Fast Fitness - Better Standing Hamstring, Achilles, and Inside Leg Stretch

Here is Fast Friday Fitness - get a better stretch for the hamstring of the standing leg when stretching the other leg to the side:

1. When you stand with one leg stretching to the side, notice the leg you are standing on. It is common to stand with the foot turned outward and the hip rounded under you.
2. Instead, turn the standing leg to face directly ahead. Knee and toes straight forward. Not turned out, not even a small amount. Stand straight.
   
3. Notice the stretch move to the back of your leg.
   

Stand straight without leaning over, rounding your upper body, or letting your hip round under you. This is different from the way most people are used to.

The straighter you stand, the more stretch, while training the function of healthy posture - a functional stretch. You need to be able to lift one leg without being so tight that your back rounds and your hip rolls under. Think of stairs, kicks for dancing, aerobics, martial arts, stepping over things, stairs, much real life. If you are not only using bad mechanics for daily life, but training unhealthful tight mechanics with conventional bent over stretching, what are you accomplishing?

If you can't stand straight, lower your leg to where you can. There is little point stretching for health while practicing unhealthful ways.

Last year Leslie was featured knocking off 30 push-ups in Are You Stronger Than A 67 Year Old Lady?

What has happened in a year? She can now do 40 push-ups. We just don't have a video camera. While we get one, click the link to do your push-ups with her each morning while it is still only 30.

Related:
Sitting Badly Isn't Magically Healthy by Calling It a Hamstring Stretch
Quick Hamstring Stretch At Work
Doorway Hamstring Stretch
Healthier Hamstring Stretching

Labels: achilles stretch, aging, fast fitness, hamstring, hip stretch, leg stretch, martial arts, readers inspiring story, stretch, upper back, yoga

Permalink | 1 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Upper Body Built in Functional Fitness

Reader Vietanh asks:

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

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

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

"Thank you and best regards,
Vietanh"

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

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

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

Apply upper body muscle use for function in daily life:

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

Use arm and hand muscles instead of compressing wrist joints:

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

Have daily active upper body fun:

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

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

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

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

Permalink | 1 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

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

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

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


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


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

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

Permalink | 0 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Mothers Day and New Parents Back and Neck Savers

Readers, patients, and students have asked me for years to write down for them about good lifting and bending over babies and children. I wrote articles and books. I did experiments in the lab. They still said they couldn't remember. So I made something for all of you. You can give these to everyone in need for Mothers and Fathers days, coming up, and all year.

Here it is, quicker and easier than reading the books:


I designed singlets and one-piece suits for infants, T-shirts for toddlers and children, various sizes and colors.

One student had asked me to write down and hang the information around her neck so she would have an easy way to remember all the time. So I made a bib too - for the baby - so she could see it each time she bent to feed and lift.

I was surprised people wouldn't just remember on their own to live in a way so important to their health. But they kept coming back asking for me to tell them again. I am drawing the various concepts and putting them on daily items as funny reminders. I will show them in future posts if readers are interested.

Labels: children, education, fix pain, holiday, lower back, neck, partner exercise, posture, upper back

Permalink | 0 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

Good brain and body training Robert!

Related Posts:

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

Robert's Success Stories:

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

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

Permalink | 2 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Fast Fitness - Hip Stretch and Spine Stability Training When Stretching Legs

Here is Fast Friday Fitness - Retrain your standing leg stretches to hold your spine and hip in healthful position, get more stretch to the front of the hip, use your back muscles, practice balance, and learn functional stretching - the way your body needs to move in real life in a healthy way.

When you raise one leg to stretch when standing:

1. Keep your standing leg straight. Don't bend at the knee and hip, as pictured.
2. Don't round your back or let your pelvis and hip round under you, as pictured.
   
3. Stand straight. Relaxed. Don't force or strain. Breathe.

When stretching, remember function. Why practice a position that is rounded, tight, and detrimental to how you move in real life when you lift your legs. It would look silly and unhealthy to stand up that way. Why stretch that way?

Get functional stretch by lengthening your body enough to be able to straighten out. That is the purpose of the stretch.

Use the new length and your brain to stand straight. Transfer the positioning to real life when you are standing and lift one leg to take stairs, kick, dance, play sports, climb over things, and other life activities. Standing without being so tight that you round your body forward, or just round from habit, is healthier, better looking, burns more calories, and stops many sources of chronic aches and pains.

Send me your photos of fixing this stretch. Doing is the best learning. I will post the photos in a reader success story.


See how to retrain this same stretch lying down:

• Fast Fitness - Don't Shorten Hip When Stretching Hamstring

See photos of fixing this same stretch for kicking and stairs:

• Common Exercises Teach Hip Tightness When Kicking, Stretching, and on the Stairs

Related posts:

• Improve Stretch and Strength With Better Kicking
• What Does Stretching Do?
• Are You Making Your Exercise Unhealthy?
• Better Achilles Tendon Stretch
• Sitting Badly Isn't Magically Healthy by Calling It a Hamstring Stretch
• Is Bad Martial Arts Good Exercise?
• The Cause of Disc and Back Pain
• Better Exercise on the Stairs
• Common Exercises Teach Hip Tightness When Kicking, Stretching, and on the Stairs

Labels: balance, fast fitness, fix pain, hip, hip stretch, leg stretch, lower back, posture, stretch, upper back

Permalink | 2 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

FDA Orders Suicide Risk Warning for Common Back Pain and Migraine Drugs, and Others

The FDA issued a public health alert today based on their review of 199 clinical trials. Specific drugs for epilepsy and psychiatric disorders are often prescribed to patients with migraine, back and body pain. The FDA review was released last January, and showed that patients taking those drugs had "almost twice the risk of suicidal behavior or thoughts than patients taking a placebo."

One of the drugs on the warning list is Neurontin (Gabapentin). Patients with back and various nerve and diabetic pain are commonly prescribed this drug. More drugs on the list are frequently prescribed for fibromyalgia and other pain: Lyrica (Pregabalin), Topamax (Topiramate), Celontin (Methosuximide), Felbatol (Felbamate), Zarontin (Ethosuximide) and others.

Here is a list of the medications required to add the warning:

* Carbamazepine (marketed as Carbatrol, Equetro, Tegretol, Tegretol XR)
* Clonazepam (marketed as Klonopin)
* Clorazepate (marketed as Tranxene)
* Divalproex sodium (marketed as Depakote, Depakote ER, Depakene)
* Ethosuximide (marketed as Zarontin)
* Ethotoin (marketed as Peganone)
* Felbamate (marketed as Felbatol)
* Gabapentin (marketed as Neurontin)
* Lamotrigine (marketed as Lamictal)
* Lacosamide (marketed as Vimpat)
* Levetiracetam (marketed as Keppra)
* Mephenytoin (marketed as Mesantoin)
* Methosuximide (marketed as Celontin)
* Oxcarbazepine (marketed as Trileptal)
* Phenytoin (marketed as Dilantin Suspension)
* Pregabalin (marketed as Lyrica)
* Primidone (marketed as Mysoline)
* Tiagabine (marketed as Gabitril)
* Topiramate (marketed as Topamax)
* Trimethadione (marketed as Tridione)
* Zonisamide (marketed as Zonegran)
Some of these drugs are also sold generically.

I will be covering migraine and other headache in the future. Instead of drugs to mask back pain, neck pain and various musculoskeletal and nerve pain, fixing the cause is healthier than drugs. By no longer injuring the area, the pain will stop and the area can heal. It is not matter of choosing between pain and often worse problems from the treatment.

To stop common causes of pain, and the need for drugs, start with these:

• Disc Pain - Not a Mystery, Easy to Fix
• Sitting Badly Isn't Magically Healthy by Calling It a Hamstring Stretch
• The Cause of Disc and Back Pain
• Fix Disc Pain Without Surgery
• How Much Inward Curve Space Should There Be In The Lower Back?
• Fast Fitness - Prevent Back Pain When Rowing
• Fix Scoliosis and Arthritis Pain, Fix New Orleans
• Prevent Knee Pain When Rowing
• Prevent Main Factor in Back Pain After Running and Walking
• Prevent Back Surgery
• Gaze Perseid Meteors Without Neck Pain
• Prevent Neck Pain and Get Upper Back Exercise Carrying Backpacks
• Upper Back Exercise and Neck Pain Prevention Too
• Free Exercise and Free Back and Knee Pain Prevention - Healthy Bending
• Fixing Leg Numbness, Back Pain, Flank Pain, Knee Pain, Nerve Pain, Three Unhealthy Surgeries, Part I
  
• Fixing Leg Numbness, Back Pain, Flank Pain, Knee Pain, Nerve Pain, Three Unhealthy Surgeries, Part II
• Cauda Equina - Result Not Cause
• Healthy Mother's Day
• Stomach Acid Drugs Increase Osteoporosis and Hip Fractures
  
  

Also recommended, available from my BOOKS page - www.DrBookspan.com/books:

• Fix Your Own Pain Without Drugs or Surgery
• Health&Fitness - How To Be Healthy Happy and Fit For The Rest of Your Life. THIRD edition.
• The Ab Revolution - No More Crunches No More Back Pain THIRD edition.

Labels: diabetes, drugs, fibromyalgia, fix pain, headache/migraine, injury, lower back, stenosis, upper back

Permalink | 0 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Vertebral Artery Compression, Dizziness, Discs, and the Forward Head

I received an e-mail from Serbia. Miroslav had suffered eight years of dizziness from compression of the vasculature and nerves of his neck. Then he found how to prevent the bad position called "forward head" using my methods. Miroslav had previously read various sources promoting the often-repeated bad advice to bend the neck forward as a the way to make space for the nerves that exit the back of spine. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. That kind of forward bending is not a healthy way over the long term.

Bending the spine forward pinches vertebrae closer in front and farther apart in back, creating unequal pressure that over time, wedges and squeezes discs rearward and outward, like squeezing a tube of toothpaste. A disc nearly always bulges (herniates/moves/slips/migrates/extrudes) toward the back of the spine out the enlarged space, from years of the bad posture of sitting and standing with a rounded/bent forward spine.

Sitting and standing straight would make more space for the nerves without the herniating force. Miroslav also had a forward head as a regular posture, also called "straightening the cervical lordosis." He had been flexing his neck (bending forward) trying to fix his various numbness and pain, and wound up compressing verves, blood vessels and other structures.

Miroslav wrote in one of his blog posts that he was practicing Alexander technique for the previous few weeks, "as specified in Richard Brennan's book /head up and forward." After getting worse and trying various doctors and cures, Miroslav found my web site. He wrote:

"Dear Dr Bookspan,
"I have found Your articles online and they have been extremely helpful. I just wanted to say that I appreciate Your work immensely. Few last articles I wrote on http://cvelee.blogspot.com/2008/11/quick-solutions.html regarding my problem and how You have helped me. If You have time, you can catch a glimpse of them.
"With respects,
"Miroslav Cvetinov"

Here is the post from his blog:

"Q u i c k s o l u t i o n s

"I am strong opponent to quick solutions to many of our everyday problem, whether money or health related. In such manner, I didn't expect my dizziness to disappear over night without trace.

"I had it since 2000. So 8 years before, they did everything necessary to rule out other diseases : EEG, Dopler, Blink reflexes, Evoked potentials... everything clean.

"In 2007. dizziness worsened so neurologist sent me to do endocranium MRI/MRA. Totally clean: no lesions whether white MS or atherosclerotic, balanced blood flow...

"2008. I have found article from Dr Jolie Bookspan, describing forward head posture and neurological deficits. I did have extremely straightened cervical lordosis, so I qualify for FHP. I started practicing healthy head postures : head back and FLEXION.

"I always thought that neck flexion was the key to healthy disc, because it opens neuroforamen, and that that degree of neck flexion wasn't possible without FHP. But, guys, I am physics scientist, I do not know how did it miss me : head-neck system has 5 degrees of freedom. I could pull it back, yet keep healthy degree of flexion. Just think of extending back of the neck while shortening front portion of it. That compulsive strengthening of SCM muscles I did, didn't do me any good, but...

"Anyway, MY TREMENDOUS DIZZINESS DISAPPEARED IN A MOMENT!! MOMENT, not day, not week, immediately. How? I do not know! I do not care! Thanks Dr Jolie.

"I can look over my shoulder while walking now. Easily without dizziness, loss of balance and lightheadedness. This it totally new.

"I have to give credit to 2 doctors more:
1. Dear ENT Vukoja Novak - he was the first one out of many doctors to tell me that if I consider it real, organic disease and not anxiety/panic related, I should check out carotid arteries on Doppler and cervical spine on roentgen. Latter revealed disk degeneration and straightened lordosis. He was the first to point to the spine.
2. Dr Mijanović - While doing EMG, he told me that tongue is clear except huge amount of hyperexcitability and asked me to check out something serious and real. I suggested left arm, with disesthesia running in C6 dermatome. He asked me about dizziness, I told him " I do have it, a lot of it, but dear doctor, I have panic disorder and somatoform disorder. It is due to this.". After poked me with a needle in left deltoid he immediately said "I can assure you, your dizziness are due to your spine."

"So, now I know. Not that it was spine, it can be cured in a moment:)"

Here is my web site post that Miroslav used: http://www.drbookspan.com/NeckPainArticle.html

These Fitness Fixer Posts explain more:

• Quick Fix?
• Fixing Upper Back and Neck Pain
• Overhead Lifting, Reaching, and Throwing - More Part I
• Disc Pain - Not a Mystery, Easy to Fix
• 14,000 Miles on a Bike - Herniating and Fixing Discs
• Breasts Causing Upper Back Pain is a Myth

Labels: dizziness, fix pain, impingement, injury, myths, neck, neutral spine, readers inspiring story, repetitive strain, upper back

Permalink | 0 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Fast Fitness - Make Your Own Device to Strengthen Arms, Upper Body, Balance, and Core Stability

Here is Fast Friday Fitness - Get intensive upper body and core training, balance, fun, and another use for the stability board you built in October 24th's Fast Fitness - Make Your Own Balance, Agility, and Leg and Ankle Retrainer.

Photos are still not loading. We didn't expect the problem to persist this long. I have been working extra to write posts not relying on images to explain concepts and techniques. Click the October link to see the photo of the board that loaded before this problem began:

1. Take the board you made, or make one now.


2. Hold a pushup position with feet on the floor and both hands on the board.


3. Balance the board and hold your pushup position. Then try pushups. Then try deliberately tilting the board to each direction while you hold your body stable. If you built the chutes with clay strips (or other creative ideas) use your hands to rock the board to direct the marble while holding your body stable in plank (pushup position). Work up to doing push ups that way.

Hold neutral spine instead of letting your lower back arch and sag:

• See photos of what overarching looks like in What Does It Look Like to Not Use Abdominal Muscles?
• How to correct pushup up position to neutral spine - Fast Fitness - Strengthen by Changing Your Plank
• How to correct with feet up on a height - Fast Fitness - Fixing Your Handstand to Neutral Spine

Want more? Prop feet up on a bench or wall or other height, and both hands on the board. Want lots more? Use one device for your arms, and one for your feet.

Labels: arm, balance, fast fitness, posture, upper back

Permalink | 0 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

Permalink | 3 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Fix One Pain, Don't Cause Another

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

Two similar letters came in recently.

Reader Tina wrote:

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

Alicia wrote:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alicia wrote back:

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

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

These three posts help understand and fix the causes:

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

Don't exercise one area and hurt the next:

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

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

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

Permalink | 2 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Tax Preparation Health

Taxes are due April 15th. Piles of papers, forms, schedules, receipts. Readers have asked how to be healthier while working at the desk, and how to keep their cool during tax preparation.

Several readers asked how to stop neck pain when looking down over deskwork. Reader John M, specifically asked "How do you suggest someone look down (to look at a chart etc at work) without pushing the (herniated neck) disc out more (or aggravating symptoms)?

Three photos above show tilting the neck forward and/or jutting the chin forward. Holding the head forward of the neck and body is a major source of upper back and neck pain. The "forward head" is hard on the soft tissues, the joints of the vertebrae called facets, and the discs of the neck, and is a major overlooked cause of "upper crossed syndrome." The forward head is just a bad posture, and easy to stop. It is not necessary to jut the neck or chin forward to look downward.

Check how you are sitting right now. Are you letting your neck hang forward, are you jutting your chin forward, or are you pushing or rounding your neck and upper body forward? Instead, keep chin in, loosely and gently. If needed, bring your chair closer in closer to the desk and lean the upper body back instead of rounding your lower back against the chair back and leaning the upper body forwad.

To look down comfortably - tip chin down in relaxed straight position instead of jutting the head and neck forward. That is healthy positioning for everyone - injured or not. No need to lean or hang the head or neck forward, or round your upper back to look downward.

More posts with quick techniques to feel better during desk work:

• Stretch upper body in your chair - Tax Stretch
• Stretch and relax upper body - Quick, Feel-Good Upper Back and Chest Stretch
• Stretch and relax lower body - Quick Relaxing Hip Stretch
• Stretch and relax your breathing - Do Breathing Exercises Work?
• Stretch and relax your spirit - Fast Fitness Friday - Strong Spirit.

Labels: disc, facet joints, fix pain, holiday, neck, posture, sitting, stress, upper back

Permalink | 0 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Readers Ask About Watching Body Positioning

How many of you caught that the photo in the Fast Fitness post - Fix Positioning by Watching Others is of terrible body positioning that is a common source of upper body pain and injury?

I received letters asking about the photo. Several readers did not catch that the reason for the photo was that both people were standing in terrible rounded forward posture. Some readers thought the photo was not of bad posture, but showed people with interest in the game or that they way they were standing was a needed position to see the ball.


The rounded and tilted forward position of the upper back, neck and head is a bad positioning that is a major cause of:

• Upper back pain sometimes called Upper crossed syndrome
• Herniated neck disc
• Numb fingers
• Shoulder pain and rotator cuff injury

Here are short posts to show you how to spot the cause of upper back and neck pain and what to do:
Breasts Causing Upper Back Pain is a Myth
Fixing Upper Back and Neck Pain The Cause of Disc and Back Pain
Disc Pain - Not a Mystery, Easy to Fix

One way to tell is to check your arm rotation, shown in
Thumbs Can Show Tightness That Leads to Upper Back Pain

Crunches, many common Pilates exercises and many other exercises done every day done for "health" are in rounded forward or bent forward positions. They are counterproductive to health, to posture, and to strengthening:
Are You Making Your Exercise Unhealthy?
Common Exercises Teach Upper Back and Neck Pain
and The Stretch You Need The Least


Look in your fitness magazines and videos and look around during fitness classes and the gym to see if you can see the forward head and a rounded upper body. It's a handy reminder that it is not healthy, and to exercise in better, healthier ways.

Labels: arm, disc, fix pain, impingement, injury, neck, upper back

Permalink | 0 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Fast Fitness - Quick Homemade Almond Milk and Rice Milk

Here is Friday Fast Fitness - easy, inexpensive almond milk and rice milk.

Good tasting and healthier than dairy milk or soymilk. See Is Your Health Food Unhealthful?

Use in place of milk in most recipes, desserts, in coffee or tea.

For almond milk:

1. Soak a cup of raw almonds for several hours until soft. Four hours is a good start.
2. Use a blender or other mixer to blend softened almonds with several (about 4) cups of clean water until you like the consistency.
3. Optional flavors can be cinnamon, vanilla, unsweetened undutched cocoa, nutmeg, small fresh piece of ginger root, fresh berries, and others.

For rice milk, throw cooked rice in a blender or bowl and mash with water until the consistency you want. Flavor as above.

Don't slouch your neck forward as in the right-hand person in the second photo above. Stand straight, pictured in Fast Fitness - Homemade Sports Food.

Labels: fast fitness, nutrition, posture, upper back

Permalink | 0 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Long Sitting - Simple and More Comfortable

As you read this, we will have been on several days of flights and trains.

Sitting for long periods does not have to be uncomfortable, whether at the desk, on a flight, when driving. Most lists of instructions for sitting without hurting your back tell you to sit in exact ways at exact angles. This is not needed. Instead, it's better to understand the concepts of how and why strain and injury occur when sitting. Then you can sit in healthy ways that are comfortable, easy, and healthy.

Many desk chairs, even expensive ergonomic chairs are made so that you sit with your spine rounded forward. Sitting rounded eventually creates herniating forces on your discs, explained in The Cause of Disc and Back Pain and Are You Making Your Exercise Unhealthy?

Commercial airline, bus, and train seats often have a concave seat back, encouraging prolonged, enforced rounding. So do many car seat backs, even those saying they have lumbar support.

• If your seat back is too concave, pad the space with a small cushion.
• Use a pad about the size of your own forearm.
• Place the pad in the small inward curve of your lower back.
• Don't remain sitting rounding forward against the lumbar pad out of habit. A lumbar roll will not make you sit right.
• Lean your upper back against the chair. Don't press your lower back against the pad.
• If your lumbar roll hurts, it is not right. It should not be a hard material that hurts you. See if you have it positioned in the right place.
• At a desk, move your seat in closer so that you do not round or lean forward to reach or see the computer.

Future posts will cover more about lumbar roll use and misuse.

If the seat is very concave, you may need two pillows, one for the small inward curve of your low back, and the second above that one for your upper back, in the space still left by the rounded seat. The upper back has a small outward curve, however sitting with a large outward curve creates upper back pain.

Get up frequently to move. Here is the link to last year's travel sitting post on Exercise and Stretch for Long Travel Sitting.

Labels: disc, fix pain, lower back, lumbar roll, posture, sitting, upper back

Permalink | 3 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Is Your Drinking Hurting Your Neck?

A reader sent me this Hauku:


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

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

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

Don't round your back or jut your chin forward. Instead, keep chin in when you eat and drink and talk on the phone. To look upward, get the upward motion more from straightening your upper back, and not from one joint in your neck. The neck is not a hinge joint. For more on looking upward, click Gaze Perseid Meteors Without Neck Pain. For neck and upper back health looking downward over desk, click Tax Preparation Health.

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

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

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

Permalink | 2 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

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

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

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


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


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

Vary the stretch by straightening elbows more. Do not hinge from the lower back, which increases lordosis (causes hyperlordosis). Tuck hip to neutral to stop compressive pain in the lower back. Here is how.

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

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

Permalink | 2 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Fix Neck, Play Hockey, Use Brain, Fun Life

Rich Tarpinian, IT systems engineer, musician, hockey coach, and vegan, fixed grinding neck pain, back spasms, disc pain, and tension-type headaches. He had not been comfortable sleeping in any position. Rich said the neck grinding and discomfort, "felt like it was never going to go away."

Rich writes:

"Thanks again for your help! Here's my update. I stopped cranking my neck around and the grinding stopped within the 2 weeks or so that you had indicated.

"I am controlling my body positioning, more aware, and have eliminated lots of neck tension even though I work at a computer all day. The anxiety I was having about disc problems, etc., has mostly been replaced with good knowledge, a feeling of control, and an ability to heal.

"Every morning (instead of sitting on the bed) I get out of bed the way you have recommended - why? because it makes sense. I don't sit on the bed and then try to straighten my body as I start to walk. I get up from the face down position in the already standing position.

"I've always had an interest in the mechanical aspect of how the body moves and what the sources of problems can be which is why, when I was pouring over information on the internet, your information regarding cause/effect relationships instantly caught and held my attention.

"I eat a pretty good diet - vegan with a good amount of raw foods, but had not paid much attention to posture and movement. I will now.

"As a side note, I coached hockey for about 8 years and played up until about 4 years ago. I had an opportunity to get back into some coaching recently but was really worried about the neck issues that I had been having for weeks. I also used to get a lot of back spasms when I played/coached. After experiencing the progress from your recommendations, which came just in time, I stepped confidently back on the ice a couple of weeks ago and have felt good given some expected muscle soreness that is now gone. The hardest thing was lacing up the skates but, once I was on the ice, I felt great.

"What you have done effectively is to empower people with the knowledge of how to find and return to the correct answers in order to maintain their own bodies. You've done that by providing reasons where needed, presenting conflicting information to show contrast, and using repetition to help solidify the important concepts."

"The key is that I now understand the causes of the problem and can, for the most part, manage the process when things start going wrong. As I cruised the internet looking at information, my anxiety meter kept rising - until I found your article on fixing the neck grinding problem which prompted me to read your other articles on sitting, lifting, etc. The article was immediately positive with a no strings attached approach to fixing and preventing the problem. My overcoming the neck issues is directly attributable to you."

Rich first fixed his pain using my web site summary sheets.
These Fitness Fixer posts also describe techniques used:

• To understand and spot the injury and pain from unhealthful head and neck position - Upper Back Exercise and Neck Pain Prevention Too
• Spot and prevent upper body pain when carrying a backpack - Prevent Neck Pain and Get Upper Back Exercise Carrying Backpacks
• Two important stretches to do first thing in the morning and throughout the day to restore ability to sit, move, and stand without unhealthful neck position - Fixing Upper Back and Neck Pain and Nice Neck Stretch
• Looking upward with good neck mechanics - Gaze Perseid Meteors Without Neck Pain
• Two nice upper back stretches to relax - Tax Stretch and Quick, Feel-Good Upper Back and Chest Stretch
• Stopping neck pain from sitting - Are You Making Your Exercise Unhealthy?
• Stopping neck pain from exercise - Common Exercises Teach Upper Back and Neck Pain
• Photo of healthful neck position when cooking - Fast Fitness - Homemade Sports Food
• Do this Wall Test to check for unhealthful neck positioning - Breasts Causing Upper Back Pain is a Myth.
• Having muscles soreness is not bad, it means you're out having fun. Make sure there is no pain or soreness in the joint. That is the difference. See Teen Dies After Using Muscle Soreness Rub
• November is Vegan month. More on vegetarian and vegan eating - World Vegetarian Day.

I wrote Rich to congratulate him on his initiative and great work, and thank him for his story. He replied:

"Just when I've corrected the forward head problem, I'm going to need those neck exercises to treat "swelled head syndrome."

Smile and laugh. It's healthy too.

Labels: disc, hockey, lower back, neck, nutrition, readers inspiring story, sitting, sleep, upper back

Permalink | 3 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Friday Fast Fitness - Better Shoulder and Triceps Stretch

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

Instead:

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

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

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

Permalink | 6 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Fast Fitness - Stronger, Straighter Upper Back

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

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

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

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

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

Permalink | 6 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Back to School - Healthy Sitting

The mind can only absorb what the tushy can endure. Better sitting can make better work along with better health. If your back or neck hurt from sitting, here is how to change it.

You don't need special or ergonomic chairs, keyboards, or desks.
You can sit well on a bucket. You can sit poorly and have pain
from an expensive posture chair. Many people do.

Myths of how to sit "right" involve strange rules - to keep thighs parallel to the floor, for example,
or feet at certain angles, or hips at 90 degree angles to the body.
None of these are necessary.

The photo of sitting, at right, shows sitting poorly. No mystery. The spine is rounding forward. Body weight presses on the lower back discs. The upper back is overstretched. The head is held at an angle that pulls on the muscles at the top of the shoulder. The post Don't Fall for "Don't Sit Up Straight" explained about a research study that found there is less pressure while leaning back against a seat, than when sitting vertically. That does not mean not to "sit straight" as the headlines said. With or without a seat back, sitting straight is still healthier than rounding.




The HealthLine team sent the photo (left) of one example of healthy straight sitting,

and a parody of exaggerated, strained, rigidly straight sitting, (right).

Anyone trying it would soon find that sitting straight like that is not worth the strain, with good reason.












To try better sitting now:

1. Move your backside right against the chair back.
2. Move your chair in closer to the desk.
3. Lean your upper back against the seat back, not your lower back. Do not press or round against the lower back.
4. Chin in loosely, not jutting or tilting forward over the desk.

What is a good way to remember to sit without rounding forward? Watch other people sitting, driving, at the desk, and when exercising and stretching. Their bad positioning will remind you not to do that to your own spine.

Many chairs, even expensive ergonomic "back posture" chairs advertised to have built in lumbar support, are built in a way that makes you round forward when you sit against the seat back. The next post on sitting will cover fixing a bad chair.

The body needs movement for health. Get up from the chair often to straighten and move. The post Exercise and Stretch for Long Travel Sitting will get you started. When sitting, use your brain and your muscles to get free, natural, upper back use by not slumping. Make the idea of good sitting about understanding healthy body use and positioning instead of memorization without comprehension. Make healthy body use enjoyable and interesting. This is the kind of learning that is in the best spirit of "Back to School."

Good sitting should not cause pain.

Posts with more healthy Back-to-School:

• Carrying Schoolbooks Is Not the Cause of Back Pain
• Prevent Neck Pain and Get Upper Back Exercise Carrying Backpacks
  
• Healthier Backpack Carrying to Get Better Exercise and Stop Back Pain

Labels: children, fix pain, lower back, posture, sitting, upper back

Permalink | 2 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Inspirational Ivy

Last October, Ivy from New Zealand left a comment on Fitness Fixer how she first found me while looking for relief from severe sciatica with foot drop. For 11 months, she had tried treatment and an exercise regimen from a chiropractor. Last week, she e-mailed me a funny update of improving mobility and health from a new stretch. I started writing this post just to tell of Ivy's stretch and how readers can have the same success.

I looked over my file of Ivy's comments on Fitness Fixer and her e-mails to me over the last two years - each story weaving to the next - of improving health, mobility, and joy of life for herself and people in her community. Reading them again was like sitting by a stream that sparkled over rocks on its way by, inspiring and lovely. Some are private, some I have her permission to tell.

Last October, Ivy wrote:

Ivy wrote, "I knew I should be feeling better than I was. During those months I was continually surfing the net looking for answers, then in November 2005, I discovered Dr Jolie Bookspan's "How to fix your own pain without drugs or surgery." Everything she described was ME, 69 years of bad habits had finally caught up with me.

"So began my journey to good health and freedom from pain. I began with the pec stretch, trapezius stretch, wall stand, sitting correctly at the computer without sticking out my chin, hamstring stretch, isometric abs (no more crunches), squats and lunges instead of bad bending.

You can imagine my joy when after 2 days I was free of pain. I was so excited that I contacted Dr Jolie, who in turn, took time out from her busy schedule to e-mail me giving me further advice and exercises which I might add, I follow religiously along with a daily 30 minute walk (weather permitting).

"Some months ago, I decided to follow a vegetarian diet. I feel so well and happy, in fact, I have loads of energy. I turn 70 at the end of this month (Oct 2006) and am looking forward to the next stage of my life feeling healthy and free of pain."

This year Ivy followed up when we were corresponding on making sure of healthy nutrition:

"This is the second winter that I have not had either a cold or 'flu. For someone who was always getting the 'flu, that is really something. I put it down to my healthy vegetarian diet."

Ivy used my free web site summary sheets on fixing pain, my books, and Fitness Fixer posts. Here are links to posts Ivy used:

• Pec (pectoral) stretch - Fixing Upper Back and Neck Pain.
• Trapezius stretch - Nice Neck Stretch.
• Wall stand - this is a quick check of functional muscle tightness to see if you can use healthful positioning for normal activity. It is described in the first paragraph of the post Fixing Upper Back and Neck Pain, above.
• Sitting correctly at the computer - When Did Health Become Thinking Out Of The Box?
  and Get Better Exercise From Your Chair
  and Are You Making Your Exercise Unhealthy?
• Hamstring stretch - Healthier Hamstring Stretching
  and Sitting Badly Isn't Magically Healthy by Calling It a Hamstring Stretch
  and Doorway Hamstring Stretch.
• Isometric abs (no more crunches) - this one isn't up on Fitness Fixer yet. It is in my book The Ab Revolution and Fix Your Own Pain, and on my web site summary on functional use of abs to stop overarching the lower spine. Ivy sent a photo of doing this exercise. I will post it when I post about this fun, different, functional abdominal exercise.
• Squats - Bending Right is Fitness as a Lifestyle
  Free Exercise and Free Back and Knee Pain Prevention - Healthy Bending
  and How Good Would You Look From 400 Squats a Day - Just Stop Unhealthy Bending.
• Lunges - Strengthen and Retrain Function With The Lunge.

The posts on lunges, Doorway Hamstring Stretch, and Functional Achilles Stretch, feature photos that Ivy sent me. I had written Ivy earlier this year asking if she could send me photos demonstrating what she is doing. She invited a neighbor to visit and take the photos, had them developed, then mailed a pack of them to me from New Zealand. Ivy writes:

"My dear 86 year old friend took them and we certainly had a lot of fun doing what I will call a "photo shoot." Bear in mind her age when I tell you that while I was trying to hold the pose, she would press the incorrect button and would have to start all over again. I would lose what I would call the correct form and so it would go on... I can now sympathize with models who have to hold poses for what seems an eternity."

In February 2007 Ivy sent an update, signing it:

"I shudder to think where I would be if I had not found your web site over 15 months ago. I mean it when I say "Thank you for helping me get my life back." I am fit, I am healthy, what more can one want in this life. I have passion about what I do something that I haven't had in a very long time."

What about her e-mail and the new stretch? We're out of room. Click for the next post- Inspirational Ivy II - Beating Foot Drop and Sciatica, and Getting Healthier.

Labels: aging, chest, fix pain, footdrop/dropfoot, hamstring, lunge, nutrition, posture, readers inspiring story, sciatica, sitting, squat, upper back

Permalink | 0 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Inspirational Update from Bill

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

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

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

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

Bill says,

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

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

Bill - Free Man

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


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

More inspiring stories coming next from readers Jill and Ivy.

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

Permalink | 0 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Fast Fitness - Strengthen Many Places at Once

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

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

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

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

Breathe. Smile.

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

Permalink | 1 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Prevent Back Surgery

I received an invitation to take a course to learn a new back surgery for damage to the facets. Facets are the joints at the back of each vertebrae (spine bone). The surgery was advertised as a good revenue producer.

In the surgery, the facet joint is cut off and replaced by "lumbar position preservation hardware" rigidly attached so that the area can no longer bend or arch backward. At right is an X-ray of the lower spine with surgically implanted hardware. The person is standing sideways facing to the right. Surgical facet rigid fixation surgery is considered innovative because it replaces the more drastic spine fusion. It also replaces repeated injections into the painful area. The seminar would teach me the surgery with a cocktail reception following.

Why does the surgery want to prevent arching the lower spine? The facets are in the back of the vertebrae. Chronically letting your spine arch (too much inward curve) squashes the facets in back. According to work I've done over years in the lab, the overarching, called hyperlordosis (or slouching backward), is a chief factor in damage and pain to the facets and surrounding soft tissue. That means that you can stop this yourself without the surgery.

Notice if you allow overarching when carrying things in back (left) and in front (right). It is not the normal curve of the spine. It is too much:
The left photo above is from the post Healthier Backpack Carrying to Get Better Exercise and Stop Back Pain. You do not need to allow the pack to pull your upper body backward. Right photo is from Healthier Carrying - Get Free Ab Exercise and Stop Pain. You do not need to lean back to offset weight carried. In both examples, the hip tilts forward in front, instead of holding vertically.
Two examples above show allowing the spine to arch too much when reaching overhead. Left photo is from Change Daily Reaching to Get Ab Exercise and Stop Back and Shoulder Pain. The drawing at right is from Back Pain in Pregnancy - and Why Men Can Get It. Imagine lifting your baby overhead (or any weight) and allowing your spine to pinch backward on the facet joints instead of standing upright and holding neutral spine.
Two examples above are from Aren't You Supposed To Stick Your Behind Out to Sit Down or Do Squats? (left) and Overlooked Ab Muscles in Overhead Lifts (right).

You can stop overarching, thereby preventing crushing force on the facets, and distribute the weight through the core muscles instead. It is a simple positional adjustment that takes seconds (shown below). An alternative is to have surgery.

Following rigid fixation surgery, you will no longer be able to stretch your lower spine as far backward, even when you want to stretch for range of motion and better disc health. You will still be able to slouch your body weight backward - onto the implants. They may eventually wear, along with adjacent bone, from the chronic crushing. Because the surgically fixed area can no longer overarch, increased forces occur on the joints above and below which have to bend more. If you thought the spine in the x-ray above still looked overly arched, not neutral, you are right. The areas above and below the implanted devices are over-arching backward, and the backside is tilting out in back (hip axis is tilted anteriorly). After years, those facets may be next to break down. It is no surprise "when the pain comes back." The cause of the pain was never removed.

Instead of allowing your spine to be pulled into damaging position, use your muscles to hold neutral spine. Here is one easy way to learn to feel it:

1. Stand with your back against a wall. Touch heels, backside, shoulders, and head. Do you feel a large arch in the lower back making a large space?
2. Put your hands on your hips. Thumbs in back. Fingers in front.
3. Roll your hip so that thumbs roll down in back.

The large space between lower back and wall becomes a smaller space. Do not flatten against the wall or round your back. Just feel the strain come off the lower back. Use the new neutral for daily positioning. Simple. Check the photo at right (spine positioning is shown standing sideways, not with back to wall). Left is arching. Right is neutral. A small inward curve remains with neutral spine (right). Neutral spine does not mean rounding the back (which pressures the discs). Make the belt line level, not tilting down in front. The photo is from the post Using Abdominal Muscles is Not Tightening or Pressing Navel to Spine. Click for additional ideas.

The muscles used to maintain neutral spine are your abdominal and core muscles. It is not strengthening ab muscles that stops pain or teaches you neutral spine. It is using them to prevent damaging spine position. You get free, built-in core muscle exercise just by avoiding back surgery.

Labels: abdominal muscles, facet joints, fix pain, injury, lordosis, lower back, neutral spine, surgery, upper back

Permalink | 13 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Gaze Perseid Meteors Without Neck Pain

This weekend in the Northern Hemisphere, the moon will be new, and the night dark, and the skies filled with the shooting stars of the Perseid Meteor shower.

Every 130 years or so, the Swift-Tuttle comet circles the Sun, streaming icy, dusty debris the size of sand and peas. Every mid-August, the Earth passes the orbit of Swift-Tuttle, raining fiery remains very fast through the sky. Igniting against the air's intense friction, they "shoot" across the sky. Books by people who study these things say they fly about 37 miles per second (60 kps), most burning away far above the ground.

The Perseid showers are seen in the sky around the constellation of Perseus the Hero, giving the name. Early Greeks explained that the god Zeus, father of Perseus, visited Perseus' mortal mother Danae in a shower of brightness. Later the event was renamed (or reborn) as "The Tears of St. Lawrence" for their appearance during the August festival of Saint Laurentius. Chinese, Japanese, and Korean writings of Perseid showers date from the 8th century. I grew up on Russian childhood social-utopian folk bedtime stories of comets, mixed with my Grandmother's whispers of fiery conflagration, later determined from an unknown comet or part bursting over Tunguska Krasnoyarsk Siberia around 1908, devastating the forest (later politically reinvented as a nuclear event, and editorially as UFOs for Russian science fiction writing and American television).

What about your neck?
When watching meteor showers standing or sitting, don't martyr your neck. If you crane your neck and push the chin forward when looking upward, you put destructive force on the neck, shown in three examples that follow:

• Three images above show craning the neck and jutting the chin. Injurious compression builds in vertebrae, discs, and surrounding soft tissue.
• The left and middle images show leaning the upper body backward. Thoracic lean overly arches the lower back (hyperlordosis), adding weighted compression to the joints called facets and soft tissue of the lower spine.
• The right photo shows unhealthy craning with the chin forward, common in some yoga and exercise classes. It adds sizeable compressive loading on the back of neck vertebrae plus shearing force on the discs. When raising arms upward, it contributes to rotator cuff compression and injury. Click Overhead Lifting, Reaching, and Throwing Part I - Shoulder and Rotator Cuff Injury.
  

I understand that jutting the chin far forward is often taught as proper form. I have taken yoga classes in India with major names and those unknown to the outside world. One teacher told me pushing the neck and chin forward protects the discs. It unfortunately doesn't. Shearing force on the discs is severe when you jut the chin forward then raise it. Shear is a structural strain when one layer shifts sideways (or front to back) in relation to the other. Damage may take years to accrue until visible on x-ray. Don't jut your chin forward, especially not when looking upward.

Photo 3 above shows tilting the neck forward when looking through binoculars (left figure with yellow arrow). The chin is not forward, but the forward head still creates painful forces on the upper back contributing to upper crossed syndrome, disc trouble, and muscle strain in the classic diamond and hangar shape across the upper back. The pain is easily stopped. Keep neck vertical and chin in (right green arrow).

You can look directly upward for all you need in healthful position. Here are ways:

• Keep your chin in, loosely and relaxed.
• Shoulders back.
  
• The back of your head lifts loosely upward without strain.
  
• Straighten the rounded-forward curve of the upper spine - get more upward gaze range from your upper back.
  
• Don't yank or force the head and chin back, or the corners of your neck will ache.
• Don't lean back by arching your lower back.

Healthy upward gazing is a nice good-feeling stretch and exercise for the upper back and neck without injury. Use it for all overhead needs, photo 4 of Amsterdam policeman at right.

The time where we pass through the Perseid shower is long, from about July 15 through August 25. The highest activity is predicted over the Northern Hemisphere this coming weekend. Look up on Saturday, 11 August before dawn, Sunday morning the 12th, late Sunday night through Monday early dawn.

Because of the tilt to Swift-Tuttle's orbit, its fiery dust falls almost entirely on Earth's northern hemisphere. Southern hemisphere friends see few Perseids. The next good Southern hemisphere meteor shower is hoped to be the Geminid showers in December.

The constellation where meteors appear to come from is called the radiant. The Perseid meteor shower radiant is the constellation Perseus. The Leonid shower is hoped to peak this 18 November. Look toward the constellation Leo. The Geminid shower radiant is the Gemini constellation. Watch in mid-December with the evening crescent of the moon.

In photo 5 at left of looking up through the telescope, the neck is a bit more forward than needs to be.

Experiment on your own. Use a mirror and send in your photos of remaking healthful fun overhead gazing activities.

Labels: aerospace, disc, facet joints, fix pain, holiday, lordosis, lower back, neck, upper back, yoga

Permalink | 2 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Prevent Neck Pain and Get Upper Back Exercise Carrying Backpacks

Tilting or leaning your neck forward (left photo) instead of keeping ear over shoulder (right photo) is called a "forward head."

A forward head hangs the weight of your head on the muscles of the neck and upper back, making them hurt. Keeping the head forward tightens the front chest and shoulder muscles. The forward head also interferes with healthy motion of the shoulder and can contribute to shoulder injury.

The resulting upper body tightness and pain is often given a fancy name of "upper crossed syndrome." It is not a disease, but an injury from simple mal-positioning, and often a simple matter to fix.

The backpacker in the left-hand photo is standing with a forward head. The photo on the right shows bringing the chin in - without strain, without arching the lower back, or making any new problems, just relaxed, straight body positioning.

When you carry packs or handbags, or any loads, see if you tilt or lean your neck forward or jut your chin out. It is a common source of "hanger-shaped" pain across the shoulders. This pain is also common when sitting at the desk, and is usually caused by the same forward head positioning.

More about how the forward head positioning causes so much upper back strain is in: Breasts Causing Upper Back Pain is a Myth.

Check for common activities when you use unhealthy neck positioning for exercise: Common Exercises Teach Upper Back and Neck Pain and Safer Overhead Military Press.

Don't add to the same round-shouldered positioning that promotes pain: The Stretch You Need The Least.

Fixing Upper Back and Neck Pain shows how to stretch the tight chest muscles that prevent bringing the chin inward comfortably - many people are too tight to stand straight. They get more pain trying to hold straight position in strained unhealthy ways.

You can easily stop the bad positioning and the pain. Don't yank or force. Forcing straight position when you are too tight causes as much pain as bad positioning. Keeping comfortable straight head position gives free upper back and posterior shoulder muscle workout. Easy fitness as a lifestyle.

Labels: fix pain, neck, upper back

Permalink | 0 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Independence Day for Fitness

Today is Independence Day in the United States. The Declaration of Independence was drafted in June of 1776. Signing began by July. The paper itself didn't grant independence - work continued until independence came a few years later. After getting the idea to do something, the next thing is to take action. Here are ideas for a life free from things that are unhealthy - pain, unhealthful food, and exercises that reinforce bad habits:

Freedom from junk food:

Instead of soda, put a red sweet pepper in a food grinder. Cut about an inch of fresh ginger root and add through the grinder. In about 30 seconds preparation time you will have a sweet, cool, red, slushy drink with an exotic tang of ginger. Healthy and good tasting.

Instead of refined sugar sports drinks, put a peeled whole cucumber into the food grinder or low speed blender with a whole kiwi fruit. It will make a sweet, cool, slushy, green drink.

Instead of processed peanut butter and refined sugar jelly, put fresh raw nuts and apple slices into a grinder, mill, or chopper. In less than a minute of preparation time, you have a sweet nut butter that you can spread on fruit slices, carrots, and other good foods. Try walnuts, almonds, other fresh raw nuts, and experiment with different fruit combination to make different sweet creamy fresh nut butters.

For more recipes, Healthy Martial Arts has an entire chapter on nutrition.

Freedom from overeating

Just as you can't go through red lights every time you just feel like it, or hit someone any time you just feel like it, you don't just eat anything you feel like it at any time. That is unhealthy. Some people say any denial is unhealthy. That is like saying you can just wet your pants when you feel like it. Self-control is cleaner in body and spirit:
Exercise Common Sense Discipline - Turn Down Halloween Junk Food
A Little Good Exercise, a Lot of Bad Food - Overweight Still No Mystery

Freedom from unhealthy drugs and medicines:

Masses of products crowding store shelves claim to fix this and cure that. Millions of dollars are spent. The products seem dazzling, but much is hype and many produce unhealthy effects. Then more dollars are spent on more pills and products for the new problems caused by the medicines. Many prescribed medicines cause new problems that can be avoided. Stop the cycle and save yourself time, money, and unhappiness. If it is not healthy, it is not health care:
Teen Dies After Using Muscle Soreness Rub
Human Growth Hormone
Is Your Health Food Unhealthful?
Stomach Acid Drugs Increase Osteoporosis and Hip Fractures

Freedom from physical pain and injuries:

At the Special Operations Medical Association conference two years ago, it was released that 62% of our American injuries in Iraq are "Disease Non-Battle Injuries"(DNBI) - not from combat or supporting operations, but occurring in the gym. At the ACSM conference last month, a research study reported that their American military units had 17% DNBI injuries. I asked them how they kept their numbers so low. They replied that the number was for evacuations - injuries so serious they required removal from the base. Some of the most common exercise and stretching practices are not healthy. It is not that they are not good for some people or that they are overuse or done "wrong" - they are inherently bad movements. The same high injury rate is happening to fitness and yoga and Pilates instructors and students. I wrote about this in Welcome to the Fitness Fixer. Here are some specifics on why and what to do instead:
Why So Many Aerobics Injuries?
The Stretch You Need The Least
Sitting Badly Isn't Magically Healthy by Calling It a Hamstring Stretch
Safer Overhead Military Press
Are You Making Your Exercise Unhealthy?

Freedom from neck pain:

Fixing Upper Back and Neck Pain
Nice Neck Stretch
Breasts Causing Upper Back Pain is a Myth

Freedom from mental pain:

Healthier Heart
Exercise Your Sense of Humor
Which Ancient Exercise Gives Focus and Concentration?

Freedom from crunches:

Abdominal crunches are a popular exercise, but they are not healthy. This is new and different information, I know. Crunches "work" your abdominal muscles, but not in a healthful or beneficial way, whether done sitting or standing or using a machine. Crunches also train rounded bad posture that you know is unneeded and unhealthy when sitting or standing that way in real life.

The idea that strengthening the abdominal muscles stops back pain is a myth. Many muscular people have pain. They do their crunches, then stand and move in the overly-arched spinal posture that is the hallmark sign that the abs are not even being used, and which creates one major kind of chronic pain: Fixing the Commonest Source of Mystery Lower Back Pain

Crunches do not automatically make you use your abdominal muscles to position your spine to support your back. You do that on your own: What Abdominal Muscles Don't Do - The Missing Link.

Neutral spine has a small inward curve to the lower spine, just not a large one:
What is Neutral Spine and Why Does Sticking Out In Back Harm?
Aren't You Supposed To Stick Your Behind Out to Sit Down or Do Squats?

The simple act of standing and doing all your activities and exercise without letting your lower spine overly arch, and instead keeping neutral spine, uses more abdominal muscle involvement than doing crunches: Using Abdominal Muscles is Not Tightening or Pressing Navel to Spine.

Functional abdominal exercises use no forward bending: Abdominal Muscle Exercise - Better, Different, Not What You Think

The book No More Crunches No More Back Pain The Ab Revolution explains a healthier better way to use and exercise your abs (114 illustrations 124 pages). I have a number of copies of the new 3rd edition expanded to give to military personnel as gifts. Contact me to send one (free) to someone you know, to keep our guys healthy.

Independence is Healthy:
This post included links to a few past posts about being free of unhealthy things. Click the labels below each post for more related posts. Keep the things you do, eat, and think healthy. If a medicine is not healthy, it is not health care. If an exercise trains injurious body mechanics, use the time for healthier exercises that are more fun. There are better, healthier ways. Be free.

Labels: abdominal muscles, drugs, fix pain, holiday, injury, military fitness, neck, nutrition, performance enhancing modality, spirit, stress, upper back, weight loss

Permalink | 0 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Healthy Mother's Day

Neolithic groups (stone age) worshiped the mother. Ancient Germans worshipped the virgin Hertha holding her child. Scandinavians worshipped virgin Disa holding her child. In ancient Egypt it was Isis with infant Osiris. In India, Devaki had Krishna (also by virgin birth). In Asia, Cybele and Deoius. Chinese holy mother Shing Moo held her child in arms. Christian missionaries to Tibet, China, and Japan found that holy mothers depicted with splendid light around their head and holding a divine child had been worshiped long before they got there.

In Rome, the goddess was Demeter, meaning Earth Mother, wearing wreathes of braided corn in her hair. In ancient Greece, Demeter was called Ceres, the great mother with baby at breast. From her name "Ceres," we get the word "cereal" (grains), "which made man different from wild animals."

In the spring in ancient Greece, celebrations were held in honor of Rhea, the Mother of the Gods. Christian Europe celebrated the spring festival of "Mother Church" who (they believed) would protect them from harm. During the 1600's, England celebrated "Mothering Sunday" on the 4th Sunday of Lent, honoring the mothers of England. All cultures worshiped the divine, the Mother, who gives life and food, compassion and love.

So. How to celebrate this Sunday on Mother's Day? I'm in favor of some goddess worship, probably involving some rocks and food and chocolates and compassion and love. Not so original, but time tested and universal:

• Visit Mom (or a Mom) and give her a massage (if she wants one). Neck, hands, feet, back. Good for circulation for giver and receiver. Touch can be healthy. Ask her stories.
• Teach her a Nice Neck Stretch
• Make her (and you) something healthy to eat. For light teas, try cinnamon, cloves, grated orange peel, or ginger in hot water.
• For a cold treat without unhealthy junk food, mash a frozen banana with crushed raw walnuts or flax seeds. Use a food grinder or get free exercise by mashing them yourself in a bowl. It will taste like creamy ice cream. Flax seeds and walnuts have been found to be effective to help bone health as vegetarian sources of omega-3 (n-3) fatty acids. Raw walnuts (as part of a general low fat and cholesterol diet) have also been found to have a beneficial effect to decrease cardiovascular disease risk, among other benefits. This treat has fiber and is non dairy, both associated with lower breast cancer risk.
• Goddess worship often is helped with chocolate. The primary chemical in chocolate is theobromine. "Theo-" means God and "broma" comes from a word meaning food. The theobromine in chocolate was named for "food of the gods." Theobromine is an antioxidant, weak diuretic, stimulant, and mood booster, opens breathing airways, and relieves coughing. Dark chocolate has more theobromine than lighter chocolate, with flavonoids and phenolics, plant substances that are good for the heart. People who get a kind of vascular headache called migraine do better not to eat chocolate. For others, get plain cocoa, unsweetened, not junked up with sugar. Add the unsweetened cocoa to the frozen mashed banana and walnuts for a healthy sweet wonderful treat that tastes better than you would expect. For exotic flavor and more health benefit, add fresh grated ginger root.
• Sit outside in the air and sun to have your tea and frozen banana. Warnings on the dangers of overtanning are important for preventing skin cancer for people who work outdoors, who over-tan for cosmetic purposes, and a few other populations. Another group to consider is those spending too little time outdoors. Sunlight exposure and the Vitamin D it makes your skin produce, is increasingly documented as crucial to bone density, healthy immune function, positive mood, sound sleep at night, relief of symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia, MS, Parkinsons, polycystic ovary, diabetes, and other health issues. A nice massage and tea and chocolate outside in the sunlight could be made into a wonderful Mother's Day. Nice excuse to buy a hat.
• Make Mom (or a Mom) some homemade healthy skin lotion. Commercial products have preservatives, dyes, and chemicals. Try combinations of grape seed oil, tea tree oil (very small amount), vitamins C and E, ginger, honey, tea, fresh aloe, and fragrances from oils, fruit, flowers like lavender, or leaves like mint. (Don't wear citrus oils like lime out in the sun.)
• Help out at a woman and child shelter. Or help at a men's shelter to help the guys get back on their feet to help their own families.
• Celebrate Mother Earth - go out and pick up litter. It's good exercise. Bend right.
• Make a trip to look around a home improvement center to see about some do it yourself solar projects, even if only to replace a few lights.
• Go do gardening for your mother, or your mother Earth. Lift and bend right, reach right, carry in healthy ways.
  
• Do some cooking, shopping, vacuuming, and cleaning for Mom (or a Mom). Water their plants. It's good exercise for you and a nice thing for them.
• Be good to each other - all the children of Earth.
• Follow the advice of the unknown who said, "The most important gift a father can give his children is to love their mother."
• If that doesn't work, take the advice on the side of aspirin bottles: "Take two aspirin, and keep away from children."

Labels: arthritis, circulation, diabetes, digestion, fibromyalgia, fix pain, green fitness, holiday, massage, nutrition, osteoporosis, Parkinson, spirit, stretch, sunlight, upper back

Permalink | 0 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Freed From Pain, He Rides Again

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

Bill writes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Permalink | 1 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Neutral Spine or Not?

A small inward curve belongs in your lower back (left-hand figure of the three in the drawing). You can slouch your spine in a few ways to increase the small inward curve resulting in over-arching, also called hyper-lordosis (two ways shown in the middle and right figures). Hyperlordosis can pinch and compress the lower spine joints called facet joints, and surrounding soft tissue.

I have done several studies trying to see why hyperlordosis hurts. One study that I will present at the American College of Sports Medicine meeting this May, identified and measured three kinds of hyperlordosis and their relation to lower back injury. It turns out that, historically, it has been tricky to measure overly-arched spinal angles in relation to the hip (middle drawing). It is even more demanding to figure how the lower spine angle relates to the upper body in hyperlordosis (right drawing).

The middle drawing above, and left figure in the photo at right, show one kind of lordosis from tilting the hip downward in front so that the backside sticks out in back, explained in the previous post What is Neutral Spine and Why Does Sticking Out In Back Harm? An earlier post introduced how this kind of overarching can injure - Aren't You Supposed To Stick Your Behind Out to Sit Down or Do Squats?

The right-hand figure in both the drawing and photo show a second kind of hyperlordosis. The hip may be fine and level, but if you slouch and lean your upper body backward, you overarch the lower spine and pinch it under your upper body weight. Watch for this kind of overarching when standing, lifting arms overhead, and carrying loads in front.

The muscles that hold your torso and hip straight are your abdominal muscles. But abs do not do this automatically - you have to voluntarily, consciously use them, the same as moving your arm or leg. If you don't deliberately use abs to position your spine, you may fall into whatever bad positioning habit you are used to - sticking out in back, or leaning upper body back, or both at once.

Strengthening abs and tightening them through conventional exercises also does not automatically make your abs do anything to position your spine - Using Abdominal Muscles is Not Tightening or Pressing Navel to Spine. That is why I spent more years in the lab to develop exercises that do train your abs to hold your spine right while you go about your daily life and while you exercise. We named the new system The Ab Revolution because it is a different way of understanding and using abs, and because we couldn't think of a better name. Ideas welcome. I will be giving a fast, fun, workshop on The Ab Revolution™ in downtown Philadelphia in May. If you can't make it, follow this blog or try the book The Ab Revolution™. It tells all about fixing the pain of hyperlordosis and how to get effective abdominal exercise.

Labels: abdominal muscles, lordosis, lower back, neutral spine, posture, upper back

Permalink | 2 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Does an Exercise Ball Make You Sit Straight?

Healthline staff helpfully sent in photos of sitting at work on an exercise ball. Both photos show obvious slouching and forward rounding.

A ball does not make you sit upright or prevent unhealthful, uncomfortable sitting position. You can sit upright or not. It is not the ball, but you, that determines what you do with your own body.




A ball that is too high will even prevent you from sitting close enough to the desk, so that you have to lean over forward to reach the surface.


Use common sense and your own muscles for simple, comfortable, healthful habits.




Photos courtesy of Healthine.com. Please do not try these bad postures at home. Healthline staff are trained professionals.

Labels: exercise ball, fix pain, myths, posture, sitting, upper back

Permalink | 1 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Do Fun, Not Exercise

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.

Labels: arm, balance, strength, stress, stretch, upper back

Permalink | 0 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Tax Stretch

The tax filing date is coming in a few days in the United States. Bending forward over a desk is a common source of sore neck and upper back.

A nice stretch for the upper back is to stretch back.

Stretching back reduces pressure on (unloads) the discs. A little about why bending forward loads the discs is in Disc Pain - Not a Mystery, Easy to Fix and Are You Making Your Exercise Unhealthy? Stretching back also is nice for the muscles.

Keep it simple. Breathe. Don't stress.

Labels: fix pain, holiday, neck, stress, stretch, upper back

Permalink | 8 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Nice Neck Stretch

Here is a quick stretch, helpful after long sitting or working. It stretches the neck, upper body, and side of the body, helping restore muscle length to tight muscles.

• Put one hand behind you, as if in an opposite back pocket (photo at right).
• Slide the other hand down your leg toward your knee. Breathe.
• Tilt your head toward your shoulder, gently stretching the entire side of your neck and body.
• For best stretch to the side of the neck, look forward, rather than up or down.
• Don't lean your head or body forward or you will lose the stretch. Stand straight.
• Hold for a few seconds.
• Change sides and repeat on the other side. Smile. Keep breathing.

To tell if you are standing straight, do the stretch with your back against a wall. Keep the back of your head against the wall for the entire stretch. If it is not comfortable to stand against a wall with your shoulders, backside, and the back of your head all touching at once, do the pectoral stretch in Fixing Upper Back and Neck Pain. You can check for the upper body tightness that makes it uncomfortable to stand straight - Thumbs Can Show Tightness That Leads to Upper Back Pain.

Use this stretch, called the trapezius stretch, along with the pectoral stretch to restore healthy positioning to the upper body. Rounded upper body position while lifting contributes to shoulder trouble, explained in Upper Back Exercise and Neck Pain Prevention Too.

With good positioning you can lift more and avoid injury.

More good, quick stretches in the book Stretching Smarter Stretching Healthier.

Labels: fix pain, neck, posture, side, stretch, upper back

Permalink | 4 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

When Did Health Become Thinking Out Of The Box?

We're just back from teaching the medical school elective in wilderness medicine. Same food as last year. But the creek was thinly iced - good for ice swimming.

Before lecturing, I worried that my information on health - stand up straight, eat right, exercise, "and all that," would be so known and obvious to the bright young medical students that it would bore them. Instead, it was called, "Out of the box." When did health become out of the box?

I spent years of my career in a lab as a serious, intensely number-checking research scientist. I worked to ensure that we knew what truly worked, and what was hype, unrelated, or just wrong. I made certain that what I discovered and developed for patients was squarely right, practical, and in the best interest of the patient (and fun too, which is health). All I pursued was The Truth. Matt Cartmill once said, "As a youth I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life. So I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet women."

Why is bypass surgery, angioplasty, stents, obesity, diabetes, and medications with uncomfortable, unhealthful side effects considered normal, while eating a vegetarian diet is labeled wacky and extreme when it is medically documented to stop and prevent heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, and other prevalent conditions that rob people of joy in life?

In my diving medicine lectures, I wanted students to see how the information worked and how it relates to many things in and out of diving, not just dictate lists of conditions to memorize. I showed slides, asking them to identify why an accident would happen on the way down versus up and why. I told them that if they understood, they would not have to memorize. I just wanted them to think. As my father once enlightened me, "Jolie, you're asking a lot!"

In the orthopedic lectures, I taught the same principles I tell in this Fitness Fixer blog of gaining great physical improvements without making pain and injury in the first place. After one of my lectures, students scattered for personal time, while a few stayed in the lecture hall, bent over laptops. They sat hunched, rubbing sore shoulders. Eventually one nudged the other, "Get the doc, she's right here." After some indecision, one student asked me to give him stretches to fix the pain of working at the computer. I told him you can sit and work without getting pain in the first place, and why didn't I show him that, instead of a stretch as an "antidote." He protested that the computer made his neck hurt. I agreed that the way he was sitting would do that, and repeated that you can easily sit and work in a way that doesn't cause the pain in the first place. More protests came, that as students they had to work on the computer long hours.

Medicine is not supposed to consist of allowing bad things to happen so that you can do a cool procedure to try to reverse it. Readers, do you want to try what I showed him and get a free house-call right now?

• I moved his chair in close to the table where he was working. Move yours in close now.
• Standing behind him with my hands on his shoulders, I gently pulled his upper body up and back to rest against the chair back. At home you can feel me guide your shoulders and upper body back.
• Next, keep the chin gently in, not jutting forward.
• We moved his computer back from the front edge of the table to make room to rest his forearms while using the keyboard. If you use a "below-desk" keyboard tray, it is often better to move the keyboard back to the desk. Don't crane your wrists, making a new problem. Relax and breathe.
• I told them that at my own desks, I raise computer on a shelf, block, or book about 10 inches higher than desk level, and use a cheap external keyboard. Even without these helpful changes, you don't have to round forward over a laptop.
• The seat back of the lecture chairs were concave - shaped to curve like the letter "C" so that you sat rounded forward. This is a common problem in many chairs, even some called ergonomic chairs. Another of the students mentioned he had a commercial lumbar roll at home. It was expensive and he didn't use it much because it was uncomfortable. I showed them how to use a small soft roll, which can be your gloves or light sweater, nothing fancy or expensive. Nestle it in the small inward curve of the lower back, then press your upper back, not lower back, against the chair back so that you can sit straight and lean back, instead of rounding forward. Pressing the lower back against the lumbar roll is a common way to make it useless and uncomfortable.
• See these posts to see how you may be doing unhealthy sitting without realizing it, during work, play, and exercise:

Are You Making Your Exercise Unhealthy?
Disc Pain - Not a Mystery, Easy to Fix
Sitting Badly Isn't Magically Healthy by Calling It a Hamstring Stretch.

It turned out that most of the young, active, outdoorsy, academically talented medical students had muscle and joint pain. So did many of the top ranked physician faculty. Several told me they thought their pain was normal from their activities, from studying, their fallen arches, or body structure. They regularly took anti-inflammatory medicines and thought they needed special shoes. The posts Arch Support Is Not From Shoes and Which Shoes Help Exercise, Fall Prevention, and Ankles? show how you can simply use your own muscles to have healthy foot and ankle mechanics and no pain, and Healthier Backpack Carrying to Get Better Exercise and Stop Back Pain shows how it is not the backpack, but mostly how you carry them that makes or stops back pain.

You probably heard not to slouch since you were a child. That easy medicine hasn't changed. You heard to eat vegetables for health and an apple a day to keep the doctor away. I think a lot of the kids I was teaching caught on and will help many with what they learned. It's easy. It's true. Who is the one who is out of the box?

Labels: arches, blood pressure, drugs, fix pain, nutrition, sitting, upper back

Permalink | 6 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Stretching With a Friend - Partner Pectoral Stretch

The posts Quick, Feel-Good Upper Back and Chest Stretch and Fixing Upper Back and Neck Pain showed two ways to stretch your upper body in the way most needed - backward, not forward. Today's post gives the same great-feeling, healthful stretch for two, the Partner Pectoral Stretch:

1. Stand back-to-back, as in the photo, arms outstretched, hands comfortably linked, thumbs face upward.
2. Don't lean back, arch your back, or jut your neck forward. Stand straight.
3. One partner gently pulls arms forward, while the second partner allows their arms to stretch backward, letting the chest muscles stretch (left-hand photo).
4. The idea is not to yank the second partner's shoulder at the joint. Allow the front chest muscles to lengthen. It should only feel good.
5. Hold for a few seconds while breathing easily, then switch so the second partner who just stretched arms backward, pulls arms forward to stretch the first partner (right hand photo).

Valentine's week Fitness Fixer posts on sharing health began with a fun lower body exercise in Partner Leg Press. Tuesday linked to doing healthier massage. Wednesday told about a sincere meaning of Valentine's Day - teaching a neighbor how to quickly stop painful, frightening back pain and sciatica.

Valentine's day doesn't have to be one day, then forgotten about. It can be the start of healthy interaction between any people and for yourself, for every day, which is the idea of "Fitness as a Lifestyle."


More partner stretches and exercises in the book Healthy Martial Arts

Labels: arm, chest, fix pain, holiday, partner exercise, stretch, upper back

Permalink | 0 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Changing Thai Massage to Be Healthier Part I - Avoid Pressuring Lower Back Discs

In the previous post, What is Thai Massage? I explained that many moves in Thai massage are beneficial, with a few to avoid. One of these less than healthy moves involves the practitioner pushing your back and neck forward into a stretch.

The post Disc Pain - Not a Mystery, Easy to Fix explains why sitting and bending over eventually breaks down the discs of your lower back. In one of the pushing stretches, the practitioner sits behind you to push your back forward, leaning their weight to assist your forward movement, as in the drawing at left.

In another move they add putting their arm under your arm and around the back of your neck. In wrestling, this move is called a half-Nelson. This move is used to bend your neck forward. From there, they push your back and neck forward, leaning their weight to assist your forward movement

Don't let people push your back or neck to round forward, whether to stretch or to make a cracking noise. Avoid treatments that include manipulation to the neck, which has been found to sometimes tear the blood vessels leading to the brain. There have been deaths and even Western chiropractors have been cautioned not to crack the neck with these moves.

A second assisted stretch to avoid is similar to the move above. The practitioner may sit behind you or to the side, and put one or both of their arms under your arms then around the back of your neck, in a move that in the West are called a "half Nelson" and "full-Nelson." From there they may swing you slightly to the side, then again with a wider swing, then a third time with force. This sometimes makes a cracking noise in your back. Anatomically, the greatest force you can put on your discs and low back is bending forward with a twist. Politely decline anyone who would do this to you.

Coming Next:
Making Thai Massage Healthier Part II - Avoid Snapping Elbows or Knees Backward
Keeping Thai Massage Healthy Part III - Should You Do "The Blood Stop?"

Previously:
What is Thai Massage?

Labels: disc, lower back, massage, neck, sitting, upper back

Permalink | 0 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Instead of ever doing another crunch again, do this fun abdominal building exercise. You will get better more effective abdominal exercise in the way your body, and abs, work for real .

Photo copyright from the book Healthy Martial Arts

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

Permalink | 3 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Upper Back Exercise and Neck Pain Prevention Too

Western boxers and students of many martial arts are often taught to hunch their shoulders and lower their head to protect their neck. Box-aerobics students (and teachers) also often jut their head forward thinking it looks tough, or more authentic. It doesn't protect the neck as hoped, and conversely produces neck and shoulder problems, some immediately, others over time. It also reduces effectiveness of the punching exercise, and to people who know martial arts, it doesn't look tough, it looks weak.

Look at the photo at left. The student on the right is holding his head severely forward (orange arrow). The teacher at right in the foreground is holding his neck and head properly, relaxed and upright (white arrow). The teacher and student in the background also are holding their neck in position that is healthy for the neck and shoulder, and makes punching more effective.

What are some of the problems of forward head angle and hunched shoulder?

• Keeping your head forward brings it closer to your opponent, easier to hit.
• In case of a head strike, a tilted angle of the neck to the brain and skull is more likely to result in brain injury.
• Hunching the shoulder can injure the neck and shoulder muscles
• Hunching results in tight, aching neck and shoulders.
• When you keep your head and shoulders forward, it rotates the shoulder bone forward. When you raise your arm with your neck forward, the soft tissue of the rotator cuff gets pinched between the arm bone and the shoulder bone. Eventually the bones can saw away at the rotator cuff muscles trapped between them, enough to get a tear.
• The same pinching between shoulder and arm bone can compress the nerve(s) that go down your arm, resulting in tingling, pain, numbness, weakness.
  

All the above problems can easily stop and reverse when you stop the cause - the forward head angle and hunched shoulder. Start with the post Fixing Upper Back and Neck Pain.

The muscles you use to hold your head and neck upright instead of forward are your upper back and posterior shoulder muscles. It is a free upper back and posterior deltoid and shoulder workout just standing relaxed but straight, and exercising that way too.

When you watch movies of Mohammed Ali fighting, watch for his healthy, straight, graceful neck positioning. For doing martial arts and boxing aerobics, you can protect your chin and neck without hunching and injuring your neck and shoulder. For exercise classes and just moving around the house you get more upper back exercise and stop injuring your neck and shoulder all at the same time by using your muscles to hold yourself upright instead of sagging. Exercise is supposed to be healthy.

Photo by Jolie Bookspan

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

Permalink | 7 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Improve Stretch and Strength With Better Kicking

Thai boxing (Muay Thai) kicks are among the most devastating and effective kicks in the world. Thai fighters spend hours a day kicking heavy bags and posts, and years toughening their legs and shins by bashing them with pipes and against coconut trees. A kick from a Muay Thai fighter's leg is like a blow from a club.

Whether you practice kicks for martial arts training, for self-defence, for dancing, or for exercise in an aerobics class, watch for several bad habits that increase strain on muscles and joints, and reduce effectiveness of the kick. It is not the point to kick someone else and wind up injuring yourself.

1. Look at the photo, above left. The teacher is holding his hip and neck straight. The student is not. The orange arrow at the student's leg shows how, when the student lifts the left leg to kick, the right leg pulls forward instead of remaining straight at the hip. This is a sign of tightness at the hip and poor technique. He needs to stretch the front of his hip and retrain kicking technique to prevent this common bad habit. Read more on this in the posts, Is Bad Martial Arts Good Exercise? and Common Exercises Teach Hip Tightness When Kicking, Stretching, and on the Stairs.

2. Next, look at the white arrow at the student's belt line. It is tilting up in front. The teacher's hip remains level as the kicking leg is raised. Curling the back and letting the hip roll under, as shown by the white middle arrow is another sign of tight hip muscles in the front and back of the hip, and poor kicking habits. When you raise one leg to kick, don't curl your hip or round your back. Hold your back straight and upright for more exercise, a built-in hip stretch, and a more effective kick.

3. Third, note the black arrow showing how the student rounds the upper back and neck forward, instead of holding straight. With practice, the student will learn to hold the neck straight as the teacher is doing.

For all the exercise you do, keep healthful positioning. You will easily prevent common strains and aches, look better, and get more exercise.

Photo copyright by Jolie Bookspan

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

Permalink | 4 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Healthier Carrying - Get Free Ab Exercise and Stop Pain

Do you overly arch your lower back when you carry things in front of you, as in the photo at left? Arching your lower back and leaning back to carry anterior loads is common source of pressure and loading on your lower back, whether you are carrying a dog, a chair, a baby in arms, a child on your hip, packages, or grocery bags. It is the same contributor to the mystery back pain from carrying backpacks, explained in the previous post, and after long standing, walking, and running explained in Fixing the Commonest Source of Mystery Lower Back Pain.

Look at the photo, at left.

1. The upper arrow shows how her upper body is tilting backward instead of being straight and upright from mid-hip to shoulder.

2. The lower arrow shows how the hip is tilting forward in front and sticking out in back, instead of being vertical from mid-hip to the top of the leg bone.

3. Between the two arrows, her lower back is overly-arched and pinched. There is supposed to be a small inward curve, not a large one, pinched back like bending a drinking straw.

Leaning back offsets the weight and makes things easier to carry. The reason it is easier is that you shift the weight from your arm and torso muscles onto your lower back. This squashes your lower back under the weight of your upper body and the things you carry. It is a common source of lower back pain that keeps coming back, even after pills and treatments. The reason the pain keeps coming back is that you haven't stopped the cause.

Leaning the upper body backward to hold something in front of you is common during standing, walking, running, reaching and carrying around the house, and while exercising. To stop the pain:

• Stop the unhealthy overarching.
• Stand straight to carry loads, whether in front of you or in back, as described in the previous post and If Better Abdominal Muscles Are Your New Year's Resolution, Try This.
• To feel reducing the lower spine arch and getting the upper body more upright, stand with your back against a wall. Touch heels, backside, and upper back to the wall. See if you have a large space between lower back and the wall, or if you have to increase the space to bring your shoulders and head to straight position. Press the lower back space lightly, gently, toward (not touching) the wall to feel how to reduce a too-large arch. Pain should stop right then.
  
• Don't tighten abdominal or backside muscles. Tightening is not how to move your spine - see Using Abdominal Muscles is Not Tightening or Pressing Navel to Spine.
• Click the label "neutral spine" (and other labels that interest you) for more on each topic.
  

The muscles that straighten your spine are your abdominal muscles. You get free, built-in exercise for your abdominal and back muscles in the way they are supposed to work for real life. That is called functional exercise.

Standing without overarching the lower back when carrying things, whether in front or back, is better, healthier, and more functional exercise than lying on the floor and rounding your back to do crunches.

Use the arch-reducing technique in this post to learn neutral spine for a healthier back and built-in back and abdominal muscle exercise all the time during everything you do.

Photo by subscription to Clipart.com

Labels: abdominal muscles, arm, fix pain, lordosis, lower back, neutral spine, posture, upper back

Permalink | 2 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Exercise and Stretch for Long Travel Sitting

We have just gotten home to Thailand after over 40 hours of flights. It would have taken longer to walk here, so we are happy. We unfolded husband Paul, just under seven feet tall, from the seat. During the next month and a half we will travel on 14-hour overnight trains and ferries to places we need to be. Paul will practice good bending almost everywhere as he tries to fit under low Asian doorways, roofs, and bus ceilings, bow lower than the old people, and stand and sit with his head lower than the head of the monks, as is respectful.

Most people sit a great deal even without long travel. Sitting puts higher pressure on the back and spine than standing. Long sitting pressures the back far more. Sitting also means keeping the hip bent forward at the crease of the leg. The muscles in front of the hip shorten and tighten. When most people exercise, their exercise is usually more bending forward. The result for most people is that the hip stays bent almost all the time. Much tightness results that prevents normal hip function, and reinforces the same tight, bent positioning that is so hard on the spine.

Long airline flights sometimes provide a video or printed message encouraging in-seat exercise and stretching. Often the advice is forward bending. That is the last thing most people needs. Instead, try the following:

• Stretch your back and shoulders backward, not forward. Pull your chin in while pushing your upper back backward against the seat back. Stretch arms overhead. Breathe.
• Lean the back of your head and upper back against the seat, press your feet on the floor, and raise your hips, trying to straighten your hip at the "crease" of the leg. Don't bend your neck forward; leep it straight. You will feel your thigh and hip muscles working to do this.
• Turn in your seat to each side to brace your elbow against the seat back for the pectoral stretch, shown in Fixing Upper Back and Neck Pain.
• Stretch the back of your legs by straightening your knees and pulling your toes back using your shin muscles.
• Increase leg circulation by pressing both feet against each other, then cross your ankles and pull both feet outward against each other, then cross your ankles the other way and repeat. Try it again with both legs out in fron, as in the stretch above.
• Get out of your seat as often as you can. Restore length to the front of your hip with the hip-tilt quadriceps stretch shown in Instantly Better Hip and Quadriceps Stretch.
• With one foot far in front of you and the other in back (lunge position) tip your hip under you to stretch the front of your hip. As soon as you tilt your hip under, you will feel the difference. While holding the hip tilt, bend both knees to dip straight down almost to the floor, then up. Do many, then switch legs and do many more.
• It is easy and unobtrusive to do wall stretches while waiting for the rest room: Rest your head, heels, hip, and upper back against the wall, described in the post Breasts Causing Upper Back Pain is a Myth. Bring both arms overhead, hands touching the wall. Lean your body far to one side then the other. Keep both hands touching the wall. When Paul does this one, his head is often either against the ceiling or he can't stand up fully at all, depending on the type of aircraft. He bends knees and grasps each elbow overhead, keeping elbows touching the wall behind him. For other people short enough to fit standing up, just stand straight.
• Then stand a step away from the wall and stretch arms overhead and back to touch the wall, fingers pointing downward. Straighten elbows as much as comfortable and keep the stretch coming from your upper back, not lower back.

Click labels under this post for more on each topic.
More stretches in the book Stretching Smarter Stretching Healthier.

Labels: circulation, fix pain, hip, leg strength, leg stretch, lower back, sitting, stretch, upper back

Permalink | 0 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Quick, Feel-Good Upper Back and Chest Stretch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Drawing copyright from the book Stretching Smarter Stretching Healthier

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

Permalink | 1 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

If Better Abdominal Muscles Are Your New Year's Resolution, Try This

Readers have been writing to ask about the conflicting reports in fitness magazines on how often you should work your abs. Some sources cite research studies saying you should rest between resistance training. Other articles say to exercise them every day.

It's common to debate fiber type and fatigue and conclude whether to schedule your abs daily or intermittently. Then people "do" abdominal exercise based on that, and completely neglect what abdominal muscles really do when you stand up and go about your daily life.

Abdominal muscles have their main function when you are standing. But they do not automatically do anything to support your back or prevent lower back pain. The support comes from how you stand. It has nothing to do with strengthening or tightening. Those are common fallacies.

Abdominal muscles attach from your hips to your ribs. When you use them, they prevent you from leaning and arching backward. The post Fixing the Commonest Source of Mystery Lower Back Pain shows how this works. Abdominal muscles are the muscles that, like a guy wire attached to the front of a tree, keep the tree from bending backward. However, abs do not keep you from leaning backward automatically. If you are not using your abs when you stand, your upper body will lean backward and/or your hip will tilt downward in front. This is called slouching. Your lower back overly curves inward too much, and pinches and pressures the joints and soft tissue of your lower back. People who overly arch the lower back (hyperlordosis) usually notice their back pain after long standing, walking, and running. They feel they need to lean forward or sit to relive it.

Using your abs doesn't mean sucking them in or making them "tight," it means not letting your lower back overly-arch. When you tilt or tuck your hip under you to straighten your lower spine and straighten your upper body so that it does not lean backward, the muscles that straighten your spine from overly arching are your abdominal muscles. That is how abdominal muscles support your back - only when you deliberately use them to.

Plenty of people have 6-pack abs and have terrible posture and continuing back pain. In my practice, I treat patients with bulging muscles who hurt their back opening windows because they overly arch the lower back when they reach upward and lift overhead.

If "abs" are part of your New Year's Resolution, here is how to get functional healthy abdominal exercise:

1. Stop doing crunches. They are not functional, not healthy, and don't train your abs the way you really need them to work in real life.
2. Instead of crunches, try the plank to practice and challenge healthy positioning, described in the post Change Common Exercises to Get Better Ab Exercise and Stop Back Pain.
3. Stand properly without overarching. That gives built-in abdominal muscles exercise all the time. Do not suck in or tighten. Just position your spine away from unhealthy overarching.

If you "worked" your abs all day all the time by controling your spine and lower back positioning, you wouldn't need to go to a gym to do funny little crunches - neither every day, nor every few days.


Photo, copyright from the book No More Crunches No More Back Pain The Ab Revolution

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

Permalink | 3 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Safer Overhead Military Press

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Permalink | 2 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Getting Stronger Without a Gym

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Photo by quailwood

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

Permalink | 0 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Quick and Fun Arm and Body Strengthener

Upper body strength is important for health, making daily activities easier, and other benefits including preventing osteoporosis of the upper back and wrist, two major sites of bone loss in both men and women. It is often said in gyms and fitness articles that body weight is not enough to strengthen, and that you need weights and equipment. Fortunately, that is not true.

Here is a quick, fun, upper body strengthener using your own body weight. It has the added advantages of also strengthening core muscles plus training a fair amount of balance. It also gives many benefits of a tilt table or inversion machine. You can use this fun exercise anywhere you have even a small wall space. It is fun and not as hard as it looks. Be brave, and (safely, carefully) try this:

• Stand with your back about a foot in front of a wall (face away from the wall).
• Crouch down and put both hands on the floor - drawing #1 at right.
• Put the bottom of one foot high on the wall - drawing #2.
• Lift your other leg to the wall so that you are standing on your hands with both feet up on the wall - drawing #3.
• Hold as long as you can. Keep breathing.
• When you want to come down, just step one, then both feet back down to the floor the way you started in drawing #1.

Avoid this one if you have uncontrolled high blood pressure or problems with pressure in your eyes or brain. To keep this exercise fun and safe, when you are upside down standing on your hands, don't let your lower back sag into an arch. Keep your hip tucked to straighten your back and you will get free core strengthening while you do this. Don't let your body weight pressure your shoulders. Use your upper body muscles to maintain shoulder position instead of letting your shoulder joints grind under your weight. Don't fall down on your face. Use your arm strength and hold yourself up. Keep breathing and don't tighten and strain, which increases blood pressure.

Don't think of this as an extreme exercise. It can be simple; don't be afraid to try it daily. My Grandmother "downgraded" to this one in her 90's from full handstands (without the wall), because it is easier and safer.

When this exercise becomes too easy, rock side to side so that you stand with weight first on one hand, then the other, as if walking on your hands. Keep your feet against the wall for balance, at first. When this becomes too easy, stand only on one hand for increasing periods. Start doing small dips, like upside-down pushups. Increase until you can dip your head almost to the floor, then push back up to a handstand again. Work until you no longer need the wall.

You do not need to lift big weights in a gym to strengthen. Your body weight provides fun, effective strengthening, with no machines, gyms, or extra weights needed.


Drawings copyright by Jolie Bookspan

Labels: abdominal muscles, arm, balance, hamstring, hand, handstand, leg strength, leg stretch, strength, stretch, upper back, wrist

Permalink | 2 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Don't Fall for "Don't Sit Up Straight"

An article getting much attention in news and blogs carries the headline, "Don't sit up straight." Many people have been overjoyed to read this. The news articles state that recent studies say not to sit up straight due to the pressure it puts on the spine. But this is misleading.

The studies don't mean, "don't sit up straight." They mean, "don't sit up vertically." They say that leaning back reduces pressure on the spine. The posts I have written about healthy sitting are in line with these studies, and say to lean slightly back. However, you still need to prevent rounding your back when leaning back. This bad rounding of the lower back is shown in the drawing at left. All my posts on sitting have mentioned to lean your upper back against the chair to lean back and reduce pressure, but not to also round your lower back.

It is not "being straight" that is the major problem. My post Disc Pain - Not a Mystery, Easy to Fix shows how rounding the spine forward mechanically opens space between the back of your vertebrae, and pushes your discs outward, over years, into this space. The post says to, "Pull your chair in closer to the desk, and lean your upper back against the seat back." That way you can lean back without rounding. That is how to sit straight (sit with your spine not rounded forward) and still not be vertical (by leaning back).

The post The Cause of Disc and Back Pain shows a photo of someone sitting vertically - head is above hips - but they are rounding the spine forward, putting unhealthy pressure on the discs and soft tissues. They need to straighten their sitting to reduce the outward force on the discs and the overstretch on the muscles and supporting tissue.

This study, and subsequent reports of it, missed that you have less vector force on your spine while sitting vertically at 90 degrees if you don't also round your spine, than if you lean back as they say but round your back. You can lean back and still pressure your spine by rounding. Look at the drawing, above left. The person is leaning back, as the study reports you should do, but the person is also rounding the lower back. This is one of the most common slouching there is. It is more pressure and more unhealthy than sitting vertically but not rounding.

Healthy sitting is simple when you understand, not just memorize a bunch of strange rules. More posts about healthy sitting to come. Until then, straighten your spine by not rounding forward. Move your chair in closer, and lift your upper body up to lean your upper back against the seat back. Yes, that does make your spine straighter - in a healthy way.



Drawing copyright from the book Fix Your Own Pain Without Drugs or Surgery.

For more on healthy sitting see the book and the free web site article - Sitting For Planes, Trains, Exercise, Computers, and TV

Labels: disc, fix pain, lower back, myths, posture, sitting, upper back, wrist

Permalink | 0 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Fix Disc Pain Without Surgery

I received a phone call from a physician who said he had three successful disc surgeries and had slipped another disc. He wanted a consult with me before his fourth surgery. I told him it was like having three successful tonsillectomies. That is not a successful surgery. He had never stopped the reason he was pushing his discs out of place, one after the next.

Surgery for back pain and sciatica is considered by some as a solution, but an alarming number of people have pain that continues after surgery, or their pain stops initially while on pain medications and rehab following surgery, but then returns. The reason is that, except for unusual situations like bullet wounds or tumors, surgery does not stop the root cause of back pain. Because the cause continues, you continue doing harm to your back until it hurts again.

Degenerating or slipping discs are not from aging, or fate, or heredity, or a disease. The term "degenerative disc disease" is a misnomer. It is not a disease process, or a germ, or inherent factor or weakness that makes discs unhealthy. There are external factors, like smoking cigarettes, which contributes to disc degeneration. However, the majority of damage to discs and the soft tissue of the back and neck is usually chronic forward bending that physically pushes the disc outward until it presses on nearby soft tissue and nerves.

Disc damage occurs daily from avoidable bad bending in daily life, unhealthy sitting position, and many common exercises and stretches. Just as not all food is healthy, not all exercises and stretches are healthy, even some of the most common ones in gyms and yoga and fitness studios. The daily harm to your back is usually painless and something you are not aware of doing, until it accumulates, like smoking for years, until one day you get symptoms. The pain may come on suddenly, but was developing over years.

The physician who had the three surgeries, and three discs already removed, had gone back to all his bad bending, lifting, and sitting, and pushed out another disc. If he had stopped the injurious mechanics, he could have let the disc heal. Pain can often stop within days using this method. He probably never needed the first three surgeries. Having a fourth disc surgery will not stop him from going back to the injurious habits that caused the discs to break down and push out of place.

Removing discs, even part of them, means that the cushion and shock absorption between your vertebrae is reduced. This predisposes to early arthritis. A worse situation follows fusion surgery. It is a belief that stopping motion in a joint via fusion surgery will stop pain. But it also stops function. If you want an active life, it is setting you up for more problems. Even if you do not value being active, because fused back bones cannot move when you bend and sit and move, the vertebrae above and below the fused site must move more than usual, squeezing the discs and bones more than they are designed for. Fusion surgery is often a predisposing factor to forcing people into future back surgeries.

I sent the physician my free articles showing, step-by-step, how to stop disc pain. I sent him several of my books for his own use and for his waiting room. I called to follow-up on several occasions, urging him to simply stop the cause of disc injury so that he would not need the surgery. He told me he was not interested and had decided to go for his fourth back surgery. I hope his luck in avoiding surgical complications holds out as well as his good insurance.

The post Common Exercises Teach Bad Bending will get you started understanding common exercises that harm. There are far better exercises to do instead that give you fun, healthy movement without harm to discs. I am not in favor of doing less to avoid pain. I want my patients to have their life back and more. You can do this in fun ways and without surgery.


Photo by subscription to clipart.com

Labels: disc, fix pain, injury, lower back, neck, sciatica, sitting, surgery, upper back, yoga

Permalink | 2 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Studies Say Back Surgery Not Needed

Many back pain patients who come to me say the same thing; that they have gone for several opinions and were told each time that surgery was the only answer. However back pain, even chronic pain, sciatica and disc pain, are simple to stop with quick and non-surgical methods.

News articles are now reporting that back surgery is not more effective than non-surgical methods.

Patients are often told that if they don't have the surgery, they might become paralyzed. A recent New York Times article stated, "Many surgeons had long feared that waiting would cause severe harm, but those fears were proved unfounded." The Times article quoted Dr. Steven R. Garfin, chairman of the department of orthopedic surgery at the University of California, San Diego, "I think this will have an impact. It says you don't have to rush in for surgery."

More important to your health is what is not being reported. The Times article said, "No one who waited had serious consequences, and no one who had surgery had a disastrous result." It is important to know what is meant by, "no one who had surgery had a disastrous result." It is not considered "a disastrous result" if you go through the pain and fear of surgery and still have back pain, or are worse after surgery. It is not considered "a disastrous result" if you lose your job because of the time lost to surgery and recovery, and your family won't talk to you because they think you're a complainer. It is not considered a "disastrous result" if the medicines given during and after surgery cause problems you didn't have before, or worsen existing problems, and then you are given more medicines to counteract the first ones, each with their small (or large) health drawbacks. It is not considered a "disastrous result" if you get far more out of shape and gain large amounts of weight because you could do less after your surgery, and your overall health declines from it.

There is no national database where people who have the same or worse pain after surgery are counted. There is no clearinghouse where people who get new problems because of the surgery are counted or helped. Often, there is no way for surgeons to know that their patients still have pain years later.

Patients may be referred to physical therapy but as their pain, disability, and misery grow, they "are lost to follow-up." I hear these things every day because these patients show up in my office and e-mail me everyday saying they have no money left and will I please help them. They are at the end of what they can endure.

Exercise programs for back pain often fail because they do not stop the cause of pain. Personal trainers and Pilates instructors come to me all the time as patients with herniated discs because they do unhealthy bending and stretches for their exercise. There are far better exercises and stretches you can do instead. Some of my patients are doctors. Their own doctors said there is nothing else to do but live with pain. People often tell me, "You don't understand, I *HAD* to have the surgery, because of the pain." I do understand, and you can stop the pain without surgery, often better and faster.

1. My posts The Cause of Disc and Back Pain and Sitting Badly Isn't Magically Healthy by Calling It a Hamstring Stretch show you how easy it is to avoid and fix pain from bad discs and sciatica, and give better exercises to do instead.
2. Understand how to stop the root causes of pain in the posts Breasts Causing Upper Back Pain is a Myth and Disc Pain - Not a Mystery, Easy to Fix.
3. Learn why it is not a matter of just strengthening abdominal muscles and realize what abs really do to help your back in What Abdominal Muscles Don't Do - The Missing Link and Change Common Exercises to Get Better Ab Exercise and Stop Back Pain.
4. Read real stories of exactly how my patients fixed pain without surgery.
5. Fix your back pain by Christmas - read Fix Your Own Pain Without Drugs or Surgery

Use this free blog every day to change your idea of exercise from a bunch of artificial moves, to real health that is built-in to your daily life. You don't have to have back pain, and you can be stronger and healthier than before - without surgery.

Labels: disc, fix pain, hamstring, injury, lower back, neck, sciatica, sitting, surgery, upper back

Permalink | 1 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Better Balance by Christmas

I heard a radio program about yoga for senior citizens. The yoga program directors made the usual statements about yoga helping strength and balance. Then they said something that seemed at odds with their goal. They said, "If your balance is poor, do the moves sitting down or hold on to the wall." The very thing that you need to improve your balance is to practice standing and (safely) not holding the wall. If you sit and hold on, you prevent practicing balance.

Balance that helps your normal daily life is easy to improve at any age. All you need is to stand up and balance. Balance is quickly lost with sitting and disuse.

How does balance practice help you? You have receptors in all your joints that sense positioning. They can tell if you are about to fall. They tell your body to send signals to your muscles to steady you. If you don't use your balance sensors with balance practice, they become slow and unable to sense positioning well. You may tip over far enough to fall before your receptors sense it and can tell your muscles to pull you to upright position. Balance practice also improves your muscles. Without balance practice, your muscles become too slow and weak to prevent you from tipping over and falling. If you have let yourself become tight, brittle, and weak from lack of general exercise, you may strain, tear, or break something from a fall that would not have otherwise caused any harm.

Years ago when I left working in the hospital to go into private practice in sports medicine, I found that by making house calls you learn the reasons for people's pain and injuries that you will never see in a hospital or clinic exam setting. It was the first time I ever saw anyone have to sit to put on or take off their shoes. Here are a few quick, functional (real life) ways to improve balance:

• Stand up when you put on your socks or hosiery.
• Stand up to put on your pants. Lift one leg in front of you, keep your upper body comfortably straight and upright, and slide on each pant leg.
• Stand up to put on your shoes. Try two ways: holding the foot in the air front of you to place the shoe, and by crossing the ankle on the opposite knee.
• For more balance, after putting on one sock or shoe, remain standing on one foot and do a small squat on one leg to reach the other sock or shoe on the floor.

If you can't stand to dress yourself, and you have at least one working leg, you may be too tight and weak and unsteady for healthy normal life. To get started:

• Practice standing on one foot without holding on to anything. If balance is poor stand near a wall for safety to get started and have a skilled friend help. Practice standing for 10 counts without holding on. Increase how long you can balance.
• Stand on one foot and swing the other forward and back, side to side, without holding on or touching down. Safely.
• If you use a cane, practice walking holding it off the ground. Use your brain to do this intelligently and safely to improve balance and reduce dependence on the cane.

Balance is "use or lose" and can be quickly improved with safe smart practice. You don't need to go to a gym or "do exercises." Use balance skills as part of your daily life.

For more fun and functional real life balance activities see the books Fix Your Own Pain Without Drugs or Surgery and Healthy Martial Arts.

Labels: achilles stretch, aging, ankle, balance, feet, fix pain, holiday, leg strength, leg stretch, side, spirit, squat, strength, stretch, upper back, yoga

Permalink | 0 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Conference on Aging Dec 2, 2006 in Midtown New York

The Greater New York Chapter of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) will hold a conference on aging on Saturday, December 2nd, 2006 at the Flatotel, 135 W. 52nd Street between 6th & 7th Avenue, in New York City.

In one fast moving day, there will be nine lectures by authorities on metabolic changes of aging, cardiovascular changes and the benefits of exercise, exercise in older patients with heart failure, neuromuscular training for the older population, psychosocial aspects, physical training for older clients with special conditions, and nutritional needs of older populations. I will be giving a lecture called "Three Quick Techniques for Three Musculoskeletal Problems Confused for Aging."

Many of the declines that come with doing less are often confused with aging. A stiff and rounded upper back, for example, is not necessarily aging, but practice. Are you sitting rounded forward reading this right now? Do you spend your day rounding over your desk and steering wheel, then go to the gym and bend forward for crunches, leg lifts, Pilates, and toe touches? Do you bend your neck down to do biceps curls? No wonder it's hard for you to straighten out. How long will you practice unhealthy bent forward position before you get stuck that way? There is no need to exercise in the very way that is not healthy when you do it sitting at your desk. There are better ways.

Much of the loss of strength and balance over the years is from disuse not aging. Many people do not use their legs for the hundreds of times each day they need to bend. They bend wrong, throwing their weight on their spine. Their back hurts and their legs and hips tighten and weaken. Eventually they find they are unable to sit comfortably on the floor, and more worryingly, cannot rise from the floor, or even from their chair without using their hands. This is debilitating weakness, and a dangerously unhealthy cycle of use or lose. It is not aging. In cultures where sitting and rising from the floor is a daily activity, people of 90 have the strength and balance to do it. They do not suffer the rates of falls, osteoporosis, arthritis, and cardiovascular disease of less active populations.

My lecture will cover three easy techniques to maintain and improve spine health and muscle strength. Come say hello. The meeting is designed for allied health practitioners, but is open to the public, with reduced registration fees for members of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) New York Chapter. Contact Felicia D. Stoler, MS, RD (732) 946-4436, or e-mail fstoler@att.net

Labels: aging, arthritis, balance, disc, education, fix pain, hip strength, knee, leg strength, leg stretch, lower back, osteoporosis, sitting, squat, strength, stress, stretch, upper back

Permalink | 2 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Bending Right is Fitness as a Lifestyle

Readers asked for more pictures of healthy bending around the house and workplace during daily life. They've been getting excited about the idea that daily life is the way to physical ability and health, instead of stopping life to do a bunch of exercises. People spend time and money for endless treatments and gadgets for back and knee pain and tight Achilles tendon. Healthy bending prevents the commonest sources of all of these.

• A major predisposing factor of knee and hip arthritis is weak thighs.
• A major risk factor of hip osteoporosis is lack of weight bearing exercise.
• A major risk factor of falls is weak legs and poor balance.
• The Achilles tendon gets a natural stretch with each time you bend right with heels down, and loses this constant normal source of stretch without good bending.
• The most important contributor to making a lumbar disc degenerate, or slip out of place (herniate), and press on nerves causing sciatica, is bad bending forward.
• The biggest contributor to upper back and neck pain is keeping the upper body rounded and bent over forward.

If you would like to reduce risk of falls, osteoporosis, bad discs, sciatica, achy upper back, and arthritis, get a built-in Achilles tendon stretch, and get strong shapely legs all at the same time, just use your legs with good body position for daily healthy bending.

Why go to the gym or to physical therapy to do knee bends to strengthen your legs, then spend your "real life" weakening your legs and degenerating your lower back discs with bad bending, and say, "I don't have time to exercise."

You will get free built-in exercise just moving in life. My friends and family in Asia are astonished when I tell them I teach Americans how to bend to look in the refrigerator, and that Americans tell me it is too much work to bend right to load dishes in a machine that washes for them. Then they pay money to go to a gym or buy equipment to exercise their legs.

Here is a fun way to change mindset to exercise as a lifestyle:

Count how many times a day you bend and how many times you can choose to harm yourself or help yourself.

If you would like to try "fitness as a lifestyle," this is the best place to start. Think of it:

1. when bending to make the bed,
2. to pick up laundry,
3. look in the refrigerator,
4. load and unload the dishwasher,
5. to pick up your shoes,
6. open a lower cabinet,
7. lift a child or pet,
8. feed a child or pet,
9. pick up things from the floor,
10. pick up hand weights to do exercise,
11. put down weights after exercising,
12. many daily activities.

More on bending and reaching, getting built-in lifestyle exercise, and fixing knee and back pain, in the books Fix Your Own Pain Without Drugs or Surgery and Health & Fitness in Plain English THIRD edition.

Labels: achilles stretch, arthritis, disc, fix pain, knee, leg press, leg strength, leg stretch, lower back, osteoporosis, sciatica, squat, strength, stretch, upper back

Permalink | 5 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Carrying Schoolbooks Is Not the Cause of Back Pain

A recent BBC news article echoed the common idea that children are getting back pain from carrying their books. However, carrying books is not the cause of the pain.

The article continued how children often require "physiotherapy" for their pain. Common programs in physical therapy involve strengthening. An important thing to understand is that carrying your own things would be more strengthening than lifting little weights that often weigh less than the books.

The article mentioned how one of the schools is trying to raise money for more lockers so that children will not have to carry their books between home and school. While physical educations programs are being increasingly cut, and children are getting less exercise, fewer physical skills, and are gaining weight, people still think it is too much exercise for children to carry books.

It is not the backpacks that hurt the back. It is carrying them with poor positioning that pressures the spine. Carrying books, even heavy books, with good positioning would be healthy and good exercise, not a cause of pain. By contrast, pulling a rolling carrier or bag on wheels while bent over in unhealthy ways can cause the same kind of pain.

One common poor positioning when wearing a backpack is rounding the upper body forward or slouching to the side to offset the weight of the pack. These poor positions are the same that create pain when sitting poorly at a desk, which is another source of the children's pain. If you stop hunching forward or sideways when carrying a backpack or other loads, and stand straight, the pressure on the spine shifts from the spine to the core muscles. It is free exercise.

The second major pain producing bad habit when carrying a backpack is leaning or arching backward - allowing the lower back to increase the inward curve (overarch). Backpacks do not make you arch your back. It is you who allow yourself to be pulled backward by the weight. If you straighten yourself and not slouch backward, the compression on the lower back stops. The muscles that pull your spine forward to reduce the backward lean are your abdominal muscles. You would have a free abdominal muscle workout. The action of pulling yourself straight instead of arching backward is the same movement as described in Change Daily Reaching to Get Ab Exercise and Stop Back and Shoulder Pain.

Posts to come will show how to easily carry loads, books, and backpacks so that instead of compressing and hurting your back under the weight, you get free exercise that makes you stronger and healthier. The answer is not to stop carrying books, then go to a gym or physical therapy center to lift weights. It is fitness as a lifestyle to move and get healthy exercise from your daily life, including carrying your own things in healthy ways.


Photo by Sarvodaya, Creative Commons

Labels: abdominal muscles, disc, fix pain, lower back, myths, posture, upper back

Permalink | 7 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

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

Do you arch your lower back to lift your arms up, as in the photo at right? It is unhealthy body mechanics if you do.

Arching your back to raise your arms reduces the stretch and exercise on the shoulder, and creates pressure and loading on the lower back.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Watch other people when they reach overhead for exercise and daily life, and notice fitness magazines picturing overhead moves. See how often they arch their lower back to lift and reach. It is important to be able to tell when positioning is unhealthy, not just follow a bunch of strange rules about how to stand and exercise. See more helpful info in Fixing the Commonest Source of Mystery Lower Back Pain, and What Abdominal Muscles Don't Do - The Missing Link.

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

Photo by Dan Mogford, Creative Commons

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

Permalink | 0 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

The Cause of Disc and Back Pain

A UK Times article featured a physician musing that as medical students they were not taught in school to identify the cause of medical problems, but to treat symptoms (and give electric shocks to decerebrate frogs). The cause of the problem would still remain.

He mentioned how you may go to the doctor with painful tonsils, and be given a "diagnosis" of tonsillitis. He educates the reader that "Tonsillitis, for example, is not a disease but a symptom - of something else that caused the tonsils to be infected." He continued with how you may go to the doctor with pain down your leg, and be given back a "diagnosis" of sciatica, which just means "pain down the leg" but not what is causing the sciatica. A disc may be pressing on the nerve, but what is making the disc press? The sciatica and the bad disc are the symptoms. They are not the cause. Unfortunately, he stopped there, and for treatment said to go back to your activities with light rest. Nothing about what caused the disc to degenerate (break down) or protrude (herniate or slip) in the first place.

Understand The Causes:

1. Bad sitting and bending are main causes of disc degeneration and herniation.
2. Rounded sitting (photo on left) compresses the space between vertebrae in front and opens the space between them in back and squeezes the disc gradually backward into that space.
3. Bad bending (right) levers the weight of your upper body plus whatever you are lifting onto your lower back discs, whether you keep your back straight or rounded.

Strengthening your back will not stop you from sitting and bending wrong. Stretches or massage that feel good for the moment will not stop you from sitting and bending in the way that rounds the spine forward, pushing and squeezing the discs until, finally, give break down and squeeze out to the back (herniate).

A bad disc is not the diagnosis. It is not the cause of the problem. It is the result of what is causing the disc go bad.

You can treat the disc pain with pills, exercises, massage, and shots, but not remove the cause. When you continue the cause, the pain often comes back. You can undergo surgery to remove the disc, but of you do not remove the cause and continue injurious sitting, lifting, and bending, you continue harming your other discs.

What to Do:

• To stop the damage, stop the cause. Then it can heal.
• The post Disc Pain - Not a Mystery, Easy to Fix explains.
• The post Free Exercise and Free Back and Knee Pain Prevention - Healthy Bending shows simple healthy bending.
• The post Are You Making Your Exercise Unhealthy (and several others) shows how to easily fix unhealthy sitting.
• There is more information in the replies already here to the many reader comments below this post. Before asking more questions, see if your answers are already here. Also click labels under each post, links in posts, and archives at right.

It is easy to prevent and heal back pain when you simply stop the cause.

Labels: fix pain, injury, leg strength, leg stretch, lower back, posture, sciatica, sitting, squat, upper back

Permalink | 28 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

How Often Should You Be Healthy?

A reader thoughtfully sent in the photos at left to help readers recognize unhealthy bending, and asked, "What is your advice when someone is having to bend to put dishes in the dishwasher? It just seems so uncommon to think to squat while loading the dishes."

There is no better time to bend in healthy ways than your real life. The whole point of fitness as a lifestyle is that your daily life is healthy movement - not to change clothes to do squats at a gym three times a week, then change clothes again, go home, and bend wrong all day. Healthy bending is for every time you bend. How often is that? The post How Good Would You Look From 400 Squats a Day - Just Stop Unhealthy Bending showed how we estimated that you bend an average of 400 times every day for ordinary activities. Why harm your back and miss free exercise for your legs hundreds of times a day?

Most people know and repeat, "bend your knees" if you quiz them on healthy bending. Bending knees slightly, as in the above photos, does not make bad bending healthy. Bending over forward pressures your lower back discs, whether your back is rounded (photo above left) or straighter (above right). You are still bending over and the leverage point is your lower spine. Bending right is simple:

• With feet side-by-side, comfortably apart, bend knees, keeping your torso fairly upright - as if not wanting something to fall from a shirt pocket.
• Keep both heels down and shift your weight back to your heels.
• Pull your knees back over your heels. Don't let them droop forward under your body weight. When you shift your knees back, you will feel the effort shift away from your knee joint to your thigh muscles.
• Don't stick your backside out or exaggerate the lower back arch.

Unless you are moving in healthy ways for your real life, it is not a lifestyle and it is not healthy. Healthy bending is easy and life changing. It is free exercise and injury prevention. When should you do it? Each time you want your daily life to be healthy.

The post Free Exercise and Free Back and Knee Pain Prevention - Healthy Bending shows exactly how to make good bending a healthy normal part of your daily life for the hundreds of times you bend.

Other posts to come have more photos and drawings, showing how to change unhealthy to healthy bending. Click the labels under this post for all Fitness Fixer on each topic.

More on good bending and getting built-in lifestyle exercise: Fix Your Own Pain Without Drugs or Surgery, and Health & Fitness in Plain English

Labels: disc, fix pain, hip stretch, injury, knee, leg strength, leg stretch, lower back, posture, squat, upper back

Permalink | 3 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Are You Making Your Exercise Unhealthy?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

Permalink | 4 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Thumbs Can Show Tightness That Leads to Upper Back Pain

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

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

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

Try this to see if you round your shoulders:

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

To fix the problem, try this:

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

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


Photo from the book Fix Your Own Pain Without Drugs or Surgery

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

Permalink | 0 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

The Stretch You Need The Least

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

Permalink | 0 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Common Exercises Teach Upper Back and Neck Pain

Tuesday night is martial arts class. It had rained all day. A few students were absent. They missed class on how to toughen body and spirit because of water? Next time it pours I think I should hold class outside. In fairness, the students who missed class responsibly contacted me that they would be out.

The rest of my students were sitting in two neat rows. They had gotten their equipment out of bins in healthy ways by bending their knees with body upright and heels down. Then they sat down in their rows on the floor without using their hands. Most were sitting up straight. The rest straightened when they saw me walk in.

Each week students practice preventing the bad habit of jutting their head forward of the center line of their body during stances and moves for exercise and sparring (left photo, above left). Healthy position keeps the chin in and the angle of the lower jaw over the center line of the shoulder (right photo).

A forward head is not healthy for daily life or exercise. It results in much neck, upper back, and shoulder pain. Jutting the head forward for kicking, lifting a weight, and other movement is commonly seen in exercise magazines and videos. Watch for it and let it remind you not to do that. The forward head doesn't look tough, it looks untrained and weak and is several inches closer to the opponent making your face easier to hit. It frequently leads to upper body pain, and in case of a blow to the head, a tilted forward angle of the neck in relation to the brain and skull is more likely to result in brain injury.

A forward head is not something you can't control. Just as you can move your arm or leg, you can easily move your neck in a relaxed way into the healthier chin-in position you want. The post Breasts Causing Upper Back Pain is a Myth gave a simple "wall test" to see if you keep your head forward - stand with your back against a wall and see if the back of your head also touches comfortably. If you have to arch your back or jut your chin forward or up to touch the back of your head, you are probably too tight to stand straight and are probably standing and moving all the time in an unhealthy bent-forward position that strains the neck, back, and other areas.

The post Fixing Upper Back and Neck Pain taught the pectoral stretch to restore muscle length to make healthy straight position comfortable. Use the pectoral stretch first thing in the morning and many times throughout the day. Then use your new ability to stand straight. The pectoral stretch (or any stretch) is not what fixes the problem. The stretch makes it possible for you to stand in the way that no longer strains and injures.

In the martial arts and in life, inviting a bad outcome is known as "leading with your chin." Letting your head and chin jut forward, as in the forward head, is inviting a bad health outcome. The martial arts teaches you to stop problems, not cause them. You can easily stop long-term damage through simple repositioning. You will look and feel better. That's using your head.


Photo and more on this and related topics in the book Healthy Martial Arts

Labels: chest, fix pain, martial arts, neck, posture, sitting, stretch, upper back

Permalink | 0 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Fixing Upper Back and Neck Pain

The post Breasts Causing Upper Back Pain is a Myth explained that a tilted-forward position of the head and neck, called a forward head, is not the normal tilt to the neck. It is an avoidable slouch that causes much upper back, neck, and shoulder pain, and pressures the discs of the upper spine. Do you have a forward head? If you can't put your back against a wall and comfortably touch the back of your head to the wall too without overarching your back or raising your chin, that usually indicates that the muscles in front of your chest are so tight that they restrict normal standing. The resulting bent-forward position of your neck creates large forces on the muscles and joints of your upper spine as it strains to hold the weight of your head forward of the supporting spine instead of above it.

Being too tight to stand and sit upright instead of slouching forward is common, even among people who stretch regularly. The reason is that they usually practice stretching forward, rarely stretching the front muscles by stretching back. In turn, holding your body bent forward instead of upright perpetuates tightness. To get the stretch in the front chest (pectoral) muscles that you need to stop the slouching-tightness cycle, use the photo above left for reference and try this:

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

Do the wall test and the pectoral stretch first thing every morning and several times every day to learn healthy positioning. Use this pectoral stretch instead of the stretch where you stand in a doorway or corner to stretch both arms at once, and instead of pulling your straight arm(s) behind you.

This pectoral stretch is one of two techniques to stop upper body tightness that prevents standing and moving in healthy ways. I will cover the second soon. Remember that head and body position is voluntary. Hold your head up and shoulders back softly. By not letting your head hang forward all day, you will no longer need constant pills, adjustments, or treatments for pain. You will stop the cause.

Thank you to photo subject Paul Plevakas, shown from the book Fix Your Own Pain Without Drugs or Surgery - What to do to fix many sources of pain and injury, step-by-step.

Post with helpful info to get the purpose of this pectoral stretch - Pectoral (Chest) Stretch - The Most Common Mistake in the Best Shoulder Stretch

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

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

Permalink | 31 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Common Exercises Teach Hip Tightness When Kicking, Stretching, and on the Stairs

Tuesday night my martial arts students showed they had improved. When I came in they were waiting in two neat rows. I still had to cue them to sit up straight.

In the post Is Bad Martial Arts Good Exercise? I mentioned showing the class not to let their neck, back, and hip round forward when kicking. By straightening, strength and stretch are built into regular movement.

Several readers e-mailed me that they noticed for the first time that they let one leg pull forward when lifting the other (notice the standing leg in the left-hand photo, at left). They said they felt a good difference when they straightened (right photo).

If the front muscles of your hip are tight, when you lift one leg high you may find that you round your back and bend the other leg. Watch for this during kicks in martial arts and aerobics, when lying on your back raising one leg overhead to stretch the hamstrings, and ascending stairs. The common practice of allowing the other leg to bend forward perpetuates a tight anterior hip, which in turn, contributes to walking bent forward and back pain.

In martial arts, you don't want your standing leg completely straight. That is an invitation for your opponent to kick your knee, snapping it backward. But for both health and effective martial movement, you don't want to bend the leg more than a small amount. Bending the back, hip, and leg when kicking decreases force of the kick, pressures your discs, and reduces stretch on the hip and hamstrings. The rounded-under hip position keeps the hip tight, a hidden cause of groin pulls. It also looks weak and unskilled. For lying hamstring stretches with one leg overhead, it is often taught to keep the second leg bent to "protect the back." However, keeping the leg (and body) flat on the floor give a far better stretch and is healthier for your back. Even in slow easy motions of stair climbing, leaning forward and allowing the second leg to pull forward reduces the normal hamstring and hip stretch, decreases the exercise on your hip and leg muscles, and reduces the back muscle activation for holding the straight position you need for health and back pain prevention.

It is said the martial arts gives you discipline and strength. It won't if you practice unhealthy habits. When raising one leg, hold your neck and back upright. Prevent the other leg from pulling forward. You will get a built-in hip stretch, one of the places you need to stretch most. You will get back and hip exercise in the way you need to move in real life, and prevent tightness and weakness that leads to poor movement and pain. You will change from kicking like a bent over old lady to a young strong athlete. Exercise as a lifestyle is not something done "for body parts." It is built into your normal movement to make it healthy movement.


Photo (and more healthy techniques) from the book Healthy Martial Arts

Labels: achilles stretch, balance, chest, disc, hamstring, hip, hip stretch, knee, leg strength, leg stretch, lower back, martial arts, neck, posture, stairs, strength, stretch, upper back

Permalink | 5 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Breasts Causing Upper Back Pain is a Myth

A news report in the MMD Newswire echoed a prevalent but false belief that breasts cause back pain.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By restoring healthier upper body positioning and use, you will get built-in back muscle exercise all day. Standing straight instead of allowing your upper spine to compress under your weight will stop your pain plus give free calorie burning exercise.

The idea is, that no matter your size, use your own muscles to prevent uncomfortable positioning. If you find that lifting your chest with your hands takes the strain away, then you can do the same with your upper body muscles. It is free exercise to use your muscles to prevent your own body weight from squashing you. Pull your chin inward and shoulders back in a relaxed way by unrounding the upper back. Then weight of your head and upper body will not pull forward on your upper back muscles, making them ache.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your size does not force you to slouch.

It does not require much to take charge and simply straighten up. It does not require long or repeated treatments or sessions or teams of professionals. I run classes for motivated, bright participants who want to empower themselves - see my web page for CLASSES - www.DrBookspan.com/classes.

No exercise is more important for your joint health than holding up your own body weight, no matter what or where it may be.

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

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

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

Permalink | 20 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Free Exercise and Free Back and Knee Pain Prevention - Healthy Bending

If you think that not having time to exercise is the problem, here is good news. Thinking that your life and your health are two separate things is the problem. You don't have to stop your life to get exercise.

The last post explained that you bend many times every day as part of normal life (How Good Would You Look From 400 Squats a Day - Just Stop Unhealthy Bending). This post shows one way to do healthy bending when you are bending with feet side by side - the squat bend.

Look at the drawings, above left. The left-hand drawing shows bad bending - letting weight rock forward, heels lifting, and overly arching the lower back. The right-hand drawing shows healthy bending - keeping weight back, heels down, and the lower back in healthy position, not rounded and not overly arched. Look at the right-hand drawing and try it:

• Keep your upper body as upright as you can, instead of rounding over forward
  
• Keep both heels down as you bend your knees (right drawing).
• If you find you lift your heels, use your leg muscles to deliberately pull your knees back so that your weight shifts back over your heels. Shifting your weight back keeps your weight on your leg muscles and off your knee joints. There should be no knee pain with good bending.
• Keep your knees back toward your ankles. If you just let your weight flop, the knees will come forward past your toes. Don't allow your knees to shift forward.
• Don't overarch the lower spine (overly sticking your behind out in back). Keep neutral spine. If you overarch, tuck your hip (tailbone) under you just enough to prevent having a too large arch (inward curve) in your lower back. Although it is often taught in exercise and weight lifting classes to stick far out and overarch, increasing the arch increases pressure on the joints of your vertebrae, called facet joints, and the soft tissue of your lower back. Overarching is a major hidden cause of lower back pain and injury.
  

Use good bending every time you bend - even to look in the refrigerator and get in and out of your chair. Don't use your arms to lean on the arm rests to sit down and get up; use leg muscles. If you need to use your arms, or you lean your body forward to sit or rise, you need to improve balance, Achilles tendon stretch, and leg strength. Bending properly does all that for you. (Practice safely. Don't fall down.)

Have a friend take photos of you from the side as you stand and bend, showing how you fixed your bending from unhealthy to healthy during whatever you do all day for work and at home. Write a fun summary and e-mail your photos and stories to me. I can post the best photos and most fun stories.

Realize that a big part of your health is the way you move in real life. Make a conscious decision to change your idea of exercise, fitness, and health from stopping life to "do exercise" to how you live. Have fun - the best health.

Labels: abdominal muscles, achilles stretch, disc, facet joints, fix pain, hip, knee, leg press, leg strength, leg stretch, lordosis, lower back, neutral spine, posture, squat, strength, upper back

Permalink | 7 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Is Bad Martial Arts Good Exercise?

This week marked several beginnings. The equinox began the journey of the sun away from the northern hemisphere bringing longer nights. The festivals of Ramadan, St. Sophia, Navarati and others celebrate origins and understanding. The university semester began, including the full-to-capacity martial arts class I teach on Tuesday nights at Temple U's Center City campus.

When I arrived, students were sitting on the floor waiting. Some sat in bad rounded posture that you know is unhealthy at your desk. They straightened when I asked them to. In past semesters there were students who refused. Once, one stormed out shouting she didn't understand why she had to sit straight when class hadn't started yet. She didn't know that class is always in session.

Students got their equipment - bending wrong to yank weights out of bins. I told them, "Healthy bending. This class is for health." Some didn't understand the connection. Others tapped those still bending wrong, "Teacher says bend your legs." Several looked surprised. One said, "I'm getting leg exercise before class even begins." I told her that class is always in session. I reminded students to use healthy bending at home and work for every time they bend (Disc Pain - Not a Mystery, Easy to Fix). I showed them how to get more exercise by helping others who came in late.

We began stances. Students sometimes have a stereotyped idea, sometimes learned from aerobic boxing classes. They stand with shoulders hunched up, upper back rounded, head and chin jutting forward, and their behind tilted out in back. I mimicked them. They giggled at how bad it looks. I told them, "You don't look tough. You look ninety." It's true that you use shoulders to block some strikes, but you are not supposed to hunch. Don't do things to harm your neck in order to protect your neck. Overarching your lower back so that your behind tilts out in back is a frequent cause of back pain in daily life (Fixing the Commonest Source of "Mystery" Lower Back Pain) and injury when giving or receiving a blow. It's silly to go to boxing class and beat up yourself.

Look at the photo above. It shows terrible positioning that injures, and perpetuates the tightness that causes more troubles. When you lift one leg to kick (or stretch or take the stairs), notice if your other leg pulls forward. That shows tightness in the front of your hip. Instead, stand straight and keep the standing leg from pulling forward. Don't round your body to lift your leg. You will get built-in anterior hip stretch, one of the places you need to stretch most, and prevent several problems that I will cover soon.

The point of exercise is to improve life. It is missing the point to exercise in unhealthy ways, training unhealthy habits. If you are interested in learning how to retrain healthy movement in martial arts or aerobic boxing classes that you transfer to daily life, let me know and I will post more on what my students learn.

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

Permalink | 12 Comments| Email Post

Post your comment

Change Common Exercises to Get Better Ab Exercise and Stop Back Pain

Holding a straight pushup position is sometimes called "the plank." Holding a plank is often done in a way that reduces the exercise benefit, trains unhealthy habits, and increases compression on your spine.

Look at the photo at left. The first boy on the left is letting his lower back (and neck) sink and bow under his weight. So is the third and fourth from the left. This sagging is not healthy and is not a normal curve. The bad overarching makes the plank easier to do. That means you get far less exercise. More seriously, allowing your weight to “hammock” shifts your body weight off your muscles and onto your lower back, causing compressive force and bad positioning habits.

The second boy from the front (and left) is holding straight.

A major, often overlooked purpose of the plank is to train your muscles how to hold your back in straighter healthier position under the weight of your own body. If you can’t hold up your own body weight in a plank for a few moments without sagging, it is no wonder your spine sags painfully during the day. No matter how many planks or pushups you do, if you let your spine sag into an arch, you are missing the best benefit of the exercise - to train positioning habits for real life once you get back off the floor.

Holding a plank has so many benefits that even if you are not athletic this exercise is one to choose. To do it in a healthy way that is useful to your real life, move your spine posture to be straighter(second from left in the photo). To reduce an overly large arch while holding the plank, tuck your hip under you as if you were starting an abdominal crunch or thrusting movement. The muscles you use to reduce the inward curve (arch) are your abdominal muscles. As soon as you reduce the arch to straighte