Jul 31

Breakfast! The Most Important Meal of the Day!

Breakfast is sometimes stated to be one of the most important meals of the day.  There is a lot of truth to this statement.  The first meal of people’s day is a breakfast type meal like cereal, eggs or something on the run like a breakfast granola bar… most of the time.  While there are certain individuals who skip breakfast and wait until their second hour of being at their job or the lunch hours, more often than not people will eat something after waking up from their nightly slumber.  Consuming a meal after you wake before you begin the activities of your day is a key component to putting your body in an efficient performance mode of human physical activity throughout the day.  In this BLOG, we will talk about some of the benefits of consuming a meal after waking and some different options on how to prepare a well balance and efficient breakfast before you start your day.  This way, your body can be productive physically, emotionally, and physiologically to help you kick butt during your day.

So why is breakfast such a big deal?  Why do your parents, Facebook posts, Men’s and Women’s Health magazines, and myself say that breakfast is sooooo important?  There are too many reasons to mention.  To touch the surface though, here are three key components you can take away after reading this:

  1. Understand why eating in the morning is good for rebuilding what was depleted from after waking up from 6-8 hours of sleep.
  2. Understand what the hormone insulin does to the body.
  3. Understand how the addition of regular exercise will compliment eating a well balanced breakfast.

Understanding what insulin does to your body is an important component of achieving an optimum level of health for pretty much every individual who lives in today’s society, especially with all of the commercialized junk food that is increasingly present on the shelves of our stores that we visit to buy our groceries from.  In fact, I feel that the understanding of insulin and how it affects the performance of your body should be common knowledge taught in high school courses.  But hey, who am I to say what’s important in schools or not.  Insulin is what we would call a potent anabolic hormone. Insulin is produced after we eat a meal involving a food that has a “glycemic response.”  Certain foods have different levels of glycemic responses, which are rated by a scale called the Glycemic Index.  When we eat a certain food with a glycemic response, the hormone Insulin will be released into our blood stream and attach onto cells throughout the body and trigger those cells to uptake sugar into their cell body.  That sugar will be used as a fuel source for those cells to grow.  When the cells grow, they are in what is called an “Anabolic State.”  Now let’s clarify something, certain foods have different glycemic responses.  These glycemic responses are rated in their potency of Insulin release from 1-100.  For example, a Pop Tart will have a Glycemic Index of 100, while Steel Cut Oatmeal has a Glycemic Index of 35 or so.  Therefore, after ingesting the Pop Tart, your cells will receive a huge Insulin spike signal, telling cells to absorb a huge concentration of sugar.  On the other side, eating something like Steel Cut Oatmeal, your cells will have a more gradual uptake of sugar into cells rather than all at once.

Why is this so important?

Well, once your body get’s a huge Insulin spike from eating something ridiculously fake and sweet like a Pop Tart, the body will absorb way too much sugar WAY TOO FAST, leaving the body in a state of shock.  When the absorption of sugar happens in this aggressive manner, one can get really hyper from the immediate influx of sugar into cells due to the Insulin spike and then crash… and you will feel like crap, depleted and probably be a jerk to your peers because you feel so weak and deprived of energy.  Consuming something in the morning with a lesser glycemic Index value will cause a more efficient uptake of sugar into the cells, instead of all at once.  With a more steady uptake of sugar into the cells, you don’t have to worry about energy levels plummeting like you would after eating a Pop Tart.

Anabolic is a term that can mean the promoting of growth of the cells in the body.  When the body is depleted, it is only natural to want to build it back up through a process of regeneration.  A great way for the human body to recognize that it should be growing is to consume a meal after it has been a depleted state.  In this case, we are talking about the first meal after 6-8 hours of sleep.  If we look at in the way that your body has been fasting for this prolonged period of time, you can understand why you wake up really hungry.  In the morning after you wake is one of the most absorptive states that your body will be in.  Every cell in your body is ready to absorb calories, vitamins and minerals like a dry sponge absorbing water.  This is the body’s natural instinct to survive; the body has been deprived of vital nutrients and calories for 6-8 hours of fasting while you have been asleep.  By feeding your body a properly portioned meal with equal amount of carbohydrate, proteins and healthy fats, you are telling your body to start rebuilding what has been depleted over your 6-8 hours of sleeping through the night.  Eating right after your wake does not only rebuild, but now your body is going into a more anabolic state to start building more throughout the day.  So what you have done is trigger an anabolic response for your body to go into cell reconstruction mode.

You can supercharge this cell reconstruction mode with exercising regularly throughout your week.  With the addition of regularly training and putting stress on your muscles through some form of exercise training, you can now imagine where these calories are going to be transported to rebuild what the body has lost over it’s fast and what will now be triggered to be built more, LEAN MUSCLE!  With the addition of lean muscle, your body will now consume fat at a more efficient pace due to this anabolic response you have induced upon it by consuming a meal to “jump start” your anabolic metabolism in the morning.  Therefore, exercise + eating a balanced breakfast will put your metabolism into an efficient mode of utilizing calories to rebuild the body throughout the day.

Understanding the function of Insulin can be a useful tool of how it will affect your energy throughout the day and how it plays a role in burning/storing fat and building lean muscle mass.

It is important to ensure that your breakfasts are balanced in the amount of protein, low Glycemic Index carbohydrates and healthy fats.  Here are few examples of balanced breakfasts that will level out your Insulin release throughout the day and encourage the healthy rebuilding of your body throughout your day.

  1. ¼ cup steel cut oats w/ blue berries and chia seeds + 2 egg spinach omelet
  2. ½ cup of sautéed sweet potatoes w/ red onion + 2 scrambled eggs
  3. Smoothie- ½ cup almond milk, ½ cup water, ½ cup blue berries, 2 tablespoon almond butter, 1 tablespoon chia seeds, banana

Jun 24

Push Ups and Planks are Hard!  Always Room for Improvement!

 

Planks and Push Ups are forms of exercise in which one holds themselves up in a prone position.  The prone position of the body is when the front of the body is facing the ground or laying face down on the ground.  Supporting oneself in this position requires a particular set of coordination and muscles acting in unison.  Strength in the prone position can benefit our performance as humans in many ways throughout our everyday lives.

First, let’s look at why you would need to strengthen your body from this position.  Many movements throughout the day require you to be able to manipulate and stabilize objects that are in front of you.  For example, reaching out to get something, turning your steering wheel on your car, doing the dishes, pushing your BBQ to the other side of the deck…  These activities require performance from the pushing muscles of the upper body.  Some of the main pushing muscles are the pectorals, deltoids and triceps.  Extending the hands out and pushing something or reaching for an object uses the muscles responsible for arm extension and pushing movements.  In the case of this article, one can see that supporting the body from a prone position with the elbows locked out can help strengthen these examples of our pushing muscles’ performance.

Another reason to why it is important to strengthen your body from this prone position is because the posture of the trunk and core must be correct to perform the Plank and/or Push Up exercise safely and effectively.  I like to call the linear relationship between the thighs and upper body the “trunk-to-floor” angle.  By maintaining a straight trunk-to-floor angle while performing a plank; you will be activating the postural muscles surrounding the spine which are critical for good posture when standing or sitting throughout our stressful days.  As humans in this very busy era, we stand a lot and work very long hours in our jobs and activities.  Throughout the day, we can let gravity get the best of us and forget to have good posture.  An example of forgetting about good posture might be sagging forward at the head and chest region or sitting in slouched position with the shoulder blades rolled forward and neck drooping.  By performing a plank exercise in the prone position, we are putting positive stress on the muscles that we use to stabilize ourselves when standing and sitting throughout the day.  This positive stress will strengthen the postural muscles of the abdomen region and the muscles going up and down the spine.  Therefore, exercising the muscles of postural stabilization that we use while in vertical position throughout our day will substantially benefit our performance in our everyday lives when standing or sitting.

In addition to stabilizing oneself in this plank position assisting posture and coordination in pushing movement, planks in the prone position can assist us in an underrated exercise that a lot of people are afraid to admit they need improvement in.  This technique is the PUSH UP.  The Push Up is a very complete upper body pushing movement.  While performing a push up, the triceps, pectorals and anterior deltoids are utilized in unison with the muscles of postural stabilization.  This is common exercise that is avoided because it is challenging for most people.  This challenge is usually seen as a daunting, scary task… so people unfortunately avoid it.  However, there is a solution to make the Push Up more manageable… and that is by doing the Straight Arm Plank.  By maintaining a plank with arms extended for a prolonged period of time, the triceps, pectorals, core and thighs are being isometrically contracted.  This means that your upper extremity muscles, trunk muscles and lower extremity muscles are still doing work, but not to the extent of work that they do when performing a full push up.  Therefore, by holding still for period of time, you are working the same muscles that one uses in a push up.  These are the same muscles, just worked in a different fashion.  The Straight Arm Plank is more manageable than a standard push up.  To get better at Push Ups, put Straight Arm Planks into your weekly fitness routine.  Over a series of a few weeks, you will notice a huge improvement in your Push Up performance.

Sometimes a Push Up can be a challenging and daunting task.  To get better at this movement, you have to start somewhere.  That is why instilling these little habits into your program will help to improve your efficiency and effectiveness of the Push Up.  Remember, practicing these sometimes overlooked movement and slowly sprinkling them into your exercise routine will make a more improved individual physically in the future.  Perhaps do a set of 30 seconds of Straight Arm Plank before your exercise routine.  2-3 days a week of this will make significant improvements to your fitness and physical performance.

Here’s a great video on some instructions on how to properly perform and modify the Elbow Plank and Straight Arm Plank.

 

Now go do some planks.

Jun 06

Fitness with your Kids: Stay Young at Heart!

So obviously if you’ve clicked on the link to look at this blog post, you have some fascination with exercising with your children.  You are more than likely either a parent, sibling, aunt/uncle, baby sitter or possibly a teacher.  Well, if you clicked on this link, you’re pretty awesome at your relationship with the youngsters that are part of your lives.

Why?  For many reasons!  Here’s just a few:

  • You obviously care about the physical and developmental well being of the children in your life.
  • You want to stay in shape while still being to interact with the youngsters around you.
  • You want to have fun with the youth in your life and you are also intrigued by physical activity.

These are some very good reason to try to incorporate your fitness with the children of your life.  Let’s approach this topic first off by discussing the way this will improve your lifestyle as an individual.  First off, engaging in interactions with kids who are in different age groups gives you a sense of where you are in your life both physically and mentally when it comes to physical activity.  For example, let’s say a 10 year old boy asks you to go race him outside on the street.  Depending on your age, injury status and athletic background, this could be a very serious decision.  You could go at it all hardcore and smoke the kid at a forty yard dash… or you could not.  Perhaps pull a hip flexor, hammy or trip… that would not be good.

So what can we do prepare ourselves for competing in a sprint race against a 10 year old kid?  My answer would be, go out and interact in their world of fitness and physical activity more frequently.  This means go play catch, build sand castles at the beach, play kick back with a soccer ball, wrestle with them, do quick little fun races and “let” them win.  Do the easy and fun stuff!  More of it! These activities will prepare you for when your younger accomplices want to randomly go outdoors to have fun with their parents and/or older peers.

In other words, keep up with this stuff.  Something that would cause a detriment to your recreational performance with kids would be to just avoid them.  If you were to steer away from physical activity with the kids in your life, the likelihood of you growing further away from their level of fitness is at a threatening level of increasing.  Granted you might not be able to execute a somersault or cart wheel as well as your 10 year old son or daughter, but you can at least stay active enough to be around them and engage in their activities a little.

Engaging in physical activity with kids will keep you “young at heart.”  This is pretty darn true.   Going outside and running around with a bunch of over adrenalized kids will definitely get your heart pumping, which is a great form of aerobic exercise.  In addition, this can help keep other variables such as agility, awareness, coordination and balance in check as well.

The next time lil’ Johnny asks you to play a game of Two Square, take him up on that.  You will be helping shape the future of humanity and also getting some much needed exercise for yourself as well!

 

pics 065

May 12

La Crosse Ball Hip Self Massage Techniques!

The hip joint can be a troublesome area for a lot of people.  There are times when hip pain can really impede the progress of a person’s day.  Common symptoms of hip pain can be tight hip flexors, sciatica, or tight IT bands on the sides of the leg.  A great way to alleviate that pain is by performing a self-massage technique on that area.

The theory behind performing self massage on a muscle group is that by pressing down on the muscles in and applying enough force, the blood vessels that supply blood flow to the muscles will dilate and the flow of oxygenated blood will travel to the massaged area more efficiently.  More oxygenated blood is theorized to delivery more functionality to the muscle.  With the muscle becoming more functional, it will likely be able to repair itself faster and move easier.

Sensations of tightness can be alleviated by performing self massage techniques such as foam rolling and/or La Crosse ball self massage.  In this particular case we are talking about tight hips.  By following the instructions on the video below, these techniques can help alleviate hip pain, sciatica and lack of mobility in the hip joint.  These exercises can be performed before exercise to help warm up the muscles and “wake up” the hips a little.  This routine can also be used in a mobility improving routine by performing this routine 2-3 times a week on a consistent basis.

Feel free to contact me and let me know if you have any further questions about the techniques or any suggestions on what you would like to know more about.

Hips hips hips!

Mar 31

Bored? Reached a Plateau? Do Resistance training and cardio equally for better results!

There is a 3 headed approach to why some people are not getting fit and trimmed and fed up with their work outs not having any results.  Poor results lead to a decrease in motivation and physical activity.   The three reasons are:

  1. Not enough cardio,
  2. Too much specialized training
  3. And not enough heavy lifting.

One of the biggest misconceptions people have about burning fat is the amount of resistance training people ignore because of the thought that it does not burn calories to shed the same amount fat like cardio does.  However, the more muscle you have on your body, the more fat you will be able to shed after a good cardio work out.

Another factor that is commonly misconceived about resistance training is the thought that the higher reps one performs with weight lifting, the better it is for burning fat and getting ripped.  This is true to a point.  However, when lifting with lower reps, testosterone levels are increased which helps to speed up the metabolism and blood flow to the working muscles.  Increased metabolism leads to more calories being burnt before and after your workout.  The increase in muscular density will help to burn more calories and fat while doing a cardiovascular workout, such as jogging or utilizing an elliptical trainer.

Too many specialized workouts are another activity people are doing in the gym that was written in this article.  Sure, standing on a medicine ball with one leg up and doing a dead lift while holding a medicine ball over your head looks like it will work a lot of muscles and be an insanely intense workout.  But in reality, unless you are an elite athlete, you probably will not do one rep of the previously listed exercise the correct way.  If you are not a quarterback for the NFL, go back to the basic weightlifting and see the satisfying results you can get from doing some cardio and good old fashioned resistance training.

People think that cardio is the best way to stay lean and fit, so they focus only on cardio four to five times a week.  In some cases, this where cardiovascular exercises can become bland and boring (no offense to all the marathon runners!)  Cardio is not supposed to have a bad reputation.  Just make sure to incorporate a hybrid of resistance training exercises and cardiovascular fitness to help shed fat and increase the body’s metabolism.   They work harmoniously so well to give you the results in strength and fitness we all strive for!   So in the long run, take out a day or two of cardio and fit some sort of weight lifting in your routine one or two days and you’ll definitely see a world of difference!

So why not throw a little variety into your training regime?  Not only will it get you feeling and looking better, but it will also put some excitement into your life by bringing in some new activities into your exercise routine.

Jan 21

What are “Good” Carbs and what are Bad “Carbs”?

pepper patties vs. banana

Sugar.  Sugars are carbohydrates.  When speaking in terms of exercise physiology and the function of a carbohydrate, they are used to create energy for various purposes inside the human body.  Carbohydrates are used to provide energy to create muscular movement so the human body can move effectively in our everyday lives.  Carbohydrates are also used to create chemical reactions in the human body that are involved in muscle resynthesis, the repairing of damaged muscle cells.  In addition, when looking at how carbohydrates are utilized during physical activity, they play a large role in making the body perform during athletic activity and exercise.

There are a lot of different viewpoints on what carbohydrate would be the best to choose from to consume to benefit physical activity, exercise and athletic activity.  So what’s the best?  In order to get a better understanding of what a “good” carbohydrate is, we must first grasp how carbohydrates work to create energy for physical activity, how they help repair muscle tissue and how they can be converted to fat.

Carbohydrates are critical to creating movement in the body.  When we want to create a movement, carbohydrates in the form of glucose in the blood stream break down through a chemical process and produces ATP.  The ATP will disassociate and produce energy when we desire a certain movement.  In exercise we need to produce a sufficient amount of ATP to be able to run efficiently, perform resistance training and have an overall effective workout session.  In order to produce ATP, we need enough carbohydrate to be able to perform our desired form of physical activity.  When looking at carbohydrates in this manner, eating carbohydrates around exercise is a good thing.  Therefore, this would be a good time to consume your carbohydrates.

A beneficial time to consume your carbohydrates would be after a bout of moderate to intense physical activity.  In instances of moderate to intense physical activity, we are usually talking about after a 30 minute or more exercise session of prolonged running or resistance training. The rationale behind consuming a carbohydrate source after exercise is that the body utilizes ATP once again for repairing the muscles that have been stressed throughout the exercise session.  Muscles will bond onto sugars in the blood stream and break them down into ATP in order to fuel the muscle cells that have been stressed to latch onto proteins in the blood stream.  The muscle grab onto proteins in the blood stream to fill in the micro tears that have been induced by the exercise session.  Therefore, in the case of muscular resynthesis, the body will utilize carbohydrates after a bout of strenuous exercise to repair muscle.  This will benefit recovery after the exercise session and the days following exercise.  This is a very beneficial time to consume carbohydrates.

Now that we know when to consume a carbohydrate, let’s talk about what types of carbohydrates are the best to consume versus the one’s that will not benefit us before and after exercise or any other time.  Any carbohydrate that comes from it’s raw and natural state will always trump a carbohydrate that has been denatured or refined.  For example, fruit comes from a very natural state… “natural” meaning it came from nature.  I can go outside and pick an orange from a tree in my back yard.  Carbohydrates such as fruit and unrefined grains seem to be the safest bet because they sit well in your stomach and do not elicit a gastrointestinal distress syndrome as prevalently as refined carbohydrates.  These natural, unrefined carbohydrates do not seem to bloat the human body as much as carbohydrate such as bread, breakfast bars and pastries.  Most of the time, it appears that a carbohydrate that has not undergone a period of refinement or processing will digest in the stomach easier and not cause adverse reactions on the body.  Therefore, carbohydrates those come from natural sources, such as trees or the bulk section of a natural food store that have no other ingredients in them, are a “good” carbohydrate.

On the other hand, carbohydrates such as table sugar, cereals, breakfast bars and bread more often than not seem to make the body move slower, give individuals symptoms of bloating and gastrointestinal distress, like burping, farting and nausea symptoms.  Theories behind this rationale are that a denatured and processed food is more difficult for the digestive system to break down and utilize as ATP.  The other additives that are added into processed carbohydrates are believed to cause an inflammatory response in the digestive tract and cause bloating and gas like symptoms.  If there body cannot recognize a simple form of breaking a carbohydrate down to utilize for energy, it will delay the digestion process and also cause adverse reactions which will slow down efficiency during and after exercise.  In addition to slowing down energy production during exercise, the refined and denatured carbohydrates will be present longer in the stomach and cannot be utilized as energy as efficiently, leaving excess carbohydrate just sitting there.  When carbohydrates are not utilized in a timely manner, the body will recognize this as a means for storage, in which case fat cells will gladly convert left over carbohydrates to make themselves larger… and fatter.  Therefore, “bad” carbohydrates are refined and denatured carbohydrates that come in a package, cereal box or in the form of bread on the shelf.

Carbohydrates are a good thing for the human body.  We just need to discern when to consume them and make sure that we have a good reason to consume them.  Adopting a solid exercise routine will help our bodies to utilize carbohydrates and give benefits to the function of our bodies throughout our everyday lives.  We also need to know why certain carbohydrates make us feel the way we do after we eat them.  Just make sure to eat the “good” carbohydrates and exercise regularly and you should feel amazing more often than not when eating carbohydrates!

Dec 10

The Shoulder Blade: An Important part of the Body that is Easily Overlooked

One of the most important parts our bodies as humans are our arms.  We use our arms for tons of stuff throughout the day.  Our arms function to cook, brush our teeth, bring a coffee cup up to our lips and even to type on a key board (like I am doing right now).  Now, I want you to visualize what your day would be like without the use of one or both of your arms.  Use your imagination; it would not be a pleasant experience.  For those of you who have had some sort of shoulder, elbow or wrist injury, you can relate how this is a drag.  Personally, I suffered from an upper extremity injury that changed my outlook on the anatomy of the upper extremities and how important it is to maintain the well being of this region.  As you will read in this article, a vast majority of the movements that make us function successfully as human beings stem from the shoulder joint, which connects the humerus (your upper arm) to the star of this article, the shoulder blade.

The shoulder blade is known as the scapula, a free floating bone that hovers over the posterior portion of the ribcage.  This bone is unique in that it has very little “bone-to-bone” attachments.  By very little, I mean not the strongest of attachments from the ligaments that attach bones to each other and the tendons that attach the muscles to the bones.  However, the shoulder blade is also unique in that it has many attachments from muscles that connect the shoulder blade to other bones surrounding it.  In particular, the clavicle, humerus, ribs and spine.  With this being said, training the muscular attachment of the shoulder blade will benefit the structural integrity of the surrounding joints and bones.

Another noteworthy attachment of the shoulder blade is its significance to the rotator cuff.  The rotator cuff region is a troublesome spot for a lot of people.  It is a joint that is not necessarily designed to endure the wear and tear that humans put on it.  For example, there are many cases of having rotator cuff complications from performing excessive amount of the bench press exercise.   In addition, when looking at overhand throwing sports, it is very common to find rotator cuff issues in this activity as well.  Rotator cuff injuries can occur in the everyday worker population as well, such as painters rolling a paint roller over head to paint a ceiling or a bartender shaking 100 cocktails a night in their cocktail shaker.

When looking at these activities and how they connect to the injuries the rotator cuff, 9 times out of 10 its from overuse of a certain activity.  So what do these individuals do that perform these activities to relieve the rotator cuff symptoms?  Well, the easy answer would be to say, “Stop doing that activity.” If you go to a doctor, you might just be instructed to stop playing sports, exercising, and at times they will even tell you to stop working your job. So that means stop performing an exercise you like, stop pitching and playing the sport you love… and of course, stop working.

Just don’t work.

Ya, sure.

That’s not the type of people we are.  We enjoy exercising and the benefits it brings us.  We enjoy playing ball.  And… we need to work to put food on the table and make a living.

What can we do stop some of these shoulder issues from occurring?  The correct answer is to train the muscles of… you guessed it… the SHOULDER BLADE!  While there are many attachments of the shoulder blade to other muscles, some of the most important are the trapezius, supraspinatus, deltoids, subscapularis and pectoralis minor.  While those words may seem like a foreign language to some, here is a brief description of where the muscles attach on the shoulder blade and where they cross to the humerus:

Trapezius:  A large rhombus shaped muscle that attaches on the vertebrae of the thoracic spine, clavicle and different parts of the shoulder blade.

Supraspinatus:  Your “shrugging muscle” that attached from top of your shoulder blade to the your humerus just outside the border of your clavicle.

Deltoid:  Attaches from the back or your humerus to the posterior portion of the scapula.  It’s function is to lift the arm laterally from the body.

Infraspinatus:  The muscle that is literally smack dab in the middle of the shoulder blade and attaches to the top of humerus.  It serves as a strong stabilizing muscle of the arm.

Subscapularis:  A muscle that is not visible to the naked eye.  It originates underneath the actual shoulder blade and attaches to the inside of the humerus.  This muscle is responsible for rotating the humerus internally.  A very easy muscle to neglect by the way…

Pectoralis minor:  This muscle attaches from a bony protrusion of the shoulder blade that pokes through to the anterior portion of the body called the corticoid process.  It attaches from the corocoid process to the anterior portion of ribs 3, 4 and 5.  This muscle is significant because it serves as a great structural support for the shoulder blade.

Teres major and minor:  Two muscles that originate at the outer edge of the shoulder blade and insert onto the anterior and posterior portions of the medial side of the humerus.  These guys are responsible for bringing the arm closer to the body from a later position while your arm is flexed at the elbow.

These muscles are critically important toward bolstering the structural integrity of the various attachments of the humerus to the shoulder.  Training these muscles for coordination, strength and muscular size will significantly benefit the function of everyday life and dramatically decrease the likelihood of injuries occurring to the shoulder region.  You can imagine how important the muscles of the shoulder blade are when looking at how these muscles for a complex but organized matrix and intersect with each other and cross over the top of certain bones, ligaments, tendons, blood vessels and nerves.

Below, you can look at an incredibly easy exercise that will work the majority of the muscles listed above.  Performing this exercise just ONCE a day will dramatically improve the well being and performance of your shoulder blade muscles.  Now get after it!

 

 

Nov 11

Pigeon Stretch: Why it’s so good!

The pigeon stretch is a great stretch for a number of reasons.  This stretching movement can help increase mobility of the hip, improve the effectiveness of your exercise routines and decrease the likelihood of hip injuries while solving hip pain issues.  The “pigeon” stretch is traditionally a stretch that assists with external rotation of the hip joint.  There are a number of different muscles that live in the hip joint.  These muscles are argued to be some of the strongest muscles in the body which are responsible for the most utilized movements of the human race, walking.  We use our legs arguably more than any other part of the body throughout our everyday lives.  Therefore, assisting the function of our legs is beneficially to our functionally movements in our daily activities.

Pigeon Full Front on Inclined Surface Angle Final

Continue reading

Dec 31

Dynamic Stretching Before Doing your Chores!

Cleaning sucks

Chores.  Chores around the house.  Chores in the back yard.  Chores in the front yard.  Chores in the side yard.  Dishes, laundry, sweeping, raking, picking annoying little things up off the ground that you have procrastinated doing for the last 3 weeks.  Maybe the refrigerator needs to be cleaned out too?  That spilled beer/milk combination is turning an astounding color and has been for the past month.  Oh chores, the word chores means doing stuff that you really don’t want to do.  You work all week and since you are inside your house for once, all you want to do is sit down and NOT DO CHORES.  Let’s face it, chores are an absolutely dreaded activity.  But wait… life doesn’t have to be so terrible when it comes to getting your infinite list of chores completed.  Luckily utilizing fitness into your chore routine will numb the pain!  Fitness + chores could quite possibly make your chore doing… dare I say, fun. Continue reading

Nov 30

Back Strengthening for Desk Workers

 

Cover Desk Worker Back Pain

I work with a lot individuals who work at desks all day to make a living.  While sitting at a desk, sometimes we forget about how sitting for prolonged periods of time can affect our bodies.  It’s not like we don’t know that sitting down in the same position will cause pain to our back and hip joints, we just get so tied up and busy with working at our desks and forget about it.   We also know that having good posture will solve a lot of the issues that cause back, hip and neck pain.  Well, what’s the problem then?  Why are so many people who work at desk jobs complaining about achy necks, pain up and down the middle back, tightness in the hips and symptoms of sciatica?  The answer could be: Continue reading

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