How Often Should You Be Healthy?
Monday, November 06, 2006
Healthline
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 (right drawing).
- 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.
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.
More photos and description of bad sitting and bending that causes back and disc damage and what to do instead - The Cause of Disc and Back Pain
Check the exercises you do for the same body positioning that would be recognized unhealthy if they were not renamed "exercise" - Are You Making Your Exercise Unhealthy?
Photos of readers using these practices in daily life - Household Fitness in the New Year
Click the labels under this post for all Fitness Fixer on each topic.
Books showing step-by-step good bending and getting built-in lifestyle exercise: Fix Your Own Pain Without Drugs or Surgery, and Health & Fitness in Plain English THIRD edition on my web site books page - www.DrBookspan.com/books.---
Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions.
Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail" (under trumpet) upper right.
See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy.
---Photo by Healthline reader
Drawing of Backman!™ © copyright Dr. Jolie Bookspan
Labels: disc, fix pain, hip stretch, injury, knee, leg strength, leg stretch, lower back, posture, practice of medicine, squat, upper back
5 Comments:
At Monday, November 13, 2006 2:16:00 PM,
Lilibet said…
Dr Bookspan is a genius.
At Tuesday, November 14, 2006 2:14:00 AM,
Healthline said…
Julia, thank you. It is the geniuses who say that.
At Monday, November 20, 2006 7:31:00 PM,
Healthline said…
Julia, Hello again. I clicked your link and found your blog. I enjoyed your well-done stories. You mentioned your many different treatments for "upper crossed syndrome." This is just a fancy name for the upper back and neck pain I have been writing about that comes from the forward head and rounded shoulder positioning.
Use the repositioning in Fixing Upper Back and Neck Pain and Breasts Causing Upper Back Pain is a Myth.
"Upper crossed syndrome" is not a medical condition and you are not doomed to pain. Doing a bunch of exercises to "balance the muscles" does not help, since the cause - the unhealthy positioning - remains. As soon as you start using the repositioning, you will feel the difference. Good work on all you've done so far. Keep me posted.
At Monday, November 23, 2009 10:42:00 AM,
Anonymous said…
Does that mean straight-legged deadlifts are a big no-no ?
If they are too dangerous, how else can I build my hamstrings ?
Thanks
At Monday, November 30, 2009 12:51:00 PM,
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM said…
Anonymous, Smart start that you understood and want healthier ways, plus wrote politely to ask. Think of smoking. It 'works' and is widely used to calm and lose weight but makes health problems. Same with some common exercises. There are good moves that build hamstrings and back and so on, without the health trade-off. Bodybuilders and heavy lifters use Fitness Fixer and my other work with good results. Beside all the links above in the article, start with Fast Fitness - Better Legs and Pain Relief Comes From You Not The Exercise Ball .
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