Workout

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Rehab

What is rehab? (I know the picture is talking about another type of rehab but it makes me giggle.)

It is the concept of taken something broken or not 100% of its full operating capacity and restoring it too its optimum capacity. People can do this by taking themselves through ranges of motion that will facilitate that joint, muscle, connective tissue, bone or whatever it is and at the same time strengthening it.

I see current programs take too long to get tissue healthy and the client pushes themselves too hard on their own. I also see clients not taking it easy enough at the beginning.

The first 5 are common Rehab concepts or you will hear about consistently. The last 4 are things that I think are not in most rehab practices.

1. If you are out of balance and things are not symmetrical you need to "rehab"!
2. If the injury is acute you need to chill out
3. If the injury is persistent but does not stop you from going through a ROM then use it but do so in a smart way.
4. All injuries and imbalances need to be trained loaded and unloaded
5. All injuries should be taken through a normal ROM
6. All injuries should be stressed but not forced. (there are times to force something but be careful and make sure you do this with a good PT)
7. If you are in rehab don't just rehab that one injury. Treat the whole body as an injury
8. Super high intensity training (anaerobic) releases a cocktail of rehab chemicals. Train HARD but safely.
9. If you have to wear a brace to do something you shouldn't be doing it.

If you are out of balance and things are not symmetrical than you need to "rehab"!

If my left leg bends farther than my right or my right shoulder has too much ROM then when I do a movement that is designed for balance the body is going to stress one side harder. Say we are doing an overhead squat. OHS is holding a weight overhead and then squatting into a full squat, while the weight stays directly over the center of the foot and the heel is loaded/pushing through the ground.

So, we are OHS and our left leg and shoulder are not as flexible as our right side. When we squat our body is going to load asymmetrically. This is great for an asymmetrical day but what happens when you need it to load symmetrically. It cant. Something is going to give. This means that you are going to be inefficient through your body and the neural patterns will make this a norm loading pattern a norm. This will create a compromise.

The argument is that while you are performing the movement the body will only be able to go as far as the compromised or the tighter joint. My answer is that sometimes that will happen but more often than not a person will load the short side and or the unstable side in a compromising way. If you are paying attention and training it as a rehab movement it is more likely that you will not overload something. More often than not, if you are not being watched then you will force/compromise the tight side to get into the "proper" position causing more damage. I see it all the time with movements. This does not mean don't train a movement that highlights your compromises, because you want to see your weaknesses. It means pay attention and have someone watch you. It also means that you need to do some tissue mobilization, massage, foam roll etc.

If the injury is acute chill out.

If it hurts when your not doing anything, it is wrong and if it hurts after you did something you probably did too much. Most people hurt and "play through it". Don't. It hurts because something is wrong. Mobilize tissue and take the hurt/damaged area through a scaled ROM. If my shoulder hurts I am going to work on all the shoulder muscles with golf balls, tennis balls, cords and then start taking it through the max ROM I can without causing more pain. It takes about 6 weeks for soft tissue to be usable. So, during that 6 weeks plan on training around it and plan on rehabbing it specifically. Give it time to heal. If your car has a flat and you take the wheel off and half plug the tire and then put a little air in it, get frustrated stick the tire back on the car and drive away the tire won't serve you. Take the time to fix it!

If the injury is persistent but doesn't keep you from going through a ROM then use it but in a smart way

If it continues to hurt when you are using it, odds are you are not using it properly. If you are then you are not doing enough of the soft tissue work and ensuring that you warm it up and cool it down. I don't like to warm stuff up but in the case of rehab I demand it to be done.

At the beginning it may hurt through a ROM but it should be that good kind of hurt.

All injuries and imbalances need to be trained out both loaded and unloaded as well as symmetrically and asymmetrically.

Every injury is a mechanical misuse of the body. Either it was too hard of a movement or the angle of the movement was asking the joint to do something that is not possible. All tissue has resilience to getting pushed around but at some point it fails. ALL tissue will fail at some point. Don't take it to that point and if you take it close to that point give it time to heal. Think of a blister. That tissue was rubbed and rubbed until it couldn't handle it anymore and a blister formed. If you do the same thing the next day it will get worse. Give it a break.

So, if it is imbalanced train that imbalance out!

If you can do a pistol (one leg squat) on one leg but not the other, train the other leg to perform the same. If you don't at some point you will try and do something and the imbalance will cause a funky load in the body and create an injury.

Odds are it will never be exactly the same, especially since we throw and kick with specific feet/hands, but you can get them very very close by training them that way. By doing so, you will be a healthier, faster, longer lasting human.

So, symmetrical is Olympic lifts while one sided kettlebell lifts would be asymmetrical. There are hundreds of each type of movement (sym/asym) but OLY lifts and KB lifts are a really wonderful place to start.

All injuries should be taken through a normal ROM

Now, it should be taken through the max ROM that is possible for that injury. You keep working the injury until you can get it through a normal, healthy ROM.

If you can't do it yourself then have someone do it for you. Be nice to it but work it through as much ROM as you can handle.

Begin loading the ROM as soon as possible but only move it through the ROM you can absolutely 100% control. If it only stays stable through a tiny bit of your passive ROM its okay, just ensure that you are also having the injury moved through a ROM while unloaded. Rehab isn't roses, hugs and kisses. It hurts a little.

All injuries should be stressed but not forced. (there are times to force something but be careful and make sure you do this with a good PT)

People baby their rehab or stop doing it because it "feels" better. It is not better. Do all of the required rehab and make sure to take time off of full out training until your are cleared. A basic idea is that if it feels good give it another two weeks of "rehab" before giving it the green light to go all out. When you think that it is better use it and if it is overly sore or different than the others take it a little easier on it next time. Keep checking it that way once a week or so and when it comes back feeling like the others you can use it full out.

If you are in rehab don't just rehab that one injury. Treat the whole body as an injury

An injury in the ankle screws up the whole system all the way up to the neck and shoulders. This means that if you are injured and just train around it or "work through it" you are demanding other joint/soft tissue systems to take up the slack. This will cause more injury. If you are injured it is ridiculously important to ensure proper movement patterns. If it hurts do something else.

Also there is going to be an inflammatory response in that injury but it will affect the whole body. So, your whole body is "swelling". Treat it that way.

If you have a flat tire and you are driving fast the rest of the car will not be able to keep you safe. Something else will give out because it cant pick up the slack. Fix the flat and check out everything else to make sure it is not damaged.

Super high intensity training (anaerobic) releases a cocktail of rehab chemicals. Train HARD but safely.

This almost sounds like it is contradictory to the above point but it can be supportive. When you train anaerobically your body will release good brain growth chemicals, (VEGF, read Spark by john ratey) HGH, human growth hormone, and will balance your estrogen and testosterone levels, as well as so many other wonderful feel good and fix it chemicals.

I will do a whole post dedicated to anaerobic training and its benefits to include a part about this in more depth.

Example:

Knee injury, get in a pool and sprint across the pool get out and do 10 pushups repeat 10x as fast as you can.

or 10 pushups 5 pullups, 10 rounds in less than 5 minutes

then work a scaled squat. Wrap a chord/belt/rope around a pole/tree/door knob and use the arms to lower you and help you stand.

Or add that into a workout.

This is just one example but pay attention to the idea and look at how many variations that can be applied

If you have to wear a brace to do something you shouldn't be doing it.

Most people feel something that hurts a little and brace it or worse they preventatively brace something. This is a bad idea.

Example.

If you take the mobility out of and ankle and tape it, brace it etc. you will take the stability out of the knee. You WILL DAMAGE the knee by immobilizing the ankle.

If you train properly you will be able to run, jump, cut, accelerate, decelerate, turn, lift something heavy off angle, take a fall, you get the idea, without damaging yourself. If it hurts when doing something look at your mechanics and your training. If either are slacking then you will get injured.

Lastly, don't take anti-inflammatorys unless absolutely necessary. They pull important nutrients from connective tissue. They will presently take down swelling but long term cause damage to the damaged area.

Icing is okay, ice massage is better, but for a short period of time about 5 min at a time. Ice massage is taking some ice and rubbing the injury directly.

Work all the surrounding tissue first, before working the damaged spot. If you work the surrounding area, that tissue can pick up a little more slack from the injury. Secondly, the body splints its own injuries. It will tighten up the surrounding tissues to keep you from using it the wrong way. If you loosen that tissue up it will help the healing process.

summary

Use the damaged area but do so in a smart way and be nice to it. Push it but then let it rest.

People have asked me to make things shorter and not so technical so I will try.

Strength comes from tension.

The more tension that you can generate the stronger your body will be. Notice, that I did not say get stronger. You are already stronger than you allow.

Most humans don't try and contract as hard as they can when they try and move something. They try and contract only hard enough to do exactly the amount of work that is required. This is efficient for a survival scenerio but it sucks for trying to become as strong as you want to be. I am not talking about bulky I am talking about strong. Long strong dense muscles.

This happens by:

• teaching the body how to recruit harder.
• recruiting as many muscles as possible to do the work.
• ensuring that your trunk is tight.

Recruiting harder

The average human only recruits about 20% of the muscles total contractile ability. A olympic caliber lifter will recruit between 40 and 50%. (Pavel Tsastsoluine, the kettlebell guy has a great book on all of this.) This means that just by training the nervous system you will be able to pull, push, jump, run, etc. faster, stronger, higher etc.

If you can get 5% more recruitment now, without adding bulk or weight, then you are going to be much stronger and faster.

Recruit more muscles

When you contract a muscle, the ones surrounding it also contract. Most people don't use their trunk properly or at all. This is the center of you and so many of your muscles run through your trunk, if you don't use it you are missing alot of muscles.

If your trunk contracts your movement will be stronger.

So, if you squeeze your glutes or calves for that matter, the movement you are trying to perform with your arms will be stronger.

Tight Trunk

There are a few reasons for being stronger when you tighten your trunk:

1. Hyperirridation (recruit more muscles, paragraph above)
2. Intraabdominal Pressure
3. Transfer or transmission of power

Intraabdominal pressure

The more pressure you put into the trunk the harder all of your muscles can contract. The body feels more protected so it allows you to move something heavier because the "stop it receptors" haven't been triggered.

Transmission

Think of the desk toy of steel balls hanging by wire and when the end is lifted and dropped the sort of see-saw back and forth. If one is slightly out of balance the see-saw action wont work well. The body does the same thing. If something is not in the correct place you wont be able to transfer power in a straight line. This will cause an injury.

Lastly if more muscles are recruited to do the required work no muscle gets overly taxed. They all share the brunt of the work. This means more work can be done. "many hands make for small work" or whatever the exact saying was, you get the point.

In summary, when you decide to train recruit as many muscles as possible and you will get stronger, faster with no bulk, and you stay in alignment. This means you have a faster road to better overall health.

nerulogical training

Neurological

This is used to teach the body how to fire harder and or with more control and finesse. The nerves are what tell the muscles how and when to contract.

A muscle fiber contracts at 100% of its capability, how many and when the fibers are recruited is up to the nervous system. The more muscle fibers that are recruited the stronger the muscle can contract. The more times a nerve pathway is utilized the more control or finesse the musculature has.

There are three things that control how hard a muscle can fire.

1. Training that pathway or neurological
2. Trunk contraction (which will be discussed in core/trunk)
3. Receptors
1. Tendon muscle receptors. We have these receptors in between the tendon and muscle. Where they come together and intertwine is the golgi tendon receptor and they play three significant roles but all of them have to do with damage assessment and getting the desired job done.

i. If you jump of a table and the receptor gets triggered the muscle fires for you, an involuntary contraction that keeps you from collapsing.

ii. If the weight is too great or the load is too great the receptor will tell the body to collapse because the damage will be less. Damage assessment

iii. Similar to two but if you get over stretched your body will let go which its goal is to hope that you don’t get torn and if you do it would be less than if it held on.

2. Bone receptors

i. We have receptors in our bones that when fired will tell the body whether or not the weight or the load being excerted on the system is too heavy. If it is the muscles will not pick up the weight.

There are also receptors in the hands and feet that if they are not fired will not fire all the leg muscles. This is why running with cushy shoes has not brought down the running injury rate. If these receptors are not triggered you will not be able to move in a fully integrated way. You will be compromised. This is why I don't like gloves or most shoes.

N1 with no fatigue

This is great for everyone. It can be done on a recovery day or a workout day. It is the action of training the nerves pathway. By not going to failure but by trying something really hard it allows the pathway to be strengthened which in turn asks the body to ask for more muscle fibers to be recruited per contraction. This means that without increasing the size of the muscle you can create more output.

It also sets up the body to be more efficient in moving heavy loads.

So an example would be try a one hand one leg (opposite) pushup and try this 2 x on each side 5 to 10 times a day but never to fatigue. If you get to fatigue you have done one too many. This trains the pathway but doesn’t put the body into recovery mode. The brilliant Russian kettlebell guru Pavel Tsatsoline calls this GTG or grease the groove. The idea is that you are building the pathway and you will increase output.

I have many clients doing many different movements to train this concept and they can do it on a recovery day.

This is one to do with the very edge of your capacity and only do a few reps throughout the day.

N2 with fatigue

It takes 1000 repetitions to create muscle memory. It takes 10000 to 15000 repetitions to break old muscle memory and create new memory.

N2 is the idea that we train this idea to fatigue but not to system breakdown. This is the idea of doing a movement as many times as you can until right before it gets sloppy. If it gets sloppy that repetition will create a bad movement pattern.

We used to do this in the Marine Corps for marksmanship. We called it snapping in. The downside is that most of the beginners had to do it too long and went to failure or lack of concentration and began creating bad habits.

The rules for this are do it with weight or with an object that is well with in your limits and do as many reps as humanly possible while maintaining good form and focus. Right before form and concentration collapse stop. This is something you can do as a recovery day, do multiple times a day and or do during a workout day.

This not a workout. It is not intended to be a workout. This is not the idea or lightweight lots of reps. That doesn’t do much for making you fit. This is a tool that develops a specific movement pattern it is not the movement pattern.

N3 with failure

This is for elite level performers. I use this for pro athletes or super high functioning athletes and I used it for training snipers in the Marine Corps. The idea is that you take somebody through complete muscle or mental failure and then ask them to do a task that is essential. For snipers it was get behind a rifle and shoot accurately, or use their scope to accurately determine range, for an athlete like a gymnast I will ask them to do a back tuck at the end of being exhausted. Or I would put them on a squishy mat and have them do 25 back tucks and not care if the are able to or not. These elite level performers have already developed great muscle memory and are now demanding that everything work when it doesn’t want to.
An example of this is watching a special operations person under complete physical and mental fatigue, stress and even duress, draw and present a firearm then place 2 well aimed shots on a designated target. This is established by N3.

We want the participant to really focus and get a few of them perfectly. If they have to slow down to do so then great. We also want them do some as fast as they can.

The rules for this are to go to fatigue (extremely hard workout) and then do a required skill. Those skills can include any of the following:

Gross

Fine

Complex

Gross motor skills use the major muscles of the body. Slapping a mosquito versus grabbing her (the mosquito) with chopsticks.

Fine motor skills, are the skills that need hand eye coordination. Threading a needle, text messaging.

Complex motor skills are motor skills that require a list of neurological pathways. Text messaging while driving (welcome to LA), starting a fire.

All of these pathways have to be trained. You can train them all under each one of the training cycles. G(ross)N1, GN2, GN3, FN1 etc.

Example. GN2 as a mixed martial arts fighter, would work on a punch or a kick or take down when fatigued but still able to perform the movement correctly. The same movement trained at the end of a disgustingly hard workout and s/he can barely lift themselves from the floor allow the movement to be ingrained and perfected for all circumstances that that person may encounter.

Core

I hate the word core!

What is your core?

I define it as anything covered by a corset and sexy underwear.

Core strength is about ensuring the spine doesn't deviate from its neutral position. The stronger you get the less the spine will deviate or more importantly the more you can move. Now, if the trunk/spine does deviate the supporting muscles should be able to pick up the slack and keep you protected. Trunk strength means, that no matter what movement you try, Long Slow Distance (LSD, and not the kind that drop on to your tongue), short duration high intensity, lifting heavy things fast or slow, your spine will be protected.

If I gave you a grand piano and then took the body or the box of the piano, and had you play it would the sound travel well?

If I replaced the box with a floppy sheet, would the sound travel well?

No!

The trunk is the box. The stronger the trunk the more energy can be transferred through the body to the appendages. The more strength that is transferred the better the performance.

If we look at the body as a car, the hips are the engine the trunk is the transmission and the appendages are the wheels. If you have a great engine and a crappy transmission you are not going anywhere very quickly. If you have a decent engine and an awesome transmission you will transfer power well and be able to get places much more quickly than the above and if they do beat you they will hurt themselves. They wont be able to maintain that level of performance. They/the car will fall apart.

So what is not your core?

Your 6 pack muscles. Those are designed for a little bit of trunk flexion (pulling the chest toward the thighs) and to keep your guts in place. So, those sit ups, Swiss ball crunches, abdominal machines and the like, are actually detrimental. They don't teach your body how to use your trunk in a functional way.

What does it mean to use your trunk in a functional way?

It means to protect the spine as you take yourself through any ROM that you need. If you are trying to push a canoe overhead, carry a heavy backpack, carry an infant, pick up that giant TV up off the ground, if you were 8 months pregnant, or in a fist fight, do you have the trunk stability through all of those ROM's the entire time.

If your back is sore than no you didn't. All the sit ups in the world won't teach you to pick up a #300 pound object off the ground and move it.

About 2 months ago I was helping a friend move a #350 steel base plate and he was in my way so, when he put it down I just picked it up and carried it 15 feet to a van and gently put it into the van. Because of its shape I couldn't keep a neutral spine and hold it, so even with a spine that was not in an optimal position I not only didn't hurt myself I comfortably (as much as you lift comfortably lift a steel base plate) moved it. This is a strong "CORE" or trunk. I had to get to a full depth squat pick up one end lay it on my thighs and then pick up the other end. My trunk had to work and stabilize through my entire ROM.

If crunches and Swiss balls are not going to teach us how do we train out trunk?

Compression

If we watch a person from the side and they contract their "core" they should actually shrink all the way around circumferentially (another new word) and vertically. The spine shape should not change. It should remain in a neutral position. This compression locks everything into place. This does a number of things, it protects the spine, allows us to increase our intraabdominal pressure (we will talk about intraabdominal pressure later) and allows for more energy transfer.

I am not saying that it should stay this locked down for an entire movement. It is supposed to be fluid and dynamic, and it should contract and release in gradients. It isn't binary, on or off, it is fluid. However, if you are trying to do something super heavy or super strong then you need the maximum amount of contraction possible.

Deviation. The spine should remain as neutral as possible. The more neutral the more balanced we can be. Now, it will deviate, rotationally, flexionally ( I just made up that word and I am proud of it so back off), both laterally and front to back. The key is that it is protected during movement and would have only the amount of deviation that is absolutely necessary. An example, is a burpee(jumping squat thrust). Why do people jump back into the push up position and let their hips fall, and why do they jump forward and let their sacrum and lumbar spine tuck under?

Some will say it is because they are weak and need to get stronger and while that is true it is most often because humans are goal oriented and lazy. The problem with the goal orientation is that they want to get those reps done instead of getting them done at maximum intensity while keeping the spine stable. They are lazy because it is more difficult to keep the spine stable and fight gravity and or a load than it is to let it fall apart/collapse. They instead let the non-movable portion of the tissue (spine and connective tissue, now yes connective tissue has stretch but very little, if you stretch connective tissue by 4% you lose joint stability) take up the slack. The problem is that the muscles that support the spine remain weak and the person training will injure themselves. By letting your spine deviate more than it needs to, you trunk will under a play load (skiing, running), under work load (moving TVs, hot water heaters, changing your tire), or under stress load (fighting, driving all day, sitting behind a computer writing on a blog) will not be able to maintain integrity.

People do all of that training and have a weak trunk because they are lazy and have the wrong goals.

Rotation. The rotation is here for a few reasons:

1. Assisting the hips with power transfer
2. Transfer and dissapation of force applied to the body (if you get moved by an outside force can your body transfer that energy and keep your spine protected and if it cant transfer it can it dissapate it?)
3. To keep you safe so you can look behind you
4. So you can smack your kids in the backseat. (not really, if you don't do that from the hips you will injure your shoulder.)

The body should be able to turn and produce rotational power but not from the lumbar spine. In truth rotational power should come from the hips (remember the engine) and the upper body rotation assists in power transfer from the hips.

The hips have two major types of power generation

1. linear, back to front as in a kettlebell swing or a broad jump, and front to back as in pulling closed a garage door
2. rotational, throwing a punch/ball or hitting a tennis ball

Many people think the rotational movement is one of two things:

1. as in tennis or punching, the arm is the prime mover and the force generator
2. an excessive spinal rotation

If the arm is used or trained as the primary force generator the shoulder and elbow will fall apart. Then the neck will also become compromised. The way it should work is the hips go through their movement and force is generated from that movement. The force travels through the trunk (this can be for linear or rotation but for this example we will use rotation) and the trunk is abruptly stopped. The stopping of the trunk forces the energy out of an appendage. If it is a throwing motion the force will continue out of the arm.

Think of keys on a long key chain, if you swing them in a circle there is a great deal of power coming out the end of the keys and it is being generated from where?

The wrist, not the keys.

If you abruptly stop the swing, the keys will speed up for a small amount of time. This is the same with throwing something. There is a rotational speed from the hips and then a sudden stop and the arm or leg (kick) moves out faster and everything remains mechanically safe. If I try to generate the same amount of power with just the arm the joints will fail.

Excessive spinal rotation, will damage the spine. If you look at a good baseball swing, punch etc. the hips open up meaning the hips lead a rotation and the trunk quickly follows, but the shoulders will have less of a turn then when people look behind them. Sit in a chair and look directly behind you. Your spine just rotated more than a professional boxer, tennis player, even discus thrower.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lh50gF5l0dw&feature=related

There are a bunch of people that try to increase their rotational ability to something of an owl/contortionist. This is not something that will help in power production and will most likely cause injury. Especially if we try and create too much rotational movement in the lumbar spine. Excessive spinal rotation will compromise power transmission and spinal stability which is what the trunk is designed to do.

Linear

Linear hip drive can be used in strength or power. Strength is lifting something without worrying how fast it happens and power is lifting something as fast as possible. Sow the hip drive can be slow and grind or quick and explosive. Both of them require a stable trunk. Picking your child up and out of the back of the car while they are sleeping and then putting them in their bed, flipping a giant tire, or quickly pulling someone's giant mean dog off of your dog. These are all movements that require linear hip drive and a stable spine. If you try and of any of these with your arms your back and or shoulders will hurt. If you set your spine you will be able to use your hips and butt and hamstrings(back of the upper leg) to perform these movements. This is bare bones paragraph because I don't think that it needs that much more explanation.

Transmission

Transmission of power is the what the trunk is designed to do as far as human movement is concerned. You can not transfer power if your spine is not protected. You will hurt your spine and you will not perform what you want the way that you want.

Okay intraabdominal pressure. This is increasing the amount of internal pressure in the trunk. The more internal abdominal pressure you can create the harder all the other muscles in the body can contract. Try a simple movement like curling a weight. Do one of them with a loose relaxed gut and then another with a tight trunk. Imagine someone is going to kick you in the ribs and tighten your pelvic floor, a kegel exercise. (Tighten your ass like you are going to prison.) The one with a tight trunk allows for the arm to curl more weight. If you do it correctly you will still be able to breathe while keeping that level of abdominal tension. However, don't try and roam around the world like that. It is what is supposed to happen when you decide to perform a movement and it doesn't have to be on at 100% all the time.

If you can learn to contract the trunk the power will transfer more efficiently, and this will lead to playing longer, harder, faster and with fewer injuries.

bracing/compressing versus hollowing /pilates c curve

There are two major schools of thought on proper trunk contraction which are the pilates c curve/ hollowing idea and the bracing/compressing idea.

I prefer the bracing hollowing because it feels more natural. If I surprise you and as you turn a corner try and kick you in the gut you will compress and brace (basically what we talked about in the intraabdominal section). When I watch a young kid pick up something heavy, like their kid brother, they brace. Pilates, is more of a hollowing and it is more of this idea of bringing the bellybutton to the spine and the anus up towards the belly button. When I try and lift something heavy I can always lift heavier when compressing rather than hollowing. The same applies in punching, sprinting etc.

The other issue I have with hollowing is I find it very hard to feel or use my transverse abdominus. It is a muscle that wraps around the body like a back brace that box stacker's have to wear. This muscle attaches to the spine by fascia (think saran wrap but thick) and then wraps around to the front of the body. When that muscle contracts it works like that back brace or a corset. It is KEY to keeping the spine neutral.

So how do we train to brace.

Activators and exercises

We start with activators and then we introduce exercises.

Back compression crunches (also called a low back press) are an easy way to learn where all the muscles are. There is a difference between an activator and an exercise. An activator is a movement that trains the nervous system to turn on, it wont really make your muscles stronger. An exercise is something can always be made easier or more difficult and is designed to make you more fit. An activator wouldn't and shouldn't it is designed to retrain movement in a controlled environment and to ensure a person knows how to turn it on before adding it to exercise. A back compression crunch is just that, an activator to ensure you know what the primary muscles for trunk stability are and how to recruit them.

So, lay on your back and notice the lumbar curve, now imagine their is an egg under your back. Squish it. Let your chin and shoulders come off the ground a little but not like you are doing a crunch. Later you will do it without picking up your shoulders and head but now just let it be. Your back should be able to squish HARD. Begin to recruit your butt and pelvic floor. Practice 5 or 10 in a row 10 15 times a day until you can do it while laying flat and really squish the ground. Then try and remember the feeling while standing then apply it lifting something.

Kegels are the pelvic floor contractions that women are told to do. Everyone should do them. They make your whole body stronger, one reason is because it means you can get more intraabdominal pressure. When our stomach/contracts our organs will want to be squished out to the spot that is not applying the same amount of pressure as everywhere else. Think a tube of toothpaste. Lets not squeeze our guts out of the pelvic floor. Next, too much abdominal contraction with no pelvic floor can cause hemorrhoids.

A keagal is the act of squeezing your pelvic floor tight. I describe it to clients (and some don't like the image but they all understand it) "squeeze your ass like you are going to prison!" A kegel should be the whole pelvic floor but you should be able to contract your anus separate from your urethra. Think of it like being able to make a fist or tap your fingers. Learn to tap your fingers and it will give you better awareness of what is happening with your pelvic floor.

FROM loaded

This is the idea that many people can stabilize while standing or lying down or through a symmetrical ROM. But true CORE strength is being able to stabilize through your entire ROM and do so under a symmetrical or an asymmetrical load. If you are carrying a child on one hip all the time does your spine deviate laterally or front to back?

If you are doing a body weight Overhead squat, pushing a canoe onto the top of your car, pulling the Christmas decoration box down off the shelf, moving a hot water heater will your spine deviate. You have to train the entire ROM of your body under load. A Swiss ball crunch does not fit this idea therefore it will not help your trunk stability.

The stronger the core the less the spine deviates or the more load it takes to deviate the spine.

Some good exercises to learn

Dead lift, single and double leg

Squats, front, back and overhead

Turkish getups

power lifts

Olympic lifts

handstands

cartwheels

pushups

pullups

burpees

Kettlebell swings

Pistols

fitness aspects flexibility

Fitness does not have to be as difficult as people make it.

This is an overview of a type of fitness, Flexibility.

For a long time I taught yoga and trained flexibility that way and happily used the saying, "a long muscle is a strong muscle!"

Well, that is wrong. It should have been, " a long strong muscle is a strong muscle." Now, a short muscle can be strong and both a long muscle and a short one can be weak. However, (elementary school toilet humor) most want it to be long and strong, then we want it short and strong then you can put weak wherever you want(probably elsewhere.)

The truth is that your flexibility should be in direct relationship to your strength. How many yoga teachers do you know that can hold 1/4 to 1/2 of their bodyweight overhead with one arm and perform a squat?

The answer is not many, but everyone should be able too.

How many yoga teachers do you know that can do a one legged squat, all the way through a full range of motion?

Same answer.

Flexibility is only good if you are strong through your ROM (range of motion).

Types of flexibility training:

1. Static
2. Dynamic 1
3. Dynamic 2
4. Assisted
5. PNF
6. Loaded
7. Tissue, joint mobilization

Static is like a basic yoga class even if it is a flow class. Hold a posture and feel the muscle burn.

Dynamic 1 is more bouncing quick stretching.

Dynamic 2 is more like doing a warm up lap and not going through a full ROM but getting everything moving and getting the tissue moving, lubricated and prepared.

Assisted is any of the 7 types listed that someone helps you with. Some good versions are Benny Vaughn's neuro kinetic stretching in texas, Aaron Mattes AIS. Although I am not a huge fan of this for normal and healthy people, but I do like it for compromised populations.

PNF is a form of stretching where you take a muscle to its "end point" and then contract the muscle for about 10 seconds. You continue this for 3 to 6 times and the ROM increases. It will not last unless you are doing it 6x a day but it can help lessen dysfunction long enough to take the compromised person through a healthy ROM. You can also have someone help you with this.

Loaded (is my favorite) is going through a max ROM while being weighted. Think turkish get up, squat variations (symetrical and asymetrical.), good mornings, dead lifts. (all these can be checked out on youtube.)

Joint Mobilization is the act of passively and actively taking an appendage and a joint through its ROM but in a lazier way. It helps everything move better. Tissue Mobilization is like rolling on a ball or a foam roller.

My two favorites are Loaded stretching and Joint/tissue mobilization. I like Loaded stretching because it makes your ROM strong at the same time you are increasing your ROM. I see people get more flexible faster by doing this than when I was teaching yoga. I also see these people get more useable flexibility, and injure themselves less. When I lived in Jackson Hole Wyoming most of the yoga teachers had to have knee surgery when they went skiing because they were too flexible for their level of strength.

Don't stretch before working out. We see a 30% decrease in strength when people stretch before moving. If you want to warm up do some lazy full ROM movements and get your heart rate up. When your heart rate goes up you get more flexible. Try touching your toes and then jump rope or lazy jog with some pushups or some burpees then check your flexibility again and you will see you can get deeper.

If I train flexibility, I do so as a skill on an off day or 20 min to 30 min after a workout and only loaded.

However, most of all my workouts are FROM (full range of motion) and under load.

Example, 3/4 bodweight overhead squats and burpees 20, 15, 10, 5 with 20 double unders between each.

the number one rule of stretching is if you feel it in the joint it is WRONG!

for example, bend over at the waist to do a "hamstring stretch" and if you feel it behind the knees it is wrong. (Now if you are doing joint rehab you may feel it in a joint but that is different. However joint rehab should be facilitated with a trained professional)

Static stretching does not facilitate trunk stability.

Movement requires trunk stability, stretching does not if you stretch without having to have the trunk actively support the spine. The flexibility that is gained will not be useable for a number of reasons.

1. Neurologically
2. Receptor set points
3. The one we will talk about today is structural stability.

The flexibility gained will not transfer to being able to be used because the spine (or joint, tissue etc.) is more important than the ROM. Therefore if you train your flexibility while stabilizing the trunk (loaded, with weight) you will have useable flexibility. The body will not allow movement it can not control, if it is forced it will get injured.

In short I am a fan of scaled(amount that can be tolerated and performed with no spinal deviation) mobility and stability through movement and or loaded movements.

You are training the body to be able to stabilize through a ROM and this will strengthen and lengthen the body at the same time.

This means that if you are injured, scale loaded movements and do soft tissue/joint mobilization. If you are healthy train your flexibility through FROM (full ROM) weighted exercises. At first that may mean just bodyweight or less than bodyweight but not passive and not static.

Favorite flexibility exercises

Squats

deadlifts

turkish get ups

pistols

pullups/muscle ups

bent press

favorite flexibility drills

Good mornings

Cossaks

Kettlebell windmills

seated split leg one armed overhead loaded bendovers to one side

This is a quick down and dirty of some basic flexibility ideas. I will go into more depth for each part later.

Nutrition

75% to 80% of all wellness and fitness is about Nutrition and Rest

1. Nutrition
2. Rest
3. Fitness

Nutrition

You can not out train poor nutrition!

The two keys to nutrition are maintaining even blood glucose levels or insulin levels and quality of what goes into your mouth.

Insulin

This is the key to losing weight and to building lean muscle.

Most things turn into glucose during digestion and the body loves glucose. The problem is when it gets too much glucose or glucose too soon.

Some things that spike insulin

1. Sugar, all types it doesn’t matter what you call it. Honey, Agave, stevia, etc
2. ALL GRAINS, pastas, flours, breads, etc
3. Adreniline

When the body sees that there is glucose in the blood stream it releases insulin, which tells the cells of the body, “hey open up and take in the fuel.” If there is too much glucose the body ignores the insulin, which causes the pancreas to make and release more. The body then says hey there is too much glucose in the blood store it. Bam it is put in the fat closet.

The other problem with this is that the body begins to inflame. Things start to swell up and the body doesn’t like that.

The spike in insulin:

1. Stores as fat
2. Creates an energy crash
1. Opiates and adrenaline are released in the blood, which feels good but then disappears quickly. This leaves you in a funky brain fog as well as sleepy and hungry
3. Screws up concentration and performance
4. Sets up cellular inflammation

The most important part of any nutritional behavior is quality foods that don’t raise blood sugar or insulin more than is absolutely necessary.

Artificial sweetners have been proven to spike insulin and create a need for more calories.

Is whole grain, quinoa, buckwheat, really not good for you?

YES!

Processed flour/grains metabolize as sugar as fast as sugar does. This means with in 2 hours the excess sugar in your system will be stored as fat.

Whole grains have a shell surrounding them that is a protection mechanism for the seed to protect it from stuff. The body is not happy when it has to break that protection mechanism down. There is an endless amount of medical proof that grain is the leading cause of disease in the world!

The 3 macro nutrients

1. Carbohydrate
1. If grains are bad then what is a carbohydrate i. Fruits and vegetables

2. Protien
1. NOT SOY

i. It raises your estrogen

ii. If you can handle it eat MEAT if not have whey protein

iii. If you are not going to eat meat then a dense protein is okay but not optimal (tempeh and tofu)

3. Fat

Fat does not make you fat

Excess sugar and insulin make you fat

Fat is good as long as it is unprocessed. Processed fat straightens out and then it cannot be used properly in the cell membranes. It screws up receptor behavior and it creates oxidation in the body. (Think the body is rusting)

Whole fats are great they also have more energy per gram.

Fat 9 calories per gram

Protien and carb have 4

Now, the last bit of bad news, beans and legumes are not your friend

They:

1. Destroy intestinal flora and cilia which will lead to cellular inflammation
1. Bad/poor nutrient uptake
2. Poor waste elimination
3. Adreneal fatigue
4. Compromised immune response

Beans and Legumes are high in protein and potassium as well as other micronutrients, but you are hurting your digestion by eating them. If it has to be soaked it is dangerous. Why do people feel bloated after eating them, or have gas? Your body doesn’t need or want them

Now, what does someone eat

Meat, fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds

Olive oil, coconut oil…

For those that are happy with their weight eat just like that at least 3 times a day and you will feel amazing. For those that want to lose weight have only 50-100 grams of carbohydrate a day until you reach or almost reach your target (healthy weight).