Overhead Stability

Hello there!

This week I want to talk a little bit about some great exercises to help increase overhead stability. If you are someone who practices handstands, do you ever feel instability or shakiness in your shoulders? If you’re not someone who practices handstands, does the thought of doing one make you nervous just imagining how weak your shoulders would be to hold you upright?

Overhead instability is common. Most of us don’t do handstands regularly or have to hold ourselves upside down. Many of us don’t have to spend long amounts of time holding something above our head outside of purposeful weight lifting. So it makes sense that most people don’t possess a whole lot of strength and stability in these positions. But it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t address it! Instability anywhere can lead to instability everywhere. The whole body is connected and we should prioritize an overall balanced body. 

So…..

Grab a band and work on some of these rotator cuff specific exercises I like to use to help you strengthen those tiny muscles needed to stabilize the shoulder so you can stack or align yourself in your handstand and not dump into your elbows and wrists. To all my bendy people, this stuff is important because you want strong stable joints so you can safely increase range of motion for all things contortion.

Wall Clocks

WITYs

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Banded External Rotation

Alright friends, that’s all for today! Happy Moving!

Sabrina

Hidden Sources of Pain

From waking up stiff in the morning, to muscle cramps, headaches, joint pain, arthritis, and gout, it seems like there is always more discomfort to be had as we age. Perhaps you think it’s inevitable, simply the cost of living life. Maybe you’re just asking too much of your body now that you’re older? You’re moving too much (or not enough) or not stretching enough. 

Movement and stretching is important, of course.

The pain you may be experiencing and chalking up to age and activity may have a root cause you haven’t thought of: the health of your gut.

If you’re interested in health, even peripherally, you’ve very likely heard how important it is that you pay attention to what’s going on in your gut. After all, as the adage goes, “all disease begins in the gut” and modern science is finally catching up to ancient wisdom. 

Your gut is THE source of everything pertaining to your health.

I mean, nutrition is obvious, right? Every process in the body requires nutrients! We get our nutrients from the foods we eat, but it’s not enough to simply eat them. We assume all is well once we pop it in our mouths and chew a couple of times, but that is only the beginning.

We must digest, absorb, convert, and get past the cell membrane! And you know what else? We need nutrients to perform the actions needed to get nutrients (I know, right?)!! No lettuce, no salad – there is no pantry in your left butt cheek where you can grab some extra B6 or selenium. If they aren’t available, you go deficient. 

However, it doesn’t end there my friends, your gut lining is about one cell thick, and is what separates you from the outside world. What goes on in the gut is a little bit chaotic – I mean if you really think about it, from top to bottom, your gut is technically outside the body in a way (think about a tunnel, or the inside of a donut). So it makes sense that, on the other side of the gut wall, your immune soldiers are hanging out, keeping watch. Of course, we want things coming in from the gut. There is supposed to be some permeability of the gut lining so that properly broken-down nutrients can make their way in, but it is a very precise and controlled process, or should be. 

What happens when we have enhanced intestinal permeability (aka “leaky gut”)? When you have leaky gut, particles that wouldn’t have fit through (e.g. larger food particles, debris from natural die-off of the bacteria in your gut) are showing up where your immune guards are. Their primary job being to protect you, they’re going to attack). Antibodies (what the immune system uses to identify and neutralize a foreign, or perceived as foreign, substance) attach to these particles, or antigens, as they make their way along, forming an immune complex. (BTW This is how we end up with food sensitivities to the foods we used to consume with no problems.) 

You might be saying…

“Wouldn’t I be experiencing obvious digestive trouble like gas or diarrhea if my gut was out of whack?” or you could be wondering, “How does what is going on in my gut, translate into pain in my joints or headaches?”

Great questions! I’ll answer the first one: while your digestion almost certainly is affected if you have an imbalance in gut flora (the good bacteria in your gut) or compromised barrier function (meaning leaky gut) you may not realize it. It could be that it came on so gradually that it just feels normal to you because it is what you are used to. Bowel regularity and healthy formation is something I’ve seen many clients discount until we talk about how to read what is really going on (grab my free Ebook to relieve constipation here). 

Now the answer to the second question – remember those immune complexes? Those are now in circulation and can become especially problematic in joint areas. If you think of a joint as an eddy in a stream where all the trash gets stuck and can’t rejoin the main waterway, that’s a pretty good analogy for what happens. Joints are areas of low circulation, and immune complexes are large molecules, making it more likely they will get trapped in the joints. So now we have inflammation in the joints causing pain – because of what is happening in the gut! Over time, if not addressed, more damage will be done to the joint tissue as it becomes an ever-increasing forward-feeding cycle (arthritis).

Solutions

The gut itself needs to be in balance and integrity. What we eat is of paramount importance. While working on healing the gut, it makes sense to remove the most commonly reactive foods. I most often recommend, in the case of pain, the removal of dairy, gluten, and nightshades (side note – I’ve seen people’s headaches disappear and their tingling fingers and toes go back to normal when they ditch gluten). Many people see a huge improvement just in the elimination of these three categories, but it can take 3 to 4 weeks and requires 100% cold turkey elimination (reducing the amount you consume won’t help). You may have to explore further elimination after a trial and continue to experiment. You are the only you, and no one else will have the same reactions and exact symptoms. (That’s why it can be so frustrating when you try t follow a protocol in a book and it doesn’t work – it just means you need to dig a little deeper and more personally – you may want specialized help at that point.)

 All of this to say….

Too often it is presented to us that the body is broken, gone rogue, or dumb and that we have to intervene (often with drugs and surgery) to straighten it out. While sometimes drugs and surgery become the only option after years of prolonged damage, I think the notion that we need to step in and ‘correct’ the body is not only quite backwards, but short- sighted and arrogant. The body has a wisdom that we may never fully comprehend. We often look to medications first, and in the case of pain, we don’t often consider food as a source of pain unless it is pain located in the gut itself. Besides, not addressing the source of the problem and merely suppressing symptoms, ironically, even over the counter medications (like NSAIDs and analgesics) exacerbate the origin of the condition by contributing to enhanced intestinal permeability. 

The interconnectedness in what you consume and how well your body handles that nutrition will dictate whether vital processes in your body go well or wonky. To me, it is so fascinating and seemingly endless, but I know it can feel a little overwhelming, so I want you to remember this: YOU are in the driver’s seat here and can have a real, palpable influence on the experience you get to have in your body as you age. Isn’t that nice to know? 

So many of us are drowning in information but don’t know how to sort it all out - If you are looking for some clarity and direction, I am offering a free Functional Wellness Assessment and you can grab it here .

Meredith is a Functional Medicine Health Coach who uses a truly holistic and highly individualized approach to get you to a place of reclaimed health and vibrancy. She works with her clients to achieve complete and lasting health so that they are free to give their gifts fully to those they love and the world at large. Meredith knows that given the appropriate knowledge and inspiration each of us has the POWER to cultivate our own best health. Some things you will find in her toolkit are functional medicine principles, nutrition expertise, mindset, energy medicine, meditation & mindfulness, movement, and many more. 

You can email her at Meredith@roottoleafwellness.com or find her at www.roottoleafwellness.com 

Top 3 Reasons

Hey friends!

This week, I am bringing you my top 3 (non-cliche) reasons why movement should be a part of your everyday routine. Let’s get into it:

1. Avoid Compensation: Muscles are really a conglomeration of lots and lots of strands and bundles of muscle fibers. Each bundle of muscle cells called a fascicle are controlled by your brain which has nerve connections running all the way down to every muscle fascicle in your body. When muscles aren’t used, they can become more and more difficult to recruit properly which can result in your body compensating for muscles that don’t want to fire. 

2. Avoid or Cure a Dowager’s Hump: If you’ve never heard of a Dowager’s hump before you’ve probably seen them or may even have one yourself! Luckily, it is possible to lose the appearance of one but it takes a lot more work to do so versus never get one in the first place! And as you can guess the longer you’ve had one the more challenging it is to reverse. That’s why prioritizing daily movement is so important in avoiding one in the first place. A Dowager’s hump is that hump or lump you see at the base of the neck on a hunched upper back. With proper posture work, they can go away and with consistent and quality daily movement, they’re less likely to appear in the first place!

3. Have Stronger Relationships: I’m sure you’ve heard of endorphins, the hormones we release during exercise that makes us feel really good or experience the so-called “runner’s high”. Well, when you exercise with friends, family or a significant other, you’ll start to tend to associate those happy hormones with that person and vice versa. 

Doing your daily movement practice with someone else can also make you associate feelings of accomplishment and progress with them as well. You can share goals and successes in the gym, in a class, or at a sport with the person and help celebrate one another. All the milestones you can reach in your movement practice, you can reach WITH someone if you so choose and it can strengthen those relationships!

Well, hopefully I’ve convinced you that there are more benefits to daily movement other than building strong muscles and bones, improving brain function, and avoiding injury! (Even though those are some pretty darn good arguments as well!) So grab a friend, spouse, or kid and find some daily movement! Doesn’t matter what it is. There is no one best activity. In fact, the best activity for YOU is whatever one YOU will stick to long term! Dancing, biking, lifting, climbing, swimming, running, etc. You got this!

Until next time,
Sabrina

Mind Muscle Connection

Hi friends!

So we all know it’s important to train our muscles and grow them stronger in the gym. We all know it’s important to train our brains to keep them sharp in school, by reading, or maybe taking a new course at work! 

But what if I told you that while it’s important to train the muscles and the brain, it’s equally as important to train them together!

While the two are technically always working together in some capacity, it’s still important to specifically train them. Combining two movements which are both strength and pattern work is a great way to confuse your brain and teach your neurological system to move your body efficiently. 

You frequently hear of the “mind muscle connection” these days, referring to the fact that your mind comes first in moving a muscle. In movement, your brain works by reacting to internal or external stimuli or by internally initiating motion. Your brain then tells your body who to recruit, how fast to go, how much force to produce, etc. 

All of this happens at the cellular level. So it’s really important that your brain is in the habit of recruiting proper muscles. Otherwise our good old friend compensation begins and it’s all downhill from there. Here’s one great way to train your neuromuscular system:

Lateral band walks: lead with the heel, maintain a neutral spine and glutes engaged.

PNF: Arm goes from the hip to up above the opposite shoulder. Palm should be facing away from your body at the top position.

Try this out and see how much your brain has to work to do both things at once!

Until next time,

Sabrina

Training and Sustainability as an Adult Athlete Part II

Last time we talked I shared with you my story,  how a simple class or 2 became an obsession in under 2 years.  How I went from being a pole dance student to getting certified to teach, teaching, competing and performing non-stop over the last 8 years.

I shared with you my 2 biggest learning lessons for an adult athlete are self care and finding your team.  

Next I’ll be sharing my three pillars for success and longevity when training at a high level.  

Resting Recovery

Allowing your body and muscles to recover is incredibly important.

 In my first few years of pole I was training almost every single day with no breaks because I was so excited! This led to many injuries, breaks, and frustration.  Sound Familiar?

Here’s my advice:

It is important Take at least 1 or 2 rest days a week to allow muscles to build and recover.

 I have found that taking a week or two of full rest quarterly, every 6 months or at a minimum once a year is incredibly important as well. 

Why?

When we train we are causing micro tears in the muscle fiber, which the body then repairs and adapts the muscles to better handle the stimulus that caused the damage. This is the process by which muscles grow and how we gain strength and flexibility. However, if you are not providing adequate rest for the repair of your muscles, you are continually causing micro tears that are not being healed. This will inhibit your progress. 

I find that when I take time off, whether that’s a couple of days or weeks, I always come back stronger and more flexible. Every single time. It stands to reason that without proper recovery you are actually inhibiting your progress. I know its hard to take breaks when you are passionate and excited for your sport, but you will see better, faster progress if you do.

Diet & Lifestyle

Although most people are not training at the level of professional athletes, eating poorly and drinking too much or taking too many drugs regularly will inhibit your athletic performance, at any level of fitness.

Why?

You need to provide your body with the proper nutrients for it to be able to function to its highest potential. 

I have a very simple formula for this. Ready?

Try to incorporate as many vegetables, fruits and salads as possible for each meal. That means that ¾ of your plate should be natural and fresh, vitamin and mineral loaded fruits, vegetables, nuts and legumes at EVERY meal.

The more natural, unprocessed foods and nutrients you put in your body, the faster your recovery and the better your overall physical and mental performance. I became almost fully vegan in 2019 and I could never go back – the way I feel physically eating vegan is worth it to me.

I will say that the process for me to become fully vegan did take years, and there are still times, particularly when I am travelling when I have no choice but to eat animal products because there is literally nothing else to eat. That’s ok. The name of the game here is progress, not perfect. Proper nutrition is like your physical therapy training, you will not notice full benefits unless you are consistent.

Performance Enhancers

I have been seeing more and more people using performance enhancers, not just in the pole and aerial world but in every sport. I am seeing a particular uptick in this trend among women. 

Why?

I personally do not believe in performance enhancing via drugs and hormones – these are all short term solutions, with major, negative long term consequences. I think training properly, being slow, steady and measured will create sustainability in your training and will allow you to maintain your skill growth in a healthy and effortless way. 

I would never want that nagging voice in the back of my head telling me that I couldn’t have done it without performance enhancers, or having to become dependent on pain pills because of lack of proper flexibility technique. I have witnessed an alarming number of aerialists who rely on prescription pain pills to perform contortion level tricks instead of addressing the core reasons for their pain in the first place. This is extremely unhealthy and unsustainable, especially as you start entering your 40’s and 50’s. I would rather have smaller range of motion that is achieved in a healthy and sustainable fashion, rather than destroying my body, ignoring my pain and dealing with major mobility issues later on in life.

These are my three biggest take aways that I would share with any professional or novice athlete that is trying to sustain longevity in the sport or activity they eat sleep and drink, or that weekend worrier that lives for the moment the work week is done.  

Remember to take care of yourself and have your support team around you. 

If you are interested in what I do, how I train, or want to learn from or  follow me, here’s how!

Follow me on Instagram @sutrawinter. Book a performance or lesson at www.sutrawinter.com

Written by: Sutra Winter

Hip Hinge & RDLs

Hey everyone!

This week I wanted to touch a little bit on the hinge movement. You may have heard the term “hinge” from trainers, physical therapists, or perhaps online! So what is the hinge and what does it have to do with movement?

The hinge movement originated from the hip joint and pelvis. It quite literally is just hinging that joint as if it were a door hinge. Imagine from your hips up is one side of the hinge, your hips down is the other and your hips themselves are the center. The key here is that as you can see on a door hinge, both sides going away from the core are flat. So when you hinge your hips, you want from your hips to your knees to be flat, and your entire spine to be in neutral so no rounding or arching. 

The hinge movement is important to master because it allows us to bend at the hips and perform day to day activities in a safe and injury resistant position. This way, when we bend down we are loading our gluteus maximus, the largest muscle in the body. This muscle was made to handle our body weight. Without a proper hinge, the low back muscles tend to take on all that weight and because those muscles are tiny, over time this often leads to chronic pain or injury of the low back. 

At FMF, we use the stick hinge technique to train and teach the hinge movement. The video above shows what that looks like:

Once you’ve mastered the hinge pattern, a great way to train and strengthen it is with Romanian Deadlifts. They’re fantastic for training the hip hinge and hamstrings. The hamstrings are utilized to move your hip joint and your knee joint and it’s important to train both of those movements for strong, functional musculature. The RDL is a relatively easy movement to do correctly and is something we teach a lot at FMF.

You’ll essentially be doing the stick hinge but with holding dumbbells in your hands.

Here’s a quick checklist for the RDL:

• Big breath in at the top, brace the A… hold this from the beginning all the way until your return to the starting position

• Hinge at the hips… send your butt to the back of the room, this loads the glutes and hamstrings… you should feel a nice stretch on the hamstrings.

• With a flat back, neutral spine, bring your torso down letting the weights glide closely to your body

**Note: keep in mind it’s not necessary to stretch your hamstrings to the absolute farthest range possible to properly perform and benefit from the movement. Regardless of if your flexibility allows you to go further, hitting mid-shin is plenty fine for depth.

On the other hand if you struggle with having very limited hamstring flexibility, only go as far as you can so that you can keep your spine neutral… Once you start rounding you’ve gone too far. Your mobility will improve, just be patient.

At the bottom you should have your hips sent back, glutes up in the air, shins perpendicular to the ground, TA braced, shoulders engaged and neck neutral. To come back up, engage your glutes and hamstrings and finish with a posterior pelvic tuck, not hyperextending your lumbar spine.

Hope you enjoyed this little intro to the hip hinge and RDLs!

Until next time,

Sabrina

Training and Sustainability as an Adult Athlete

Just imagine you found a sport you love and you’re above the age of 30…

I stated pole dancing at age 33, and my hobby quickly turned into an obsession in the span of 2 years. I went from being a pole dance student to getting certified to teach, then teaching, competing and performing non-stop over the last 8 years.  I had no formal dance training before I started pole, and most everything I learned about dance, flexibility and training as a professional athlete came to me through the pole dance world.

Why did I become so obsessed with pole dance? 

I loved the expressive and artistic nature of the sport, I loved that it was sexy and that the challenges were never ending; there is no such thing as mastering pole dance. There is always something new to learn, and even after a lifetime of pursuing this sport there will still likely be moves, styles or sequences that will elude you. I love the difficulty and the lack of a skill ceiling. There is always something new to learn in pole.

However, I made many, many training mistakes as it relates to training and injuries, especially in my first few years of pole dancing. I made all the typical training mistakes: not enough rest, overtraining, over-training repetitive movements, not training symmetrically, not enough recovery training and recovery/ physical therapy/ self-care for the body. It’s hard to slow down when you are so excited and in love with your sport! 

In retrospect not training smarter slowed down my progression and has also allowed for major injuries that have taken months to heal or are now just, “working” injuries that I have to be careful with when I train.

 Here are some insights I have learned along the way training as an adult to be a professional athlete, and how to create sustainability in your progress, skills and training, I hope some of these insights are helpful to you whether you are just a weekend hobbyist or training to be a pro.

I’ll share my lessons I’ve learned  and in the blog next blog piece my three biggest take aways as an elite adult athlete, instructor and artist. 

1. Find a very good physical therapist and start working with them NOW.

You do not need to be injured to train for your “best” body. And by best I  mean most functional, not best looking. 

There are no perfect bodies. Every body has mis-alignments, weaknesses and lack of balance in muscle development and or flexibility in certain places. The sooner you start working on these imbalances and personal weaknesses the faster you will progress in your sport.

You might be like me..

 I have an extremely tight back and shoulders and I am over developed in my musculature in the front of my body compared to the back. The left side of my body is also more flexible than the right. This lack of balance has caused me major back injuries that plagued me for years until I started incorporating my physical therapy exercises into my weekly and sometimes even daily training routines.

Physical therapy has been the single most important tool for me in injury prevention

 I don’t wait for my body to break now before working my physical therapy exercises. They are a part of my training regiment, and have been incredibly important in maintaining a healthy body so that I may continue training at the level I want to. 

Pole sport and dance is all about proper and functional mobility, without it you will not be able to perform any of the skills particularly as you progress to becoming aerial on the pole.

 Just like your training regiment for your sport, it is key to remain consistent with your physical therapy training. Doing your physical therapy exercises once a month when you remember to do them will not help you manage or heal the imbalances in your body that are leading to injuries or inhibiting range of motion or functional movement. 

Just like training the skills required for your sport to progress consistently, you must remain consistent with your physical therapy training to see lasting results.

 If you train hard you have to provide care for your body. This again is pretty individual, but include things like myo-fascia release, acupuncture, cupping, massage, chiropractic adjustments, foam rolling etc. 

2. Self care for your body.

If you train hard you have to provide care for your body. This again is pretty individual, but include things like myo-fascia release, acupuncture, cupping, massage, chiropractic adjustments, foam rolling etc. 

In pole, we are throwing and wrapping our bodies around a metal pole, which is a very unnatural thing to do. Most elite athletes when training perform repetitive motions over and over again, just as we do in pole. Therefore it is incredibly important to give your body a “release”. 

These types of self care activities will allow for larger range of motion, better soft tissue function and performance and you will become a lot more attuned to your muscle tone and your overall body health. 

These two things I learned and have incorporated into  not just the times I feel depleted, or in a competitive season, but in my everyday life. 

Next blog we talk about the three essentials: Rest/recovery, diet and lifestyle, and performance enhancers.  

Big, big, big topics!!

If you are interested in what I do, how I train, or want to learn from or follow me, here’s how! ⬇️⬇️⬇️

Follow me on Instagram @sutrawinter or at www.sutrawinter.com

I am most passionate about performing. Who do you know that would want an award winning athlete to perform at their function, raising the bar and making the event go from good to memorable?

Written By: Sutra Winter

Monster Walks

Alright I’m going to say something a bit controversial here so brace yourselves…

Monster walks are not ideal for “warming up the glutes” or “strengthening the glutes” and in fact might even be doing more harm than good especially if you have a lower body injury!!

I know, I know. All the trainers at the gyms are having their clients do them and all the girls on Instagram told you they get your glutes firing and sold you their booty bands! I’m here to keep it real and rely on anatomy and biomechanics to prescribe exercises. Plus I don’t have any cute booty bands with my name on them to sell you (but now that I think of it maybe I should 😂)

Alas it’s not all bad news! If you have been doing these or were thinking about trying them out, don’t worry! Resisted lateral movements are fantastic for your hips. The problem with the monster walks is the excessive hip flexion. The idea behind the concept of the monster walk is spot on. We want to strengthen the glute meds and external hip rotators. So let's do it right!

At FMF we simply call them lateral band walks. You can do them alone or add some upper body work in addition for double the benefit. Here’s how they work:

As you can see, we perform these standing mostly straight up. Because of this, the glute meds are actually doing the work and the pesky hip flexors aren’t kicking in and taking over the load. Most people have tight hip flexors. The reason for this is usually because we spend so much time seated throughout the days and weeks that those muscles are constantly in the flexed position and lock up. Now it seems pretty obvious that if you want to counter that and open the hip flexor and engage the glutes, you would definitely NOT get into a pretty much seated position that you’ve been in all day long and then add even MORE resistance to it!

So, keep the bands, keep doing the band walks! Just try them standing up with good, tall posture. To make it even better, try doing a nice hip flexor release beforehand so they’ve already relaxed, making it even easier for those glute med muscles to kick on and support your hips.

Here’s one we love to use in the office!

Alright friends, that’s all for today! Happy band walking :)

Sabrina

Thoracic Spine Health

Let’s talk a little about thoracic spines.

“But what are thoracic spines?” You maybe asking.

I’m glad you asked! The spine is split up into a few distinct segments based on the shape and form of the vertebrae in the given segment.

Here’s a visual representation for you

So as you can see there is the cervical spine which is mostly around the neck, the thoracic spine which is the upper and mid back and then the lumbar which is the low back and into the sacrum. Our vertebrae are very important. They allow for all the twisting and turning and bending and stretching that our spines can do and most importantly they protect our spinal cord.

Over the last few years, posture has become a hot topic and with the rise of technology and the amount of time most of us spend sitting in front of computers and phones, everyone wants to work on fixing their poor posture! Which is great! Because not only does poor posture not look very good (you know when you see someone super hunched over and suddenly get the urge to stiffen up and sit up straighter than you’ve ever sat before??) but it can cause numerous health problems and pain down the road.

So today I want to bring you a little bit of education about the thoracic spine in particular and ways to take care of yours! 

**also be sure to note that we are indeed supposed to have curvature in our spine. I know a lot of people get hung up thinking that their upper back is hunchy and they’re lower back is over arched but remember, there is supposed to be rounding in the upper back and curving in the lower. The trick is working to have the right amount, not trying to have a completely straight line for a spine!

Here’s a few great moves for tightness in your upper back in order from easiest to most advanced. It’s very important to maintain mobility in your thoracic spine. As I mentioned before, your spine allows you to twist and turn and move all over and if we get to a point that the vertebrae stiffen and lock up we start to lose that range of motion. This will then cause you to start compensating to get yourself into the positions you need to get into but can’t.

So here’s a few great things to throw into a warm up, a break during the day, or your AM or PM routine!

Bow and Arrow: 

Grab a band, you’ll want to have it coming from above you. You’re gonna hold each end and then basically pretend like you’re pulling back a bow and arrow and rotate through your upper back.

Puppy Pose

On all fours you’re going to put your arms far in front of you and send your chest down to the floor with your hips up in the air just like a puppy stretches! (hence the name)

Banded Y’s

With these you’ll want to make sure you’re using a band that is light enough that you aren’t dumping into the low back!

Well, hopefully you learned a little bit more about your thoracic spine today and how to take care of it! I think it’s super important to be able to know some terminology about our bodies. It can be very helpful when you are dealing with your own injuries or a child or family member and you are seeing the doctor. Just by knowing a little bit about anatomy you might be better equipped to ask the right questions, understand what the doctor is telling you, and most importantly advocate for yourself when needed.

As always, please feel free to reach out to us by email or on any of our socials if you have questions or comments! We love and welcome feedback. If you feel like you need some more support and care for your own thoracic spine or other injuries, head to our book now tab to schedule your intake assessment and we’ll get you feeling better and back to yourself and daily activities pain free. That’s what we do!

See you next time!

Sabrina

Power of Plyometrics Geriatric Training Part III

It’s the moment we’ve been waiting for! We’re finally going to get into HOW we tackle training plyometrics with our older populations. This is part III of this series so if you haven’t read the last two blogs, I would recommend starting there to get caught up to speed before diving into this post.

The fact that a huge component of falls with older clients is psychological, we always start slow and basic, yet still interesting and mentally challenging. Rushing into box jumps is not only dangerous but very overwhelming. Mobility, stability, and pattern work is where we start. Pattern work is very important to work on the neurological aspect of fall prevention. Getting their brain to know which muscles to activate and use when is important to start with. 

Some examples of this would be working on weight distribution, muscle imbalances, and cleaning up the squat pattern. Most likely you’ll find people are generally dominant in their anterior chain so starting with opening up pecs, quads, hip flexors etc. is helpful. Then to balance it out and activate and strengthen the glutes, rhomboids, hamstrings etc. Once people have a relatively clean squat with little lean to one side over the other, strong glutes and core muscles you can move into low impact plyo work.

We typically start with low impact bilateral movements, and then move into unilateral low impact. Then we go to bilateral high impact followed by unilateral high impact. Also note that balance is vital here so training single leg balance must be done as well.

Let’s get into some plyo examples:

Low Impact 

Low-impact is a style of exercise that gets your heart rate up while minimizing the amount of stress and impact on your body.

Side-ways jumps with both feet: This is a great and simple intro to plyo work in older populations. It is just like it sounds. The client would jump or hop with both feet to their left and then back to their right. This can start out really slow and get faster with time.

Side-ways jumps every other foot: This is a great step up from the bilateral hops. This is still pretty low impact but now they’d jump from side to side - jump to the left and land on the left foot, propelling them back to the right and landing on their right foot, and repeat.

Moderate Impact

Next we can move into some moderate impact plyo after the low impact has been mastered. These exercises can easily be advanced into more challenging movements as appropriate.

Box jumps: Now these would start very low height (we're talking like 6 inches here depending on the client’s ability). Here you would just perform your average box jump but start low and you will likely not be able to have them do a full hip hinge with an arm swing into a big hip extension and jump, at least not at first. Most clients over the age of ~60 will start to have a harder and harder time performing what might be an ideal box jump by a 25 year old seasoned athlete. This is perfectly fine. As long as it looks relatively clean and the client feels safe and pain free it’s good to get them comfortable off the ground.

Single-leg jumps over a (short) cone: A good succession to a bilateral jump to a higher surface is a unilateral hop over a cone. This can start with something short and doesn’t have to be a cone. The idea is just to get them to jump OVER something. In a geriatric client, especially if they are post injury, this will probably feel pretty intimidating at first. It’s really important that they’re able to handle this type of movement safely, though. If you imagine daily life and think about people having to trip over something like a curb and catch themselves, which is easy for a younger person, being able to catch themselves is the difference between an irritated ankle and a full blown fall to the ground. We always want to think about how our movements in the gym relate to movements we have to do in our daily lives.

Well, hopefully this was helpful and you found some good ideas to try out on your own or with your own geriatric or aging clients. Experiment and let us know how it goes or if you have any other good exercises you use with your clients or opinions on this topic! We’d love to hear from you! if you want some added support, and a great community join our Facebook Group today. Or Send us a text @ (442)-264-7344 to schedule an initial appointment today!

Have a great week and we’ll see you next time!

Sabrina

Power of Plyometrics in Geriatric Populations Part II

Welcome back to the blog! As we discussed in our last post, plyometrics are suitable and beneficial to more populations than we might normally think of. Today we’re going into how geriatric clients are a good example of this. 

Think of this as fall prevention. This is something you’ve most likely heard of in hospital settings, physical therapy and/or old folks homes. Obviously, in those cases, an older individual has likely already experienced a fall that brought them there so the “prevention” is preventing a second, third, or fourth fall. You may also have heard that when an older person has a fall, their likelihood of having another increases. This increase is, reportedly, around 50% so it’s quite common for elderly individuals to experience numerous detrimental falls in their older lifetime after they’re had one.

What if we reframed fall prevention and started training to prevent the first fall before it ever happens instead of waiting to train afterwards?

Let’s take a step back and consider why older people tend to start having falls in the first place and how they lead to broken bones, sprained wrists and ankles, hip/knee replacements, head injuries etc.

When you imagine a little kid falling on the playground you may think, “stand back up and try again”. When you imagine an elderly individual falling, you likely think a bit differently. Perhaps you would run up to them, check their body for injuries, and possibly even call an ambulance.
 

As we age, physiological changes happen that can increase our risk of injury. For example, hearing and vision tends to worsen, both of which help with balance. However lifestyle changes are a big culprit, too. One that we know a lot about and work with at FMF, is that as people age, they tend to decrease their activity… they move less. 

While it’s more difficult to retain muscle and the rate at which our bones grow and replace themselves slows as we age, with less movement, your muscle mass decreases as you don’t use them, and your bone mass decreases because you are not doing weight bearing activities regardless of your age. Your muscle memory and reaction times slow down because of this. It’s much like if you speak a second language and stop using it for some time, you’re pretty rusty when you try speaking it again. 

At FMF, we follow the literature and our clinical experience and train fall prevention to our elderly population whether or not they’ve had a fall. It’s very important to encourage elderly clients to move more, and it’s very necessary to train them in strength, mobility, and plyometrics. This way they are used to quick movements, can balance and have fast reactions and will be more likely to catch themselves if they begin to fall. They’ll also feel more confident moving around and be less likely to trip or slip in the first place.

At FMF we train fall prevention to our elderly population whether or not they’ve had a fall

Adding in plyometrics increase balance, quicker reaction time, and help them to be more likely to catch themselves if they begin to fall.

So now that we have discussed how lack of movement is a huge contributor to elderly clients’ likelihood of falling, in the next post we’re going to talk about what specifically we do at FMF to train clients and help our older patients decrease their mental fears around falling (psychological aspects are also hugely related to falling which we address in our programs). We improve their physical abilities to avoid falling and this all relates back to plyometrics!

For even more information and access to our huge online exercise library and platform where you’ll find community and support in your movement practice as a trainer or trainee, join our Coach Now program. if you want some added support, and a great community join our Facebook Group today. Or Send us a text @ (442)-264-7344 to schedule an initial appointment today!

See you next week!

Sabrina

The Power of Plyometrics

This week we are jumping into an introduction to a series on plyometrics: Focusing in on speed, agility, and quickness training which have some common threads. 

There are many reasons and benefits to train plyometrics. There is also a wider range of clients who use plyometrics, more so than we think. Geriatric clients are a prime example of people to train plyo that tend to surprises people. When thinking about plyo most people think jumping, Olympic lifting, high impact movements, and sometimes it seems like it’s only appropriate for high level athletes but that’s actually far from the truth!

While Plyometric training does indeed include a lot of speed, agility, and quickness training (SAQs). Along with training powerful and explosive movements at different levels and degrees of intensity, that can translate very well into high intensity sports as well as everyday functional movements for young kids all the way to geriatric patients. 

As we know, everyone should train strength and stability. However, once people have developed a reasonable amount of success in those areas, plyometric movements can and should start to be incorporated in an intentional, smart manner. 

Next week we’re going to dive into how plyometric training applies to training geriatric populations as well as how to do this for your clients or yourself.

Are you over compensating?

Today we are going to talk about something you’ve probably heard of before. Maybe by a practitioner telling you that you are doing it, or just from social media where it is talked about a lot - compensation.

Our bodies are really good at figuring out ways to keep us alive and moving without asking for much! So sometimes we’re getting way more creative at achieving things than we need to be without noticing. The problem is, your body won’t start to complain right away or ask for attention until it's a bigger issue. At that point it’s usually past the point of a quick fix because you have now developed a new movement pattern due to constant repetition.

For example, let's say you are a volleyball player and you practice 3 times a week and play for fun on the weekends. You’re probably hitting the ball quite a few times in total each week. Now if you get a minor shoulder irritation that results in a little bit of pain and some inflammation you might think nothing of it. But your body may try to avoid this pain by adjusting your swing just a little without you even noticing. 

Again, this isn’t an issue in the short run, but 5 months later you may be left with a nagging shoulder pain that now is requiring a trip to the doctor. They do a scan and come to find out you have a mild tear in your supraspinatus. Rehab will take 2-3 months and then you’ll have to relearn that swing pattern. Your body has become so used to the new pattern it made up that you have to retrain it to stop doing that. 

What happened was your body started compensating for the fact that your arm swing was causing it pain by using a slightly different movement pattern that bypassed the irritation. It was not using the muscles meant for the swing, so those became weak, others became overdeveloped, mobility suffered, nerve fibers lost their nice clean pathways and became pinched, etc. Similar to a snowball effect until finally the pain became enough to make it on your radar and cause you to pay attention.

Compensatory patterns develop for a variety of reasons, but a common one is when there is loss of or lack of full range of motion within a joint. Then the muscles around that joint trying to function to move the joint start pulling and pushing loads not meant for them. This can overload smaller muscles intended for stabilizing the joint and asking them to produce force that they aren’t made to produce, and then losing access to neural connections to larger important muscles we need to be strong to perform quality movement.

How to avoid or overcome this? Daily and frequent repetition of movement patterns using the intended muscles for their intended tasks. In order for that to happen you have to train the neuromuscular system to get those pathways firing and functioning, create and maintain proper range of motion within the joints, and strengthen and stabilize the musculature that connects the neurological and skeletal systems to produce movement. 

It’s important to acknowledge pains and irritations when they are mild because without addressing them at that stage as the individual in the volleyball example did, it’ll just get worse and worse. 

So in conclusion, compensation is really your body’s way of trying to be helpful! In the end, however it’s not so it really requires you to take initiative to develop quality movement patterns and work on your posture before these things happen. And it’s important to address pain early on! Contrary to popular belief it is not “no pain, no gain” it is indeed, “no pain=gain.” 

Alright until next time friends! ON INSTAGRAM WITH US! WE LOVE SEEING YOU DO ALL THE THINGS!
FMF

It's a RUNderful life!

This week I want to talk about something that builds off the last blog about feet so if you haven’t read that one yet, I’d recommend going back and giving it a read before this. 

So as we discussed, gait pattern is a movement pattern that is often overlooked but is very important. After all, everything does start with your feet! When you think of gait patterns you probably think of walking, but once you pick up your pace enough, walking turns to running! Running is important to talk about too!

Running gets a bad rap sometimes

It’s totally possible to get back to running after an injury or set back, if that’s what you love. All you have to do, is take the time to work through your posture and movement to develop the strength and stability to run well.

Unfortunately, just like many movements, running can get a bad rap. Oftentimes, doctors may even advise patients against running when they are perfectly fit and capable enough to run simply because they don’t want to spend the time to get to the root of why running may be causing the patient pain or discomfort. Well, I’m here to tell you that you don’t have to stop running even if you have injuries! It’s totally possible to get back to running if that’s what you love. All you have to do, is take the time to work through your posture and movement to develop the strength and stability to run well.

Last time we talked about some foot specific movements so today I want to give you a few ways to prepare for a run that can really help you run pain free. It’s not uncommon for runners to acquire muscle imbalances that create more work for the body when we ask it to run or move (inefficiency). In fact, even runners that strength-train regularly can fall victim to muscle weakness if they’re not addressing the imbalances directly.

For example, prolonged sitting can cause the gluteus medius on both sides to weaken or shut off, causing instability and lateral shifting in the hips. This weakness hinders your running form via wasted lateral movement and can also cause overuse injuries like Iliotibial Syndrome and other issues down the chain. Our pelvis and spine are protected by muscles including our core, glutes, and hip flexors. When we run we want our pelvis to be neutral and our spine to be decompressed (having space between the vertebrae) but our hip flexors tend to be very tight and our glutes tend to be weak causing a pelvic tilt. When you run with a pelvis angle of more than 10 degrees you lose the ability to recruit your glutes, therefore elongating your core and forcing your hip flexors to perform double duty... stabilizing (good) and propulsion (not their job).

Before a run, try doing a hip opening stretch such as the ½ squat or table 4 stretches we have on our blog! Next, a great way to get those glutes to start firing up before a run is by doing some glute bridges! Once again, glute bridges come to save the day. They’re such a simple and equipment free exercise you can easily do before a run wherever you are.

Glute bridges

Glute bridges will bring the pelvis into neutral and allow you to use your glutes for propulsion instead; saving your back and using the correct muscles. 

We have numerous blogs explaining proper glute bridge form in great detail so if you are new to them or need a refresher be sure to check them out. When doing them, make sure to push up through your glutes and squeeze them together at the top of the bridge while keeping your rib cage from splaying open by tucking it in through your core. Do 2 sets of 10 before a run.

Proper running technique also involves rotation through the spine. Here’s a good warm up for your thoracic (between shoulders) spine.

In the video above, you’ll see the model demoing with a PVC pipe, but you can also do the same motion by placing your hands behind head as if getting ready for some sit ups. Tip to one side without crushing into your side body and gently twist your torso as if you were wanting to look up to the sky. Don’t force the twist, it is designed to be a gentle stretch. You will increase your range of motion with each rep you do.

And last but not least, remember that strength training is essential for any sport so don’t forget to spend time doing moderate weight bearing exercise at the gym!

Ok that’s all for now folks! See you next time. Don’t forget to tag us and share your running journey on Instagram with us! We love seeing you do all the things!
FMF

Feet are our body’s connection to the earth

At Foundation Movement Fitness we always talk about quality movement. There are about 8 basic movement patterns, one of which is gait pattern which means how you walk. This is often times a really overlooked aspect of movement though it’s very important. So let’s talk about it!

Part of gait pattern is foot health.

Your feet have ~26 bones, 30 joints, and 30 muscles in and associated with each foot depending on how you count those originating from the leg.

Either way there is a lot going on in there! We know we have to take care of the muscles in our shoulders and hips but how often do we remember to take care of those in our feet?! 

It seems that feet are typically ignored until there is something wrong with them like someone breaks a bone, injures their ankle, pulls a muscle, or develops plantar fascitis or other chronic foot pain. Whether you have already sustained a foot injury or not, let's talk about how to take care of your feet and keep them happy and healthy.

There are three exercises I want to bring up that are super simple and you can start them today! They are as follows:

1. Ball Massage: This is one of my favorite things to do. One of those things that hurt so good if you know what I mean! For this one you’ll need some sort of ball. The smaller and more firm the object the more intense the soft tissue release will feel. A tennis ball is probably the lightest thing you could use followed by a lacrosse ball, a golf ball, a mini rubber ball or a marble. Any of these work fine but you’ll probably be best off with the mini rubber ball which we use in the office and you can buy a pack of them on amazon easily. Once you’ve acquired your ball just go ahead and roll the bottom of your foot! Take your time and get into any spots where you feel a lot of tension. You can completely control how much pressure you use by pushing your foot softer or harder on the ball.

2. Calf Raises: Another super simple and great way to work on your foot health is to add in a little ankle stabilty. There are a variety of ways to do calf raises. The most simple is just standing on both feet and using a wall to support your balance. From standing flat, go up to your tippy toes and then back down to the floor. It’s important to make sure you go all the way up and not just halfway to get the full benefit. You should really feel the burn at the top! To progress these you can do single leg, slow eccentrics ( lowering slowly), and add a deficit ( past the ground, standing on a box or step).

3. Toe Yoga: Toe yoga probably sounds a bit funny but it’s actually really hard. The idea is pretty simple. Just stand with your feet flat on the ground and you’re going to alternate between raising just your big toe off the ground and then just your last four toes off the ground. When doing this it’s important that the whole rest of your foot and non-participating toes stay completely on the ground to get the full benefit.

Now that we’ve done a few exercises, let's talk a little about how to care for your feet by simply taking off your shoes and playing! 

Shoes play such a big role in foot health and wearing poor shoes all day can be super detrimental to your long term foot health. An ideal shoe mimics the foot as best as possible - relatively flat sole and no heel lift, big toe box, and a toe box that is on the ground and not lifted multiple inches off the ground. What’s even better than an ideal shoe is no shoe at all! That’s right - spending time barefoot is truly one of the best things you can do for your feet. 

Kick off your shoes!

So, it’s time to kick off your shoes and close your eyes! Yes, to catch up on sleep but ALSO to challenge and strengthen your feet.

There are two concepts called kinesthetic awareness and proprioception. We work on this in the office all the time. In basic terms - it’s balance! And your body’s awareness of where you are in space during movement. When you close your eyes, you are taking away one of your body’s main ways to sense where you are. Therefore your other senses will be on much higher alert and working harder.

Now taking your shoes off offers the opposite effect. You’re inviting MORE senses because your feet have an amazing amount of sensory receptors, many of which shoes block due to the amount of material they put between your skin and the ground. So this way you’ll have lots of extra information and feedback from the ground giving you body and muscles lots to work with. So just try it out and see what happens for you! Some of the best places to do this are out in nature. Anything from the sand on the beach to the grass in a park - grounding in nature will do wonders for your feet.

Alright friends, that's all for now. Look out for the next blog that will expand a bit more on gait pattern and foot health to talk about running!

Balance

How We Train Balance at FMF

Balance is a really important aspect to train. This not only applies to injury work but also to lifting, sports and general health.

We are able to balance because of our eyes, muscles, joints, and vestibular organs. Which are Sensory receptors in your body bring external information to your brain and nervous system.

Vision: Rods and cones in your eyes detect orientation of everything around you. 

Muscles and Joints: Proprioception; your body’s awareness of where it is in space. We sense stretch and pressure from our tissues and can then tell what’s happening with our own body’s movement.

Vestibular: This includes structures of the inner ear such as semicircular canals, inner ear fluids, and other small organs.

Together these systems control our balance skills. It’s very crucial to train them because balance is easily lost when it isn’t used. When we are kids we run all over the place falling down, jumping around, going upside down and are really good at balancing. But as we get older we tend to do less and less play like this and if it goes on too long we can significantly decrease our balance abilities. This can then lead to falls, unstable joints, and poor coordination.

Static Single Leg balance

We incorporate static single leg balance, tandem stances while performing other exercises, and variations in surface for exercises.

At FMF we train balance in a variety of different ways, always suiting where an individual client is at in their programming. The basic starting point for everyone is discovering how hard it is to simply stand on one foot. We incorporate static single leg balance, tandem stances while performing other exercises, and variations in surface for exercises. Other ways to indirectly train balance are to use unilateral movements, movements using 1 leg or arm instead of two such as lunges in any direction, and to build on to strength training by going unilateral like single leg deadlifts.

Turn things upside down

Lastly, we do believe putting bodies into a wide variety of positions is successful for improving balance and love to utilize handstands as another way to train balance.

Tag on Instagram, to show us how you are practicing balance this week! Until next time! See you soon FMF Tribe!

Stress Less, live more

STRESS….

These days, stress is something everyone seems to talk about all the time.

Whether it’s our friends and family telling us about their stressful jobs, people we follow on social media talking about stress relief tactics or the news reporting statistics of how the pandemic is affecting people’s stress levels! It’s everywhere!

So today, I just want to encourage everyone to take some extra time to relax and breathe to let your parasympathetic nervous system bring your body into homeostasis. Here are some good activities I can recommend to destress that aren’t too time consuming and can definitely be squeezed into a busy day but really make a difference.

Take a five to ten minute walk without your shoes on and without your phone.

Looking at our phones is shown to increase our stress levels quite a bit! Especially with social media. The apps are actually designed to get your sympathetic nervous system active so you stay on them longer! This kind of walk will stimulate your body by having direct contact with the ground and relax your mind by taking your eyes off your phone.

Take five minutes to stretch.

There are lots of ideas on our Instagram feed and our blog about different stretches to do. Some of my favorites would be to stretch your quads and hamstrings to relieve tightness in your lumbar spine, lacrosse ball your pectoralis muscles to relieve shoulder tension, and lay on a foam roll for your thoracic spine to reverse the rounding and stiffness in there caused by chronic sitting!

Laugh!!

Take ten minutes to watch some stand up comedy, call a funny friend, recall some funny memories and allow yourself to really laugh out loud and enjoy the feeling of laughter. It’s so very healing.

Let me know what you do. I love hearing from y'all about how movement heals you. It makes my heart happy. 

Mobility v Flexibility

We have talked before about mobility and stability and how the two require one another for quality, healthy movement. Today we’re going to talk about mobility again but with another concept, flexibility. 

We get a lot of patients that come into the office and are interested in becoming more flexible. They come in with goals such as being able to touch their toes, being able to squat, or being  able to do the splits and everything in between.

There are two things I want to take a look at.

1. What is the difference between flexibility and mobility, are they the same or not?

2. What do people really mean when they say they want to become more flexible?

Let's start with defining the two terms. Mobility is really something that is required for correct posture and movement. One truly must have standard mobility in order to move well. While it cannot be put to a super precise number that every provider in the world would agree upon, there is definitely a little window of degrees that most would say could be considered a standard.

Mobility is the range of motion (ROM) that a person has throughout their joints and muscles. An easy thing to picture is a squat. When you see people squat, you will see people squatting super low or barely at all, using super heavy weights or none at all. In order to perform a squat safely with a lot of weight, one should be able to get into that low squat position with no issue just on their own with no weight. If they cannot, their risk of injury is increased. Now that is not to say they are certain to get injured. Some people go their whole lives with terrible form while working out and never have an issue, but that is pretty uncommon. 

Take this stick halo, for example. Being able to do this movement is a standard range of motion. This movement is something the majority of able bodied population should be able to do! 

For range of motion, people should be able to get into a low squat comfortably, be able to reach their toes when bending forward, and should be able to rotate their torso among other things.

Flexibility on the other hand, is a totally different thing. Flexibility requires fairly intense training. It is taking range of motion in a joint or muscle and pushing past the standard degrees. For flexibility you can think of dancers, gymnasts and yoga. Getting into a downward dog comfortably is mobility. That shouldn’t be terribly uncomfortable. However, doing the splits is flexibility. Raising your leg above your head in ballet is flexibility. Doing gymnastic routines with positions you could never imagine getting into is flexibility. 

So to answer question two, what do people really mean when they say they want to be more flexible? Sometimes they truly do! Sometimes people come in with goals of being able to do the splits or backbends. But a lot of the time what people are really wanting is just to gain a normal range of motion in their joints. 

Why is this happening? The reason people tend to call that flexibility is because as a society we have moved so far away from your average person having the standard mobility in their body that many people see a normal range of motion as impressive, or, flexible! Because of our typically sedentary lifestyle (especially now after two years of the pandemic!). Most people have greatly reduced ROM, and cannot comfortably get into positions or move their body in ways that really should not be an issue. 

Ok so what can I do about this? PRACTICE! Remember that our bodies were designed to do these things. We just lost a little bit of touch along the way and that’s fine! It’s never too late to start practicing mobility and it improves faster than you’d think! 

Try out that stick halo above and this hip flexor stretch below. It helps stretch and mobilize your hips and works into getting that optimal low squat position.

We’ll catch you next time as we dive into the complicated world of stress. Add these simple but effective movements into your daily routine, and tag us on Instagram to let us know how it’s helping your ROM. Until then….

FMF

Client Empowerment

To teach or not to teach?

So, I’ve noticed that there is a perception among some health practitioners (trainers, PTs, even primary care doctors etc.) that clients/patients don’t want to know or cannot understand the “why” behind their rehab, strengthening, or any variation of health improving journey.

This is simply not true. Most of us have heard the phrase before that goes something along the lines of, “if you can’t teach it to a kid, you don’t understand it”. And that certainly applies here.

The reason many of us in healthcare have jobs is because we have completely disregarded the need for health education starting from day one. The vast majority of schools teach a lesson on health to kids maybe a few times a year. And these lessons are largely useless (think back to “the movie” in 6th grade for sex ed *shudders with cringe*). Students are required to take math which goes mostly unused for the rest of their lives if they aren’t in a career involving it, but are not required to take anatomy and physiology even once.

Now I will go on in a separate post about this sad reality in our society, but here I want to address healthcare providers and discuss what happens 20 years later when people are needing to recover from health problems and come to us. 

People need to learn how to take care of themselves. They need to understand what is going on in their bodies. They need to understand their pain or illnesses and be empowered to work through them on their own. 

I’m still not entirely sure what people’s reasoning is for not wanting to empower and educate their patients. It might be laziness, the fact that they actually do not know how to explain things to their patients, the idea that they don’t think their patients care or would be capable of understanding, or because they think that if they empower and educate them they may lose that client or patient. 

Knowledge is Power

It’s their body! They are absolutely able to understand it .

First of all, if you are under the impression that a person will not be able to understand what you are explaining to them about their body issues, remember that that person is living in that body! They are absolutely able to understand. It doesn’t happen overnight but with consistency in education they are plenty capable. Second, withholding information from a patient in order to keep them reliant on your services and coming back is incredibly selfish but it’s also not true! We have clients that have gained so much autonomy from seeing us and they come back for months to years longer than they really need us because we are able to continue to help them grow and they still see the value in staying with us. So if you are providing valuable services, that should not be an issue. 

At FMF, client empowerment is at the top of our list of priorities. We want our clients to become aligned with their bodies and health. For the majority of clients who don’t know what is going on inside them, this is completely life changing. 

People have questions. 

Why am I in pain?

Why am I overweight?

Why am I unhappy?

Why are you having me do what we’re doing to get me where I want to be?

I truly believe that it is our responsibility and duty to answer those questions to the point that the clients understand. This takes on a different timeline for different people. Nobody learns this on day one. It takes practice as the clients are working physically on themselves. Things start to click one by one. Watching this process is so beautiful and priceless. Everything about a person changes as they become more intune and confident in their bodies. They carry themselves differently and speak more confidently. 

Empowerment is Priceless

Everything about a person changes as they become more intune and confident in their bodies. They carry themselves differently and speak more confidently. 

Another aspect of this is that when clients understand what’s going on with them and why you are having them do certain protocols, the client will be much more likely to engage in the plan because they feel like they are a part of it. It helps them see the value in whatever it is you are asking them to do! It truly benefits all parties to educate your clients.

As healthcare providers we owe it to our clients to empower them and truly help them heal. 

Until next time!

FMF

Hang Hold Variations

Hey FMF tribe!

This week we are going to be going over hanging leg raises and pull ups as they relate to progressions, regressions, and variations. You will definitely want to check out our most recent post before reading this to be caught up on the topic as this one builds off the last.

So as promised here are two examples of variations of exercises for clients.

1. Pull Ups

Everyone wants to be able to do a pull up. Most people will probably never be able to. But that’s ok! Don’t let that discourage you from training them yourself or from training them for your clients. Doing a pull up is a very important, functional movement and regardless of if someone can progress to a full pull up or if they are doing “variations” of them, they will be hugely beneficial! So this is where that term variation becomes important.

If you have a client come in and tell you they have the goal of getting a pull up but they are there because of frozen shoulder, or chronic shoulder pain, or neck pain with tingling down the arm, the first thought you may have is: that is one lofty goal! Realistically, you may also be thinking that it’s unlikely they’ll ever really be able to do a pull up especially if maybe this is a client that is really out of shape or older as well as having an injury. 

Don’t let that keep you from training pull ups! A pull up is going to look different for everyone. Most of us are not going to be able to bust out 10 beautiful unassisted pull ups at any given moment but we can certainly still train a variation of this movement.

Once a client is able, a simple dead hang is a great place to start. Have the client hang for as long as they can to find a baseline and start working up that number. Someone who cannot comfortably hang from the bar for 10 seconds certainly won’t be able to grip long enough to do 10 pull ups. So start with hanging. Gradually work that up as tolerated.

Next are shrugs. In this video you can see Mason demonstrating a hanging shrug. As you can see he is very controlled and slow in his movement. He is not swinging his body around. This is how you want a shrug to look. 

Now after this, there are a few ways you can take it… try out banded pull ups, eccentric pull ups, jumping pull ups, and even cable lat pull downs. You may also want to try different grips. An underhand grip pull up tends to be easier than a pronated grip. Just be sure to continuously work on one thing and after that improves, you can change to another. If your client never fully moves to being able to do an unassisted pull up, that’s ok. Having them do all these variations will still be hugely beneficial. 

1. Hanging Leg Raises

Ok now another one that a lot of people want to be able to do is a hanging leg raise. We have purposely put these two together because they can also help improve one another. Working through hanging leg raises will certainly help improve pull ups and vice versa. Here is the run down to the hanging leg raise progression seen in the video:

Start with your hang hold: depress the scapula and pull the shoulders away from the ears. 

First, the simple knee tuck. Remember to remain controlled though the core to prevent swinging. Next, bent knee raises. Some people might not have the hamstring flexibility for a full straight leg raise and that’s ok! These are challenging on their own and are a good segway into the straight leg raise. Next would finally be the straight leg raise.

From here, there are tons of fun variations to make these harder. Upgrades can include: leg circles (shown in video), ankle weights, dancer straddle ups, holds at the top, half pullup positions, chin above the bar position, etc. Get creative!

I hope this is some fun and helpful inspiration for working through variations for different client’s wants and needs. Never write off a lofty goal! Just know that you may be doing a variation of that goal that doesn’t quite look the same. And again… that's ok!

See you next time!