, breaking concrete, digging stumps and rocks, bending and reaching, lifting right, hauling bales of compost, and all the rest that gardening can involve, is more exercise than you can get in a gym. It combines hard natural movement using much of the body at once to give muscular and cardiovascular exercise. To pull weeds, you squat well, both heels down, loosen roots with a digging stick, grasp weeds at the roots, rise pulling slowly. Over and over. Rise and bend. Garden prayer.
We were amused that more grew outside than inside the garden. Outside, tall weedy grasses grew everywhere. Inside, small seedlings grew into low herbs and vegetables. Deer and other animals didn't eat our garden. We had built a 6-foot fence around it, but deer can easily jump that height, and small burrowing groundhogs and rabbits can wiggle through or under. What we had done is leave them a bushy meadow near the garden area, with plenty of food and hiding places. They didn't need to bother the garden. The municipality cited my mother for a violation of some kind for not mowing her "lawn." Sorry Mom! We paid it for her.
Large slabs of concrete lay buried, inches below the surface of much of the area we wanted to plant. We needed to break and remove them. I managed to lift Paul's huge sledgehammer, swinging it with both hands over my head. It came down on the slab and bounced. I tried a wider stronger swing. It was heavier to swing than it looked. It bounced off the concrete each time. I handed it to Paul. He swung it quickly with one arm, splintering the slab. We dug the dozens of new football-sized pieces and made a rock border for the flowers nearby.
We gardened without pesticides or chemicals. We hauled hundreds of pounds of compost that the municipality gives away free at the recycling centers. Thank you recycling center for all the good exercise, compost, and manure. Plants grew healthy and didn't need chemicals to fight insects. They could fight them from their own internal health - people can do the same much of the time from simple good health practices. Plants manufacture their own anti-inflammatories against disease. That is part of why eating vegetables and fruit is good for your own health against inflammation.
The work it took to eak out a few plates of vegetables for each meal reminded us of subsistence farmers - how worrisome it is to have to rely on what you can scratch out of your own soil. If we had to last the winter on what we grew, it would be a long thin winter. Much of the world does not sit around indulgently with fast food in the refrigerator. Many do not have refrigerators. Before spending money on junk food, then complaining you are too heavy, think. Save the money. Improve your health. Refraining from eating does not make anyone fat.
The tomatoes grew tall and long. They grew so much that we could not find the strawberries.
We are saving the seeds from the sweetest cantaloupe, the largest cabbages, and the most wonderful purple peppers and white eggplants for next year.
The wonderful Thai bamboo hoes we brought back with us have shrunk in our colder dryer climate, loosening the heavy metal shovel-heads so they tilt sideways with each overhead swing. We have been fixing them, then going back to hoeing. The ground will soon freeze. Hoeing is more upper back strengthening and work than anything in a gym, even more than all the pushups and handstands that I love. Bend knees, upper back upright, breathe in, swing up, breathe out, swing down. Over and over.
Saturday night was Halloween. The World Series was playing. Paul didn't want to disappoint me by not going out to see the fun going on for Halloween in the city, and would never have said anything. I put on a costume and sat with him to watch the game. It was a great evening. The next day I put on a scarecrow costume and we worked in the garden.
We were just two city kids, who grew up in urban slums. I didn't know about gardening, but we read, worked, learned from mistakes, and sweated under the hot sun and the cold evening air.
Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal feedback. Top students may apply for certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
"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:
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.
---
Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from fun ones. Before asking more, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, or in the Fitness Fixer Index.
Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books. Get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy.
--- Read and contribute your own success stories of these methods. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books. Limited Class spaces for personal evaluation. Top students may apply to certify throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. ---
For weightlifters who enjoy Olympic lifts, rows, cable cross-overs, curls, and all the other good stuff with endless heavy weight, you may like growing vegetables.
We have been tilling a vegetable garden from a rocky field at my Mom's. Seems her home was built on landfill. We had to sledge-hammer and pry concrete slabs - prodigious squatting, levering, clean-and-jerking, and hundred pound medicine ball throws over the just-built garden fence into a pile. Then lifting and hauling away the pile.
Carrying sand, earth, rocks, weed bales, tree branches as heavy as you can lift, over uneven rocky hilly earth back and forth from the truck, the field, and the new compost pile a hundred feet away for hours is functional weightlifting. Hours of repetition-maximum (RM) hoeing gives a harder abdominal, arm, and gluteal workout than it looks.
Healthline software still isn't uploading my own photos. At left above, a photo of a statue with too much lumbar curve/hyperlordosis to be healthy, but in general doing functional weightlifting. Use your muscles to prevent overarching like this when you swing a sledge, a kettlebell, or other weight. For Fitness Fixer posts on neutral spine and hyperlordosis, click the photo or here.
Over the winter while visiting home in Asia, my husband Paul and I went to a workman's shop. The store-keeps remembered us and smiled. The first time we went there years ago, they were so sure we were lost tourists, they took our shoulder and gestured at a restaurant. In the best Thai I could manage, I explained that Paul is a carpenter, has done forge metal work, and loves old-world tools, strong bamboo handles, and hand-hammered metal. They smile each year we return. In the US, we live in a crowded urban area with minimal bricked exterior in deep shade from surrounding buildings. Vegetable gardens don't grow. Paul wanted to plant my Mother's field - a brambled overgrown area.
In the Thai tool store, I explained with the words I knew that Paul was looking for a specific Thai tool, shaped like a backward shovel, that you use in overhead action, like a mattock (flat bladed pick).
Quickly, excitedly, word went from the store-keep, to her friend in the next shop, to the next, and next:
"Man who good to Mother of wife!"
The coconut telegraph was happy. We bought two heavy tools, called "job" in Thai. Both had thick lovely bamboo handles. One was giant sized for Paul, the other for me. Fun getting them through flights and US customs.
Mom had asked a local man what it would take to clear her field, and he told her a blowtorch, a machine plow, three men, and a week. Paul and I cleared it in one day in early April with a digging stick and the Thai hoe-shovels. The ground was half frozen. Six, or so hours massive exertion - first clearing brush and tall grasses, then hours of half-squats to seize handfuls of stalks, standing back up to pull them with grip strength. Then excavating slabs of concrete and discarded materials with a pry bar, the Thai digging tools, and bare armed weight lifting.
The packs of seeds we had scattered in assorted flowerpots, pans, shoeboxes, and containers sprouted over just a week into tiny plants - broccoli, cabbage, pea, hot and sweet peppers, strawberries, eggplants, and assorted spices. We have been learning about complementary planting - plants, just like people, who are better and healthier with specific other kinds of plants so that chemical fertilizer isn't needed. We are learning about plants that repel pests, instead of using insecticides.
We got a rain barrel to reduce water bills. We attached an old broken hose. The holes made it a natural soaker hose. We poked more holes and arranged it around the garden for drip irrigation. We don't know the water quality of either the rain or from the tap. We will send six dollars and a soil sample to an agricultural university for testing. Maybe other toxic things are in that landfill that we don't want the vegetables absorbing. Maybe commercial food factories have the same problem. Many things to learn.
Weeks pass squatting and sitting well to plant seedlings, still hitting buried rubble. More lifting and hauling. Each night we are too tired to worry or think anything bad. We are barely were able to lift hands and feet. I consider what people for thousands of years have been doing just for subsistence farming, day after day, year after year. I thought of Fitness Fixer success story Ivy and her story - Farm Work, Lifestyle Exercise, and Preventing Overuse Pain.
We thought we planted everything, then found a half pack of pea seeds left. Paul mentioned we didn't have one more container for them. I laughed, "we didn't have a pot to pea in."
Ideas:
If you're a tough vital strong person, or want to be, dig a garden.
If you don't have anywhere to dig one, hook up with some nice elder who wants one, a community group, Habitat for Humanity, or someone who doesn't want to exercise like this but still wants a garden.
Contact your community to see about organizing parents and children out in sunshine for functional exercise doing good for all.
If you only want one hour a day of hard total body fat burning muscle building exercise, only plant a small vegetable garden.
No need to buy fancy tools, use what's handy.
If you don't want to exercise so hard, try a single pack of seeds in some potting soil in almost any container on a sunny windowsill. A chance to get the vegetables you like.
Fancy individual peat pots and seed starters aren't essential; a simple pack of seeds can get you a pan full of fragrant oregano, said to be very healthful. It gives a gasp of wonder (to me) when seedlings actually sprout.
Before the 2008 election, a video appeared by Roger Doiron (I don't know him, just liked the video). He asked the next President to grow a garden. It did come true. Here is his viewpoint of getting your own garden started, showing various bending, occasionally good:
Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from fun ones. Before asking more, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, or in the Fitness Fixer Index.
Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books. Get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy.
Fast Fitness - Double Arm Strength, Endurance, Balance, Stability, and Free Inversion Table
Friday, May 01, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Fast Friday Fitness - build on the handstands you have already been doing with Fitness Fixer.
Do a handstand against a wall. An easy way is to stand with your back about a foot or so from a wall, crouch down and put one foot, then the other, high on the wall.
With feet still against the wall, begin to lean your weight until you are holding yourself up on only one arm.
Hold as long as you can. Breathe normally. Leave shoulders relaxed, not tight. Switch to the other arm.
"Sorry my video requires a lot of phone power so I had enough to snap a shot before I have to charge it. Angle is kinda odd as it is on a "tv" with my wallet ingeniously holding it in a position so it can see me instead of the floor lol. I need to go and buy a camera.."
If you like lifting weight overhead for upper body strength, you don't need to wait to go to a gym, or to get weights or equipment.
How to get started with a wall handstand - Wall Handstand Success With Liz. Use your brain before trying this. Be safe and careful, obviously.
--- Read and contribute your own success stories of these methods. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal evaluation. Top students may apply to certify throughDrBookspan.com/Academy.See Dr. Bookspan's Books. ---
Here is the latest fun update from Robert Davis on losing fat and increasing strength and flexibility. He has been sending success after success using Fitness Fixer techniques:
"I have noticed a big improvement since I started in my flexibility. I noticed this the other day when I realized just how much farther I can stretch now. I could not lower completely into a sitting squat without tipping before. Now I can and it sure as heck makes working in really low areas for a longer time very easy without resorting to bending (bad weighted flexed) which I refuse to do at all now.
"I have seen increases in all areas of stretching. I see that it just takes time and consistency.
"Since I am a musician, I carry a guitar bag everywhere. I decided to make a "portable" gym. Got a pull-up bar that goes in doors (removes and mounts quickly) and my guitar bag. That is all I need. I fill the bag with random objects to add weight and strap it on (like a backpack) and do everything from the books with increased weight and also pull-ups of all kinds of grips/variations for more challenge. You mentioned the wall handstand pushups and this reminded me of that. I strap my weighted bag to my back and do those now too. No need to go to the gym =P
"PS my friends think the wall stand pushups are "nuts" and can barely hold themselves up in position when they try. Who needs the military press? I actually found this to be much harder because of all the stabilization. Unlike a machine or barbell, it feels like a lot more muscles are coming into play a bit more when doing them like that. Seems so with almost all the body weight exercises. No wonder aside from cosmetics, weight training has no functional use outside of the gym. Takes a bonehead like me to realize this!
"Oddly, since I had changed my diet from meats and animal to Vegan (inspired by the body builders you have shown on the Fitness fixer) I have had people comment that I seem to be getting bigger! This is kinda funny because I actually lost some mass and it is mostly body fat from the weightlifting diet (now changed to vegan) and doing these exercises in place of weight training. They often do not believe me when I say I have not touched the bench in 3 months or so now. =0"
Watch for Fast Fitness this Friday to see what Robert Davis will show you next.
---
Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from cool ones. Before asking, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, and archives at right.
Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. Become certified through the Academy - Dr.Bookspan.com/Academy BrowseDr. Jolie Bookspan's books on her website.
Fast Fitness - Add Balance, Stability, and Portability to Military Press - Handstand Pushups
Friday, April 17, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Fast Friday Fitness - If you like lifting weight overhead for upper body strength, you don't need to wait to go to a gym, or to get weights or equipment.
Get more exercise, practice balance, and shoulder and arm stability, with handstand dips:
Do a handstand against a wall. An easy way is to stand with your back about a foot or so from a wall, crouch down and put one foot, then the other, high on the wall.
With good judgment, do upside down pushups (dips).
Vary the depth of each dip, speed of each, speed you can do a number of dips, and distance of your hands from the wall to vary the exercise.
Robert Davis sent in his video of how to do handstand pushups. Blogger is still having trouble uploading visuals. Click this link to watch it:
he writes, "I replaced the military press with this. It is portable for one! Ever notice how pronounced male gymnasts shoulders and arms are? They do things like this:) "
Robert was a weightlifter who hurt his back with conventional lifting (bad bending and overarching the lower spine). He rehabbed quickly with Fitness Fixer techniques and has been sending in his success stories one after the next. He writes:
"This was not a very problematic exercise as I had been used to destroying my shoulders with mega high weight LOL. But this is different because of the engagement of muscle groups that control stabilization.
"But yeah, I have been doing that in place of military press and see how it is more beneficial as the stabilizers have to kick in more then being benched or using a machine.
"Once again thank you and I think people should really listen to you. I am glad I did because I have no need to go in to get scanned or be told I need surgery or something silly ;)
"Like I said I am not into pro body building, I just did it to stay "fit" and look fit as I thought it was. But after going thru this, it is not all that functional to pound out reps of heavy weight and not be able to do a plank or walk/sit straight. I lifted enough just to have "lean muscle" but not to be huge. But I realize now this is easily done safely with your methods and I do not need a gym."
--- Read and contribute your own success stories of these methods. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal evaluation. Top students may apply to certify throughDrBookspan.com/Academy.See Dr. Bookspan's Books. ---
Fast Friday - Oblique Core Strength and Balance on the Ball
Friday, March 20, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - develop strong side abdominal and back muscles, and train balance at the same time:
Put both hands on the floor and step one foot up onto an exercise ball of any size
Step the other foot up to the ball and turn sideways. Hold straight (upper photo). Hold and feel all abdominal and back muscles working strongly to hold yourself straight.
Work up to raising one arm.
Don't let body sag (lower photo). The idea is to train your muscles to be able to hold straight against the resistance of your own body weight during daily life when walking and everything you do. If your muscles don't have the strength or endurance to hold you, then you will sag onto your joints.
At first, you may need help to steady the ball. Practice until you can steady it with your own muscles, balance, and stability.
Instead of sitting on an exercise ball, remember that you might already sit much of the day. Get up and use an exercise ball for more functional, active, and healthful things.
Send in your photos of your fun successes using the ball in ways that train function. Exercise ball success story already in progress from Robert Davis. See his first story - Fixed Injuries, Got Strong, With Functional Exercise.
---
Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from selected ones. See if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, and archives at right.
Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right.
Reader Robert Davis has been enthusiastically sending in success story after success story. He sent his first story of fixing a painful back injury from weightlifting - Fixed Injuries, Got Strong, With Functional Exercise.
Since getting the idea of using healthy daily movement instead of injurious movement during daily life and exercise, Robert stopped major causes of his injuries. He has rapidly been getting strong using fun functional exercise, and improving function. He has been taking ingenious photos using his camera phone. His stories and photos will be posted. He is sending them in fast and furiously. I enjoy hearing how he experiments with each thing, and sees and understands how they work so he can incorporate the concepts into daily movement, not just going thorough arbitrary motions and calling it exercise.
We are still having problems uploading photos and movies for you - since October. It has been a time-intensive and difficult process to get any photos at all uploaded for these posts. It has changed and delayed a few of the articles I wanted to write for you. When Healthline staff can help, they will. Robert generously made a page to store visuals so you can link and see them. Start with:
Watch how he uses a healthful squat for real life, not just 10 times in a gym.
Robert writes:
"Make a mess and pick up only one item at a time via a squat. If you need to clean the house only pick up one item at a time. The constant up/down motion of the squat etc should get the heart rate up for a good cardio workout. Why not kill two birds with one stone? Tired of the stationary bike? Do this for a half hour:)"
Good bending is natural built-in cardiovascular exercise, leg strength and stretch, Achilles tendon stretch, hip strengthener, warm-up for stretching, and back pain prevention, since it stop one major cause of back pain - bad bending (bent over at the waist or hip). Done properly, good bending strengthens knees and does not cause knee pain. The Related Posts below explain more. For all Fitness Fixer articles on each topic, click the labels under this post - for example, "Achilles stretch."
Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from fun ones. Before asking, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right and the Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. SeeDr. Bookspan's books.
Fast Fitness - Even More Core With No Forward Bending
Friday, March 13, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Fast Friday Fitness - build on a previous Fast Fitness for increased strength of body and core. Strengthen almost everything with this fun move.
Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from fun ones. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Read inspiring success stories of these methods and send your own.For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books. For personal evaluation take a Class. For top students, certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy.
Hold a straight pushup position. Extend one leg 90 degrees out to the side. Your foot and knee point straight to the front.
Keep that leg and foot parallel to ground, not sagging downward to the floor.
Do pushups keeping the leg held straight out to the side and off the floor.
Don't let your lower spine or neck droop under your weight. Keep your back straight by tucking your hip under to straight, not rounded position. See how to hold neutral and prevent compressive spine sagging - Fast Fitness - Strengthen by Changing Your Plank.
Readers - send in your mpeg movies of doing this and all your other successes.
---
Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from selected ones. Before asking, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, and archives at right. Send in your success stories, and read inspiring success stories of these methods.
Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right.
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - learn how to use your abdominal muscles for what they need to do in real life - hold your spine in neutral position, even against resistance:
Lie flat, face up. Legs out straight, as if standing up. Hold a weight a few inches above the floor with arms outstretched, elbows by your ears.
Lift the weight a few inches up and down, using your abdominal muscles to prevent your ribs from lifting up and to keep your back from leaving neutral position.
Keep your lower back close to the floor. This is the key to making this into an effective and functional abdominal retraining exercise. Also prevent the weight from touching the floor (don't drop baby on head).
This video was made by David from Belgium with his baby Aiko, born one year ago today, Feb 27th 2008. Happy Birthday Aiko!
Click the arrow to run. If the video does not load, here is the URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8k4zDwce7bE
Watch how David bends well with heels down and upright body to pick up baby Aiko, and gets up again without using hands.
Press your lower back toward the floor and feel your abdominal muscles working strongly. The point of this retraining drill is to have fun learning to hold your spine stable against resistance, learn how to reduce an overly large lower back arch using the floor as a guide, then transfer that knowledge to standing and lifting overhead. This is how your abs are supposed to work in daily life when standing - to prevent the spine from overarching (overextending backward).
For more on using neutral spine in real life see the third expanded edition of The Ab Revolution™.
--- Read and contribute your own success stories of these methods. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal evaluation. Top students may apply to certify throughDrBookspan.com/Academy.See Dr. Bookspan's Books. ---
Partner 1 (white uniform) does biceps curls and other lifts using partner 2's weight.
Partner 2 uses core and whole body strength and endurance to hold straight positioning. Partner 2 can face up, down or sideways, in each case using appropriate muscles to maintain straight position. Breathe normally.
This Fast Fitness can be done with willing friends, children, pets, and furniture.
Partner 1 uses core and abdominal muscles to stand with neutral spine rather than leaning backward, and whole body strength to support weight of partner 2.
It is a myth that you must lean back to offset a carried load. You get intense and functional abdominal muscle workout by using them to pull you forward to neutral standing position.
I once used this exercise of holding straight horizontal position (partner 2's part) while helping out a friend who is a stage magician. I filled in for his absent assistant for the floating lady illusion. I was too tall for the apparatus. It usually holds your body out flat using struts reaching from head to thigh. It reached only to my midback. I wound up holding my weight myself, from hips to feet - high above the stage - while trying to look hypnotized. More on this, someday, in another post.
I make posts from fun mail. Before asking more questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. Try fun stuff, then contribute! Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy. ---
Fast Friday - Functional Oblique Abdominal Muscle Practice - Holding Straight
Friday, February 06, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - use your oblique abdominal muscles functionally - to hold yourself straight against resistance:
Stretch out on the floor. Turn to the side, standing on one hand and one foot
Hold straight as long as you can. Don't sag. Feel how to hold yourself straight and relaxed.
For more, raise the top leg. Keep body straight, instead of bending forward at the hip. Don't increase the inward curve at the lower spine when you raise the leg. Keep neutral spine.
Photo is of one of my students, Dr. Hanley Owen, a physician from Fairbanks Alaska, who took a workshop with me at the Wilderness Medical Society meeting 2008. Check my web site CLASS page for workshops this summer - DrBookspan.com/classes.
Instead of curling forward and sideways to exercise abdominal muscles, this drill retrains oblique abdominal the way you need them in real life - to keep you straight instead of slouching to the front or side when carrying shoulder bags and other loads, including yourself.
---
Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from selected ones. See if your answers are already here by clicking links and archives. Read success stories of these methods and send your own.
Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer e-mailed to you. Click "updates via e-mail" - (trumpet icon).
Fast Fitness - High Core Strength For The New Year
Friday, January 02, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Fast Friday Fitness - a quick fun one to fulfill New Year's Resolutions for increased strength of body and core. Strengthen almost everything with this fun move that my students affectionately call "peeing dog" -
Hold a straight pushup position. Keep elbows slightly bent, not locked.
Lift one leg straight out to the side, as if over a bicycle. Hold as long as you can. Jump to switch other leg out to the other side.
Hold neutral spine throughout (pictured at center). Don't let lower spine or neck droop under your weight (gray shirt second from right). This post shows how - Fast Fitness - Strengthen by Changing Your Plank.
Send your photos or short movies of your successes doing this. Coming soon - an even more fun and challenging maneuver once you can do this one.
Photo is from my workshop at the 2007 International Black Belt Hall of Fame.
---
Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from selected ones. See if your answers are already here by clicking links and archives. Read success stories of these methods and send your own.
Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer -Click "updates via e-mail" - (trumpet icon) upper right.
Fast Fitness - Don't Shorten Hip When Stretching Hamstring
Friday, December 19, 2008
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Fast Friday Fitness - Get a more functional hamstring stretch, and a built-in posturally helpful functional stretch to the front of the hip at the same time.
When lying on your back to stretch your hamstrings by lifting one leg:
Lie flat. Keep the leg you are not lifting flat on the ground, not bent at the knee and hip, or with upper body curled and neck craned, as pictured.
Don't let your pelvis and hip round under you. Don't let your backside curl up off the floor.
Keep your hip, leg, back, shoulders, and head relaxed, flat, straight, touching the ground.
It is a myth that you must bend your knee to protect your back. If you must bend your knee to protect your back, how are you supposed to stand on one leg and lift the other in real life to climb stairs, kick, and even run and walk, without curling into bent over, old-looking, tight, injury-producing position?
When stretching your hamstrings, remember function. Why practice a position that is rounded, tightening, and detrimental to how you move when you stand and extend your legs. Get stretch by lengthening you body enough to be able to straighten out.
Send me your photos of fixing this stretch. Doing is the best learning. I will publish the photos in a reader success post to come.
Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from selected ones. See if your answers are already here by clicking links and archives. Read success stories of these methods and send your own.
Have The Fitness Fixer e-mailed to you, free. Click "updates via e-mail" - Health Expert Updates (trumpet icon) upper right column.
Readers say they enjoy hearing how to do things, but often remain reluctant to try them. Here is a fun story of success trying a wall handstand for the first time.
Reader Liz first wrote how she fixed her lower back pain using Fitness Fixer methods. I enjoyed getting her organized intelligent e-mails showing how she paid attention to why things worked and how to apply them. I asked her if she did the wall handstand - for fun, and to strengthen in functional ways.
Liz wrote:
"I read your reassuring posts about this but it still looks scary. I'm just not used to being physical, being raised to be "Ladylike" although I'm trying all the time to push my boundaries. I liked your description of you leaping up from your desk and doing a handstand. That marvelous description has stuck in my mind. One day I shall try it, you are very inspiring."
"All you do is put your hands like a pushup on the floor and step your feet up on a chair or wall behind you. "The post has a short movie."
Liz replied:
"I shall try it! First I must visualize myself doing it a few times, and watch the video a bit more too. When I watched it I tried to feel my own arms and legs doing the same movements. I find that helps when I attempt something very new. Also I like the idea of trying it on a chair first, or perhaps I'll work my way up a wall, low at first.
"And after all that I just did it. Felt very odd, never felt like that before. My head full of blood, my arms wobbly (working on the upper body strength) all my tummy and thigh muscles working very hard to keep me straight. I had a few false starts and tried it with each leg, very badly. I'm not strong enough to do it very close to the wall, when I get better at it I expect I will be able to."
I was so happy. I wrote to Liz:
"I am thrilled with you (again).
"Thank you for your faith and trying this. Quick, just snap a photo - a camera phone photo e-mailed to me is fine - anything so that I can throw this up on the Fitness Fixer success stories.
"I never knew that so many people were just not trying the handstands. They write, and sigh, that it is for other people, not them. I am writing this all precisely for them - the very people who need it most - to build the strength, body knowledge, and self confidence that modern fitness removes.
"Enjoy this. Grab bunches of photos. I'll do the work of sorting them out."
Liz replied:
"Hello Dr Jolie, "I found a clear spot, in the hall, where my husband could get a clear shot of me doing a handstand. I was concentrating really hard, and my face was bright red from all my blood pooling in my head, so no smiling face for the photo I'm afraid! I did a downward facing dog first to get comfy with the top down bottom up feeling, then up I went and I held it for a good 25 seconds too!
"I'll work on the other photos.
"Hope you can use this, if it's the wrong size let me know and I'll resend. "Happiness, liz."
What a great handstand. Look at that great neutral spine. Feet so high up on the wall. So much so easily and quickly. What a success.
I wrote to Liz that I was proud of her for trying things that build the strength, body knowledge, and self confidence that modern fitness with arbitrary artificial movements and little sets and reps removes.
Liz replied:
"So true, I felt very proud of myself! I'm going to do it again right now!"
Click the label "handstand" under this post for all posts teaching how to learn various kinds of handstands.
---
Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from selected ones. See if your answers are already here by clicking links and archives. Read success stories of these methods and send your own.
Have The Fitness Fixer e-mailed to you, free. Click "updates via e-mail" - Health Expert Updates (trumpet icon) upper right column.
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - Strengthen and increase endurance of hands, fingers, and forearms.
Farmers Carry - Hold a heavy briefcase, suitcase, bucket, grocery bags, or other weights with a handle. Hold arms down at your side (or out to the side to add shoulder exercise.) Babies and children love to be swung (safely) forward and back in slings and other inventive carriers held in farmers grip.
Finger Carry - Hold (non-living) items down at your side, to the front, and out to sides with four fingers, three, two, then each one. Don't tighten your hand. Learn to apply strength in relaxed manner. When lifting with one arm, stand straight and get built-in core stabilization exercise, instead of leaning to the other side. You don't need to lean to counter balance the weight - use your muscles instead.
Pinch grip - Increase different grip ability by holding the weight pinched between the pads of your fingers instead of resting the weight inside the curled fist. Hold a book or heavier weight down at your side with 'pinch grip.'
Photo uploads still not loading. Several posts and reader stories have been postponed. Grip techniques on today's Fast Fitness are (hopefully) easy to visualize. Click the photo credits to see them on Flickr.
---
Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from selected ones. New questions will make their way to the top of the schedule in about 2 months. Check if your answers are already here by clicking links and archives. Read success stories of these methods and send your own.
Have The Fitness Fixer e-mailed to you, free. Click "updates via e-mail" - Health Expert Updates (trumpet icon) upper right column.
Sedentary Lifestyle Linked to Teen Emotional and Behavioral Problems
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
A study of physical activity in more than 7,000 teenagers found that inactivity is associated with emotional and behavioral problems.
Teens with less than one hour of moderate to vigorous physical activity a week had more symptoms of anxiety, withdrawal, depression, sleep problems, rule-breaking behaviors, attention problems, and somatic complaints (body pain).
Study author Marko T. Kantomaa stated in an American College of Sports Medicine news release, "Negative mental and emotional effects brought on by physical inactivity does not help young people ease into adulthood. Physical activity could be a highly effective and relatively easy way to help that transition and could, in addition, lead to establishment of lifelong healthy habits."
The study was published in the October issue of Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise - Kantomaa MT, Tammelin TH, Ebeling HE, Taanila AM. Emotional and behavioral problems in relation to physical activity in youth. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2008 Oct;40(10):1749-56.
Increase in physical activity is known to reduce incidence of depression and anxiety in both adolescents and adults.
This morning, the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released "The Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans." The guidelines describe, "the types and amounts of physical activity that offer substantial health benefits." In summary, adults need 30 minutes of moderate-intensity daily physical activity five days a week, and children should run and play at least an hour every day.
Regular exercise lowers the risk of heart disease, many cancers, osteoporosis, diabetes, Alzheimer's disease, depression, and other diseases. Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt said in a telephone interview, "More than 59 percent of adults don't get enough physical activity and a quarter of adults aren't active at all in their leisure time."
Guidelines for ages 6–17:
1 hour (60 minutes) or more of physical activity every day.
Most of the 1 hour or more a day should be either moderate- or vigorous-intensity aerobic physical activity.
Vigorous-intensity activity on at least 3 days per week.
Muscle-strengthening and bone-strengthening activity at least 3 days per week.
Guidelines for over age 18:
2 hours and 30 minutes a week of moderate-intensity, or 1 hour and 15 minutes (75 minutes) a week of vigorous-intensity aerobic physical activity, or an equivalent combination of moderate- and vigorous-intensity aerobic physical activity. Aerobic activity should be performed in episodes of at least 10 minutes, preferably spread throughout the week.
Additional health benefits are provided by increasing to 5 hours (300 minutes) a week of moderate-intensity aerobic physical activity, or 2 hours and 30 minutes a week of vigorous-intensity physical activity, or an equivalent combination of both.
Muscle-strengthening activities that involve all major muscle groups performed on 2 or more days per week.
Barry A. Franklin, PhD, national American Heart Association spokesperson and Director of Cardiac Rehabilitation and Exercise Laboratories at William Beaumont Hospital in Michigan, stated, "Numerous studies now suggest that if we can simply move people out of the lowest levels of cardiorespiratory fitness, it can have a profound (and beneficial) impact on public health." More information and downloads of federal guidelines - www.health.gov/PAGuidelines.
Use this Fitness Fixer column to see how to get healthful activity as part of daily life. You don't need a gym, a trainer, or equipment. Click the articles and archives in the list at right, use the search box at top right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. Read success stories of these methods and send your own.
--- Read and contribute your own success stories of these methods. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books. For personal evaluation take a Class. Top students may apply to certify throughDrBookspan.com/Academy.
---
Photo - Family meets guidelines on Morro Strand State Beach by mikebaird
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - rows to strengthen the upper body, practice balance and neutral spine, and avoid lower disc injury from bad forward bending.
Readers have been writing in, excited about doing handstands for the first time or improving the handstand they do to get whole body functional fun exercise. My student Danielle demonstrates:
Shift your weight to stand on one hand. Grasp a hand weight in the other hand
Do rows, and any variety of arm free-weight movements that you want to improve.
There is no need to bend over forward to do rows. It does not train functional posture, and unequally squeezes lower discs outward, which adds to degeneration and herniation forces that are common during bad daily sitting and unhealthy bending. You don't need more unhealthy things while exercising.
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - Dips upside down holding a handstand, for shoulder and arm strength, balance, agility, and fun.
Readers Dave, Nine-Volt Terry, and others asked about dips. You don't need weights and equipment to increase strength. Body weight can be used in many fun ways. Fitness Fixer has shown how to do an easy handstand, then last Friday featured a short movie to learn a regular handstand - Fast Fitness - Step Up To Handstand.
This week - use the handstand for more:
Hold a handstand the way you are safe and comfortable.
Bend your elbows to lower toward the floor like a pushup, then push to straighten.
Increase how deep you can dip and how many you can do and push back up again.
These dips are safer for the anterior (front) shoulder than conventional dips which are done by leaning or hanging on hands while upright, and bending elbows behind you to lower and raise. They can work like a Safer Overhead Military Press. Make sure you don't have glaucoma or uncontrolled high blood pressure before doing these. Breathe and stay relaxed instead of tightening.
To increase skills, work until you can do handstand dips without a wall.
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - learn to lift up to a full handstand, for shoulder, arm, and wrist strength, balance, agility, skill, and fun.
Previous posts showed how to step up to an easy handstand by putting one foot up high behind you on a wall or surface. Here is how to learn swinging up to full handstand:
Stand close to a secure surface.
Plop both hands on the floor about a foot from the wall and swing one leg upward
Use momentum of putting hands down and swinging leg up, to swing the other leg upward to the wall.
Click the arrow to run the short movie. Three of my students demonstrate three stages of learning this handstand:
Mr. Sosaku at right holds the finished stance.
Helen, center shows swinging up straight, bringing both feet to the wall.
Kimberly shows the beginning - placing hands and getting the idea of lifting legs upward.
Let your feet come to the wall and straighten your body, so that you do not curl your back against the wall. Work to increase strength and balance, so that you need the wall less and less, eventually holding straight handstand without the wall. Note the hand weight on the floor. Future posts will show weightlifting with one arm while in handstand on the other.
Fast Fitness - NoCost Hand Strength and Rehab Equipment
Friday, June 20, 2008
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Fast Friday Fitness -hand exercise without rehabilitation equipment.
One of the exercises against repetitive strain syndrome is to exercise the muscles that open the hands. There are expensive commercial devices you can buy for this. One consists of a special glove with weights and pulleys to resist your ability to open your hand. Or you can:
Hold the fingers of one hand closed with your other hand
Open the hand against the resistance of the hand holding it closed
Do as many as comfortable. Repeat with the other hand. Vary intensity and number.
If you want to go high-tech, put a rubber band around the fingers instead of using your other hand. Push each finger in a variety of ways.
"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.
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 Third edition, 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."
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:
Click the labels under each Fitness Fixer article for more on each topic.
--- Read and contribute your own success stories of these methods. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certifiedDrBookspan.com/Academy.
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - get in shape with true fitness:
"For attractive lips, speak words of kindness. For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people. For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry. "
- Audrey Hepburn (1929-1993) British Actress
--- Read and contribute your own success stories of these methods. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal evaluation. Top students may apply to certify throughDrBookspan.com/Academy.See Dr. Bookspan's Books. ---
"Hello, I'm writing as someone who has incurred a training-related lower back injury and who has great interest in your words on hyperlordosis. I am hoping that you might shed some insight on how to achieve a neutral spine while doing "kettlebell swings." This is the exercise that has caused me back pain, and I would love to return to working out with kettlebells, but am not sure how to do so without creating too much lordosis. Any ideas? I appreciate any assistance you can provide and thank you for your contributions! Take care, Dan L"
Kettle bells (also called kettle balls and many other names) are usually ball-shaped weights with a handle. A variety of sizes is shown in the photo below, along with a medicine ball for comparison. Kettle bells were long used in various martial arts and cultural festivals and contests before being rediscovered for modern weight lifting. In general, you lift, swing, and move them to do various weight lifting exercises.
When lifting and swinging kettlebells (and any weights) overhead, don't lean your upper body backward (photo below left). Leaning backward is often mistakenly done to "balance the weight" and make the lift easier. Another common body movement to make lifting overhead easier is changing the tilt of the pelvis (hip) so that it juts forward in front and outward in back (same photo below left). Leaning the upper body back and tilting the pelvis are not necessary to balance a load - your own muscles can hold the load, and in fact, that is the point of lifting the weights. Not only are they not necessary, they increase the inward curve of the lower spine. Increasing the small normal small inward curve (lordosis) to a large curve (hyperlordosis) increases compression on the joints (facets) and soft tissue of the lower spine. The same overarching is the hidden cause of back pain in women who lean back and/or tilt the hip trying to offset the load of a pregnancy - Back Pain in Pregnancy - and Why Men Can Get It.
The photos of spine position swinging the heavy medicine ball are from the book Healthy Martial Arts. My black belt student Christopher demonstrates. This is a similar overhead motion as swinging kettle bells by the handle. In the left photo, Christopher allows the hip to tilt forward in front (and out in back) and his upper body is tilting backward relative to the lower spine. In the right photo, he holds neutral spine. In the right hand photo you can see the change to reduce the overarching to neutral spine. The belt line changes from tipped downward in front to level.
Leaning backward and overarching are not helpful adaptations as sometime thought, are not unavoidable, and are not limited to pregnant women. Overarching (hyperlordosis) is a common bad posture, and an often missed source of back pain. It can be easily prevented by using your muscles to hold neutral spine. The post Prevent Back Surgery shows photos of hyperlordosis compared to neutral spine during many activities.
Neutral spine while exercising with kettle bells is the same as neutral spine during anything else - just hold your spine position. Holding neutral spine is the same as not slouching your shoulders or not letting your mouth hang open. You just voluntarily move to and hold desired position.
Neutral spine is not done by tightening or clenching any muscles. It is done by moving your hip and lower spine the same way you move your arm to scratch your nose - without tightening, just moving it to where you want it.
Helpful posts to see and learn neutral spine while swinging kettlebells, babies, and all other fun weightlifting:
The book Healthy Martial Arts (www.DrBookspan.com/books) has a section on lifting and swinging kettlebells, medicine balls, and other weights. Keep breathing, smiling, and have fun. You can swing weights to be stronger and healthier, without injury.
Fast Fitness - Fixing Your Handstand to Neutral Spine
Friday, May 16, 2008
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Last week's Fast Fitness showed a movie of how to step up into an easy handstand and get back down. This week shows a common pitfall - letting your lower spine sag under gravity - and how to fix it and hold neutral spine.
My student Dennis, Olympic medalist in wrestling, demonstrates:
Step your foot up behind you high onto a wall, then the other.
For the first 5 seconds of the movie, Dennis allows the lower spine to overarch (increase the inward curve) under the pull of gravity, a bad posture called hyperlordosis. It is not the normal inward curve, it is an easily changed bad posture.
At second 5 he changes the tilt of the hip and lower spine back to neutral spine. The action is like doing an abdominal crunch to bring the spine and torso just forward enough to be straight.
This technique practices the muscles and positioning for straight standing, making it better than just a handstand. If you want to gain abdominal strength, using neutral spine uses those muscles. An important difference in Fitness Fixer exercises is that they are not only exercises alone. All the techniques I developed are supposed to be used to train muscle function and positioning for when you stand up and walk away.
Use neutral spine, not only for handstands, but all you do. Examples are in Prevent Back Surgery.
Fast Fitness - Easy Handstand for Balance, Upper Body Strength -The Movie
Friday, May 09, 2008
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - a quick, safer way to try a handstand. Standing on hands has many health and strength benefits and can be easily practiced in this way.
My student Dennis, Olympic medalist in wrestling, demonstrates in this short movie. Click the arrow to watch the movie:
Stand with your back about a foot in front of a wall, and crouch to put your hands on the floor (avoid slippery surface)
Put one foot high up on the wall, then lift the other foot up too
To get down, step one foot back down, then the other
To see step by step still photos and more explanation, click the post Fast Fitness - Easy Handstand where David from Belgium shows the handstand plus how to add a nice overhead hamstring stretch.
Keep breathing. Smile. Relax. Send in your own photos of trying this. Be safe and have fun.
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.
"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.
--- Read and contribute your own success stories of these methods. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books, get certifiedDrBookspan.com/Academy.
Here is Fast Friday Fitness - if you have been afraid to try a handstand, here is a quick easy way to have success. You will strengthen your hands, wrist, arms, shoulders, upper body, and core, practice balance, and get blood circulating.
Crouch down near a wall (avoid slippery floor)
Put one foot high up on the wall
Lift up the other foot
To add a nice stretch on the hamstrings, lift one leg away from the wall into a wide split position in the air, as below.
If you have uncontrolled glaucoma or high blood pressure, ask your care providers first.
Click here to see a quick video showing how to change sagging spine to neutral spine.
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:
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.
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.
Squeezing the "cheeks" of the gluteal muscles together is training a different movement direction than either pushing your hip and leg forward or back.
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:
When you hear that you need various strengthening exercises to correct posture, think of shaking a dog's paw.
--- Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy.
Fast Fitness - Stronger Arms and Chest, and Core, Hip, and Leg Stability With A Friend
Friday, March 14, 2008
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - strengthen inner legs, thighs, arms, and core, while practicing neutral spine with a friend. More exercise than putting hands up on a bench or exercise ball.
My students Johanna (1) and Diana (2) demonstrate the beginning of this move. Description of how to progress follows the photos:
Partner 1 lies face up with bent knees
Partner 2 does pushups on Partner 1's knees while holding neutral spine, not letting the lower back sag and arch downward. Partner 1 gets entry-level exercise hip and core exercise by holding legs stable and does not let knees wobble. Higher-level exercise is described below the photos.
To increase core and hip stabilization training for both partners, Partner 1 tilts knees slightly to each side while Partner 2 continues pushups. Try both moving continuously side to side, and holding legs stable at an angle. Do not twist your spine.
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.
Fast Fitness - Plyometric Partner Bench Press for Valentine's Week
Friday, February 15, 2008
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - Have fun together as you strengthen arms, shoulders, chest, back, wrists, and core, while practicing neutral spine, speed, teamwork, and cooperation in a fun plyometric partner bench press.
Lie face up with both arms held upward to support partner (white karate uniform).
Push your partner up and down with your hands in a bench press motion. To add plyometric training, push partner strongly and quickly into the air (right). Catch them lightly, bending your elbows upon contact. Switch places and repeat.
Use common sense and springy light touch to reduce unhealthful impact in both partners. You can improve strength and speed without hurting joints and connective tissue. I will post more on plyometrics in articles to come.
--- Read and contribute your own success stories of these methods. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal evaluation. Top students may apply to certify throughDrBookspan.com/Academy.See Dr. Bookspan's Books. ---
Valentines Day is for everyone, not just couples. It is healthy to have active fun with family and friends too.
Monday's post Valentine Partner Pushups gives a fun partner exercise idea. Here are more variations for active fun with children and friends of many ages.
Babies and children love to move. They can hold their body weight. Get them started early. Don't let them lose this strength by making them sit still and eat. Get up from the table and play. That is Valentines Day love.
Try these with friends
This man is doing a partner handstand with his young daughter. It is a lot of good exercise and balance for both:
I will cover how to do this partner handstand in a future post. Send in your own photos of fun exercise with family and friends.
Exercising in social ways is healthy. Valentine's Day is this week. This week I will post several ideas for fun active partner exercise. Start with this version of partner pushups, then have fun making up your own.
Pushups give full body physical benefit when done with neutral spine. Here are two posts that explain how to tell neutral spine while holding a pushup position and how to correct an overarching lower back (hyperlordosis) to neutral spine:
Fast Fitness - Prevent Wrist Pain During Pushups and Cooking
Friday, February 08, 2008
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - Learn to use strength and good joint positioning instead of compressing the wrist joint during activities that put weight on a bent wrist.
Good positioning and strength is more effective than splinting wrists straight and restricting activity:
While sitting or standing, press your right wrist and hand backward strongly using your left hand. Feel the right wrist compress under the weight of the other hand.
Now use your right hand and forearm muscles to press forward against the left hand. You should feel the compression come off the right wrist.
Hold a pushup position. Use this technique so that, regardless of your weight, instead of letting your weight compress your wrists, you use your hand and forearm muscles. Keep weight distributed across your hand, not just on the heel of the hand.
Use this whenever you use your wrists - for weightlifting, for standing on your hands, for typing, driving, biking, playing piano, and during cooking and cleaning.
--- Read and contribute your own success stories of these methods. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal evaluation. Top students may apply to certify throughDrBookspan.com/Academy.See Dr. Bookspan's Books. ---
"I would like to take this opportunity to tell you that after suffering for many years from back (scoliosis) and neck (arthritis) pain, it was my good fortune to happen upon your website. I read every word, tried the movements and postures and found an immediate measure of relief from the pain that no doctor, chiropractor, physical therapist or massage therapist has been able to help (I am 56). I immediately ordered a number of your books, read them from cover to cover, gave them to my daughter and son-in-law and then ordered more for my son.
"I took your books with me to New Orleans, where I worked for 10 days as a volunteer building houses, and am happy to report the exercises and stretches allowed me to climb ladders, wield heavy loads and hammer nails without further consequence to my back and neck.
"As mentioned by most people, I found instant relief upon simply correcting the positions of my neck and back. I took the books to New Orleans with me and did most of the stretches, especially the side bending, back extension, hip and hamstring ones. I also took great care with my positioning with the construction work and lifting. "Before I found you, because I was in so much pain, I had stepped up my go-to stretching routine gleaned from years of aerobics and some yoga, which always included toe touching with straight knees and plow and all those exercises you say not to do. I thought it was good that I could touch my toes on the floor behind my head in a plow or my palms to the floor bending forward. Ouch!
"I've also been doing many of the strength-building exercises, trying to work up from the elementary to the more difficult. It's fun stuff and it feels SO GOOD!
"Thank you for putting so much information out there for the long-suffering public! Sincerely, Marla Black"
"PS - my daughter is a triathlete and she and her husband have been doing all the bad stretching and wrong postures. Her neck and back were starting to hurt. I gave them the books and they are already onboard and feeling the difference!"
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - fun challenge for body stabilization, strength, speed, and balance with a friend.
Stand facing a partner
Stand on one foot, pressing the other against your partner's raised foot.
Push, pull, surprise your partner with unexpected movement change, all while remaining balanced. Change to push toe to toe and side to side.
Reader Bernie supplied this photo. His inspiring story will be posted in January. He registered for my back pain workshop two years ago, then skipped it to do surgery instead. His doctors told him that since his pain was from structural damage, that no exercise or repositioning would help. Bernie took my class two years later. Although much of the pain was from structural problems, several of which he didn't have until the surgery, we successfully fixed the worsened structural situation.
Click archives at right for more, links in the articles, and labels under each post. Have The Fitness Fixer e-mailed to you, free, using the button at top right (looks like a trumpet).
My mother is a Russian circus teacher. We recently went with her to a recital of a neighbor who teaches elementary trapeze arts. The performers, age about 10 to a women in her 50s, were having fun moving and pulling themselves up and down ropes, scarves, and hoops. It wasn't a polished performance or high technical ability. That wasn't the point. They were lifting their body weight, climbing, stretching, balancing, focusing, burning calories, learning safety and cooperation, exercising, developing arm, hand, wrist, and grip strength, and moving their bodies in functional ways.
Their over-dramatic costumes flopped over their faces when they hung upside down. One young performer wore fly-front long johns. They seemed to think they were great artists. True or not, they were moving, smiling, stretching, laughing, and exercising to do art and fun.
Check for fun safe programs near you of healthy movement of all kinds. Get the good they can provide of new fun ways to use your body and mind functionally. If they use traditional stretches and exercises to warm-up that are not healthful, change or skip them. These posts give ideas:
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - fix your plank (hold pushup position) to strengthen core and wrists, and train standing neutral spine posture. In yoga the plank is done in high and low positions called chaturunga.
A sagging inward curve to the lower back is not the normal curve, it is too much curve - pictured at the start of the MPEG movie below. Holding a plank with a sagging (overarched, hyperlordotic) lower spine "hammocks" body weight onto your spine joints called facets, adding to lower back pain, and does not use your core muscles. It is counterproductive as an exercise. Instead:
Hold a pushup position
Change sagging lower back to neutral by tucking the hip. Head up, neck as straight as standing.
Don't flop all weight on wrists. Press with hand and fingers, and use forearm muscles to reduce wrist compression and shift weight to surrounding muscles - see Stronger Pain-Free Wrists When Biking for ideas.
Reader David D. from Belgium sent this excellent movie. He pushes up into plank. You can also can start on hands and feet without pushing up. He first demonstrates badly overarched lower back, then changes to neutral spine in seconds 8-11 of the movie, then holds. When you do this you will immediately feel the effort shift to your abs. Use this instead of crunches for functional core training. If you push up from the floor, hold tucked neutral spine, not lifting upper body first.
(The exercise is not to do overarching and change to neutral - it is to hold neutral throughout.)
Grunting in the gym made recent news. A member was forcibly removed from a gym when others complained. The article told of factions arguing who was right if grunting and other loud vocalizations when exerting for exercise were helpful or needless annoyance.
Exercise is supposed to be healthy and build discipline of mind and body. Antagonism and disputes are not healthy for mind or body. Moreover, both sides have missed the point.
Breathing out, either quickly or slowly in coordination with effort can help. It can be done silently - by exhaling without vocalizing. You can have both, the exhale and the peace. This quiet but forceful exhalation practice is used in many high exertion fields from martial arts to warfare to meditation.
Fighting ninjas were legendary for both focused effort and silent tactics. No sense making a war cry until it was needed for its better purpose - to increase tendency to submission by the other party on the receiving end of the cry. In other words, to be scary.
For exercise, focused exhalation can increase acceleration at specific points of the move to increase power. For heavy moves, it can help lessen increases of pressure in the chest cavity and blood vessels, depending how it is done. Sometimes, people put so much pressure into the exhalation that they increase internal pressure instead of prevent problems. Done either quickly or slowly, it can be used to strengthen the move by including expiratory muscles. Often in martial arts and yoga classes, we (teachers) use noisy breathing just to remind students to breathe at all. It is a cue until they remember to breathe on their own (quietly) instead of holding their breath.
In the war dances and drumming in many countries, in martial arts, and in meditation arts, a concentrated exhalation coordinated with effort is variously called kiah, kiai, hihap, battle cry, and other terms. Each school is certain that their own different translation and beliefs about these terms is the "right one." The exhalation can be vocalized in a short yell, a loud breath, or silent. In group efforts, from martial arts to hauling sheets on tall ships, to chain gangs, to exercise classes, it helps unify mood or keep cadence. Done without coordinating effort, it is called yelling, and sometimes it is just vocalizing in corny ways.
More about breathing, the kiai exhalation, and exercise for any sport are in the book Healthy Martial Arts.
--- I make posts from fun mail and success stories. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. Why not try fun stuff, then contribute! Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy. ---
Fast Fitness - Strength, Abs, Balance, and Ankle and Leg Stabilization
Friday, November 09, 2007
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - quickly increase functional stabilization of the knee, leg, and ankle while increasing overall strength and balance.
Anyone can lift weights, but can you do it balancing on a basketball? Get started by standing on one foot:
Do your regular lifts, curls, presses while standing on one foot (and then the other). Breathe.
Notice the leg you stand on. Don't let the arch of your foot flatten toward the floor, or knee roll inward toward the other leg. Hold knee, ankle, arch inline, using your muscles. See Arch Support Is Not From Shoes.
It reduces exercise to sit, even on a fitness ball. It is more exercise, more functional, and better balance training to stand on one foot than to sit. You sit all day already.
Be safe, be excited about having fun doing functional movement, be happy.
November 1 is World Vegan Day, and all of November is celebrated as Vegan month.
Vegans are vegetarians who don't eat, and often don't wear, any products from animals. The idea is no more unusual than not wanting to hurt, wear, or eat your pets. Vegan living can be healthier, and vegan diet can fuel both endurance and strength athletes.
Vegans and vegetarians have been found to have lower body fat on average than non-vegetarians, and lower risk of diabetes. A new study by The World Cancer Research Fund making big news as "a landmark study" found that keeping slim is one of the best ways of preventing cancer, and that evidence is stronger than previously realized that eating meat, and processed meats such as ham and bacon, increase risk of colorectal cancer. The report makes 10 recommendations including getting exercise every day, drinking water rather than sugary drinks, and eating fruit, vegetables, and fiber. There is no fiber in meat, dairy, or eggs. Vegan meals can provide enough calcium to prevent osteoporosis. See Exercise is More Important Than Calcium Supplements for Bones and Stomach Acid Drugs Increase Osteoporosis and Hip Fractures.
Vegans may promote farm sanctuaries and work for better ways than vivisection (hurtful testing on animals). The argument is not if you would rather that a child not get needed medicine rather than test on an animal, the quest is for neither to suffer, and find smarter, healthier ways for all. Significant examples exist of tests based on animal physiology that were ineffective or injurious when applied to humans in need.
Vegan bodybuilder Kenneth G. Williams is pictured above and at right. His web site is www.VeganMusclePower.org.
In the tradition of fighting monks, Chris Price is a vegan Muay Thai and mixed martial arts fighter. His web site is http://www.veganfighter.com/
Helpful Book: Healthy Martial Arts - Healthier training for all sports, featuring vegetarian and vegan athletes. Chapters on strength, endurance, speed, balance, nutrition, performance enhancement, injuries, building the spirit and the mind.
Diabetes causes such serious health problems that the risk of death is twice as high for someone with diabetes compared to someone of similar age without. More than 20 million people in the US have diabetes (colloquially called "the sugar" disease) with 2 million a year more cases diagnosed every year. Exercise has been found to be a top factor to prevent and treat diabetes.
Three main types of diabetes are type 1, type 2, and gestational.
Type 1 diabetes, where the body does not make enough insulin (in the body organ called the pancreas), is treated with injected or inhaled insulin, although nutrition and exercise changes are a fundamental part of management.
An estimated 90–95% of cases of diabetes in North American are type 2. Type 2 diabetes is also called non insulin-dependent diabetes and obesity-related diabetes. Type 2 was rare until modern sedentary habits combined with mass sales of unhealthful food.
Gestational diabetes is generally a form of type 2 during pregnancy.
In the recent past, type 2 diabetes developed only in adults as they gained weight, reduced activity, and increased packaged, commercial, unhealthful foods. An escalating phenomenon of type 2 diabetes in children is now occurring.
Approximately 85% percent of adults and children diagnosed with type 2 are overweight and less active than they could be. Type 2 is increasingly being found to be best treated with more fun movement and less bad food, a win-win situation.
Several studies have found that exercise and healthier diet are more effective than medicine for people with type 2 diabetes. A recent randomized controlled Canadian study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that people with type 2 diabetes who began exercising developed better blood sugar control, both from aerobic exercise and resistance training. Not exercising yielded no improvements in sugar control. People who combined aerobic exercise and also lifted weights had the biggest improvement. It is not known in this study if results occurred because of the type of exercise mattered, or because the duration of exercise was greater in the combined exercise training group. According to an editorial co-published with the study, "Doctors should prescribe exercise to all type 2 diabetes patients who are healthy enough to work out."
In the past people with diabetes and diabetes-related complications were discouraged from exercise. However, exercise has been known in the past, with recent substantiating studies, to be the top factor to prevent and reverse diabetic problems. According to William Kraus, MD, of Duke University Medical Center, "Failing to prescribe exercise to patients with diabetes is simply unacceptable practice."
Things To Help
You do not need a gym or special clothes or equipment to get aerobic or weight lifting exercise.
Go outdoors for a break every day that you can, for fresh air, sunshine, and fun movement.
For both active and resistance exercise indoors and out, remember that daily healthful movement easily accumulates from your healthy bending, balancing while dressing, taking the stairs, and other daily real life movement.
Have fun - skate, bowl, cycle, walk, go dancing, gardening, shoot hoops, take food to shut-ins and get them moving too, with improvised exercise of moving arms and legs, clapping, singing, and having fun.
For fun exercise-as-lifestyle ideas, check through lists of Fitness Fixer posts, linked at the right of each article.
My post Hyperbarics for Diabetic Foot Injury gives more information on preventing amputations from diabetic wounds, and lists some of the ways that exercise reverses the contributors and complications of diabetes.
There is great hope. Have fun making a new healthier life.
"Gardening requires lots of water - most of it in the form of perspiration." ~ Lou Erickson
Involve children in gardening at any level. Getting outside to dig, bend, stretch, think, and create in the fresh air is health as a lifestyle - improving physical skills, knowledge, confidence, cooperation, discipline, caretaking, and purposeful activity.
"What this country needs is dirtier fingernails and cleaner minds." ~ Will Rogers
A few weekends ago, the Philadelphia City Gardens Contest ran final judging. Husband Paul and I are judges. I don't know much about horticulture, but Paul does, and I am good at holding the clipboard and getting dirty.
Each judging team travels to gardens all over the city, grouped according to garden purpose. There might be community vegetable gardens in the city's most blighted areas, flower gardens grouped according to size, or mixed use individual or group gardens. Gardens are judged for many points including health and variety of plants, whether natural or inventive bug and weed control is used, and interesting use of materials. In past years we visited a garden in one of the most difficult areas of the city, which had made neat container gardens from tires dumped in the area. Another garden gleaned trash from the street to help clean the neighborhood, including a bathtub and vacuum cleaner, reborn in the garden with painted smiles, streaming vines of flowers, posed like characters at a tea party. We met 90-year-old ladies who tended their garden in dresses and church hats, teaching neighborhood children self-respect instead of vandalizing, and to reap what they sow, and share what they harvest for healthier neighborhoods.
"Wisdom is oftentimes nearer when we stoop than when we soar." ~ William Wordsworth
Last year we judged the city's Children's Community Gardens. Here are some of the stories to give ideas and inspiration for yourself or community:
Miss Vanoka Morris Smith and the kids of the Blaine School Strawberry Mansion were a shining example of showing kids how to be fit in body and mind, with teamwork and love. There were no treadmills or artificial exercise. All the kids involved got real fitness as a lifestyle. These inner city kids were well-behaved, disciplined, and educated. Each knew every plant, and information about them. The all-organic garden used heirloom seeds, vegetables, pollination by bees and butterflies, rotating beds to promote soil health, and complementary plantings to combat harmful bugs. They painted garden scenes on plant beds, picnic tables, and the tool shed. They learned discipline and got exercise and dignity by keeping all the areas clean.
"The highest reward for a person's toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it." ~ John Ruskin
At the Urban Nutrition Initiative in West Philadelphia, Debbie Harris's high school students created a health and life-enhancing school-wide program of cooking and nutrition that they call "personal and social change through food." Students get to keep the proceeds from their Farmer's Market, learn healthy social structure, get a high amount of functional physical activity, and the educational message that "Vegetables are cool."
"The philosopher who said that work well done never needs doing over never weeded a garden." ~ Ray D. Everson
St Paul's Church on Stenton Avenue began reclaiming a garden from a neglected site to encourage children to have reflection and contemplation outdoors. The garden joins their columbarium (low wall containing parishioners ashes), along with physical activity – a "prayground." They plan to incorporate garden plants and themes with their Sunday school teachings: kids will plant their prayers, and they will build small climbing apparatus with 'eight fruits of the spirit' on each of the eight rungs. Like life, their garden space is a work in progress.
"There can be no other occupation like gardening in which, if you were to creep up behind someone at their work, you would find them smiling." ~ Mirabel Osler
At the Beacon Summer Program at St. Sulzberger School, Crystal Martin teaches 8th graders botany using the garden and microscopes to see leaves and bugs. Built in a flood prone area, the garden is divided into three distinct "watershed" systems - country, suburban, and city - with different drainage systems. The different drainage clearly teaches the effect on the garden – three distinct garden looks and conditions result. Corresponding wall murals teach the crucial message of balancing need for water and drainage.
"Gardening and laughing are two of the best things in life you can do to promote good health and a sense of well being." ~ David Hobson, The Mad Gardener
Get inspired and think how you might like to get started. Young children can learn responsibility by having their own area near your shared area. Babies can sit with you and play in the dirt. On a small level, children can start with sprouting mung beans on a plate (posts to come will show how) and plant a windowsill of seasoning herbs for healthier cooking. Older children can grow healthful chemical-free food and flowers for the table and instead of unhealthy offerings at bake sales. They can learn that good posture during movement is healthy, natural, and good exercise. Get library books on composting, small building projects, organic gardening, and beautiful use of space. Learn the simple elements of a Japanese rock garden or Zen garden, called karesansui. Use healthy bending with one foot in front of the other (how to lunge) and feet side by side (how to half-squat and why it is great). Breathe. Smile.
"We plant seeds that will flower as results in our lives, so best to remove the weeds of anger, avarice, envy and doubt, that peace and abundance may manifest for all." ~ Dorothy Day
--- Read and contribute your own success stories of these methods. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certifiedDrBookspan.com/Academy.
---
Urban site before reclaiming photo 1 by jared CityGarden 2 photo by stu_spivack CityGarden 3 photo by davidsilver
It is not true that back pain and weakness is normal with aging. It is not true that to stop the cause of back pain you must do special exercises to strengthen one specific muscle or group such as the multifidus or abdominal muscles. It is not true that you need to rest or cut back activity to stop back pain, or use special devices.
Doing specific exercises does not stop the cause of back pain. Consider the number of people who do their back exercises, then bend wrong to put down their exercise equipment and pick up their things, then spend their day sitting, walking, and bending in the injurious body mechanics that created the pain in the first place. Examples and what to do instead are in the posts: Leg Exercise That Helps Your Back and Prevent Back Surgery.
Last year, Ivy, a Fitness Fixer reader from New Zealand stopped a long disabling bout of sciatica by stopping the cause in her daily life and the exercises she was doing - Inspirational Ivy. Ivy was not sedentary. She faithfully exercised, so was surprised to wind up with sciatica so serious that she lost partial use of her leg. One of the positive changes she made was to stop doing crunches. Ivy wrote:
"I was one of these people who for years did 100 crunches a day thinking that they would strengthen my back and take away the pain. Not so. I have been following your Better Abdominal Muscles advice for a year now, it just being part of my every day life....the bonus being no more back pain."
Problems with crunches:
Most people already know that sitting rounded over the desk is unhealthy. Spinal discs are strong and withstand compression, but asymmetrical loading from chronic forward bending degenerates disc in front and bulges them outward, among other problems. The same problems occur with forward bending exercises like crunches, also called curl-ups, partial sit up, and abdominal flexes, among other names.
Crunches and other forward bending exercises do not work your abdominal muscles in the way they need to work in real life.
If you have tendency to a rounded upper back posture, have tight neck muscles, or already sit, bend, and walk around with your spine bent forward, adding to that with crunches is counterproductive.
Ivy did not have thinning bones, but for someone with osteoporosis, forward bending exercises add the possibility of promoting further kyphosis (upper back rounding) and crush fractures.
Ivy wrote me last week:
"Over that eleven-month period that it took to find your web site, I must have opened every web site there was that mentioned the word sciatica, some of which I took aboard and wondered why there was no improvement. I can smile now when I recall how a few days after following your advice, the pain had disappeared and I attended my great granddaughter's first birthday where I sat too terrified to move in case the pain resurrected its ugly head."
Ivy is a great-grandmother, and she is fitter now than when she started. She changed the way she exercised to make it functional instead of a list of arbitrary motions that did not relate to healthy movement in real life.
If you want to make one positive change for your health, stop doing abdominal crunches and use functional abdominal movement instead.
Parcours is pronounced par-core. It is a French word meaning "course" or trail. A parcours is a path with obstacles at varied intervals. You navigate using your body and brain, similar to steeplechase. Some parcours are formally designed municipal parks. Some are impromptu collections of trees, walls, buildings, windows, and rocks. On a rainy day you can make your own in your house.
In ancient times, a course might involve days of travel. Today, several cities around the world have public courses used by people of all abilities and ages. Modern fitness programs use it, with names like freerunning and various brand names, but the idea is not new.
Stations may be a log to walk across, rings to swing on, various height and shape objects to stretch on and around, a place to see how far or high you can jump, something to balance on, a ladder or wall to climb over or under.
To get to the next station, you can walk, run, bike, skate, or whatever you can do. Parcours length varies from a block to miles. Some people make a day of it with picnics and rests between stations. Others go make a quick lunch run over part or all of the course.
In the early 1980s I was the first person to put exercise programs aboard cruise ships. Until then, cruises were associated only with deck chairs and food. I was told exercise would not catch on. I ran exercise, health education, and stretch classes, and led the scuba and snorkel trips. I also led a parcours, taking about an hour, all over the ship, from deck to deck, stem to stern, over and under tables, chairs, hatches, and railings, and through the cha-cha lessons. We ran, we walked, we balanced, we cha-cha'd, we tip-toed very fast to get away, we laughed.
Parcours uses the body in natural ways to build strength, spirit, and balance. It can be healthier, better training, and more fun than doing artificial repetitions of an isolated exercise.
More to come on keeping parcours safe for joints, and preventing injuries.
---
Read success stories of these methods and send your own. See if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal feedback. Top students may apply for certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
Here is 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:
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.
Strengthen Legs Without Knee Pain - Standing Lunge
Thursday, August 02, 2007
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Many people know they need to bend "right" but don't because it hurts their knees.
Bending right will not hurt knees. It will help fix one of the things that has been injuring them - bad bending habits which pressure and grind the joint.
Good bending will also give your knees the exercise they (and you) need.
Some knee patients are told to never "bend right" with a half-squat or lunge because it is bad for the knee. There are specific things about bending and straightening the knee that can increase certain kinds of pain, to be covered in future posts. Use your brain and try the following gently and safely. Done right, it should reduce knee pressure, not increase it.
How To Lunge:
Stand with one foot far in front of the other. Both feet face forward. (Left photo.)
Feet remain normal width from side-to-side, not directly in line front-to-back.
Lift your back heel. Don't turn the back toes outward. Look at your back foot and check.
Tuck your hip under (click "neutral spine" label for posts explaining how). You will feel a far better stretch and strengthener.
Bend both knees to lower straight downward. Don't touch back knee to the floor. Use leg muscles. Watch your front knee and keep it over your front heel, not sliding forward. (Right photo.)
Don't let your front knee sway inward.
Keep upper body upright and straight. (Right photo.)
Lower and rise several times, then switch legs. Keep feet still, not stepping forward and back.
Tips:
To keep healthy knee positioning for the front knee, peek downward to see your front knee and foot.
You should be able to see your front toes all the way through the bend.
If your knee slides forward covering your toes, you are shifting weight to your knee joint and off your leg muscles. This is one of two common ways to increase knee pain while bending. Letting the front knee sway inward is another.
Keep front knee steady over your front ankle, not sliding forward or inward. You will strengthen and stabilize your knees and legs instead of hurt them. You will feel more muscle use when you keep healthful positioning.
Lunge is a Lifestyle, not an Exercise to "do" 10 Times:
No need to go to a gym to do lunges. Use the lunge for daily bending around the house. It will add up to many lunges every day, built-in as fitness as a lifestyle. The posts How Often Should You Be Healthy? and Bending Right is Fitness as a Lifestyle give ideas of how to use healthy bending for normal daily life.
Benefits of the Standing Lunge:
Strengthen leg muscles
Strengthen the knee
Stop harmful forces on the knees from bad bending
Stretch the front of the hip of the rear leg
Stretch the Achilles tendon and foot of the back leg
Learn knee stabilization
Practice balance
Retrain healthful bending for daily life - transferring to function instead of just being an arbitrary exercise - free exercise all day
Retrain straight upper body position for bending - more functional exercise
Provide beneficial general exercise, warming which makes further movement easier, and healthful body movement.
Have fun practicing this now. You will need the standing lunge for tomorrow's Fast Fitness - Quick Warm Up. Enjoy.
--- Read and contribute your own success stories of these methods. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal evaluation. Top students may apply to certify throughDrBookspan.com/Academy.See Dr. Bookspan's Books. ---
Respiratory Muscle Training for Swimming, Diving, and Running
Friday, July 06, 2007
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
At the diving and hyperbaric conference three weeks ago, I attended sessions on respiratory muscle training for underwater operations. It is a topic of interest for those in charge of combat swimmers, and anyone doing physical training.
In one study, Researchers at the State University of Buffalo at New York found that respiratory muscle training improves swimming and respiratory performance at depth. As you go deeper, the work of breathing can increase, even using high performance breathing devices, because of higher gas density and other factors. They tested the effect of resistance respiratory muscle training on respiratory function and swimming endurance in divers at 55 fsw (~16 m). They found that respiratory muscles were less fatigued following training, breathing rate was lower during the swims, and that the training increased the duration they could swim by about 60%. They concluded that respiratory muscle fatigue limits swimming endurance at depth, and the increase in swimming endurance may result from reduced work of breathing or improved respiratory muscle ability.
The second study by the same group looked at the different benefits of training the endurance and strength of the respiratory muscles. Eighteen SCUBA-certified swimmers were randomly assigned to a placebo group who didn't train their breathing muscles, a respiratory endurance training group, or a respiratory strength training group. Each group used a breathing resistance device five days a week for 30 min over four weeks. The endurance trained group decreased heart rate and ventilation during underwater swims. Both the endurance and strength groups improved fin swimming endurance. The placebo group experienced no changes.
The researchers concluded that respiratory muscle training is effective in improving swimming endurance. They told me they found it is also effective for endurance running, but perhaps not as effective. They are working on finding out why. My friends who do long stints in submarines mentioned they like to use respiratory muscle training to help keep them in shape since they can't go out for a run while on sub duty.
Related:
The previous post on training breathing muscles -Respiratory Muscle Training for Better Health and Exercise - covers how breathing exercises help increase respiratory capacity in people with various diseases, and physical training in athletes.
Respiratory Muscle Training for Better Health and Exercise
Monday, July 02, 2007
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
At the American College of Sports Medicine conference last month, I attended an entire session on effects of training respiratory muscle function. Back when I was in school, we learned that the ability to breathe harder, better, faster, could not be trained with exercise or other modality, that it was fixed from person to person, like eye color, except that it got worse with aging, and that it didn't matter much, since ventilation did not do much to limit exercise potential anyway.
Even though the lungs don't have any muscles of their own, it didn't seem right to me, as the diaphragm and muscles that move the rib cage to voluntarily breath in and out are muscles like any other. What if there are people whose respiratory muscles are not trained to work hard enough and add to the metabolic cost of exercise, increasing fatigue and so, limit exercise? It is also true that many people are not in good enough shape to use more oxygen, so breathe most of the oxygen back out with each breath, even when exercising strenuously. What about someone in great athletic shape who could use that oxygen. Why couldn't they be trained to move more air faster if they needed some?
Exercising the muscles that you use to breath in (inspiratory muscle training) is known to improve the endurance of the respiratory muscles in people with spinal cord injury and cystic fibrosis, and is shown to improve exercise capacity in patients with heart failure. What about for people without these conditions or for athletes?
Combat swimmers have long used various breathing training to get in shape for swims and other strenuous work. The diving medicine conference I attended two weeks ago had several studies that showed interesting and promising results with breathing training.
Respiratory muscle training in the above studies did not involve popping corks from your lips, as in the photo. To improve your breathing capacity and do training at home without respiratory training devices, see the Fitness Fixer post Do Breathing Exercises Work? and the book Healthy Martial Arts.
--- I make posts from fun mail and success stories. See if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certifiedDrBookspan.com/Academy.
Leg Exercise That Helps Your Back - Why The Lunge?
Monday, June 25, 2007
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
I receive the question often, "What exercises should I do to stop my back pain?" I stress that that the exercises you need to do are to simply change away from all the injurious movements that are causing all the pain in the first place (left drawing) and use good movement instead (right drawing). Then your back can heal. The pain will stop.
I see patients all the time who come to me after going through back pain exercise programs. They went through their eight or ten week program, then their pain came back. Every day they did their exercises, then bent over wrong to put down their weights (left drawing), bend over wrong to pick up their gym bag (same left), sat badly on the way home, then hunched over their computer to record their exercise session. It is no mystery.
The post Disc Pain - Not a Mystery, Easy to Fix shows the mechanism of how bad bending and sitting damages the spine and discs. It is a simple injury, not a disease or condition. You can easily stop the process yourself.
A lot of dollars are spent on the common assumption that you need to strengthen or stabilize the back or exercise a particular muscle set, for example the multifidus. That does not fix the source of the damage. At the gym I see trainers, students, and yoga and Pilates teachers doing their exercise classes week after week, saying they come because they have to because of their back pain. Even the exercises they are doing were contributing to the problem. Many things that are bad for you feel good at the time. The post Common Exercises Teach Bad Bending gives examples so that you can avoid this pitfall. The post Sitting Badly Isn't Magically Healthy by Calling It a Hamstring Stretch shows how the most common stretches done, even in back pain programs are contributing to the problem, and what to do instead.
The answer is easy. The post Bending Right is Fitness as a Lifestyle showed one of the most important exercises you need to do to stop back pain. It introduced the squat, which is not an exercise to do for 10 repetitions, but to use instead of bad bending for the hundreds of times every day you bend for things. Instead of hurting your back hundreds of times every day, you prevent hurting your back hundreds of times a day. Instead of hurting your back hundreds of times every day, you strengthen your legs hundreds of times a day. It is not the exercise of squatting that fixes your pain by strengthening, but by preventing the damage in the first place.
This post introduces the lunge as a second wonderful "exercise" to stop back pain. It is not something you do as an exercise for a number of repetitions. Instead, you use it, along with the squat, for the many times a day you need to bend for all the daily things around the house and workplace - the laundry, the pets, the things on the floor, the kids, the dishwasher and refrigerator, and everything else, all day, every day:
Stand upright with one foot far in front of the other (right drawing).
Feet apart comfortably, both facing ahead, not turned outward (right drawing).
Bend both knees
Don't let your front knee come forward. Keep it over the front ankle (right drawing).
Lower straight down.
Your back heel comes up. Keep the front heel down for better knee health. It's a free, built-in Achilles stretch too.
Don't touch your back knee to the floor.
Don't hold your hands on your front knee. Although common, you get better balance and strength without it.
Done properly, the lunge should not hurt your knees. If you are too weak to lower enough to pick up the mail on the floor and get back up, that is serious weakness. You need functional strength to do ordinary daily life. This isn't walking miles over rocks to the river and returning with heavy water jugs over your back just to cook with. This is getting the mail.
Bending right with the lunge burns more calories than bending over wrong. Good bending helps a weight loss program.
Click the labels under this post to see more on these topics. The next post Strengthen and Retrain Function With The Lunge shows a reader making good use of the lunge. Posts to come will cover more about how wonderful the lunge is to transform your life from weakness and pain into easy function. This is fitness as a lifestyle.
--- Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy.
Last week at the sports medicine conference, I talked to a researcher from Kuwait University. Dr. Jasem Ramadan presented a lovely little study called Bioenergetics of Islamic Prayers, measuring the amount of oxygen and calories the physical movements of the prayers burned.
Five standard prayers (Salat) are mandatory every day for every adult male and female Muslim. Each prayer has a continuous sequence of body movements (Rakkas) consisting of standing, bowing, kneeling and sitting. Each Rakka lasts between 3 and 6 minutes. Dr. Ramadan looked at the energy cost of two and four Rakka prayers in thirty-two male and female adults. He found that Salats have a positive effect on metabolic function. For an 80 kg person, energy cost of daily prayers was about 80 calories a day, and could be considered a form of physical activity that enhances fitness.
Dr. Ramadan told me, "The prayers have been done for thousands of years and no one thinks about it as physical exercise." I told him I think that often. I told him that Russian Orthodox prayer was pretty physical. A liturgy lasts hours, done standing and continuously crossing yourself from the floor in a squat to high overhead. Everyone including the oldest people do this, up and down, and up and down, and up and down, stretching and squatting, reaching and bending. I always thought it was group community health activity, probably found long ago to be protective against many ailments (and attributed divinely). The original yogas were the same, reaching upward to exalt the heavens, bowing, kneeling, prostrating, rising, over and over.
I told Dr. Ramadan that many Westerners aren't comfortably able to do the kneeling Rakka shown in Healthy Toe Stretches or rise to a stand without using their hands, as in the post Quick and Easy Strength and Balance Exercise, not only the elderly, but the rest of the population too.
He seemed surprised and interested. I told him I believed that this lack of basic human movement for real daily life was a major contributor to the epidemic numbers of people who are too weak and unstable to get up unassisted, to walk without canes and walkers, have trouble taking stairs, have poor balance, and for much knee and hip pain and degeneration. Dr. Ramadan said that elders in his country do not suffer knee and hip arthritis in high numbers, and can easily rise from the floor into their old age. I told him that many Westerners are familiar with a device that is worn, with a button to press for help if they cannot get up from the floor or chair. At this point, he was sure I was kidding.
If you cannot get up from the floor or low chair easily without using your hands, you likely have dangerously decreased leg strength and balance. Use good bending to strengthen your legs and knees many times a day and improve your fitness, explained in the post How Often Should You Be Healthy? Use healthy movement every day to sit, rise, bend right, clean, garden, give thanks, stretch, take stairs, and play to get healthy functional exercise, and prevent common joint pain. That is fitness as a lifestyle.
I am attending the annual meeting of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM). There are many hundreds of studies, seminars, clinics, workshops, lectures of all sorts, running concurrently. It is like drinking candy from a fire hose.
Dashing from one lecture to another in the enormous conference center trying to learn as much as possible from simultaneous sessions is exercise in itself.
Some of the "studies" predictably show glowing results. Studies funded or conducted by candy bar manufacturers show athletic gains from eating their candy bar. A study funded by the US Poultry Association concluded that dietary cholesterol may have a modest role in muscle mass and strength increases (and an "uncertain role on cardiovascular risk factors.") Studies from sugar water manufacturers, who are also major sponsors of this sports medicine conference, show high results in athletic events drinking their product. There is no doubt that hydration and blood sugar are enhanced from refined sugar products to complete athletic events with good results. Commenting professionally, I am not sold on these products for long-term health. Moreover, you can get the same results in most cases with healthier food. The post Is Your Health Food Unhealthful? gives some healthy food choice ideas. Click the label "nutrition" accompanying that post for all Fitness Fixer posts that give ideas for healthier sports nutrition.
One nice little study from University of Pittsburgh researchers showed that overweight adults who achieved higher levels of physical activity during a weight loss program also reported "adoption of eating behaviors recommended to improve weight loss." They also found that, "Failure to sustain physical activity reflects the failure to sustain recommended eating behaviors." The bottom line is still, "Stay active and eat right."
Another nice study from the Nutritional Interventions sessions found that, "Individuals at risk for developing cardiovascular disease (CVD) can reduce risk factors through diet and exercise before resorting to drug treatment," that, 'Ingesting vegetable versus animal protein has also been shown to have beneficial effects on various risk factors" and that "Participation in a 12 week resistance exercise training program significantly increased strength and decreased CVD risk factors in overweight, hypercholesterolemic men with no added benefit of protein supplementation." The bottom line is still, "Stay active and eat right."
Reuters News India reported that yesterday in the eastern state of Bihar, the driver of a stalled electric train asked passengers to help get it moving again. We call this a G.O.P. car (get out and push).
The train had stopped in an electrically neutral area between wires. Hundreds of passengers pushed for more than half an hour to move the train until it connected with the electric contact overhead to supply power again (different distances, time, and why the electric connection to overhead wires was lost, according to different news sources).
In the 1970s and 80s, I often worked as a scuba instructor and dive guide in the Caribbean Islands and Mexico. There were strange tides one day, and the boatman accidentally ran the old wooden dive boat (with no radio) aground, far from shore. It seemed reasonable enough (to me) to put everyone out in the waist deep water, decreasing the weight and draft (distance from the waterline to the bottom of the hull). All the paying passengers and I got to enjoy a yo-heave-ho of functional exercise in the water pushing the boat free under the shining sun. The boatman stayed onboard to steer. I also put the two children on the trip with us off the boat to help, although the shorter one rode on my shoulders, excitedly pushing with both hands and feet.
For many years, it has been an interesting question whether exercise will increase or decrease risk of decompression sickness after scuba diving. Exercise seems to affect evolution and dissolution of bubbles from the dissolved nitrogen absorbed and released during and after scuba dives. It is turning out that exercise can both increase and decrease risk, depending on the timing of the exercise, to be covered in future posts. It is a topic for divers from military operations to vacationers trying to adjust their risk factors, and divemasters and scuba instructors who haul anchors, gear, and passengers up and down boat ladders (and G.O.P. boats).
Going back to trains, at least 30 years ago, my mother and I came up with the idea that in addition to dining cars, rail lines should have an exercise car, instead of passengers being confined to long sitting. We envisioned stationary bicycles and other simulators hooked up to generators that would run lights (or television), or record the distance traveled, with windows or screens showing passing scenery like a nice bike trip or race. Participants could race with or against each other. (Originally, Mom thought the cyclists could power the entire train.) Ideas flowed, like having proceeds help set up exercise and health programs that develop body and spirit in poor neighborhoods passed though. We came up with several names like "Training" and other variations, and thought it would be a new exercise craze and sure-sell for the rail industry. We made inquiries and didn't hear much back. You heard it here first - now date-stamped in this blog as our fun idea.
I was one of the first people to develop fitness on cruise ships, back when cruises were thought of as only deck chairs and buffets. Let me know if you want stories (or to set up a fitness cruise). Rail lines, are you interested? I will develop it for you as a fun fitness "Training™" program.
--- Read and contribute your own success stories of these methods. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certifiedDrBookspan.com/Academy.
---
Photo (unrelated to the Bihar train this week) by Prince Roy
Sitting in full squat with heels down can be healthful and useful. Squatting for daily life is a built-in Achilles stretch, more effective and functional than the standard "lunge and lean stretch" against the wall, or lowering one heel from a step or ledge. Better Achilles Tendon Stretch shows one Achilles tendon stretch that is effective and quick. Sitting in a full squat is another. Rising from the squat adds functional leg muscle strengthening and balance.
I took the photo, above left, in an airport in Asia. The man was easily sitting to work on his laptop during the hour before boarding. Others were similarly sitting with laptops and mobile devices to get work done. Elders squatted that way to rest.
Achilles Stretch in the Bathroom introduced the full squat as a functional normal daily action used in many countries for resting, washing, gardening, working, washing, toileting, chatting on the phone, and other activities, and gave an idea of how to try it. Save Knees When Squatting explains how keeping the heels down rather than lifting heels to rest on the ball of the foot is safer for the knees. Reader Mim supplied a wonderful link in the comments for a great little film of the Asia squat. More Fun Squatting tells a funny squatting story. People new to squatting may find their Achilles tendons are too tight to bend in this normal manner. Reader Ivy of New Zealand offered to demonstrate one easy way to practice this stretch in a safe way, and sent the photo at right.
Keep both heels down while holding something sturdy in front. Straighten your arms and lean back to shift weight away from the knee joints.
Squatting can be a nice stretch for your lower back too. I have been working, off and on, for some years on the interesting finding that slight forward spine rounding when just sitting on your heels in the squat (no weights) does not load the spine to the extent of sitting on your behind in a chair. Be smart about trying it or not if you already have damaged knees. When rising, make sure to keep knees back over your feet, not sliding forward, which loads the knee joint, or inward at an angle (narrower than your feet), which can twist the joint. Either action can grind against the meniscus and cartilage.
Done properly, it should feel good on the Achilles and calf, lower back, be good exercise, not hurt the knees, and become an option for a functional stretch and even normal sitting ability.
Today I took a break from a study we're doing, to do the Leg Stretch That Strengthens Arms in yesterday's post. It is a good exercise that you can do quickly.
A pile of assorted scientific utensils fell out of my pockets, along with pens, rulers, scribbled data notes, a telemetry battery, the roster for a new class starting tonight, and - strange for a scientist - an amount of money in the form of a few coins.
I have long taught to shift weight while holding a handstand to progressively strengthen arms until you can walk on your hands, and to stand balancing on one hand. The idea is to work so that you will be able to do it. Today I was reminded how practical it can be.
Here is a new fun exercise while standing upside down on your hands - shift weight to stand on one hand and retrieve objects on the floor with the other hand to stuff them back in your pocket.
Of course, everything will fall back out. Then you laugh upside down and pick them up again. This will last through a good exercise session. My hat also kept popping off, another good exercise to get back on while upside down. If you need to shoo pets away from your face, all the more exercise. Be safe. Have fun.
To get started doing handstands in a safe, controlled manner, see Quick and Fun Arm and Body Strengthener. It is an excellent upper body and core strengthener and balance trainer.
Readers have e-mailed for more upper body strengtheners.
Increasing upper body strength helps many things. The post Quick and Fun Arm and Body Strengthener listed several benefits to your health and daily activities, and gave a quick, fun upper body strengthener that needs no weights or equipment, no trip to the gym, can be done in the home or office, and improves balance at the same time. It is not as hard as it looks.
Consult the post link and exercise your brains and common sense first:
Crouch down in front of a wall (drawing 1).
Put one foot up high on the wall (drawing 2).
Raise the other so that both feet are on the wall (drawing 3) to produce a quick and easy to do handstand.
Hold yourself steady. Relax and breathe.
The above link explained how to use this easy handstand to do various other exercises to progressively strengthen.
To add an effective leg stretch:
While holding the wall handstand, gently, carefully, lower one foot on the wall, then lift the other foot far away from the wall
Open legs overhead into a wide split (drawing at left)
Hold, breathe, relax, enjoy
Switch legs to stretch the other side.
This stretch feels great and is fun to do. As far as I have been able to determine, it is good for the shoulder (as long as you don't fall on it or do something not intended in this stretch).
Hold weight on your hand and forearm muscles instead of only mashing your wrists back to keep this move a good strengthen for the wrist, which is often needed to prevent wrist pain.
This fun exercise improves balance and is effective to improve your ability to hold body positioning steady - two important skills for health. Use your muscles to hold your torso straight, without letting it sag and sway.
Have fun and develop fun healthy movement with this combination stretch, balance exercise, and strengthener. This stretch and others for all ability levels is in the book Stretching Smarter Stretching Healthier.
When we first cleared the area, we filled the wheelbarrow with concrete slabs, pried and dug from the patch. Paul bent to grasp the wooden handles. When he rose lifting the handles, the barrow was so heavy that both handles snapped, scattering everything. Paul is strong.
The wonderful Thai bamboo hoes we brought back with us have shrunk in our colder dryer climate, loosening the heavy metal shovel-heads so they tilt sideways with each overhead swing. We have been fixing them, then going back to hoeing. The ground will soon freeze. Hoeing is more upper back strengthening and work than anything in a gym, even more than all the pushups and handstands that I love. Bend knees, upper back upright, breathe in, swing up, breathe out, swing down. Over and over.
Saturday night was Halloween. The World Series was playing. Paul didn't want to disappoint me by not going out to see the fun going on for Halloween in the city, and would never have said anything. I put on a costume and sat with him to watch the game. It was a great evening. The next day I put on a scarecrow costume and we worked in the garden.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=aef976c2-e285-4613-a346-7e1fa0fad6cd)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=789051bf-dd7a-447c-9062-2953a050f02a)
