Dealing with pain part 2

Money is and always will be a big motivator. Take care of your pain or else you will be literally and figuratively paying for it in the long run. Like I said in the last post, randomly increasing exercise through any modality will not help your nagging aches and pains. On the contrary, increasing exercise will only make it worse. That does not mean exercise is harmful, but we are going about this increased activity thing all wrong. My goal is to get people educated about their dysfunctions and to do something about them. It will save TONS of money in the long run. I have some friends that already have back and knee pain. Are their lifting techniques wrong? Probably. Do they keep running on sore knees and backs? Probably. We do not think about how we are setting ourselves up for pain and failure in the future. As I have said before, we have become too focused on hitting the muscle from every angle, or increasing the incline of our runs instead of moving correctly.

How do I move correctly?

Unfortunately, I can't screen you online. You might be able to give me a back round of yourself, but I will never see your body in action unless you come see me. I guess this could be a sales pitch but that is not my goal. My goal is for you to realize that everybody is different. We all have our unique habits like driving with one arm, holding the phone to your chin 3 hours a day, or squatting with your low back rounding or curving in.

Sorry lady but your poor attempt at a squat will only lead you to pain killers 

Lets go ahead and take a squat for example. To me it is all about the risk and reward. The risks of squatting incorrectly is increasing your risk of injury. I have always heard that squatting is the best exercise to work out legs. It only works well if you can get in that correct position. That does not mean go under a bar, start squatting, and expect to reap the benefits. You MUST be able to do a correct body weight squat before anything. This is where I come in. Sometimes giving verbal cues is not enough, and I must progress you to it. That is the art of training. There are many different ways to teach somebody to squat, but I will simply look for the correct path and allow your body to feel what is right. This is how we learned as babies, and we can gain a lot just by looking at how a child learns to move. This has nothing to do with leg strength. More often it is a lack of hip mobility, core stability, or both.

Core stability has become a buzzword in fitness today so I will dedicate a paragraph to explaining it's myth. Core stability will not be increased by doing a crunch. Do you see anything that resembles a crunch (rounding of the shoulders, flexion of back and neck) in a squat? Absolutely not.

stability  sta·bil·i·ty (stə-bĭl'ĭ-tē)
n.
 The condition of being stable or resistant to change.

Crunching does not create any resistance to change. It is actually a change in the position of the spine. Core stability is the ability to stabilize the trunk in the presence of external movement. As the hips drop back, we must keep the trunk stable and upright. Imagine putting 200 pounds on your back and dropping into a squat, the back cannot stabilize, so it just falls forward. You do not have to imagine much because you see this at the gym everyday. We cannot train core stability by isolating the abdominal wall and expecting it to turn on it's "strength" during a movement. We have dumbed down the body into parts, train it that way, and wonder why we have back and knee pain. 

Those rounded shoulders and forward neck look a lot like the people that experience neck and back pain. Oh well... we will just keep doing crunches but buy a $6,000 mattress to save our back. Very rational.

 So back to the risk and reward stuff. The reward of squatting correctly is practicing core stability, hip drive, working quads and glute muscles, and maintaining joint alignment and mobility. These are all great if done correctly. But Matt, I like to run a lot of miles everyday because it makes me feel happy. Fine. I would hope that before you start your 1.5 hours of non stop movement, that your joints have near perfect alignment. If they don't, your body will present pain. Resistance training should be a part of every runner's routine. You will not get big, bulky, and slow. On the contrary, you will reinforce good posture, strengthen the muscles, strengthen the joints, and look better. If your goal is to increase both the size (or tone, depending on if you are a male or female) and strength of your legs, squatting can do just that. If you decide to start adding weight to a dysfunctional squat, you will not:


1. Correctly timing the leg, hip and trunk stabilizers into effect.
2. After setting the stabilizers, then moving the prime movers (quads, glutes) to do their job and gain size and strength. 


If we make the quads and low back become stabilizers, it does not allow them to do their job. The more we do this incorrectly, the more we reinforce poor movement. This will undoubtedly lead to a plateau and most likely an injury.

I wish that everybody could come get a movement screen. Unfortunately some people don't have the time or money to come see a trainer. I just want people to realize the great benefits of moving well, and then strength training to reinforce it. We can save a lot of money on medical bills if we do. If you have nagging pains, go see a good physical therapist. If you need a recommendation, then ask me. A couple of visits through manual therapy and then setting a good strength training program can get you on the right path. If you don't have pains, then come get screened. This goes to young and old, athletes and non athletes. Just because you are 16-20 years old does not mean you lift correctly. You might have been progressed to weights too early before getting form down. Trust me, a lot of coaches out there are more impressed by improperly squatting 400 pounds, than properly doing a body weight squat. It needs to change. We can only do this by increasing awareness of proper movement and get rid of our dysfunctional habits inside and outside the gym.

Some homework...
The Joint by Joint Approach by: Michael Boyle 
This article is a great introduction to the way I think. Coach Boyle advocates thinking of the body as a whole and not in isolation.