Contest To Sit Up Straight - A Hint
Monday, December 14, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
We have three excellent answers so far that will be announced as contest winners along with reader BikaBill who sent in winning photos. There is still time to send in yours to be among the winners. About thirty to forty wrote claiming some vague involvement of abdominal muscles. Pop fitness throws around "abs" so much that odd ideas get ingrained that are not real anatomy.
To help with your contest and your real life, which is the idea of the contest:
Hint 1
Abdominal muscles curl your spine forward. - If you are already sitting rounded forward, you do not want to curl forward more. You need the opposite - back muscles to unround, not the abdominal muscles in front.
- Readers correctly noticing the tilted back pelvis that is part of rounded spine in the photo of bad sitting (note the stripes pointing back at the side of the hip instead of vertical) were correct that the top of the hip/pelvis needs to pull forward, to reduce the angle between pelvis and leg so that the pelvis can straighten to upright and vertical. Abdominal muscles do not that do that. Abdominal muscles do not connect to your leg, so cannot move your leg closer to your body or your body closer to your leg.
- Think what muscles may be the ones you need instead. Then, do strong muscles move all by themselves?
Hint 2
Mr. Georges Nakhlé is my director of the Lebanon office of The Academy of Functional Exercise Medicine (AFEM), the teaching arm of my practice. He instructs classes and wrote in to help readers:
Mr. Nakhlé writes:
My answer is: Muscles required to contract are : the paravertebrals (extension of vertebrae), trapezius inferior (adduction and lowering of scapula), the deltoideus posterior and latissimus dorsi (extension of arm) and the rhomboideus (for scapula stabilization)
Muscles required to stretch: pelvi-trochanters to ease the medial rotation of the pelvis on the femur and the pectoralis major
Muscles required to straighten the back: the major work goes for the Latissimus dorsi and a part for paravertebrals; the rhomboideus for scapula stabilization, the trapezius inferior for scapula lowering, the triceps brachii for arm extension.
Another contest question was:
>Explain why the same tightness or weakness does not show itself standing where people often hyperlordose instead of flex the lower spine.
Mr. Nakhlé writes:
Tightness when standing: When standing the psoas is stretched so it pulls the lumbar vertebrae, and if the rectus femoris is tight it will tilt the pelvis in an anterior pelvic tilt.Readers what do you think?
Weakness when standing: when standing we don't need muscle strength, just little adjustments.
Here is the Contest. Send In Your Answers, Winners Announced Next Week:
Fun Contests Still Open:
- Fast Fitness - Balance Contest!
- Fast Fitness - Contest for Children (and Everyone) To Learn What They Live
- Logo Design Contest for New International Sports Medicine Academy
- Reps of Exercises Don't Fix Pain; Fixing Causes Does
- Forward Air Head Syndrome - Doing Sets and Reps and Missing The Point of the Exercise
- Fixing Posture - No Exercise Needed
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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 to The Fitness Fixer, click "updates via e-mail" upper right.
For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions.
See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy.
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 to The Fitness Fixer, click "updates via e-mail" upper right.
For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions.
See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy.
Labels: contest, fix pain, International Academy of Functional Sports Medicine, posture
5 Comments:
At Wednesday, December 16, 2009 6:01:00 PM,
Anonymous said…
With all respect to Mr. Nakhlé, I think his answer, which may be 100% technically correct, is 0% helpful for most people without a degree in physiology. The great thing about this website is that it converts medical mumbo jumbo into accessible language (including visual language). Unfortunately, Mr. Nakhlé's description is completely impenetrable and seems intended to impress some medical board rather than to communicate to normal people.
At Thursday, December 17, 2009 1:10:00 PM,
George Nakhlé said…
dear anonymous,
my answer was for Dr. Bookspan without knowing that she may publish it on the web. If I knew that, i would have written it in an easy and comprehensible way.
At Saturday, December 26, 2009 12:45:00 AM,
Anonymous said…
Mr. Nakhlé, thank you for taking the time to respond to my initial comment, which, in retrospect, may have been a little sharper than was warranted.
When future questions like this arise, I think Dr. Bookspan might consider a visual aide, like a human skeleton diagram with the correct muscles highlighted. That would really help novices like me.
Happy Holidays!
At Saturday, December 26, 2009 12:15:00 PM,
Steven Rice said…
In reverse order of importance:
3. Strengthen spine extensors and shoulder retractors.
2. Stretch spine flexors and shoulder protractors. Note that because of Reciprocal Inhibition, muscles which are contracting will inhibit the activation of their antagonists.
1. Engage the brain to develop better postural habits. No matter how strong the elongated muscles get, and how long the contracted muscles get, if the brain says "slouch" that's what the body will do. The other steps are necessary but not sufficient to fix the posture problem. (extra mumbo jumbo- tonus and elongation are independent within normal ROM.)
This also explains why in standing some joints may be go too far in the opposite direction.
Steven
Positive Massage Therapy
At Wednesday, December 30, 2009 6:45:00 PM,
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM said…
To Steven Rice, Good work, you are with the winners on Contest Winners - How Sit Up Straight.
Reciprocal inhibition of muscles on the other side is not always automatic or in effect at all in some cases. That is another commonly repeated pop-fitness phrase. Inhibition happens in some instances, but would be a problem for movement if it always did. I reply to questions about it in the comments of Fast Fitness - Quick Relaxing Hip Stretch.
Dear Anonymous, Thank you for instructing me that other readers too, may not recognize basic body parts and what they do.
No degrees should be needed to know fundamentals about yourself. Just like knowing common car parts, you can prevent unneeded repairs, and being fooled by sales pitches.
I took your good idea in the next article after this one, I added a description why a muscle was named and how to understand its action by the name - Fast Fitness - Mobilize and Strengthen With Serratus PushUps. I plan others to follow.
This article above is just the hints to the Contest, with hope that readers might look things up or even move their own body to straighten up and feel muscles for themselves. The answers have been listed in - Contest Winners - How Sit Up Straight. In it we use names like "back muscles."
In Mr. Nakhlé's description, you can see muscles listed with the word "vertebral" in it, so you know it has something to do with the spine. That could be a start. Mr. Nakhlé tells me he is preparing another short description for us. I will post it when he sends it.
Thanks to your good idea, I plan to do articles showing how to understand muscle names and the interesting ways they move - often not at all like in advertisements for exercise equipment. Often, the trainers, even doctors, do not know either. They just repeat the same wrong things they heard. You reminded me about a needed topic.
Thank you for the nice words that I "convert medical mumbo jumbo into accessible language." I work for that. Enjoy the articles here. Take some photos of what you are trying and send them in to me and you can be the next good example of readers thinking and succeeding in fixing their fitness and health.
Happy Holidays and New Year for Fun Simple Health. Keep the good work coming.
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