FitSugar

Cross Train With Every Step

FitSugar — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 14:21:16 -0700

If you're training for a marathon and logging 40-plus miles a week, there is one physical activity you still do much, much more than running: walking. With every step you take, you can better prepare your body for running. Here's how to cross train with every step:

Posture: The alignment of your spine, pelvis, and ribcage is an important element of being an efficient runner. While posture can be the last thing on your mind as you're running sprint intervals, you can pay attention to your torso alignment while moving at the leisurely pace of walking.
Abs: When walking, just like when running, work on engaging your low and deep abs. Your low belly, about two inches below your belly button should be taut. This helps to keep your pelvis stable so your momentum keep you moving forward rather than wasting energy with side-to-side movement of your pelvis.

Learn two more tips.

Running Tip: Keep Your Eyes on the Horizon

FitSugar — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 11:58:36 -0700

When your mom told you stand up straight, you probably had no idea that she was also helping your running technique. Running efficiently and pain free has a lot to do with your posture. Keep your head in line with your spine, your shoulders relaxed, and your torso over your hips. A simple way to stack all these body parts one on top of the other is to gaze naturally at the horizon as you move forward. Adjust your eyes and chin so they are parallel with your body. It's tempting to look down at the ground or gaze at the peak of an upcoming hill, but this can overstretch your neck and cause your shoulders to hunch up toward your ears. Not only will gazing at the horizon prevent pain during and after your run, but it'll also make your workout easier.

Running Tip: Maintain Your Posture on Uphills

FitSugar — Tue, 05 May 2009 04:30:00 -0700

I've slowly come to love running uphill. At first my booty and hamstrings would burn unbearably, and I'd have trouble breathing. It takes a while to train your body to conquer hills, and one trick I practice is to be mindful of my posture. Give this a try the next time you're faced with a hill. Instead of leaning your chest forward to trek uphill, run with your hips pressing forward so that your shoulders are stacked on top of your pelvis. Not only will it allow you to use the power of your quads and glutes to get up the hill, but it'll take pressure off your knees and lower back.

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Gear Review: iPosture

FitSugar — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 14:30:00 -0700

As a Pilates instructor, one of the most valuable lessons I teach is how to sit and stand properly. Yes, the 100s are a great ab exercise, but folks sit and stand all day long, easily undoing their hard work. Poor posture can lead to many overuse injuries and, on the vanity side of things, make you look shorter and 10 pounds heavier.

Since none of us can afford to have a Pilates instructor poke our spines into place 24/7, two physicians collaborated on the iPosture ($65). It is a small device that you clip to your bra, wear on a necklace, or stick on your upper chest with adhesive that vibrates when you slouch.

Surprisingly effective, the little electronic device, a bit over inch in diameter and practically weightless, contains a nanosensor. You set iPosture once you are in your desired posture, and when you deviate three degrees from that posture, the device vibrates, reminding you to correct. To see what I thought of iPosture after wearing it for a couple of days, read more.

I thought that wearing this device would be annoying, but it wasn't at all. As you can see, it's quite small. The iPosture is so unobtrusive, you don't feel it until you slump and the gizmo vibrates. The vibration is completely quiet, so nobody can hear it.

Wearing iPosture, I learned that I slouch much more than I thought, and when I am stressed my posture tends to be worse. After wearing it for a couple of days, I noticed that my neck wasn't as sore after working on a computer all day long. The iPosture comes with two replacement batteries and many adhesive stickers if you opt to wear it on your chest. The device comes with a free gift - I would opt for the book Young, Sexy and Healthy: The Ten Best Exercises For Your Posture.

If you suffer from back, neck, wrist, or shoulder pain, iPosture can help by teaching you to stand and sit correctly. You can buy the device here. I know that $65 seems like a lot for such a simple device, but not when you consider that the going rate in SF for a 55-minute session with an experienced rehab specialist Pilates instructor is $75 to $85.

Slouching: The Saboteur of Flat Abs

FitSugar — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 12:00:00 -0800

You may spend 20 minutes working your abs every other day, but you sit at a desk for hours upon upon hours a week. If you slouch at that desk, you are quite possibly undoing all your hard at the gym strengthening your abs and back. When you slouch, all your hard work slouches with you. Slumped over a keyboard, your abs essentially turn off and your back muscles get tired from being overstretched. Your core exercise should affect your everyday habits. Not only does this posture look bad, it feels bad too and can lead to all sorts of repetitive stress injures, like carpal tunnel, associated with desk jobs.

So take a second to check your seated posture and sit tall, with your shoulders away from your ears and your spine straight. Why not take a moment to do some at your desk ab work?

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Minutes to a Healthier You: Posture Check

FitSugar — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 08:00:00 -0700

It's not the hours we spend at the gym that make a difference in our health, it's the little things too. Like paying attention to how you stand. Your posture affects every activity you do from cooking dinner to running on the treadmill. Take advantage of the moments throughout your day when you can to do a postural check-in: riding the elevator up to the office, standing in line at the ATM, washing the dishes, waiting for a traffic light to change to green. You catch my drift. Every time you are just standing around make sure: your pelvis is over your ankles, that your ribs are over your pelvis, your shoulders over your ribs and your head floating up above it all. Also make sure you have your weight evenly distributed on both feet. When I am standing still, I often find my glutes clenched, pelvis tucked under, and my ribs tilted back with my shoulders far behind my pelvis. Plus I tend to stand with most of my weight on my left foot. Needless to say, when I align my body and put some weight on my right foot, my back stops aching. Check your posture next time you are just standing there and see how you really stand.

Need some more pointers on how to improve your posture? Then check out - Attention: Stand Up Straight. And if you would like more tips on staying healthy during your busy days read all my Minutes to a Healthier You ideas.

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Stand Tall to Ease Back Pain: Alexander Technique Works

FitSugar — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 03:00:00 -0700

I have spent many a Pilates session teaching clients with severe back pain how to stand, sit, and walk. In these sessions, I have borrowed elements from the Alexander Technique. Learning basic body mechanics while unlearning bad postural habits seemed to help these clients out of pain, and now I have science backing me up on this.

New research from the UK found that patients with chronic back pain treated with the Alexander Technique had many more pain-free days than back patients treated with pain medication or massage.

Alexander patients experienced just three days of back pain a month compared to 14 days a month of pain experienced by patients who received massage, or 21 days of pain experience by patients using pain medication. The Alexander patients had 24 sessions to create this reduction in back pain, but retraining your body does come at a price. Private Alexander sessions come at a high price, upward of $80 for an hour lesson.

If you are interested in trying Alexander, you can find a teacher here. If you are in chronic pain, it might be worth investigating. Some practitioners offer group classes, which are considerably less expensive, or you can buy packages of classes for a reduced price.

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Fit Tip: Try Pilates at Least Once

FitSugar — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 11:00:00 -0700

While I was doing bicep curls at the gym yesterday, I was reminded of how great Pilates is. Why, you may ask? Because so many Pilates fundamentals extend to other activities, so you can exercise better no matter what you're doing.

If you've never taken a Pilates class, I urge you to try it at least once so that you can apply the lessons to the rest of your fitness routine. For instance, Pilates focuses a great deal on breathing and control, both of which come in handy when strength training. The more you control your movements, the less prone you are to injury.

Even more useful is learning to suck in your abs (engage your deep abs), concentate on your core, and keep your spine neutral. This not only protects your back and improves posture but also helps build your ab muscles. After dabbling in Pilates, you'll learn that sucking in your abs during just about any activity - from weightlifting to canoing - can help you tighten your tummy and protect your back.

So give it a shot and see what you learn. Who knows? You may even find a new workout you love. Are you a Pilates fan? If so, tell me what it's taught you.

Attention: Stand Up Straight

FitSugar — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 03:00:00 -0700

When teaching Pilates, I have been accused of sounding like a drill sergeant. That's what happens when you harp on people's posture day in and day out. Good posture is important for both looking and feeling your best. A frequently repeated "fact" is that standing up straight can make you look ten pounds lighter. Slumping adds not only odd stresses to the spine but can make a body appear heavier, not to mention shorter.

More than just looking long and lean, having good posture is important for the health of your bones and joints. Proper alignment decreases undue wear and tear on the soft tissues, ligaments and cartilage that surround and protect your joints, especially your spine. Plus, if you are slouching you are smooshing (yep, that is the technical term) all your internal organs. It is bad for digestion; your stomach and intestines need plenty of space.

Finding perfect posture is easy. First you want to think of balancing the bones on top of one another like a column starting with your feet on the floor, ending with your skull. I have a posture checklist for you, so read more.

Here's a posture checklist:

1. Stand with your feet under your sits bones (yep those bones that you sit on that are the base of you pelvis). Your feet will only be about one or your own foot widths apart - not very wide. The weight on your feet should be balanced equally between the balls of your feet and your heels, as well as the inside and outside of your feet.
2. Align your pelvis over your feet. Your pelvis should be level. Think of the pelvis like a wide soup bowl and you don't want the soup to spill over the front or the back of the bowl.
3. Keep your ribcage directly over your pelvis. It is a common posture for the ribs to hang back behind the pelvis.
4. Next place your shoulders right over your ribs.
5. The skull should be right over your feet. Your earlobes should be in line with your shoulders - don't thrust your head forward.

For the supreme alignment check-in, stand with your back against the wall (take off your shoes first and try to find a spot with no baseboard) and see how it feels to have your heels, booty, upper back and the back of your head all on the wall. It might feel extreme, but use that as a guide.

Fit's Tip: It really helps to just keep lengthening your spine up and out of your pelvis. One image that helps a lot of slouchers stand tall is to imagine that there is a golden string attached to the top of your head lifting and lengthening your spine.

You Asked: Posture Problems at Desk

FitSugar — Mon, 19 May 2008 03:30:00 -0700

You are asking and I'm answering . . .

Fit,
I don't know what to do about my back! I'm 26 and have been working at a desk job for the past 3 years. I sit at the thing almost all day long! Recently, my middle and upper back have been killing me!!! My muscles are so tense it feels like my back is just a huge knot! Massages only provide temporary relief. Can you suggest any exercises to improve posture? Should I go to a chiropractor?
Thanks!
hottpink

I know from experience that sitting all day can wreck anyone's posture and the consequences can be painful. To see my suggestions to get out of this uncomfortable pattern, read more.

In our sedentary society, it is important to remember that we did not evolve to sit all day long, especially in chairs. Our bodies are designed to walk, by some estimates our ancestors walked at least 12 miles a day. So my first bit of advice is to stand up and walk as much as you can throughout the day and over your lunch hour (another reason to not eat at your desk).

The ligaments that support the back of the spine get over stretched when we slump, the muscles that line the spine (the extensor muscles) respond by tensing up. The best thing to alleviate this problem is to move your upper spine and shoulders around during the day. I recommend shoulder circles both forward and backward and squeezing your shoulder blades together multiple times an hour. Also arching over the back of your chair will reverse the slumping curve (here is a photo of the stretch) and it just feels great.

Outside of work, you need to strengthen your upper back with exercises like rowing and your entire back with the superman. Your chest is probably tight as well, and I suggest trying back bends on the ball and stretching your pecs. Of course, working your core muscles to support your torso will help as well (click here for core exercises).

Last but not least, pay attention to the ergonomic set up at your desk. The top of your computer monitor should be at eye level or just below and your wrists should be even or slightly lower than your elbows for typing.

A chiropractor may offer temporary relief too, but taking yoga regularly could solve the problem indefinitely. Good luck and like my mother always reminded me – sit up straight. And in your case even try leaning back a bit.

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