A question I get absolutely all the time is, “Why is my posture so bad?”
The answer? It’s the little things you’re doing over a period of years.
It’s hard to influence your posture with exercises. Most of the time it’s due to things you are doing outside of the gym.Imagine a person that sits all day. Their hips are constantly in flexion, their upper back and shoulders are slouched over, they get up every two hours to go to the vending machine. Even if you gave this person the absolute perfect exercises they may not change their posture much.Why?It’s because what we do everyday for hours and hours. A half-hour workout just isn’t going to change your posture.
Think about it – do you really expect 1 ½ hours in the gym every week to counteract the fact that you sit at a desk or in your car for 40, 50 or even 60 hours every week?It’s not going to happen. Those constant postures manifest and develop into something much bigger than you give them credit for. Muscles tighten in as little as 20 minutes; that means if you’re sitting at a desk for 8 hours every day, your muscles are adapting to that position by getting shorter! On top of that remember that you drove to work, you sat down for breakfast, lunch and dinner. All these postures were the same!
If you are really serious about changing your posture, look at every aspect of your day.
If you sit at a desk, get your hips in extension by performing frequent lunge stretches. Get a stand-up desk. Move around a lot. Try to be constantly moving.
If you drive all day long, set a timer on your phone to go off every 15 minutes that will cue you to sit-up straight and move around a bit. Fidgeting is not a bad thing!
Monday, May 25, 2009
Results that last?
Do you want results that last a long time? What a silly question, of course you do. When it comes to back and neck pain, most people suffer constantly.
The key to long term pain relief in the lower back and neck is to improve muscular endurance. It’s not to increase strength of the muscles, it’s to increase the time that the muscles can contract. This means that it is not important to lift heavy weights for your spine, but rather you must be able to lift light weights for a longer period of time. In fact many exercises don’t even require weights. Your own body weight is enough.
The goal is to hold a position and be able to maintain that position without movement for a couple of minutes. Think of it this way, stop doing crunches but rather hold the top position for one minute.
People that lift heavy weights all the time still can suffer with back pain. Strength appears to have a very weak correlation with lower back pain. Just because you can lift heavy weights doesn’t mean your back may not hurt. You have to be able to do an exercise that lasts a long time to help the correct muscles in your lower back.
The correct exercises are extensions on a gym ball, stability exercises on the floor, higher repetition deadlifts, squats, and good-mornings. We can show you these in the office.
The problem is that most people that have repetitive constant back pain have weak muscles that get quickly tired and have shrunk. To compound the problem, the muscles don’t contract at the right time. For example, when you go to lift a box in the garage, the back muscles should work, but they take a split second too long to contract. Just enough time to sprain your back. OuchThey also had abnormal activation patterns.
The muscles of your lower back quickly shrink after an episode of lower back pain. The muscles don’t recover after the pain is gone. This sets you up for the next episode of back pain.
It takes 8 weeks of endurance training to increase endurance ability by 100%- 150% in patients that are out of shape. This means that AFTER the back pain is gone, it can take 8 weeks to fully recover the muscular endurance to prevent the next episode. As you can imagine, some patients never follow this advice. They figure that the pain is gone so they must be alright only to experience pain again. It’s a vicious cycle.
Exercises can be done daily or even twice daily because they don’t produce muscle soreness. Usually with chiropractic, the pain will begin to reduce within 1-6 weeks depending upon the case. After this, it is important to continue with the treatment while exercising for at least eight weeks.
This is the reasoning for the treatment recommendations that we make.
The key to long term pain relief in the lower back and neck is to improve muscular endurance. It’s not to increase strength of the muscles, it’s to increase the time that the muscles can contract. This means that it is not important to lift heavy weights for your spine, but rather you must be able to lift light weights for a longer period of time. In fact many exercises don’t even require weights. Your own body weight is enough.
The goal is to hold a position and be able to maintain that position without movement for a couple of minutes. Think of it this way, stop doing crunches but rather hold the top position for one minute.
People that lift heavy weights all the time still can suffer with back pain. Strength appears to have a very weak correlation with lower back pain. Just because you can lift heavy weights doesn’t mean your back may not hurt. You have to be able to do an exercise that lasts a long time to help the correct muscles in your lower back.
The correct exercises are extensions on a gym ball, stability exercises on the floor, higher repetition deadlifts, squats, and good-mornings. We can show you these in the office.
The problem is that most people that have repetitive constant back pain have weak muscles that get quickly tired and have shrunk. To compound the problem, the muscles don’t contract at the right time. For example, when you go to lift a box in the garage, the back muscles should work, but they take a split second too long to contract. Just enough time to sprain your back. OuchThey also had abnormal activation patterns.
The muscles of your lower back quickly shrink after an episode of lower back pain. The muscles don’t recover after the pain is gone. This sets you up for the next episode of back pain.
It takes 8 weeks of endurance training to increase endurance ability by 100%- 150% in patients that are out of shape. This means that AFTER the back pain is gone, it can take 8 weeks to fully recover the muscular endurance to prevent the next episode. As you can imagine, some patients never follow this advice. They figure that the pain is gone so they must be alright only to experience pain again. It’s a vicious cycle.
Exercises can be done daily or even twice daily because they don’t produce muscle soreness. Usually with chiropractic, the pain will begin to reduce within 1-6 weeks depending upon the case. After this, it is important to continue with the treatment while exercising for at least eight weeks.
This is the reasoning for the treatment recommendations that we make.
Monday, May 18, 2009
Diet Cola or Coffee?
I’m switching from diet cola to coffee. Is that healthier?
I’m not so sure that coffee can be considered “health food” but when you compare the chemicals in diet colas to coffee, coffee can be considered healthier.
There have been some studies showing that caffeine taken prior to exercise can stimulate energy from fat cells. This is only for infrequent ingestion of caffeine. It’s not to say that coffee is a weight loss drink. When those people ingested caffeine regularly, the results were not as good.
Coffee the way some people drink it should be sold at 31-flavors rather than Starbuck’s. The studies were done with coffee…beans with hot water…not cream, sugar, caramel, chocolate sprinkles, etc.
Lastly, you are likely to get a dirty look from your dentist, with a speech about teeth whitening.
So while it’s unlikely that coffee is the holy grail of health, it seems to be considered by some to be “healthy” this week.
We’ll see what happens.
I’m not so sure that coffee can be considered “health food” but when you compare the chemicals in diet colas to coffee, coffee can be considered healthier.
There have been some studies showing that caffeine taken prior to exercise can stimulate energy from fat cells. This is only for infrequent ingestion of caffeine. It’s not to say that coffee is a weight loss drink. When those people ingested caffeine regularly, the results were not as good.
Coffee the way some people drink it should be sold at 31-flavors rather than Starbuck’s. The studies were done with coffee…beans with hot water…not cream, sugar, caramel, chocolate sprinkles, etc.
Lastly, you are likely to get a dirty look from your dentist, with a speech about teeth whitening.
So while it’s unlikely that coffee is the holy grail of health, it seems to be considered by some to be “healthy” this week.
We’ll see what happens.
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