My friend, teacher, and fellow instructor Shihan (means - high teacher) Peter Chong of Singapore, 8th degree Black Belt (HachiDan), breaks 10 blocks of ice while standing on eggs.
Shihan Chong did this for his 70th birthday in front of 200 friends and supporters. Here are some photos:
Shihan Chong broke 10 blocks of ice with his bare hand while standing on 2 trays of chicken eggs. All 10 blocks of ice were broken, but not one egg.
"Tameshiwari" - breaking - is a major part of development of spirit and character in his style of Karate.
Shihan Chong lived many years in Japan training with the legendary Sosai Masutatsu (Mas) Oyama. He was President of the Singapore Karate-Do Federation (SKF) until 2009, President of the Singapore Martial Arts Instructors’ Association (SMAIA), Senior Advisor to the International Karate Organization - Kyokushinkaikan (IKO Japan), and Chairman of the IKO Asia & the Middle East. He recently was awarded the International Martial Arts Living Legend Award.
For weightlifters who enjoy Olympic lifts, rows, cable cross-overs, curls, and all the other good stuff with endless heavy weight, you may like growing vegetables.
We have been tilling a vegetable garden from a rocky field at my Mom's. Seems her home was built on landfill. We had to sledge-hammer and pry concrete slabs - prodigious squatting, levering, clean-and-jerking, and hundred pound medicine ball throws over the just-built garden fence into a pile. Then lifting and hauling away the pile.
Carrying sand, earth, rocks, weed bales, tree branches as heavy as you can lift, over uneven rocky hilly earth back and forth from the truck, the field, and the new compost pile a hundred feet away for hours is functional weightlifting. Hours of repetition-maximum (RM) hoeing gives a harder abdominal, arm, and gluteal workout than it looks.
Healthline software still isn't uploading my own photos. At left above, a photo of a statue with too much lumbar curve/hyperlordosis to be healthy, but in general doing functional weightlifting. Use your muscles to prevent overarching like this when you swing a sledge, a kettlebell, or other weight. For Fitness Fixer posts on neutral spine and hyperlordosis, click the photo or here.
Over the winter while visiting home in Asia, my husband Paul and I went to a workman's shop. The store-keeps remembered us and smiled. The first time we went there years ago, they were so sure we were lost tourists, they took our shoulder and gestured at a restaurant. In the best Thai I could manage, I explained that Paul is a carpenter, has done forge metal work, and loves old-world tools, strong bamboo handles, and hand-hammered metal. They smile each year we return. In the US, we live in a crowded urban area with minimal bricked exterior in deep shade from surrounding buildings. Vegetable gardens don't grow. Paul wanted to plant my Mother's field - a brambled overgrown area.
In the Thai tool store, I explained with the words I knew that Paul was looking for a specific Thai tool, shaped like a backward shovel, that you use in overhead action, like a mattock (flat bladed pick).
Quickly, excitedly, word went from the store-keep, to her friend in the next shop, to the next, and next:
"Man who good to Mother of wife!"
The coconut telegraph was happy. We bought two heavy tools, called "job" in Thai. Both had thick lovely bamboo handles. One was giant sized for Paul, the other for me. Fun getting them through flights and US customs.
Mom had asked a local man what it would take to clear her field, and he told her a blowtorch, a machine plow, three men, and a week. Paul and I cleared it in one day in early April with a digging stick and the Thai hoe-shovels. The ground was half frozen. Six, or so hours massive exertion - first clearing brush and tall grasses, then hours of half-squats to seize handfuls of stalks, standing back up to pull them with grip strength. Then excavating slabs of concrete and discarded materials with a pry bar, the Thai digging tools, and bare armed weight lifting.
The packs of seeds we had scattered in assorted flowerpots, pans, shoeboxes, and containers sprouted over just a week into tiny plants - broccoli, cabbage, pea, hot and sweet peppers, strawberries, eggplants, and assorted spices. We have been learning about complementary planting - plants, just like people, who are better and healthier with specific other kinds of plants so that chemical fertilizer isn't needed. We are learning about plants that repel pests, instead of using insecticides.
We got a rain barrel to reduce water bills. We attached an old broken hose. The holes made it a natural soaker hose. We poked more holes and arranged it around the garden for drip irrigation. We don't know the water quality of either the rain or from the tap. We will send six dollars and a soil sample to an agricultural university for testing. Maybe other toxic things are in that landfill that we don't want the vegetables absorbing. Maybe commercial food factories have the same problem. Many things to learn.
Weeks pass squatting and sitting well to plant seedlings, still hitting buried rubble. More lifting and hauling. Each night we are too tired to worry or think anything bad. We are barely were able to lift hands and feet. I consider what people for thousands of years have been doing just for subsistence farming, day after day, year after year. I thought of Fitness Fixer success story Ivy and her story - Farm Work, Lifestyle Exercise, and Preventing Overuse Pain.
We thought we planted everything, then found a half pack of pea seeds left. Paul mentioned we didn't have one more container for them. I laughed, "we didn't have a pot to pea in."
Ideas:
If you're a tough vital strong person, or want to be, dig a garden.
If you don't have anywhere to dig one, hook up with some nice elder who wants one, a community group, Habitat for Humanity, or someone who doesn't want to exercise like this but still wants a garden.
Contact your community to see about organizing parents and children out in sunshine for functional exercise doing good for all.
If you only want one hour a day of hard total body fat burning muscle building exercise, only plant a small vegetable garden.
No need to buy fancy tools, use what's handy.
If you don't want to exercise so hard, try a single pack of seeds in some potting soil in almost any container on a sunny windowsill. A chance to get the vegetables you like.
Fancy individual peat pots and seed starters aren't essential; a simple pack of seeds can get you a pan full of fragrant oregano, said to be very healthful. It gives a gasp of wonder (to me) when seedlings actually sprout.
Before the 2008 election, a video appeared by Roger Doiron (I don't know him, just liked the video). He asked the next President to grow a garden. It did come true. Here is his viewpoint of getting your own garden started, showing various bending, occasionally good:
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.
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - Strengthen and increase endurance of hands, fingers, and forearms.
Farmers Carry - Hold a heavy briefcase, suitcase, bucket, grocery bags, or other weights with a handle. Hold arms down at your side (or out to the side to add shoulder exercise.) Babies and children love to be swung (safely) forward and back in slings and other inventive carriers held in farmers grip.
Finger Carry - Hold (non-living) items down at your side, to the front, and out to sides with four fingers, three, two, then each one. Don't tighten your hand. Learn to apply strength in relaxed manner. When lifting with one arm, stand straight and get built-in core stabilization exercise, instead of leaning to the other side. You don't need to lean to counter balance the weight - use your muscles instead.
Pinch grip - Increase different grip ability by holding the weight pinched between the pads of your fingers instead of resting the weight inside the curled fist. Hold a book or heavier weight down at your side with 'pinch grip.'
Photo uploads still not loading. Several posts and reader stories have been postponed. Grip techniques on today's Fast Fitness are (hopefully) easy to visualize. Click the photo credits to see them on Flickr.
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Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from selected ones. New questions will make their way to the top of the schedule in about 2 months. Check if your answers are already here by clicking links and archives. Read success stories of these methods and send your own.
Have The Fitness Fixer e-mailed to you, free. Click "updates via e-mail" - Health Expert Updates (trumpet icon) upper right column.
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - Train children's balance and grip strength, use your legs, and have family fun.
Have young children sit on your feet, and hang on (sensibly, parent's permission, and all that). Babies are born with a grasping reflex and are stronger than you may expect.
Do any variety of walking, marching, dancing, and range of motion, while standing, or sitting, while they act as natural strength and endurance trainers and floor dusters.
Teach sharing, enjoyment, physical skills, personal interaction, and all the good you can think of.
Outside of all the debates of whether leg weights are helpful or not, fun activity with your family can develop many strengths.
Fast Fitness - NoCost Hand Strength and Rehab Equipment
Friday, June 20, 2008
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Fast Friday Fitness -hand exercise without rehabilitation equipment.
One of the exercises against repetitive strain syndrome is to exercise the muscles that open the hands. There are expensive commercial devices you can buy for this. One consists of a special glove with weights and pulleys to resist your ability to open your hand. Or you can:
Hold the fingers of one hand closed with your other hand
Open the hand against the resistance of the hand holding it closed
Do as many as comfortable. Repeat with the other hand. Vary intensity and number.
If you want to go high-tech, put a rubber band around the fingers instead of using your other hand. Push each finger in a variety of ways.
The post Junk Food Through Your Skin? about making your own healthier skin and hair care products brought in many notes from readers asking for more.
Fitness is not just in a gym. Health comes from all your actions. Commercial cleaners may have toxic fumes or compounds you absorb through your skin. They may be mass-produced in ways that pollute water sources, degrade air quality, generate industrial litter, and destroy resources faster than can be replaced. Healthier ways are simple and usually cheaper. Here are a few cleaners to try making on your own. Children who are able, can have fun helping you measure, mix, and get good physical and mental exercise from making things clean and healthy:
Rust Remover - Sprinkle salt over the rust. Squeeze a lime over the salt until soaked and leave for a few hours. Use the lime rind to scrub off the rust. When sanding, vinegar helps see the metal to determine how much rust still remains.
Furniture Polish - Squeeze the juice from a lemon. Good hand exercise. Mix in a teaspoon (5 ml) of olive or other oil. Apply thinly to the wood and use a soft cloth to make it shine. Experiment with how much oil you like compared to lemon. A thin rubbing of plain coconut oil makes great wood polish as well as nice skin cream and hair shiner.
Counters and Surfaces - mix a quarter cup of baking soda (about 60ml) and quarter cup of vinegar in a quart (liter) of water. For stains, sprinkle baking soda over the surface, wet with water, and allow to sit until you feel like wiping it off with a sponge or lemon rind. Plain white vinegar makes a nice disinfecting cleaner by itself.
Glass Cleaner - Add 1/4 cup white vinegar to a quart warm water. Add a tablespoon of cornstarch. Apply any way you prefer from a sponge, spray bottle, or crumpled newspaper.
More Fitness Fixer to make your cleaning into healthy exercise:
During the part of the year that we live in the United States, we have a luxury - a washing machine. You put clothes in it, and it washes them for you. You come back later, hang out the clothes, and the Earth dries them for you. Luxury.
Recently the old washing machine could not wash any more. I always appreciated the machine, but I rediscovered something else. Washing clothes by rubbing them on a washboard, and wringing water from heavy canvas work jeans and martial arts uniforms is vigorous hand and arm exercise.
Occasionally, sources for arthritis information state that if you have arthritis of the hands or wrists, avoid wringing clothes and instead, purchase a tool that squeezes the cloth to remove the water for you. However, it is not use of the hands or a wringing action in itself that causes arthritis pain. Use of the hands improves function, improves joint health, improves the strength that allows you to accomplish more without strain, and is an important part of arthritis prevention and management.
Good use and exercise of the hands does not mean to move the area no matter how much it hurts. Misuse - bad movement habits - is often the culprit in wear and pressure on the area. Instead of craning the wrist and fingers back and levering the wringing action on the finger joints, wrist and base of the thumb, use the muscles of the hand and forearm, as well as the entire arms to power the wringing action. Start with fun gentle squeezing, let the hands warm through real life use, and continue to improve function through use.
There is no need to keep straight wrists or splint them to keep them straight. Splinting may temporarily reduce pain, but reduces strength and function which often leads to bigger problems. It is not a healthful or useful solution to, "limit the patient to limit the pain." Use your body, have fun, be active, and be able to move for normal daily function. Use healthful body mechanics and the actions will be far more likely to build you than injure.
More posts on strengthening the hands are on the way.
More on distributing weight on muscules of the arm and hand instead of compressing the joints:
Click the labels under each Fitness Fixer article for more on each topic.
--- Read and contribute your own success stories 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 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 certifiedDrBookspan.com/Academy.
Here is Fast Friday Fitness - if you have been afraid to try a handstand, here is a quick easy way to have success. You will strengthen your hands, wrist, arms, shoulders, upper body, and core, practice balance, and get blood circulating.
Crouch down near a wall (avoid slippery floor)
Put one foot high up on the wall
Lift up the other foot
To add a nice stretch on the hamstrings, lift one leg away from the wall into a wide split position in the air, as below.
If you have uncontrolled glaucoma or high blood pressure, ask your care providers first.
Click here to see a quick video showing how to change sagging spine to neutral spine.
Fast Fitness - Stronger Arms and Chest, and Core, Hip, and Leg Stability With A Friend
Friday, March 14, 2008
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - strengthen inner legs, thighs, arms, and core, while practicing neutral spine with a friend. More exercise than putting hands up on a bench or exercise ball.
My students Johanna (1) and Diana (2) demonstrate the beginning of this move. Description of how to progress follows the photos:
Partner 1 lies face up with bent knees
Partner 2 does pushups on Partner 1's knees while holding neutral spine, not letting the lower back sag and arch downward. Partner 1 gets entry-level exercise hip and core exercise by holding legs stable and does not let knees wobble. Higher-level exercise is described below the photos.
To increase core and hip stabilization training for both partners, Partner 1 tilts knees slightly to each side while Partner 2 continues pushups. Try both moving continuously side to side, and holding legs stable at an angle. Do not twist your spine.
Fast Fitness - Plyometric Partner Bench Press for Valentine's Week
Friday, February 15, 2008
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - Have fun together as you strengthen arms, shoulders, chest, back, wrists, and core, while practicing neutral spine, speed, teamwork, and cooperation in a fun plyometric partner bench press.
Lie face up with both arms held upward (white karate uniform) to support partner (black karate uniform).
Partner (black uniform) rests shoulders on your hands and holds straight body position on toes. Partner (black uniform) uses abdominal muscles to hold neutral spine without letting the lower back sag.
Push your partner up and down with your hands in a bench press motion. To add plyometric training, push partner strongly and quickly into the air (right). Catch them lightly, bending your elbows upon contact. Switch places and repeat.
Use common sense and springy light touch to reduce unhealthful impact in both partners. You can improve strength and speed without hurting joints and connective tissue. I will post more on plyometrics in articles to come.
--- Read and contribute your own success stories 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. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal evaluation. Top students may apply to certify throughDrBookspan.com/Academy.See Dr. Bookspan's Books. ---
Valentines Day is for everyone, not just couples. It is healthy to have active fun with family and friends too.
Monday's post Valentine Partner Pushups gives a fun partner exercise idea. Here are more variations for active fun with children and friends of many ages.
Babies and children love to move. They can hold their body weight. Get them started early. Don't let them lose this strength by making them sit still and eat. Get up from the table and play. That is Valentines Day love.
Try these with friends
This man is doing a partner handstand with his young daughter. It is a lot of good exercise and balance for both:
I will cover how to do this partner handstand in a future post. Send in your own photos of fun exercise with family and friends.
Fast Fitness - Prevent Wrist Pain During Pushups and Cooking
Friday, February 08, 2008
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - Learn to use strength and good joint positioning instead of compressing the wrist joint during activities that put weight on a bent wrist.
Good positioning and strength is more effective than splinting wrists straight and restricting activity. Learn to distribute weight across your whole hand:
While sitting or standing, press your right wrist and hand backward strongly using your left hand. Feel the right wrist compress under the weight of the other hand.
Now use your right hand and forearm muscles to press forward against the left hand. You should feel the compression come off the right wrist.
Hold a pushup position. Use this technique so that, regardless of your weight, instead of letting your weight compress your wrists, you use your hand and forearm muscles. Keep weight distributed across your entire hand, not just on the heel of the hand.
Use this to learn how to press with your whole hand whenever you use your wrists - for weightlifting, for standing on your hands, for typing, driving, biking, playing piano, and during cooking and cleaning.
--- Read and contribute your own success stories 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. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal evaluation. Top students may apply to certify throughDrBookspan.com/Academy.See Dr. Bookspan's Books. ---
Fast Fitness - Upper Back, Shoulder, Triceps, Arm, Wrist, and Hand Stretch
Friday, December 07, 2007
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - nice stretch for hands, upper back, and everything in between.
Stand with your back about a foot from a solid surface
Reach upward and backward to place both hands on the wall, all fingers facing downward
Press, lifting upward, keeping the stretch in your chest and upper body.
Vary the stretch by straightening elbows more.
Do not pinch your spine backward like a soda straw at 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.
My mother is a Russian circus teacher. We recently went with her to a recital of a neighbor who teaches elementary trapeze arts. The performers, age about 10 to a women in her 50s, were having fun moving and pulling themselves up and down ropes, scarves, and hoops. It wasn't a polished performance or high technical ability. That wasn't the point. They were lifting their body weight, climbing, stretching, balancing, focusing, burning calories, learning safety and cooperation, exercising, developing arm, hand, wrist, and grip strength, and moving their bodies in functional ways.
Their over-dramatic costumes flopped over their faces when they hung upside down. One young performer wore fly-front long johns. They seemed to think they were great artists. True or not, they were moving, smiling, stretching, laughing, and exercising to do art and fun.
Check for fun safe programs near you of healthy movement of all kinds. Get the good they can provide of new fun ways to use your body and mind functionally. If they use traditional stretches and exercises to warm-up that are not healthful, change or skip them. These posts give ideas:
Bill is now away on his current adventure, flying commercial cargo flights all over the world. He tells about it in Reader Successes Endure - Next Update From Bill. He took time to send some photos of how we changed simple wrist positioning to stop hand and wrist pain when biking:
Don't do this for too long. Hands may go numb and wrists may hurt.
The handshake grip, easy on elbows and wrists.
Alternate hand position, when sitting more upright.
Bill writes:
"I find it helpful to change hand position frequently. It minimizes discomfort and numbness. Ensure position does not put a lot of weight on your arms. Seat and feet should carry most of the weight.
"Labor day ride (September 2007) with a quick group of us old-timers (ages 55 to 66) rode 67 miles in 3hrs 30min. That's 19 mph! Best ride I've ever done. No pain or numbness. Your stuff sure helps."
Distribute weight over your entire hand and fingers.
Use forearm muscles to prevent the wrist from pinching back under all the weight.
The idea is to keep your weight up on your muscles, not just passively compressing the joints.
Use healthful positioning and muscle use to prevent wrist pain when cutting food, using a keyboard or data entry device, gardening, and all the fun exercises you can do. Future posts will give specifics for each, but you can apply the general concepts now to all you do. Confining the wrist to a splint does not stop the source of the problem and is not healthful in the long-run. Wrists need movement and loading to keep the joint healthy, the muscles strong, and bones dense. Just do it in a healthful way.
--- Read success stories of Fitness Fixer methods and readers, 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. See class schedules, get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy. ---
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - Train speed and eye-hand coordination while having fun.
Have you seen martial arts movies where the master catches a fly with his chopsticks? The true master doesn't restrain or harm the lives of others. In the spirit of healthful exercise, World Vegetarian month and higher spirit, try this instead:
Tear a sheet of paper to different size pieces
Throw in the air
Catch as many pieces as you can as they flutter downward.
Want more? Use only one hand to catch. Then switch.
You can play this with children too. Get more exercise and prevent pain by using healthy bending to pick pieces up and start again.
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.
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - nice stretch for hands, wrist, and forearms:
Face a wall and raise both hands to about head height.
Turn palms up, thumbs to the outside, fingers downward,
Press toward wall. Bend elbows to various amounts for a full-range wonderful, gentle stretch.
Keep body straight, not sagging inward or tilting out in back.
Breathe. Smile. Feel good.
--- 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.
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.
Reader Tries This and Shows How To Get Started, Even if You Think You Can't:
Read success stories of these methods and send your own. See if your questions are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal feedback. Top students may apply for certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
Thumbs Can Show Tightness That Leads to Upper Back Pain
Friday, October 27, 2006
Healthline
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.
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.
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