Monday Moron Medical Monitoring, Session 7: Greetings From the DL

I was told over and over again that, especially at age 29, I really had to do mobilization exercises. Just 10-15 minutes per day -- work a different body part every day. Consider it pre-hab -- you know you're going to be injured; this is the way to avoid it.

And instead I did what I've always done when it comes to stretching: I almost completely ignored it.

I'm doing some now.

I'm mostly following Kelly Starett's program and his book, Becoming a Supple Leopard.

The main point he makes is that any fault in position will lead, inevitably, to a fault in movement. Any fault in movement will lead, inevitably, to injury, as the wrong muscles are being over-used to compensate for the lack of activation of the proper muscles, and bones aren't properly aligned to be in their proper load-bearing position.

An example of that was my crap shoulders, which are internally rotated (rolled forward). They're being pulled forward by my chest muscles; my mid-back muscles, which are supposed to counteract the chest muscle pull and keep the shoulders neutral, have gone to sleep and have atrophied.

When you bench, you're supposed to put the ball of your upper arm deep into the socket joint to maximize your ability to load a weight; that puts the load onto a joint that can take it. (Coaches tell people to "bend the bar" or "break the bar" as a cue to get them to put external rotation into their arms -- imagine trying to bend the bar; naturally, the balls of your arms go deeper into the shoulder socket to do this.)

If you don't have your ball in your socket, muscles and ligaments and tendons must compensate for what your joint is supposed to be doing; but they can't, so they fail, and you get injured.

A similar thing must have happened with my hips, when I tweaked my back and pulled my pelvis out of position (it was rotated and stuck too forward on one side and backwards on the other -- and it was painful as heck).

Anyway, now that I've suffered not one but two inevitable, completely-predictable injuries based on faults in beginning position (and therefore, faults in movement), I'm going to try to actually listen this time.

I'd really recommend this book. It's loaded with photographs and shows you more clearly what the proper beginning, finishing, and transitioning positions are for most major exercises (lifts), and the most common faults. Rippetoe describes this in words, but a picture is worth a thousand words, and I find Starett's explanations more easily understood.

He also goes for global explanations -- basically, the shoulder is the same joint as the hip, so most of the same principles (push the ball deep into the socket when loading weight, and you do that by externally rotating the limb) apply to various movements.

Then the last part of the book has mobilization exercises for all the different parts of the body.

I'm not really happy to be stuck in re-hab land but I guess I should have been working on fundamentals of position and movement all along so I'll keep at it.

By the way: I read someone explaining posture and this brief suggestion made sense to me. When you stand, stand as tall and straight as possible, and imagine that your head is pulling up the rest of your body up into the air with it.

I've been trying that. It feels right. Who knows, maybe it will work for you. The thing about posture-correction: It actually takes a fair amount of energy and neuromuscular control and you can only build a little endurance at standing or sitting properly at a time.

No GAINZ nor LOZZ GAINZ on my end. As I haven't been working out, I've gained no muscle. I lost a pound but I figure that was mostly muscle.

So tell me about YO GAINZ, BITCHEZ

posted by Ace at 06:13 PM

| Access Comments