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Giuliano is a young Romanian boy living in Italy, trained by his gymnast father. Thank you reader Paul J for telling me about him.
Below is a link to the short video clip where I captured the above photos. I was not able to embed this movie, by request at the source. Click to watch 5 year old Giuliano do air pushups:
I used to teach air pushups in my yoga classes. Every class gave opportunity to see, try, and learn. I'd coach, encourage, even lift the students personally if it helped them try it, or feel the leverages needed. Were students excited? Inspired? Did they get strong and focused?
They might have if they tried it. They whine, stall, pout, refuse, and complain to management that my class is haaaard, and they had to connnnnnn-centrate. They didn't want any of that.
Each week new students arrive in my yoga class, holding expensive yoga equipment. Some are yoga instructors. They explain to me that yoga cures all back pain. I ask why they have come and they tell me all about their back pain that they have for 4 years and they do yoga every day (not curing anything evidently). They say they do yoga all the time and know all about it and how it gives you peace and love and concentration and good posture and strength and balance. Then they sit in terrible posture waiting for class. They get indignant when I tell them to sit well. They correct me that "class hasn't started yet." In the first minutes of class I teach standing on one leg. They topple over and refuse to try again. I have them stand on the other foot and they are flabbergasted that we are doing it again when they just spent all that time insisting to me that they can't (instead of trying). We do simple planks and they sag their back and lock their elbows. When we start hand balancing to learn the basics of air pushups, some of these yoginis have thrown full-out tantrums.
Then the next week, a new crop comes to class explaining to me that yoga gives you love and acceptance and peace and good posture. So I teach them air pushups.
Giuliano also does The Flag - To be covered in the future.
Reader Peg S. put healthy bending to work in real life, wrote in with this success story, sent a title for it, took photos and sent them with captions. Thank you Peggy for great work:
"Dr. Bookspan, your emphasis on squats and lunges in place of unhealthy bending has saved my back during long hours of snow shoveling.
"Lots of snow has fallen in far western Maryland - over 265 inches so far this season - with three back-to-back blizzards (22 feet of snow, or 673.1 centimeters).
"All that snow needed to be moved. I avoided unhealthy bending and had no back discomfort after hours of lifting snow-laden shovels.
"When I took a break, I emailed my yoga class students reminding them of the healthy movements such as squat and lunge in their snow removal efforts. They later thanked me for the reminder.
"Thank you for the information on back health!!!" Peggy S
Peggy is teaching these and other healthy movement techniques to developmentally disabled adults to train useful work skills and prevent injuries. See the first results in Functional Fitness as a Lifestyle By Mail Room Workers Peggy, her colleague Patty, Reader Paul J, and I have been working on Peg and Patty's project of using human powered devices like bicycles, to make electricity. More on this to come. Contact me if you can offer real input to design or build.
Fast Fitness - Hip and Quadriceps Stretch Lying Down
Friday, February 05, 2010
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Fast Friday Fitness - The front of the leg and hip are helpful places to stretch. Here is another nice stretch for the front of your hip and thigh.
People often "do" a quadriceps stretch without getting a stretch. They keep the front of their hip bent forward at the crease where it meets the body, meaning the area is being shortened not stretched. This is opposite of the point of the stretch. To get the stretch and the idea of lengthening and extending at the hip:
Lie on one side with both knees bent in front of you. It is ok to round your body a bit. The spine is not rounding under compression. It's a nice stretch. Prop your head comfortably.
Keep the bottom knee still bent in front of your body.
Notice different stretch with raised and lowered top knee placement. Stretch the other leg too.
Prevent these reasons the top knee may hurt:
Don't pull back so hard that it pulls painfully at the knee.
Tight quads can feel like knee pain when they tightly pull where they attach at the knee. It is not a problem with the knee, but with tight thigh and quadriceps muscles. Tight people may feel sharp pulling or yanking around the knee when trying to put weight on a knee stretched behind them, as when ruining or lunging. The problem is tightness, so stretch gently and intelligently. The idea is to stretch the quads so you don't hurt, not yank so that you do.
Check that you are not twisting at the knee - generally you can tell this if your foot is facing a different direction than the front of your knee. One commonly missed reason for knee pain felt during running and walking is twisted stretching, including yoga poses like lotus and hero if you don't turn from the hip, and others, covered in Knee Pain When Running - Check Your Yoga.
--- Read success stories of these methods and send your own. See if your answers are already here by clicking labels, links in posts, archives, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe free, "updates via e-mail" upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class space for personal feedback. Top students may earn certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Getinfo all in one place in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
If your knee pain from running isn't getting better with fixing bad gait, physical therapy, and medical care, check your yoga. Several poses directly twist, overstretch, or pinch knee cartilage. Over time, injury builds that does not show much in people who do yoga and little else, until their knees encounter resisted motion for running and sports, or from a trip or fall.
Not long ago, people in yoga or sports did not intersect much. Now, the previously more sedentary yoga populations try running, aerobics, and sports. Athletes are being told that yoga will give them magic benefits. Knee injuries bloom when they go back to sports, making the staunch yoga camps claim sports are the culprit, when it was the knee damaging motions in yoga and other stretches. The knee is a primarily a hinge joint, like the hinge on a door that only can open and close. The door swings toward you and away. If you lift up on the door, it twists the hinge and eventually loosens it. The door begins to creak and rub and make noise.
Think of sitting cross-legged (tailor style). Your knees are out to the side and your lower legs bend toward you. All is fine at that point. Now picture, as with lifting upward on a door, you lift the foot and lower leg to rest it on your thigh in Lotus position or lifting it in some pigeon poses as in the photo, at right. Unless you outwardly rotate the upper leg fully at the hip, the knee twists, overstretching the lateral (outside) ligament and pinching the medial meniscus and soft tissue.
Often people bend the ankle upwards too, also pictured at right, a separate problem - see Unhealthy Yoga Ankles.
How to picture rotation at the hip? Think of a stapler. Like the door just mentioned, the stapler has a hinge or knee joining two sections, like your upper and lower leg. It opens and closes on the hinge. If you pull the upper or lower part sideways, it twists or shears the hinge. To turn to staple sideways, you need to rotate the whole thing.
Hero pose, (Supta Virasana) begins sitting on bent knees, meditation style (left-hand photo below), which often is fine. The knee hinge closes, like closing a door, normal bending. Then the pose continues by pulling the feet outside of the upper legs, like pulling upward on the door hinge. If you do not inwardly rotate both upper legs at the hip fully, your knee twists at the hinge, overstretching the medial (inside- facing the other knee) ligament, pinching the lateral (outer) meniscus and soft tissue. Lying back, as in the right-hand photo adds prying of the joint to the rotation damage (often people overarch the lower spine too instead of stretch the muscles, an additonal problem). In "W" sitting, both feet face outward. Not a problem for the knee unless the hips do not fully rotate (whether relentless W sitting is eventually is too much at the hip is a separate question). Runner's hurdler stretch is the same issue, one leg at a time.
Even though yoga may call for "doing both sides" and following each motion in one direction with one in the other, twisting both the medial and lateral sides of the knee cartilage by doing both Lotus and Hero will not cancel each other, but can overstretch and degenerate both sides.
Warrior poses 1 and 2 are like a lunge. Check your front knee: - Is it inside the line of your foot? - Do your foot and knee face the same direction?
Sagging inward unequally loads the knee and when the foot and knee face differently, the knee twists under body weight (blue center model, photo at right).
Keep your knee above your foot, both facing directly forward.
Mighty Chair pose - watch for, and change overly-stylized artificial position, not valuable for any functional motion (photo right and lower drawing left).
For chair pose, use outer thigh muscles to hold straight and prevent knees from sinking inward. Use neutral spine instead of overly-arched to practice movement the way it is needed all day for real life. Right-hand drawing below shows fixing.
Make yoga something that benefits your real life movement habits, not trains artificial, damaging, motion you don't even need.
Hindu squats and one-legged heel-up deep bends may not twist the knee as much as pry it. Picture a tool to crack nuts - two handles joined at a hinge, like your upper and lower leg joined at the knee. Imagine putting an object (for example, a soccer ball) between the upper and lower leg and try to close the heel toward the upper leg - if the ball does not compress, the hinge (knee) pries open. That happens with low squats on the toes (heels up) if you have large or heavy legs. If you have slender legs, the heels can come closely, like bending your elbow so that your lower arm rests along your upper arm. Slender legs do this, while muscular athletes may destabilize their knees, leaving them venerable to future injury.
The beginning of one of the pigeon poses is pictured at right. The person pictured is sitting to the side, instead of keeping the back knee and leg rotated to face straight downward. Sitting to the side greatly reduces the stretch, especially to the rear hip's front muscles that need the stretch, but usually no big problem to the knee. When the pose continues to lift the back foot for King Pigeon, if you lift the foot up without facing the knee downward, you twist the knee joint. By turning the whole leg downward, you get a better anterior hip stretch, and when you lift the foot, the knee can bend like a hinge, not twist.
One Legged King Pigeon kneels on the rear knee with that knee bent so only the kneecap bears your weight. To reduce compression, and get a better stretch for your hip, move your back leg further back so that your weight rests on the thigh, not kneecap.
I have taken several yoga teacher certifications. Each gives different, plausible-sounding rationale why knee twist poses help, but the anatomy is just off enough to come to wrong conclusions. In one, they taught to deliberately twist the lower leg on the upper "to protect the meniscus." Twisting does not protect, but twist in a damaging way. There are two bones in the lower leg, allowing some rotation, but twisting injures other structures. Another teacher training stressed extreme knee twisting as a stretch in itself, stating that any increase in motion is beneficial, especially from joints. Knee laxity results. Without much muscle and positioning training, you predispose yourself to instability when giving the knee challenge, like going back to sports, or from a fall or blow. Another certification teacher training taught that knee twisting is beneficial since it allows great range of motion in case you fall down with your knee twisted backward. Sounds plausible for that one fall (unless you fall differently), but for every other day in your life, so much extra space can result that the joint 'rattles' and wears prematurely. In another class we were made to sit in Lotus, then, still folded in Lotus, rise to knees and swivel from knee to knee to waddle around the room, compounding damage with body weight on the twisted strained joints.
In each yoga teacher training and class I take, I hear teachers tell about their knee pain and surgeries. They don't know why. They think they need more yoga and do more injurious poses, getting relief or distraction for the moment, then pain comes back. Movement in general often relieves pain for the moment. No need to repeatedly add injury to get temporary relief. Stop the causes and the pain stops.
There are assertions that many people do these stretches and not everyone gets knee pain, so they must be fine. Smoking and unsafe sex also do not have a one-to-one association with immediately bad consequences every time. Some stretches and movements twist the knee and overstretch cartilage. If you do these stretches and have pain, or just sit or stand with your knees hyper-extended (locked back) even if you think it is unrelated, it is one place to think about.
--- Read success stories of these methods and send your own. See if your answers are already here by clicking labels, links in posts, archives, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe free - updates via e-mail or RSS, upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class space for direct feedback. Top students may earn certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Get more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
"Thanks so much for your help. "I wanted to let you know that I have had a herniated disk in my lower back for eight months. Had physical therapy & injections, but still needed medications-pain pills, etc. I never experienced so much pain in my life. I came across your website & articles & starting doing what you recommended, & within days I have been feeling great & have reduced the pain medicine because I don't need it.
"I know now that I was doing the wrong exercises in the past- too much bending forward & back. Didn't really know that this exercising technique (bending, stretching forward, arching) is incorrect. It sure is!!!!
"I really like the hamstring stretch - putting your leg on the wall. This is terrific. I feel so MUCH BETTER....
"Also, when you get copies of the Abs book, please let me know. "Have a great day Dr. Bookspan!!!! Laraine"
A herniated disc is an injury, not a condition or disease. It can heal. You do not have to live with it. You can go on to being able to do more not less.
Discs are living parts of your body, not like a tooth that once broken cannot heal. Most of the time, injured areas can heal, if you let them. Bulging areas can reduce. Dried discs can rehydrate. Each night as you sleep, discs replenish fluid. They plump back up a bit. That is part of why you are taller each morning, than in the evening. They can do all this if you stop the causes that injured them.
Doing surgery, adjustments, treatments, massage or yoga does not stop the cause of disc injury. Common exercises add to injury. Not all exercise is medicine. Then it is no surprise when pain does not stop, or stops but returns, or the next disc herniates after fixing the first one.
Changing unhealthy movement habits that degenerate discs and push them out of place means moving in healthy ways for all you do, not just for sets and reps in a gym. You can do all the "reps" of back exercises in the world. If you return to bending and standing in injurious ways all day around the house and workplace, it is no surprise that the exercises and treatments did not fix the pain.
Click the following for simple ways to stop causes of disc injury. Get the overall concepts, don't bog down on details. I see people in gyms following trivial, exacting "proper form" for exercising, while missing the whole point of healthy bending and lifting or how to apply it to general motion all day.
--- Read success storiesand contribute your own of these methods. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certifiedDrBookspan.com/Academy.
Don't let the vast potential of children go unmet. Go to the playground with them. Hang with them. Tumble with them. Play movement games with them. It's gaining priceless skills and health and the best aspects that childhood offers, not losing any aspect of childhood. Ask them to show you things.
Babies have a grasp reflex that allows them to hang with their fingers, with grip equal to world class climbers. Children have the brain elasticity to easily learn many languages without an accent, to move with strength and ability.
Don't strap children into the equivalent of wheel chairs (strollers) while you lift little hand weights. Lift the kids.
I teach many of the moves in this video in my yoga and other classes. Beginners can start them with good success, if they work and try. I have had yoga instructors who come my classes, curse and storm out at the first effort, whining that it is "haaaaaaaaaarrrrrd." They claim yoga makes them strong and loving, then throw tantrums, but that is for another story.
Click the labels children and partner exercise below this post, for Fitness Fixer ideas you can try (using your brain) so that children grow with all the joy, discipline, and strength of real health.
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Questions come in by hundreds. I'm bailing the ocean with a bucket. I make posts from fun mail. Before asking more, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. Why not try fun stuff, then contribute! Read success stories of these methods and send your own.
Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy.
Fast Fitness - Better Standing Hamstring, Achilles, and Inside Leg Stretch
Friday, June 12, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Fast Friday Fitness - get a better stretch for the hamstring of the standing leg when stretching the other leg to the side:
When you stand with one leg stretching to the side, notice the leg you are standing on. It is common to stand with the foot turned outward and the hip rounded under you.
Instead, turn the standing leg to face directly ahead. Knee and toes straight forward. Not turned out, not even a small amount. Stand straight.
Notice the stretch move to the back of your leg.
My student Leslie is pictured above at age 68. I snapped this shot of her while she was waiting for one of my classes. The position of the foot on the standing leg isn't visible, but she is straight ahead. I had to snap the photo quickly before the club manager told us to stop.
Stand straight without leaning over, rounding your upper body, or letting your hip round under you. This is different from the way most people are used to.
The straighter you stand, the more stretch, while training the function of healthy posture - a functional stretch. You need to be able to lift one leg without being so tight that your back rounds and your hip rolls under. Think of stairs, kicks for dancing, aerobics, martial arts, stepping over things, stairs, much real life. If you are not only using bad mechanics for daily life, but training unhealthful tight mechanics with conventional bent over stretching, what are you accomplishing?
If you can't stand straight, lower your leg to where you can. There is little point stretching for health while practicing unhealthful ways.
What has happened in a year? She can now do 40 push-ups. We just don't have a video camera. While we get one, click the link to do your push-ups with her each morning while it is still only 30.
Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from fun ones. Before asking more, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, or in the Fitness Fixer Index.
Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books. Get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy.
Fast Fitness - Develop Ankle Stability Sense While Stretching
Friday, June 05, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Fast Friday Fitness - prevent a common source of overstretched lateral ankle ligament, which is one contributor to repeated sprains - turning the ankle when stretching:
When you stretch your hip and legs, or sit cross legged or in yoga poses, notice if you allow the foot to turn, increasing stretch on the outside ligaments of the ankle - too much supination. Reader Liz demonstrates in photo 1 below.
Straighten your ankle, Liz photo 2, below.
You may notice you get more good stretch from your hip to make up for the motion you were getting by turning your ankle. Holding straight gives better stretch in the hip, and better ankle stability training.
Avoid turning ankle, overstretching outer ligament, demonstrated by Liz in photo 1 above /\
Then remember to use the sense and knowledge of ankle straightening when you stand, run, take stairs. Lying down to stretch will not train stable ankles. The idea of this post is not to make ankles worse with your stretches. Not all things are good to stretch. Avoid the unhealthful practice of lengthening the side ankle ligaments, shown again in the photo below:
Ligaments are like a briefcase latch. They attach the top bone to the bone below it. Like a latch, a ligament is not supposed to stretch, but hold position, so that the briefcase hinge (your ankle joint) does not rattle and the briefcase does not pop open (side of your ankle sprain). While sitting cross legged, straighten the ankle so that it does not turn up.
Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from fun ones. Before asking more, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, or in the Fitness Fixer Index.
Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books. Get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy.
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Healthy photos thanks to Liz of New Zealand Ligament stretch yoga ankles by Than Tan
Your Muscles Are Your Orthotics for Arches, Knock Knee, and Knee Pain
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
David from Belgium has been a success story and valuable contributor. He frequently makes us photos and movies showing how to fix pain and unhealthful fitness using Fitness Fixer techniques. He first left a comment on a post in 2007:
"I'm training to be a yoga teacher and I'd love to teach the right things to my pupils such as good posture. Your insights are very inspirational. After struggling with minor but persistent knee pain for some years, I was diagnosed with seriously fallen arches recently. I'm not really flat-footed, but ankles that drop inwards too much. (I could clearly see that on the video my podiatrist made of me walking on bare feet). In a week I'll be getting new orthotics. Though, after reading a patient's testimony on your site I decided to try and use my feet differently. So now on my walks to and from my day job I'm trying to walk 'right'. Rolling on the entire foot, heel to toes, leaning more on the sides and using all five toes. It feels awkward though and I notice that I often forget it. I wonder if this will 'fix' my feet eventually? Anyway, thanks for sharing your knowledge!"
I replied that it "fixes" arch positioning as soon as you do it. It is natural to control how you stand and move - the whole intent of functioning in a healthy way in life, and the intent of yoga (supposedly). It seems at odds to say that yoga teaches body awareness, strength, or positioning, then let ankles slump without control, and purchase devices to do it for you. Once you understand the purpose, it will not be awkward. It is the same as any other good posture.
Since then, David has consistently made good use of these materials, and shared many success stories. He has fixed various pain producing habits for himself and his students, fixed his mother's herniated lumbar disc by showing her healthy bending around the house - Bending Right is Fitness as a Lifestyle, and developed a new yoga system of healthier movement - Getting the Right Yoga Medicine.
Orthotics are rigid shaped devices, fitted by prescription, that specifically move and hold your foot in a certain position.
Orthotics are different from over-the-counter shoe pads that can help by cushioning impact.
Orthotics do not do anything you cannot do yourself using your own muscles and sense of positioning (kinesthetics).
It is a myth that only a device can move your foot and leg leg. Click the label "myth" under this post for all Fitness Fixer posts on fitness myths.
Try these in relaxed way:
Stand and see that you can raise your own arches back to normal, taught in the post Arch Support Is Not From Shoes. It takes only seconds.
Make sure you are also not pronating from higher up - Healthy Knees.
Remember, don't force. If it hurts, it's wrong. All you are doing is learning how to stand neutral, not tilted so much that you compress the joints.
The concept is to hold your feet in the same healthful position that shoe supports would. It is like an ice skater holds their skates straight at the ankle, not angled.
During walking and running, a brief and small inward drop (slight pronation) occurs right after foot contact that creates part of the "spring" and propulsion. The idea is not to prevent all foot motion, but to not let the knee twist inward. You can do that with your own brain and muscles.
See if your answers are already here by clicking links, labels under posts, archives, and the Fitness Fixer Index. Read success stories of these methods and send your own. For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer - Click "updates via e-mail" - (trumpet icon) upper right. Find fun topics on See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certifiedDrBookspan.com/Academy.
14,000 Miles on a Bike - Herniating and Fixing Discs
Monday, November 24, 2008
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Kristin S was run over by a hit-and-run driver while biking home from work. The car's trailer hitch crushed her face, nose, jaw, cheekbones, and eye sockets inward to her sinus cavities. After Kristin's reconstructive surgery, her step-mother, a student in my martial arts classes, asked me to make a house call to get Kristin back to physical activity. When I met Kristin, she had just had the wiring removed from her jaw, was moving slowly and painfully, and could barely open her mouth when she greeted me at the door.
We had a good session. I showed Kristin several of my rehab methods. She was a good listener and applied everything well. She rehabbed quickly and went back to biking, her socially conscious work, and her active life.
Kristin soon designed a bike trip called The EarthCycle Campaign to raise public awareness of ways to reduce common practices that waste and destroy world resources. Her trip extended 14,000 miles (22,530 kilometers) from Fairbanks, Alaska USA to Tierra Del Fuego, Antártida e islas del Atlántico Sur, Argentina.
I donated some of my books to Kristin to raffle along with her other fund raising activity for the trip, then off she went.
Along the 14,000 mile ride, Kristin stopped in villages and cities to exchange information about simple ways that we all can lower our impact on Earth's environment.
Months of biking passed. Kristin's back pain began.
Pain worsened as she rode mile after mile, through villages, open roads, and cities. She tried exercises she found on various web sites and doctors visited in cities she passed through. She did yoga. She stretched. The pain worsened. After one medical evaluation, the doctors told her results showed several herniated discs in her lower back. From there, she was told by every doctor that it was permanent and she had to stop biking. The rehab they gave her didn't help.
I received a short e-mail from somewhere on the road - "Help me, how do I fix this, they said I have to live with pain and have to stop the tour."
I chided her good-naturedly, "Kristin you should have read my books before selling them :-)" I e-mailed her back explaining the uncomplicated way that discs can be injured and also healed.
A herniated disc nearly always bulges (herniates/moves/slips/migrates/extrudes) toward the back of the spine, not the front. What pushes it to the back? You do.
Sitting with a rounded back physically angles the spine bones (vertebrae) closer in front and farther apart in back. The "opening" in back is often mistakenly written about as a positive way to make space for the nerves, but what is missed is that the bones pinching closer in front make unequal pressure, like squeezing a tube of toothpaste from one end. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Contents are squeezed outward to the other side. The discs are mashed and degenerated in front and pushed outward (herniated), little bit by bit, in back. At left (hopefully since we're still having graphics problems) is a graphic of the process from the post: Disc Pain - Not a Mystery, Easy to Fix. Two vertebrae are shown from a side view, as if you are sitting facing right. The right-hand drawing shows how sitting bent forward physically pushes discs (herniates them).
Sitting and standing straight would make space in a healthier way for the nerves.
Disc herniation is a process taking a few years, just like the damage of smoking or eating junk food accumulates until the heart is damaged enough to hurt.
I e-mailed Kristin telling her that a herniated disc is a simple injury, not a condition. It can heal if you understand and stop the bad postures that push the disc outward. In her case, it was sitting bent rounded over her bike, and unhealthful stretching and yoga. Here is what she did to understand and fix it all:
So was her yoga. If you already spend time bent forward and have the usually result of a flexion injury, you don't need more forward bending stretches - Getting the Right Yoga Medicine.
Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from fun ones. See if your answers are already here by clicking links and archives. Read success stories of these methods and send your own.
Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy.
In medicine, if someone wants to lose weight, they can do things to lose weight. It wouldn't work as well to "balance" the practice by doing things that both gain and lose. If someone has too high blood cholesterol, they may use foods, medicine, and exercise to lower it. It isn't helpful to do one thing to raise and another to lower the level. There's no need to "balance" the level by doing things to raise the level too.
In modern life, it is common to sit too much. The answer is not more sitting, or to bend forward more, but to get up and stretch the other way. The concept is not just mystic yoga, but common sense.
It is good yoga to omit moves that are not needed. Yoga has a long tradition to add or restrict specific movements and foods when you have too much or too little of something. Not all forward bending yoga moves are needed or useful to do in every class, and for many people, not at all.
It is not a mystery that several specific injuries come from too much time spent with the hip and spine bent forward. Hours a day, over months and years of sitting rounded forward, bring vertebrae together toward the front of the spinal column, slowly pressing the discs between them outward to the back, like squeezing the front of an old tube of toothpaste. Disc degeneration and herniation slowly result. The muscles that cross the front of the hip can become shortened until it is uncomfortable to stand or lie flat and straight. The front of the chest can round until round - posture feels normal and the rotator cuff rubs a little more raw with each lift of the arm. These are just three of several injuries from too much forward bending, also called flexion injury.
Someone with disc pain or other flexion injury doesn't need more flexion (forward bending). They need to reduce flexion and stretch the areas the other way. It is not unbalanced to give what is needed, not impose more of the cause of the problem. This becomes even more important with every passing year, as patterns and injuries become deep-rooted.
David Demets of Belgium has been invited to participate as a yoga teacher at a Global Mala event in Bruges. The event takes place September 21 and 22 at many places around the world. David will be one of four yoga teacher to lead people in 27 sun salutations on the 21st, to make a total of 108. The developers of the event say there are many approaches to leading a Yoga Mala and that they are open to any style of basic sun salutation.
One of many different parts of yoga is a short series of movements done in an order, like a dance, called a Salutation. Yoga has many different Salutations - moon salutations, wind salutations, sun salutations among others. They have different purposes, done at different times for different needs. Using all parts of one salutation for all students at all times, for people already loaded heavily with injury or pain from too much sitting does not serve the purpose of yoga.
David writes,
"I think this is a great opportunity to introduce yoga without (weighted) forward bending to a large group of people. So I'm working on an adapted sun salutation where I've left out the standing forward bend. I've made a video of this for my blog."
For forward range of motion without loading outward pressure on the discs, David retains the lunge with hands forward on the floor and the downward dog.
One year ago in October, David wrote me that he developed a yoga class that does not give more flexion to people with flexion injury. He wrote, "My mother follows this class as well. She says she hardly ever feels the hernia (herniated disc) in her back anymore since she started following (this new method). And I know she had really painful trouble with her back the past years. This is simply amazing! I'm very grateful."
Part II coming up - what happened when I explained this to one class that I teach.
Overhead Lifting, Reaching, and Throwing - More Part I
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Nice e-mails and requests came in after Part I last Monday about the overlooked training habit which slowly impinges and tears the rotator cuff. Here is one that covers the points from all received so far.
Reader Hanson writes:
"Thank you Dr. Bookspan for exactly the missing link. I had been attending months of expensive private yoga lessons at [well known studio name deleted] for my shoulder woes without much relief, and maybe have worsened my circumstances. I thought becoming worse with yoga was preferable to surgery that my orthopedic surgeon at [top California facility name deleted] said was required. The yoga directress said more months were necessary (for her wallet?) and I must learn to cool my mind (before I questioned why I wasn't getting better?). I sure didn't question when she wore that little outfit. She showed me yoga poses to "awaken" the area and other fuzzy yoga talk. Poses were raising arms overhead, leaning over with arms overhead, sitting with arms up, and so on. My shoulders burned, she said it was "awakenening." Now I discovered from you it was "impinging." No one said anything about a forward head when I raised arms. I did the same as the directress did. She had this bad posture too. She said do it slowly if it burns. So I burned up my shoulders slowly. Instead of paying the yoga directress for another private session of self-injury raising my arms with head forward I printed your blog and held it overhead to read it. I didn't lean myself back and didn't tilt my head forward. The shoulder is already better. I found all those yoga lessons never prepared me to stand up straight. They told me yoga gives you posture, but it didn't give me anything except a worse shoulder. The "awakening" came from your blog saying use this for life not just exercise. I can lift arms without pain now. I keep my head straight, not forward. Can you put more pictures up of what to look for and can you tell people about your blog?"
Left (pink), upper body leaning backward (explained in Part I). Tilting unevenly compresses the lower spine by increasing the inward curve under load, and fools some into thinking the arm is stretching fully. Center, hunched (raised) shoulders and forward head. Hunching compresses the area. Keep shoulders down when raising arms. Don't raise arms and shoulder together. Right (yellow), leaning upper body backward and forward head. Can you detect the forward head camouflaged by the upper body lean back?
Head forward when raising arm. Shoulders rounded, further compressing the area when lifting the arm.
Head forward when raising arm, shoulders rounded. Also pictured - lower back rounded, tilting the hip (pelvis) too far under. Shifts weight to the lumbar discs (click The Cause of Disc and Back Pain).
Fix Your Fitness to be Healthy and Stronger. Be able to do more, not give up lifting:
Click labels under this post for all Fitness Fixer on each topic.
--- Read success stories and send your own. See if your answers are already here - click Fitness Fixer labels, links, archives, andIndex. Subscribe free - "updates via e-mail" upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class space for personal feedback. Top students may apply for certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Get more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
Fast Fitness - Fixing Yoga Warrior and Lunge Exercise to Neutral Spine
Friday, June 13, 2008
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Fast Friday Fitness - quickly change your posture to change your luck on Friday the 13th. Hyperlordosis (swayback posture) seems to be unlucky - it causes lower back pain. You can do this in seconds to make a certain change to healthier spine for yoga or practicing the lunge. If you don't believe in luck, you're lucky. It's just good posture and simple anatomy.
Reader David from Belgium demonstrates in this 20 second movie that he made for us:
First ten seconds - he steps into a yoga pose called Warrior pose, but allows overly arched lower spine. He also demonstrates leaning more weight forward of center line, which is a different issue.
Note how the belt line tips downward in front and the lower spine overly curves inward - more than a normal curve.
At second 11 he levels the hip to bring the posture to neutral spine. Then he kindly demonstrates overarching when raising the arms further. Instead, hold neutral spine and raise the arms from the shoulder, not the lower back.
To prevent shoulder impingement when raising arms, keep shoulders down and back, don't just chin and neck forward, keep them gently in. A forward head posture compresses the rotator cuff when lifting arms. See Safer Overhead Military Press.
I never expected repeated requests to see how to do neutral spine in different activities. It is the same. Just apply the same neutral spine and that’s all. I thought one post would do it, but will post each activity readers ask about. I am aware that there are yoga and fitness places which teach to overarch the spine as part of the move. Teaching swayback does not seem to be as helpful as teaching neutral spine. Changing lunge and Warrior pose to neutral also improves the stretch to the front hip muscles of the back leg. Lucky.
"My Yoga teachers uses that, but you hold you legs at a right degree angle to the floor. It forces your back to be straight. Seems to me it sets you up for more shoulder action. I don't think I'll ever be able to do a handstand without the wall."
The handstand against the wall can be done with legs straight or bent as Ginger describes, or a variety of other stretches. However bending the legs at right angle, or any angle, does not "force" a straight back. Rounded back can still occur. Many people with tight hamstrings wind up rounding the back doing this stretch as Ginger describes because the back is the only place they can get the stretch from and they do not know how to transfer the stretch to the hamstrings. The shoulders also can be in any posture or level of "action" from good to bad depending on how much you know about posture and allow to happen.
The photo at right shows five of my students demonstrating the easy wall handstand in both positions. First at right in the foreground is Diana who hold straight good neutral spine. Next, also in good neutral spine is 67 year old Leslie who starred in the post Are You Stronger Than A 67 Year Old Lady? Click the post to do your pushups with her every day. Third in the middle, Johanna demonstrates right angle (photo taken just before reaching parallel to floor). This can be a fun stretch for hamstrings without loading the lower back.
Most important, use a straight handstand position in neutral spine to train straight body position against resistance, then transfer that knowledge to daily life. If you use the right-angle pose alone you do not learn that.
All my exercises are developed to be more than exercise alone. Instead of just "doing a move" or "holding a pose" use them to train how to move out of bad positioning into healthy position for everything you do.
The post Fast Fitness - Fixing Your Handstand to Neutral Spine shows a short movie of letting spine sag in the handstand and how to fix it so that you can train what to do when you are walking around, running, lifting weights, and just enjoying life. Instead of "doing" exercise, restore real life.
For doing handstands without the wall, it’s just real life balance and stretch training - a post soon will cover how.
Feeling Better Than She Ever Has Part I - Fixing Herniated Disk and Reclaiming Active Life
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Barbara's story came in over several weeks. Barbara thought she was healthy and active, and had done years of yoga. She had years of lower back pain, then a sudden onset of severe pain, leg weakness, and numbness. She couldn't push off effectively with her left foot, or stand on tiptoe. The heel of her left foot was completely numb, as well as the left side of that foot.
Barbara lives six hours from the nearest big town (there are 300 people in her little town in the Yukon and one general store).
Her doctor found that she had a herniated disc in her lower back, put her on anti-inflammatories. She was in continuing pain, and fearful of her future of pain and reduced activity, which would mean getting more out of shape and feeling worse. She was frightened that she had some "debilitating disease."
Barbara found my web site and this Fitness Fixer column with free information of how discs become pushed outward (herniated) through bad sitting and bending habits, and began trying some of the information. She wrote me excitedly the first week,
"I decided, after reading one of the many great patient stories you included in your book showing what to do, to lie on the floor on my stomach propped on my elbows to read your book. This felt amazing and when I got up again I could walk straight!"
Another e-mail followed that she was feeling worse again after that. I asked if she had gone back to all the injurious habits that cause the pain. She was surprised to realize that she had. Bad forward bending puts outward and eventually herniating forces on the discs. Barbara was bending badly all day at work when she need to pick things up, bending badly at home over the sink, counters, and while doing housework, then going to yoga class and spending much time bending over forward. Even in a yoga class, herniating forces occur from chronic forward bending, both sitting and standing bent over. It isn't magically good for the discs by calling it a stretch. Barbara also had been told by her health care providers not to do any lunges or squats. She later realized they were just the healthy bending she needed to do normal daily reaching and bending at work and around the house. Without them, she would only be doing the same bad bending that was contributing to the original problem.
Barbara wrote,
"I realized that part of my problem all week was that I had been half-heartedly doing "exercises" then going back to wrong bending while getting completely frustrated because it would seem things would start to feel better in the morning, but I'd feel like garbage by night. I wouldn't do all the things you recommended first thing in the morning, and I would get halfway through a lunge or squat to bend or pick something up and then bend forward out of frustration. So, I pampered myself yesterday - really, truly practicing and applying how to move in real life, especially concentrating on those lunges and squats when I needed to get something. It also finally clicked with me that while I was trying to concentrate on tucking the hip to neutral spine to walk, I was totally ignoring the forward bend of my upper back while standing and walking all week. I was walking all stooped over and feeling like an invalid."
I wish I could write that Barbara followed everything I said and was better the first day. What actually occurred was that it was six weeks until the "light bulb went on" and Barbara realized that "doing" a stretch or exercise doesn't magically erase the injury. Stopping the injurious bad movement habits that harms the disc is needed to let it heal. Using healthy movement in daily life for daily bending and reaching would improve strength and balance. Barbara said that reading the Fitness Fixer stories from Ivy sparked her "turning point" to understand. She then started feeling relief.
Barbara wrote.
"In short, I’ve come from having pain, and muscles completely unaccustomed to healthy movement lifestyle, to feeling stronger, more flexible and agile, pain free, along with a new attitude to everyday life and health, with fresh energy and a renewal of love of life. I know this might sound dramatic, but you’ve changed my way of life.
"Your website has been a godsend actually; especially when I surf the net and see "surgery" splattered everywhere.
"PS My principal just ordered your book - he borrowed Fix Your Own Pain for a week (I didn't think I'd get it back) and would like his own copy. That's saying a lot - he's doesn't take well to other people's advice."
It was six weeks of half-way recovery and recurring pain until Barbara got the idea that "doing exercises" doesn't heal an injury if you go back to bad movement habits the rest of the day. She also noticed how some of the most common exercises contribute to the original problem. Here are links to the information Barbara used:
Barbara generously wrote up her story to help readers see that they can fix pain sooner, rather than waiting six weeks. Coming next, Feeling Better Than She Ever Has Part II - a look behind the scenes.
--- Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy. ---
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