Here is a test for you to see

There is a lot of talk these days about core strength and for very good reasons. You need core strength to help your body in everything you do. If not, you are in a lot higher risk bracket of injury. But how do you know if you have good core strength or not? I will show you a test so that you can evaluate your own core strength.

But why should we even bother about having a strong core? Firstly, it is not just your abdominals as many people believe. Your back, stomach, hips are all a part of what is known as your core muscle groups. The reason that these muscles need to be strong is that they support you when you do your daily activities. If they are not strong enough, when you have to do a certain activity your other muscles are then recruited to become stabilisers and you have just set up imbalances leading to injuries.

A classic example of this is the painful lower back when standing. Many people can not stand for very long because their back starts to ache. This is because they do not use their abdominals when standing and allow their lower backs to overarch. This creates a forward tilt in the pelvis. Two perfect examples of this are men with large stomachs (the classic beer belly) and pregnant women. Both suffer from lower back pain due to not using their abdominals to tilt their pelvis which will decrease their arch in their lower backs and remove the back pain. When there is an arch in the lower back that is bigger than it should be it then aggravates the facet joints which causes pain. It is a situation that is totally avoidable! Have you ever wondered why they have that rail in bars for you to put a foot on? It’s because by putting one foot up on the rail takes away some of the arch (from the forward tilted pelvis) and helps the lower back. A man with less lower back pain whilst standing will happily drink more beer! Very clever indeed.

Once you start using your core muscles for things as simple as standing correctly you will have less back pain. An easy way to check this is to look at a person’s belt from side on. The belt should be horizontal not tipped down at the front. So often you will see the person’s belt higher at the back and lower at the front. This is because they are not using their abdominals.

I will be doing a workshop soon on the facts and fallacies of lower back pain and teaching why your back ‘goes out’, how to fix your own back pain, the safest back strengthening exercises, best core exercise combinations and much more.

But for the moment

Rest assured I will be watching your back…

Oh yes, here’s the test for your core

The core strength test

• Lay down in a plank position on your forearms. (This is the position as if you were doing a push-up but instead of your hands touching the ground you are resting on your forearms.) Do not arch your back! Your back should be straight which works your abdominals. Hold for one minute.if you can do this for one minute you have good core strength. if you can do it for 30-60 seconds you average core strength and if you can do it for less than 30 seconds you dont have core strength!

if you could do it for 60 seconds you may like to try the advanced core test below

• Now in the same position lift the right arm of the ground and hold for 15 seconds
• Return the right arm and now do the same with the left arm. Hold for 15 seconds.
• Return the left arm and now lift the left leg out straight behind you. Do not arch your lower back. The torso should remain perfectly still, this means that your core is stabilising you. Hold for 15 seconds.
• Return the left leg and do the same with the right leg for 15 seconds. Don’t arch your back.
• Now return the right leg and lift both your left leg and right arm at the same time. Don’t arch your back and try to remain steady at all times. Hold for 15 seconds
• Finally, return the arm and leg and do the opposite arm and leg for 15 seconds.

If you can do this you have good core strength.

If you could not complete this you do not have sufficient core strength and you should do this test as an exercise 3-4 times per week to build up your stamina. You will soon be stronger and have better core strength stamina which means you will have fewer problems with your lower back, your neck and your shoulders.

the good…

• From a standing position place one foot back behind you in a comfortably wide stance. Make sure you keep the back foot facing forward, do not let it turn out. You may have to look at the back foot to check because it can feel like its straight when its not.
• Bend your front knee so that your front shin is vertical, this will put your weight through your ankle and protect your knee.
• Bend both knees a little and allow the back heel to come off the ground.
• Make sure your hips are facing forwards
• Ensure that your back is upright and not leaning forwards
• Your weight should be placed evenly between both feet
• You MUST tuck your backside underneath you by using your abdominals to lift your beltline up. ( a pelvic tilt)This decreases the arch in your lower back which will then give you a stretch through the front of your back thigh.
• Hold for 15 seconds and change sides
• Relax, breathe, smile and enjoy
• Do this several times per day to stretch out the front hip especially if you are sitting a lot ( who doesn’t these days)

…the bad and the ugly

• bending the front knee too much which stresses the front knee
• turning the back foot out
• arching the lower back
• leaning the body forwards over the front leg instead of being vertical
• allowing the front knee to fall inwards, keep your shin vertical
• forgetting to relax, breathe, smile and enjoy

Edit

SIT-UPS

There are many exercises and gym myths that I am going to debunk in the following blogs so that you can get the best out of your gym workouts and more importantly, not injure yourself.

First of all, if you are doing sit-ups to strengthen your core-STOP!

I will not go into great detail in this post about the correct way to strengthen your core but if you would like to call me or email me I will be happy to tell you exactly what you should be doing instead. The main reason you should not be doing sit-ups is because it damages your back! The posterior forces that are produced on your lower back discs are enormous! What this means is, do enough sit-ups and you will be on a short course to lower back pain and if enough damage is done you will more than likely get sciatica. Sciatica is where the nerve is being pressed or ‘impinged’.

The National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety recommends that no more than 3400 newtons should be placed on the lower back because this or more than this amount of force is harmful to the lower back. Well guess what, a sit-up produces 3413 newtons of force. This means that every sit-up that you do is potentially damaging your back!

There are much better alternatives to doing sit-ups that will strengthen your stomach muscles without the harmful effects to your back.

But for now,

I will be out there watching your back…

If I was asked which the best exercise for lower back pain is and I could only choose one which would it be.

I am sure that if you are reading this you probably are suffering from lower back pain or at least have at some point been suffering from back ache. Let’s face it, haven’t we all at some stage.

One of the biggest problems for back pain sufferers is that if you surf the net there are literally thousands of people claiming that they have miraculous exercises to cure your back pain. However there is only one problem. If you don’t know what to do you could make your problem worse, much worse.

Let’s take a lower back L5-S1 disc bulge as an example. It’s the most commonly affected disc because it’s at the end of the spine and has the most amount of stress put on it. It’s also the area where the lumbar curve changes from a lordosis to a kyphosis where it meets the sacrum. This area of changing curves is another reason that the stresses are greater at this region. The sciatic nerve exits at this region and this is why sciatica is most common as far as lumbar pinched nerves are concerned. The majority of disc bulges in this region tend to be posterior disc bulges, in other words the bulge is being pushed from the front of the spine to the back (away from the navel). Therefore if you were to do exercises that exacerbate it such as flexion exercises you could push the disc bulge further in the wrong direction making your problem worse. In fact, I had a client see me this morning who had been doing yoga for the past 6 months and every time she did forward bending yoga postures she made her back worse, so much so that she has given up yoga altogether. I would surmise that she has a posterior disc problem or at very least ligament problems that are constantly being overstretched doing these exercises. If you have read my other posts you will know that bringing knees to your chest, touching toes and other lumbar spine flexion exercises can be very damaging to the lumbar spine and should be avoided!

Another problem stretch for lumbar disc problems is the lumbar torsion stretch. Many of you would be aware of this one too. It’s where you lay on your back and pull one leg across your body with the opposite am outstretched. This too can make certain disc bulges worse!

Likewise if your problem was from spinal stenosis you could do extension exercises and aggravate your pain by doing these.

So the stretch I would do is one that is safe, both stretches and strengthens common weak and tight muscles and will ease back pain. The stretch I choose is to loosen our lower back muscles that are contracted chronically all day every day and are major contributors to back pain in most cases. The majority of us sit all day at our desks, in our cars or at the computers and chronically shorten a muscle called the illiopsoas. When this is tight it can pull on our lower backs and make sleeping on our backs and stomachs, sitting and even standing painful. If I was on a desert island and could only do one stretch it would be to loosen the illiopsoas muscles. One of the major problems when this muscle is too tight is that it restricts our amount of hip extension. This is very important because when we don’t have enough hip extension which we need to walk and do our daily tasks, our body compensates and finds extension elsewhere. This happens at the lumbar spine which is not good! If your hip can’t extend like it should your lower back does the compensating which means you now have hips that are to tight and a back that is getting too much movement when it should be doing its role as a stabiliser. It is imperative that this be turned around because it will and does lead commonly to back pain. What you want is to have the hips more mobile by doing the lunge stretch and your back staying in its more neutral position with reduced movement. Your back needs to be stabile not moving around all over the place to compensate for other tight and poorly performing muscle groups. Therefore the lunge stretch is the best single back exercise if you had to do just one! It also makes your body work hard to balance whilst you do it so it hasn’t the added bonus of strengthening certain other integral muscle groups as well.

I must add that it is very often taught poorly and not correctly. To be effective it must be done properly otherwise you can aggravate your back by doing it.

I have a full explanation on how to do the lunge stretch both properly and safely. So for those of you who don’t have time to do your back exercises here is one that you can do several times a days you stand up from your computer and it will help enormously.

One final word- remember to sit properly, to lift correctly, to get up and down from your chairs correctly and your back will be very happy indeed!

It’s been well known for a long time that when we exercise we tend to deal with stress more easily. Scientists have known this for years but the big question remained-how does this actually happen? Well, now thanks to researchers at Princeton University and a handful of very fit rats we know why.

An incredible discovery was made recently at Princeton University; they noticed that the rats that were exercising had brain cells (neurons) that would respond differently to the couch potato rats. Last week if you happened to attend the annual meeting of the society for neuroscience in Chicago (who didn’t) you would have learnt that a group of scientists did an experiment which had extraordinary findings. They allowed one group of rats to exercise and the others to be big fat sloths, then they plunged both groups into cold water to go for a swim which apparently rats don’t like to do-it stresses then out! I must admit that I am not exactly fond of a cold water plunge either. Before you think how cruel, those poor little rats getting put into cold water I would like to remind you of the experiment I wrote about a while ago regarding stretching and tendon strength. The researchers were seeing if stretching would make a difference to muscle and tendon tears, in other words does stretching decrease or increase your risk of injury. In this experiment they stretched out the rats until a tendon or muscle went snap! So I am thinking the cold water dip was a walk in the park compared to their mates in the stretching class.

Anyway,

What the scientists noticed is that the rats that had been exercising had biochemically and molecularly calm brains. The new neurons that were formed as a part of their running seemed to have been buffered from the stressful experience. For many years we have all touted the benefits of exercise as a mood enhancer but how a physical activity could directly affect your psychological state such as anxiety levels was not known. There were just educated guesses and postulated theories until now. This has become easier due to better research techniques and of course our deeper understanding of genetics and thought processing.

So we now see evidence that exercise remodels the brain to protect us against stressful states. We literally become more resistant to stress.  In another study at the University of Houston, researchers have looked at how exercise affects the levels of dopamine (your feel good neurotransmitter in the brain) and also the levels of antioxidants in the body. Scientist have know for a long time that stressed people that suffer from anxiety a lot have excessive oxidative stress which leads to cell death throughout the body including the brain.( I don’t need to tell you that that is not good!) However, moderate regular exercise has shown to decrease the effects of oxidative stress and a report at the society of neuroscience in Houston said that they had observed rats whose levels of oxidative stress which had been artificially increased( by injecting with chemicals) were extremely stressed and anxious when put into unfamiliar situations. However, the rats that had been doing their regular workout (and I imagine were looking rather buffed) and were also injected and put in the same situations were calm as cucumbers. They apparently did not go running into the corners looking for dark areas to hide but just cruised around exploring.

“It looks more and more like the positive stress of exercise prepares cells and structures and pathways within the brain so that they’re more equipped to handle stress in other forms,” says Michael Hopkins, a graduate student affiliated with the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory Laboratory at Dartmouth, who has been studying how exercise differently affects thinking and emotion. “It’s pretty amazing, really, that you can get this translation from the realm of purely physical stresses to the realm of psychological stressors.”

I hear what you’re thinking, I will go for a quick walk this morning and I will be stress free! Unfortunately, it won’t happen immediately. They had a bunch of rats that ran for only three weeks and then were ‘stressed out’ but did not get the protective benefits of the rats that ran for six weeks. There seems to be a change neurologically between a 3 and 6 week period of exercising.

Dr. Greenwood who is a research associate in the department of integrative physiology at the University of Colorado who has been in charge of the experiment says that he is unsure how this translates in regards to humans. It could be that we need more weeks of exercise than the rats or hopefully for the lazy ones reading this, less. He does go on to say though, although the effects will not happen overnight they will happen and the effects will be profound!

So I don’t know about you but I am getting away from this computer and my stress and going for a walk, or a ride, or to the gym.

Here’s  a quick and effective little exercise that relieves upper back tension for those tight shoulders  and neck from being at the computer, driving the car or from good old everyday stress.

So many of us have tight and painful upper backs and necks and It generally takes years of accumulated bad posture and  physical and mental stresses to get this but the good news is that quite often it can be fixed quickly and easily. One of my clients said to me many years ago that she wears her shoulders as earrings. I didn’t immediately know what she was talking about so she explained to me that all day every day she would find herself so tense her shoulders would not be relaxed and they would creep higher and higher until it felt like they were attached to her ears. I am sure many of you drive your cars like this or work at the computers like this. Your shoulders are not down and relaxed, you continually have to tell yourself to relax them instead of holding them tightly. It gets worse the more stress that you have around you. It you do this for long enough these muscles get painful from hours of contracting them. Imagine if I was to ask you to bend your elbow and flex hard your bicep muscle to contract it hard-as if you were to show me how big your arm muscles were. And imagine if asked you to hold that for one hour in the same position. Well, you probably wouldn’t last for very long and even if you did, your arm would be very sore from contracting it. This is exactly what is happening when you are holding your upper back and shoulders ‘like earrings’. It’s little wonder they are sore at the end of the day!

One of the most difficult things to do is be aware that you are doing this. So many people are so used to it, when I tell them to relax their shoulders they tell me they are relaxed. I try to wiggle their upper back and shoulders and they are locked hard. The client generally is quite surprised because they think that they were completely relaxed. Unfortunately, after years of tensing their upper backs and necks they have literally forgotten how it feels to feel relaxed. This is where this exercise comes in.

The ‘I dunno’ exercise:

We need to re program your muscles to start to realise where and what relaxed is again. The ‘I dunno’ exercise will do this for you. I want you to do this several times day especially if you find yourself going back into bad habits by tensing those shoulders. Shrug both shoulders up towards your ears as if you were doing that classic ‘I dunno’ position. Hold for 3 seconds and the gently let them drop back to a relaxed position. Let them relax for 5 seconds. Now push them in the opposite direction towards the floor, the opposite to a shoulder shrug, for 3 seconds. Then relax them in neutral again. Repeat this sequence 5 times of raising, relaxing, pushing down and then relaxing. This will give you a much better understanding of where relaxed is and when you are tensing your muscles. It will also have the advantage of fatiguing these muscles which will make them less reactive to going back to being worn as earrings. The more you do this the more aware you will become and the less pain and tension you will have.

Remember, always have good posture when you are sitting and standing otherwise you will have limited results. As I have said many times before, that it’s imperative to remove the causes to your pain. Bad posture with your head in a forward protracted position is the main cause of neck pain!

For more information please feel free to email me at

http://boquetespa.com

Mark Perren-Jones

So much research in the area of pain management is consistently proving that just therapy alone is not the best way to remove your pain. Therapy PLUS CORRECT EXERCISES will not only get you better more quickly but also help you remain pain free. Here is another study showing the effectiveness of doing exercises for pain relief. If you read nothing else read the last paragraph of this article.

I have been seeing people for 20 years in the clinic and have continually given them exercises, specific exercises for their pain. By doing the exercises the clients get better more quickly and are also able to stay pain free.
The most important aspect is that the person is prescribed the correct exercises for their specific problem; not just any old exercises will do. This means that the person has their pain properly diagnosed and the exercises are given specifically for each particular ailment. The amazing part is that you only need to do a few minutes of the exercises a day.

You may also note that in this study chiropractors are the practitioners that give exercises to their clients the least. Have you ever wondered that if you knew the cause of your pain and knew how to fix it with specific exercises you could remain pain free instead of having to see your chiropractor for so-called ‘maintenance visits’ each month-and save yourself some money!

Experts say exercise underutilized as treatment for back, neck pain
Exercise has shown significant promise in improving physical function, decreasing symptoms and minimizing disability caused by chronic low back and neck pain. However, according to a study, exercise remains an underutilized treatment.
Researchers from the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research at the University of North Carolina conducted a survey of nearly 700 individuals with chronic back or neck pain who saw a physician, chiropractor and/or physical therapist during the previous 12 months. They asked participants whether they were prescribed exercise, the amount of supervision received, and the type, duration and frequency of the prescribed exercise.
Less than 50 percent of the subjects in our sample were prescribed exercise, one of the few moderately effective therapies for the highly disabling illness of chronic back and neck pain, said Timothy S. Carey and Janet K. Freburger, lead researchers of the study.
Related Coverage Lost time injuries, musculoskeletal disorders decline in ‘07, study finds (12/01/08) Job creation must be accompanied by emphasis on safety, group says (04/02/09) National summit urges action to improve workforce health, productivity (12/01/08) Michigan: Senator introduces bill to block state-mandated ergonomics standard (03/23/09) Surgeons issue new treatment guidelines for carpal tunnel syndrome (12/01/08) According to the study, the type of provider played a major role in whether participants received a prescription. Of those who received an exercise prescription, 46 percent received the prescription from a physical therapist, 27 percent from a physician, and 21 percent from a chiropractor. The authors noted that these findings correlated with previous studies that have found that “who you see is what you get.” The study, published in Arthritis Care & Research, found that for those who were prescribed exercise and the type of provider seen determined the amount of supervision and, to some extent, the types of exercises prescribed. Physical therapists were more likely to provide supervision and prescribe stretching and strengthening exercises, practices which the researchers said follow current guidelines and lead to better outcomes.
The authors suggested that future studies explore barriers to prescription of exercise treatments, such as practitioner knowledge, organizational aspects of the practice, and poor reimbursement for exercise instruction compared with other types of treatment.
Second study supports exercise. In a second unrelated study published in The Spine Journal, researchers found that exercise in the workplace is effective in preventing new episodes of low-back problems.
“Strong and consistent evidence finds many popular prevention methods fail while exercise has a significant impact, both in terms of preventing symptoms and reducing back pain-related work loss,” said Dr. Stanley J. Bigos, University of Washington professor emeritus of orthopedic surgery and environmental health.

this is not what i am asking you to do-yet

Lower back strengthening exercises

These exercises are for all lower back pain. Those people who suffer from disc pain, sciatica and pain which is worse from sitting or bending forwards and is normally better when standing are going to benefit enormously from these.

These exercises work on several levels. You will be doing 3 exercises which build your lower back muscles whilst extending your back which also benefits the disc placement. This is extremely important. The fourth will strengthen your core muscles as well. Also, the simple act of sitting up straight all day will build your postural muscles as well. Your lower back will feel much better!

Before we get to the exercises I need to point out that you can do these lower back strengthening exercises until the cows come home but if you continue to sit poorly, slouch over the computer, bend and lift poorly you will not remove the causes of your back pain. You MUST assume good posture AT ALL TIMES. I advise you to get a lumbar roll to help you sit in a more upright position in your chairs. You need to be sitting with the lower back having its small inward arch always. If you do not, you will be in a slouched position which over stretches the lower back muscles and ligaments which cause pain. If you do this for long enough the ligaments that surround the discs can lose their integrity and the disc can protrude/herniate or slip (a disc doesn’t actually slip but that’s for another post). If it protrudes enough it will press on the nerves and the most common nerve that gets pressed on is at the bottom of the lumbar spine called the sciatic nerve. Therefore you must remove the causes of your lower back pain to remain pain free. If you were to cut your elbow but you kept bending your elbow the cut would not get a chance to heal. However, if you avoided bending your elbow for about a week your elbow would heal nicely. Your back is the same! If you have hurt your back or continually suffer from lower back pain, sciatica or disc pain you must implement these guidelines above. I have written much more on this subject in my back pain section of my blog.

Exercise 1: egg under your chest

• lie on your stomach with arms by your sides
• imagine you have a raw egg under your chest and you don’t want to break it
• therefore you have to lift your chest off the floor gently
• come up and down, don’t strain just do them comfortably
• do as many as you can and as you build up strength you can hold for longer and also do more repetitions
• you can also do this with your arms out in front of you when you have more strength
• breathe

Exercise 2: eggs under your thighs

• still laying on your stomach imagine you have an egg under each thigh
• therefore you have to lift the thighs off the floor to avoid breaking the eggs
• it’s the same as exercise 1, hold for a few seconds and then bring your legs back to the floor
• Increase your reps. and length of time when you are able to.
• Don’t strain and remember to breathe

Exercise 3: superman!

• Ok here’s your chance to become a superhero
• This is a combination of the two previous exercises
• Lift your legs and arms from the floor (hands are out in front of you like superman-yippee!)
• This is quite challenging so work up to it, after all not everyone can become a superhero overnight.
• The same as before, build up your reps. and the time you hold the position
• Be careful with your neck; do not overly arch it upwards. You can keep looking at the floor when you do this if its easier for your neck
• Don’t strain and remember to breathe

Exercise 4: the push up

• Hold a push up position
• Place your hands under your shoulders. You may also like to do these with your hands in a fist position
• You are going to hold this push up position but you MUST NOT HAVE AN ARCH IN YOUR LOWER BACK. You need to use your core muscles to keep your back from sagging. Keep your lower back straight. You may need someone to watch you so that they can tell you if your lower back is straight or not.
• Hold for as long as you can comfortably
• Breathe

And that’s it! Remember:

1. at all times use good posture
2. lift and bend properly, not with a rounded back
3. do these exercises daily
4. enjoy being pain free

Here are the most important stretches you should be doing if you use a computer and the ones you should completely avoid! We all spend way too much time on computers these days so it’s important to know what stretches to do to ease neck tension and back pain. I will teach you what are the essential stretches and proper ergonomics at your work station.

Ok, first of all it’s absolutely vital to have proper posture or you can do all the stretching in the world and it won’t make a lick of difference. This is one of the major mistakes many people make.  There are so many people that go to the gym, yoga, Pilates, do stretches, and do hundreds of sit-ups or ball exercises only to find themselves still suffering from back pain. If you are one of these people and want to know more read my article why does my neck hurt to find out why you may still suffer, to understand the causes and know how to fix them.

We all know that we should be taking regular breaks and normally we don’t so obviously trying to do this will be of great benefit not only for your body but also to refresh your mind.

When you are at a computer in a sitting position the hip flexors (the front of your hips) become chronically shortened so it’s a must to stretch these out. If you don’t, not only can you suffer from back pain at your workstation but also it may then hurt when you have to stand for extended periods of time. If these hip flexors are chronically shortened enough it can also be painful for people to sleep on their backs or on their stomachs. Also, we need to address stretching out the neck, back and chest. This is because many people tend to slouch and the pectoral (chest) muscles also become chronically shortened and pull the shoulders forwards. This can then lead to shoulder problems. You may never have thought your shoulder problems could come from having tight chest muscles but it’s very common and very commonly overlooked. And finally we have the neck muscles to stretch. We need to stretch out the trapezius muscles. However, once you have stretched out these muscles its imperative that you go back to your workstation and resume good posture.

You want to do these stretches hour or so. It’s important to be able to take these breaks for body and mind. You don’t want to be doing neck stretches like putting your chin to your chest because these muscles are generally already overstretched from poor posture ( chin jutting forwards-for more on this see ‘why does my neck hurt?’) and also you don’t need to be bringing knees to you chest, touching your toes, curling up into a ball or other stretches like these because they all put too much pressure on your lower discs and don’t stretch the muscles that are tightest-they don’t get to the muscles that need to be stretched! Also, don’t stretch your arm across your body as these stretch the backs of your shoulders which don’t normally need to be stretched because you are already over stretched at the back of the shoulders.

I will explain more about this in another post but for now here are the stretches you need to be doing.

The hips-the good, the bad and the ugly

the good…

• From a standing position place one foot back behind you in a comfortably wide stance. Make sure you keep the back foot facing forward, do not let it turn out. You may have to look at the back foot to check because it can feel like its straight when its not.
• Bend your front knee so that your front shin is vertical, this will put your weight through your ankle and protect your knee.
• Bend both knees a little and allow the back heel to come off the ground.
• Make sure your hips are facing forwards
• Ensure that your back is upright and not leaning forwards
• Your weight should be placed evenly between both feet
• You MUST tuck your backside underneath you by using your abdominals to lift your beltline up. ( a pelvic tilt)This decreases the arch in your lower back which will then give you a stretch through the front of your back thigh.
• Hold for 15 seconds and change sides
• Relax, breathe, smile and enjoy
• Do this several times per day to stretch out the front hip especially if you are sitting a lot ( who doesn’t these days)

…the bad and the ugly

• bending the front knee too much which stresses the front knee
• turning the back foot out
• arching the lower back
• leaning the body forwards over the front leg instead of being vertical
• allowing the front knee to fall inwards, keep your shin vertical
• forgetting to relax, breathe, smile and enjoy

the chest-the good the bad and the ugly

The good…

• Stand facing a wall and place your hand on the wall with your elbow about shoulder height
• Now turn your body and feet away from the wall feeling a stretch through the front of your chest, not the back of the shoulder
• Make sure your shoulder is relaxed and down
• Keep your chin in and your hip tucked under so that you don’t overarch your back
• Hold for 15 seconds and change sides
• Remember to breathe, relax, smile and enjoy

…The bad and the ugly

• Letting your shoulder pinch at the back rather than feel the stretch at the front
• Hunching your shoulders up
• Jutting your head forwards and over arching your lower back
• Leaning your upper back backwards-(keep back vertical using your abdominals)
• Forgetting to breathe, relax, smile and enjoy

Option 2:

The Stick Up-the good, the bad and the ugly

The good…

• Stand in a doorway and place both forearms on either side, elbows at shoulder height( like in a stick-up position)
• Place one foot in front of the other
• Keep your chin in and your hip tucked under using your abdominals so that your don’t overarch your back
• Move your weight forward to feel a stretch through the front of your chest
• Keep your shoulders down and relaxed
• Hold for 15 seconds
• Remember to breathe, relax, smile and enjoy

…the bad and the ugly

• Allowing your shoulders to pinch at the backs
• Jutting your chin forward
• Overarching your back rather than tucking the hip under by using your abdominals
• Hunching your shoulders
• Forgetting to breathe, relax, smile and enjoy

Option 3:

Hands behind head-the good, the bad and the ugly

…the good

• Place your hands behind your head
• Pull your elbows back to get a stretch through the front of your chest
• Keep your chin in and your hip tucked under using your abdominals so that your don’t overarch your back
• Keep your shoulders down and relaxed
• Hold for 15 seconds
• Remember to breathe, relax, smile and enjoy

…the bad and the ugly

• Allowing your shoulders to pinch at the backs
• Jutting your chin forward
• Overarching your back rather than tucking the hip under by using your abdominals
• Hunching your shoulders
• Forgetting to breathe, relax, smile and enjoy

The neck

• stand upright and put your right hand behind your back trying to touch your left buttock
• Tilt your head to the left trying to touch your left ear to your left shoulder. keep your head straight( you may want to do this in front to a mirror first to see that you are doing it correctly)
• slide your left hand down the side of your left leg
• Do not lean forward or back and don’t let your head come forward.
• If you want to enhance this stretch, cross your right foot over your left foot and gently push your hips to the right. this will stretch you from your lower back all the way to your neck
• Remember, with all stretches you only want to feel a gentle stretch not ‘no pain, no gain’. Hold for 20 seconds.
• Be careful as this is also an exercise in achieving good balance with your legs crossed over.
• Enjoy!

Ok, so we have discovered that static stretching is NOT what you want to be doing but that now leads us to the question-what should we be doing?

Dynamic stretching and dynamic warm ups!

When you stretch your muscles whilst you are moving, you are doing what s known as dynamic stretching. When you do this you:

1. increase your power
2. increase your flexibility
3. increase your range of motion

This is because when your muscles are stretching whilst moving they actually get an excitatory message to perform. The master to key to dynamic stretching or dynamic warm ups is to make them specific to the sport you are about to play.

“You need range-of-motion exercises that activate all of the joints and connective tissue that will be needed for the task ahead,” says Terrence Mahon, a coach with Team Running USA.

For example, let’s say that you are a runner; an ideal warm-up might include squats, lunges and “form drills” like kicking your buttocks with your heels. Or maybe you are a sportsperson that needs to move rapidly in many directions, such as a footballer, a basketball player, or a tennis or squash player. Sports such as this need to have dynamic stretches that involve many parts of the body. This is where I promised you become a superhero by doing the” Spider-Man”. It is a great drill: drop onto all fours and crawl the width of the court, as if you were climbing a wall. This is a wonderful dynamic exercise to prepare the body.

I mentioned golf before, and I have been doing dynamic warm-ups for a long time now before playing and I can vouch first hand that my game has improved from doing this. By the way, a recent survey of 304 recreational golfers found that two-thirds seldom or never bother. If you were to come to where I play in the Panamanian mountains where it’s full of retirees I would think a survey would be more like 90% don’t warm up. I think the majority of the club members consider here consider a cup of freshly brewed mountain coffee and a chat their warm up. However, if only they knew how much they would benefit from exerting themselves a bit before teeing off. In one 2004 study, golfers who did dynamic warm- up exercises and practice swings increased their club head speed and were projected to have dropped their handicaps by seven strokes over seven weeks. Not only this but  new research by Andrea Fradkin, ( an Australian I am proud to say) who is an assistant professor of exercise science at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, suggests that those who warm up are nine times less likely to be injured! “It was eye-opening,” says Fradkin, an avid golfer herself. “I used to not really warm up. I do now.”

In some schools, there still remains controversy about dynamic warm-ups and injury prevention. The one thing that is perfectly clear though is that studies have shown static stretching alone before exercise does little or nothing to help. The largest study has been done on military recruits; half of the recruits did static stretches before exercise/training drills and the other half did not. The results showed that there was no difference between either group. The group who did the static stretching before exercising had the same amount of shin splints, calf strains, stress fractures etc as the group who did absolutely no stretching beforehand.  Another major study published earlier this year by the Centers for Disease Control, showed that knee injuries were 50% less among female collegiate soccer players who followed a warm-up program that included both dynamic warm-up exercises and static stretching. (For a sample routine, visit www.aclprevent.com/pepprogram.htm.)

Dynamic stretching:

These exercises below are taught by the United States Tennis Association’s player-development program and are great for many athletes, even golfers. Do them immediately after your aerobic warm-up and as soon as possible before your workout.

STRAIGHT-LEG MARCH

(For the hamstrings and gluteus muscles)

Kick one leg straight out in front of you, with your toes flexed toward the sky. Reach your opposite arm to the upturned toes. Drop the leg and repeat with the opposite limbs. Continue the sequence for at least six or seven repetitions.

SCORPION

(For the lower back, hip flexors and gluteus muscles)

Lie on your stomach, with your arms outstretched and your feet flexed so that only your toes are touching the ground. Kick your right foot toward your left arm, and then kick your left foot toward your right arm. Since this is an advanced exercise, begin slowly, and repeat up to 12 times.

HANDWALKS

(For the shoulders, core muscles, and hamstrings)

Stand straight, with your legs together. Bend over until both hands are flat on the ground. “Walk” with your hands forward until your back is almost extended. Keeping your legs straight, inch your feet toward your hands, then walk your hands forward again. Repeat five or six times. G.R.

For more on dynamic stretching google ‘dynamic stretching’ and if you want it for your particular sport just add your sport after that.