Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Thoughts from a personal trainer - Mike Luque

Form matters for your body to function well.
Friday, April 24th, 2009

“Habituation is the simplest form of learning. It occurs through the constant repetition of a response. When the same bodily response occurs over and over again, its pattern is gradually “learned” at an unconscious level. Habituation is a slow, relentless adaptive act, which ingrains itself into the functional patterns of the central nervous system.”

*

Thomas Hanna “Somatics” 1988

It seems most people understand the obvious when they are at the gym, that they are working on strengthening their muscles (and hopefully stretching them out as well). But one not so noticed aspect of everything you do at the gym is that you’re training your body and nervous system to deal with all the movements you’ll do the 23 hours a day you’re not at the gym. That’s why proper form is so important. If you’re doing your exercises with poor form, when you use those muscles/movements outside the gym your body will follow the same patterns. Habituation, as Thomas Hanna puts it so clearly. So with that in mind, I want to discuss the big three most common postural/functional mistakes I see people making when working out. All three relate to the same postural distortion.

Now days, most people’s jobs involve sitting. Lots and lots of sitting. Lots of typing, staring into a computer screen. Unconsciously, most people will sit with their head forward of their shoulders. This unconscious behavior causes the strong muscles in the back of the neck to shorten (cervical extensors), the muscles at the base of the skull (sub-occipitals) to tighten (a cause of tension headaches) and the big muscles on either side of your throat (sternocleidomastoid or SCM) to shorten. This then habituates into a postural distortion called “forward head posture” (FHP). FHP can be the root of everything from headaches, neck and shoulder pain, dowager’s hump (lump of extra tissue at the base of the neck, just above shoulder blades), poor breathing patterns, back pain… the list goes on. Quite simply, it isn’t good for you. So motions in the gym that accentuate and even more strongly habituate this postural distortion have to be avoided.

1. Lat Pull Downs behind the head
Oi Vey! This one drives me up a wall. I cringe every time I see someone pull the bar down behind their head. I will frequently go to the person and suggest the correct form and explain why, but after a while its like trying to brush back the ocean with a broom. The tide of poor form is overwhelming!
If you’re doing a lat pull down behind your head, the bar needs to have space to go. So if you’re pulling it behind your head, you have to move your head forward, into FHP. Not only are you accentuating FHP by forcing your head into this position, but you’re teaching your body that every time you use your latissumus dorsi mucles, your head should move forward. You’re teaching your body to continuously reinforce this postural deviation.
When doing a lat pull down, the correct form is to lean back somewhat, looking up about 30 degrees and pull the bar to the top of your sternum, or breastbone, just below the collar bones. Your spine should also be fully upright, no rounding of the low back. This will emphasize the lat muscles to act as the primary movers and keeps the head in line with the rest of the spine. This will habituate a good, healthy standing and moving posture, reducing the effects of FHP.

2. Head popping forward (in varying exercises)
Related to the forced head motion of bringing the lat bar behind your head is an active FHP when using the arms and shoulders. I see this mostly when people are doing bicep curls or shoulder press. Whenever they reach the apex of the motion, either full flexion of the elbow in curls or arms fully extended overhead with shoulder press, their head will move forward, into FHP. When they return to the “resting” position their head travels backwards, closer to posturally correct. You see this a lot when people are really working hard and using weights that are relatively heavy for them. Again, you’re teaching your body a motion, that every time you use effort to bend your elbow to lift something, or reach for something over your head, your head will move into FHP. And if you pay attention to your body for even one hour a day, you’ll realize you do those two motions many many times throughout a day. So once again, it is very important to focus on how you’re moving. Mirrors in the gym aren’t there for you to admire how sexy you are or how big your guns are. They are there to assist you in maintaining correct form. So as you’re doing these motions, watch your head. Is it moving forward? If so, every time you do these motions, give yourself a slight double chin feeling to activate your cervical flexors (the smaller muscles in the front of your neck that tend to be weakened by FHP). This will help keep your head over your shoulders and habituate healthy functional movements both in and out of the gym.

3. Spotting on the ceiling when doing abdominal curls/crunch/sit up.
This also drives me up a wall, mostly because I know there are still trainers who teach their clients this in the mistaken belief this is posturally correct. When you’re doing an abdominal curl/crunch, your spine is rounding forward, into flexion. If you’re spotting on the ceiling, your head and neck are not moving with the rest of the spine. So while your spine is going into forward flexion, your neck is going into extension. When you’re supine (face up) and going into neck extension, you’re very strongly using the same muscles that cause FHP, the SCM, the cervical extensors and the sub-occipitals. Once again, you’re strengthening these muscles, which will only increase and reinforce FHP.
The correct head/neck motion when doing abdominal curls is to feel a double chin feeling, activating the cervical flexors, lengthen the back of your neck (taking force off the three FHP muscles mentioned) and move your head with the spine, looking toward your knees as you come up. What you don’t want to do, however, is use your hands to pull your head upward. There are good reasons to actively use your hands on your head, but to simplify the details, keep your fingers on your head but do not use your hands to lift your head. Make your cervical extensors do the work. They need to be strong too.

So remember, working out is also teaching your body movement patterns. You can either teach patterns that will benefit your posture, ensuring healthy neck, shoulders and spine, or you can help break down your body and worsen the effects of today’s computer based, high stress lifestyles. Really seems like an obvious choice, huh? Form matters. Posture matters. Keep it in mind in all your exercises.

As always, I welcome your questions and feedback. Until next time, Let’s Move!

Mike Luque is a certified Gyrotonic Instructor and Personal Trainer in San Francisco with 10 years of experience and a passion for helping people improve their lives by improving how their bodies feel, look and move. For more information on Mike, go to www.strengthofaspiral.com or call 415.225.2405

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

The here and now of it

There is no here other than your own personal location. Everything else is there. Meaning that everything that happens in the world, in the universe, for us is happening within us. The singing of a bird is sensed, heard, from within, so sound itself is something that only resides within your soma.

and there is now time but the present. The present being an undefinable moment in time that is infinitely small and infinitely large. The perception of time seemingly limited to how long you are able to stay consciously engaged.

In modern physics, this is a crucial element of relativity theory. Every object in the world is in constant motion and that motion creates the sensation of mass, heaviness. Similarly, every object has a sensation of gravity, attraction, love. So that as we cling to the surface of the earth and as the earth clings to the energy of the sun, so too do the earth and sun cling to your personal internal sense of energy. There is an equal, balanced pressure from you to the earth and from the earth to you. The balancing point is contact. So for all of us, we have a center, a here that is the focal point of all the universe.

And for time, we understand now that time is truly related to the speed of an object and our current perception of the present reflects our motion around the universe. As we as objects move faster, the present moment will dilate, expanding to encompass more, past and future mergeing into one... present.

For each of us, the universe truly only exists within the scope of our perception and function. We are interdependent upon each other and seemingly our existence is necessary for the continued expansion and growth of the whole universe just as the continued expansion of the "big bang", a process still happening, inevitably led to conscious organisms that can experience and accentuate the exquisiteness of that event.

As the universe continues to expand, we are all accelerating, moving faster, dilating our present moment and becoming, as a whole, more conscious. It is inevitable, it is happening. Know it, experience it. Becoming more sensitive to your own hereness and nowness will help you to truly start to create and expand your own potential.

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

hurts soo goooood!

Well, I'm feeling it. I really pushed myself this weekend trail running, swimming and engaging in various park activities. Who knew Bocce could be such a workout. So it seems like an appropriate time to address a very universe experience.... Muscle Ache

Question: Why do muscles ache?

This is an interesting one that I’ve only recently discovered a good answer for. Muscles ache for a very simply reason… they are being burned. When we move, contract a muscle, a complicated reaction happens that can be simplified by saying glycogen is converted into Lactic Acid.

Everytime we bend our arm, stand up, walk, eat, twist, dance, snowboard or play wii tennis we convert glycogen into lactic acid.

It is this lactic acid that actually causes the pain because being an acid, it literally burns the pain receptors in our muscles causing an acheiness. This lactic acid will stay in the interstitial areas of our muscles, between fibers and cells, waiting for the lymphatic system to come through like a janitor and clear things through.

During normal activity, this isn't a problem because there is plenty of time for the lactic acid to get cleared through the lymphatic system. In exercise terms, this is considered aerobic, meaning with oxygen.

It is during high intensity activity that this becomes a problem. Trying to climb 50 flights of stairs will trigger a burning sensation in your quads because the intensity has now pushed beyond the limits of aerobic contraction and has become anaerobic, meaning without oxygen. At this point, you are said to have passed your aneorobic threshold. What that means is you are not able to clear out lactic acid as quickly as you create it.

Performance athletes are well aware of these thing because succeeding in sports depends on being very sensitive to your anaerobic threshold. A marathon runner knows that if they are going to last 26 miles they need to make sure that they stay below their anaerobic threshold. on the other hand, a sprinter will be able to time their exertion so that every single ounce of energy is put into running those 100 yards and they will go far beyond the anaerobic threshold and be quite spent after just a short time of exertion.

Some of you might think, what does this have to do with me? I'm not a performance athlete, in fact, I haven’t moved from my desk all day? The truth is all of us, we are continually involved in movement. If you're going to yoga regularly or hiking on the weekends, this movement is active. If during the week though, we stop actively moving it does not mean that are muscles have stopped working. If you are driving for a commute, or sitting upright at your desk, if your posture is slouched or arched or tilted, if your shoulders are way up by your ears or your belly is tucked in to hide a beer belly, there is a muscular event happening. That muscular event is happening continually at an unconscious level. When you look at your posture and think, well that’s how I’ve looked for quite awhile, that means your muscles have been engaging in this way for quite awhile. And every time a muscle contracts or every second that a muscle stays contracted, it burns glycogen and creates lactic acid that needs to be cleared by your lymphatic system.

Not only does this cause a continual production of lactic acid but it also inhibits the action of your lymphatic system. By tightening a muscle you effectively create a tourniquet around the bone, joint, and arteries. The lactic acid gets stuck and cannot drain efficiently. One of the most common recommendations you’ll hear from me and other massage therapists after a treatment is to drink plenty of water because toxins have been released. Toxins can only be released if they were at one time stuck, trapped inside the grip of a tight muscle.

When this tourniquet tightens it also blocks the entrance of oxygen so that if continued, even a mild, innocuous contraction can start to pass the anaerobic threshold, creating lactic acid faster than you can clear it through. When this happens, fatigue sets in very quickly and your shoulders, back, neck, stomach become very sore and tired.

When someone's back "goes out" or they tweak their neck, what is typically happening is that the muscle goes into a spasm(100% contraction) and begins to anaerobically create lactic acid at an extreme rate, the equivalent of holding a 90lb dumbell in your bent arm for 30 seconds. The muscle will scream in pain from this rush of acid to the pain receptors and will continue to burn as long as the spasm is present. The spasm must be dealt with before the pain can start to diminish and even afterwards it can take some time for all of the lactic acid to dissolve.


Interestingly, the lymphatic system also depends of muscle contraction to push waste through the system and clear it out through digestion/elimination. So the key is not stuck movement but slow and steady contraction and release to literally pump the muscles, squeezing blood and oxygen in, lactic acid out. Simply put, a strong continual contraction will become anaerobic, depleting oxygen access and flooding the muscle with lactic acid. A continual process of movement, corresponding with balanced contraction and release gives the muscles time to rest and move through lactic acid to prepare for the next contraction.

Once again, Hanna Somatics provides the answers because not only are these techniques ideal for getting a person out of acute spasm but they are also ideal for gently and efficiently moving through the lactic acid :-)

Stay tuned because I will follow up on this with how anaerobic/aerobic contraction relates to sympathetic/parasympathetic states and how you can modify these states for better efficiency and performance on the marathon course or at your desk.

Saturday, May 9, 2009

what's love got to do with it?

Excuse me if I get a bit mushy and sentimental but I'm going to talk about the "L" word: Love.

Words are just metaphors for reality, an attempt to explain the unexplainable so why not talk in terms that are simple, understandable to all humans.

I'm interested in love as a metaphor for that intangible force that bonds us together at a collective level and at a cellular level. As young babies we are unable to do anything except curl and flex with the muscles of our abdomen, chest, hands etc. Alone, this curling constitutes a protective stance, the "fetal" position. In yoga, they refer to this as child's pose because it is the first posture we develop. But put a teddy bear in the arms of that child or a parent and see this pose for what it is. An Embrace.

Thomas talks about love being the force of gravity. It is love that holds the cosmos together, swirling around in the seeming infiniteness of space. Why do the planets not fly away from each other, what keeps the universe in it's beautiful spiraling form? Love.

He talks again about love at the cellular level, bonding atoms together to form chromosomes, chromosomes together form organisms, and organisms together form societies, culture. When you get down to it, there is no "me" and "you", we are just swirling masses of energy with no more structure that a stream of water or the air around us. So how do we have arms, legs, minds. How do distinct Somas develop and flourish in this world? perhaps that unifying, structure enabling force is love.

And why not, is love any worse a term for that force than gravity?

Someone conveyed a story to me the other day. A group of sled dogs came in close proximity to a polar bear. The polar bear went into an aggressive stance and the world wisened dogs, responding in kind, started barking. But before an altercation took place, a young puppy, new to this world bounded towards the Polar Bear. Fearless and joyful with curiosity and love, the dog ran up to the bear. And they didn't fight, instead the bear and dog began to play, rolling around in the snow.

We assume that because war and aggression are so prevalent in modern and past societies that we are inherently aggressive and warlike. But I propose that aggression and competition are learned things, taught from society. When children first begin to move it is not out of fear, it is out of curiosity. Early Somatic thinkers referred to this as a joy response. At a young age we move towards something because deep down we are all driven by love.

The need to protect, the need to distance ourselves, create boundaries, assert our individualism, fight. These are all things that are taught to us, consciously and unconsciously and are very much in opposition to what I view as our true and most basic instinct... to love.

Friday, May 1, 2009

Story telling -Somatic Case Study

So, piggy backing on the last blog I posted talking about why we use the words Soma and Somatic let's look at a recent client I helped.

This client, let's call him Dan, came to me for a lingering shoulder pain. His range of motion was limited and the Physical Therapist suggested that there was a slight, unhealed tear in his rotator cuff. From a traditional western view, I'm sure that this is correct. He feels the pain in his shoulder and the pain may very well be from a slight tear in his rotator cuff.

But in the Somatic view, my job is to understand the experience and function that could have led to this tear. And, considering that the pain has lingered for about a year at this point, there must be something happening to perpetuate the situation that got him into and maintains this pain.

So, we say forget the shoulder. The shoulder is a dead end. Looking at him as a body with a pained shoulder will do nothing to fix the problem because the problem is a Somatic one. And truly, unless there is something structurally broken, meaning the nerve is cut, or the bone is fractured, the problem is always Somatic and therefore requires a Somatic intervention.

And looking from a Somatic, whole living organism perspective, a story starts to develop. What I saw was a person who was cringing to the left. Meaning, his left shoulder was quite significantly lower than the right and was being drawn into his side in a protective position. This is a very common position that happens after injury or trauma. We all do this, it is an unconscious reflex that is present in all organisms and is a position that displays itself in various lopsided postures. If the trauma/injury is severe then the cringing will be severe and the organism's posture will reflect that. Also, their physiology will reflect that and many of the problems we deal with, scoliosis, sciatica, frozen shoulder, are a natural result of this reflex.

So probing a bit to find out if there had been any incidence that happened before the shoulder problem, I discovered that he'd snapped his achille's tendon running through an airport and had had a long process of rehabilitation. But how could that be related to what's happening way on the other side of his Soma? The answer is in the Somatic center, the waist muscles.

It is the waist muscles, between the ribs and hips that hold our pelvis/legs and allow us to walk in an even graceful manner. And it is the waist muscles that hold our shoulders and neck, allowing us to reach, twist and bend. So if we have an injury, it is the waist muscles that will hold up that hurt leg to keep from reinjuring it. This is why so many people think one of their legs is longer than the other; an imbalance in the muscles of the waist resulting from some injury or trauma.

So if the waist muscles are tight, drawing that leg up into the pelvis, very likely the shoulder will become compromised. Contraction, shortness in the waist area on the injured side will lead to shortness, contraction throughout that entire side and the person will become clearly imbalanced. And, in fact, upon palpating the waist and back muscles on the injured side, I noticed that they were quite hard and contracted. Once the waist area is hard, shoulder mobility will be limited and the rigid muscles are much more prone to tear. They lose their elasticity and will tear under stretch or aggressive movement.

No matter what we tried to do to fix the shoulder, we would not be successful until the Somatic problem of protective cringing, a trauma response, was addressed and released. But, by addressing the issue at its' core and releasing the pattern, very quickly we were successful in ending his pain.

In five sessions, with the help of home exercises, he began to once again move those hard, overcontracted waist muscles with control and awareness. He was able to voluntarily contract them and he was able to voluntarily release them until they became very soft and all of a sudden the shoulder starts to move freely again, his left side opens up and that pattern of cringing goes away. Quite a magical thing to see and if he continues to move and release those muscles in an active way, there is absolutely no reason why the pain would return.

This is the power of Hanna Somatic techniques, but it requires first an understanding that we are in fact Somas, not bodies and shoulders.

body mind connection-the soma

So, I was in conversation with someone earlier and a familiar question came up about Somatics; "is it about the connection between the mind and body?" I happily get this question a lot and there seems to be quite a buzz around this idea of mind body connection which means that people are curious and are open to the idea that our conventional truths are flexible.

My simple answer is yes, it has to do with a mind body connection. But in truth, the idea of the mind and body being somehow connected is as false as saying the mind and body are separated. Simply having separate words for mind and body implies difference, separateness and is indicative of a culture that likes to compartmentalize things unnecessarily.

Long answer, in the somatic viewpoint, there is no connection between the mind and body because they are one in the same. They are both you, a soma. You are a mind just as much as you are a body and so anything that happens to your soma is just happening to... you.

In a similar way there is no connection between the emotional, physical, spiritual because anything happening to you is simultaneously and equally affecting you emotionally, spiritually, and physiologically.

The idea of a split was a construct, designed by Rene Descartes as a way of separating science(the body) from religion(the mind). It is a construct unique to modern western civilization and I would say has been a very dehumanizing construct because what that construct defines is that we are not whole, but rather separate parts working together to a better of worse extent.

So when I use the word soma, it is a way of redefining us as people. A way to bring back the wholeness that we gave up a few hundred years ago. Don't worry so much about how the mind, body, spirit, soul connect because they don't connect. They are one, they are you and you are a soma. It's a lot simpler that way, don't you think?