Put Your Head Back in the Window

Proper Push Press

Full shoulder range of motion is probably the most underrated necessity with regard to exercise.  This is especially the case in CrossFit.  Now that workouts are being “judged”, there is this general range of motion rule that a lot of CrossFit gyms are living by: Head Through the Window.

I am a CrossFit Coach and I have just about had enough of this cue.  If an athlete is pressing a barbell overhead, in order to be a successful rep, the athlete is cued to put the head passed the shoulders.  More often than not, athletes will poke the head forward without moving the shoulders at all.  This creates a forward head carriage along with cervical flexion.

With a load overhead and the head and neck forward and down, out spinal chain has significantly been weakened. 

The first main issue with this is the tension built around the base of the neck.  This repetitive positioning can lead to thoracic outlet syndrome and before you know it, you are having odd sensations into the shoulder and even the hands. 

Our common theme in training (to date) is that the spine must remain neutral and braced in order to generate AND TRANSFER force.  When there is a kink in the chain (and this position is a major kink), the body is weakened as a system, and the potential for injury is greatly increased.

Sometimes the athlete is being lazy with pressing overhead, but other times what you see is what you get.  If the athlete can only bring his or her arm up to a line in front of the ear, then that is where the range of motion should end.  Otherwise, the athlete will be poking the head through the window or hyperextending the thoracic spine to achieve a “completed rep”.

USE THESE CUES INSTEAD: “Extend the elbows”, “look straight ahead”, “arms all the way up”

This may seem like semantics, but it is important to know that your athlete understands what you are asking.  They may think that from now on, a shoulder press has a finished position with the head forward and down.  Communication is key.  Look straight.

Questions? www.dryaun.com

Four Ridiculously Easy Tips To Increase Your Water Intake!

     

If there’s one thing you remember to do every day, remember to DRINK WATER! Aside from the obvious hydration factor, water is completely essential to any person’s diet. In the heat of the summer, it is common to feel fatigued and dizziness, both signs of dehydration. To all of my athletes out there, water is a key element in helping to transport nutrients throughout your body, providing you with the energy you need during your work out and the rest of the day. Water also regulates your body temperature, loosens your joints, and prevents muscle cramps. You’d be surprised at how much a little extra H20 every day can affect every aspect of your life.

How much water should I be drinking?

You should be drinking water ALL DAY! A few months ago I started marking my water bottles with times to force me to drink a certain amount per day, and it worked wonders. I felt more awake during the mornings, less hungry all day, and it greatly reduced my muscle soreness. In order for athletes to maximize their workout potential, I suggest following a more direct schedule before and after your workout, as well as throughout the day.

A few hours before exercise	17-20 oz
20-30 minutes prior	8 oz
Every 10-20 minutes during exercise	7-10 oz
Immediately after	At least 8 oz

What is dehydration?

Dehydration simply means you are losing more water from your body than you are taking in. This can show symptoms of dizziness, lightheadedness, nausea, vomiting, and muscle cramps. In very serious cases, all of these symptoms can lead to heatstroke.  To monitor this, doctors recommend the urine test. Dark = you need to drink more. Light = you’re good to go. Here are some great tips to help monitor your water intake and prevent dehydration.

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1. Use a reusable water bottle- if you finish a plastic water bottle, you’re more likely to throw it away. A reusable water bottle will encourage you to refill, and is a great way to help the environment.  BPA- free water bottles will not give off any byproducts versus traditional plastic water bottles.

2. Add a lemon or a lime- There are some of us out there who just don’t like the bland taste of water. Adding a lemon or lime will give a nice boost of flavor, and provide extra health benefits such as improve digestion and give vitamin C. 

3. Start and end the day with a glass of water- It’s an easy habit to get into, and will encourage you to continue drinking water throughout the day.

4. When you’re hungry, drink water!-  People tend to confuse hunger with thirst. Instead of going right for that afternoon snack, drink a glass of water. Water is a great aid in weightloss and can help to make sure you are not overeating throughout the day.

Move At Work, Yo.

Sitting in front of a computer for 8 hours at work sounds harder than running a marathon to me.  I just think of being glued to a chair and a bright screen while ticking away at the keyboard.  Sure my chair is awesome, state of the art lumbar support and my work ergonomics department inspected my station and left it with an A+.  But at 11:30, almost lunch time I am stiff and just want to move.

Is this accurate at all?  Or am I painting a picture that could only belong in Office Space and not real life?  I’m going to run with it as if it is a common situation anyway.

Work ergonomics are definitely important and are a necessity to any desk job, but there really is no replacement for real mobility during work; it would just not be a healthy environment.  Even writing this blog, I can feel my shoulders wanting to roll forward, my mid back wanting to drop, and my lower back wanting to round.  Why?  

Good posture takes work.

So, what is to be done?  What is acceptable at work?  What if I am too embarrassed and do not want to make a spectacle of myself? 

What is to be done: 1) Dynamic mobility is always a good go-to when you are feeling or want to prevent stiffness.  A pretty good routine of dynamic mobility would be a World’s Greatest Stretch, walking with leg pulls, air squats, side bend plus reach.  (There really are so many, but these are just to name a few)

But really, we also want to reverse everything that we turn into while sitting for a long time.  That means (2)  Breuggers position while sitting or standing (standing preferably).  Finally I really like 3)the Beefed Up Child’s Pose.

Breugger's Position

 

What is acceptable at work?  I’m sure most of these could be squeezed into your day without reducing your production…

Embarrassed? Spectacle? Two things here. 1) Who cares?  You are being an active member in society!  You are taking it upon yourself to stay healthy and energetic!  You are realizing that how you feel is directly proportionate to how you perform!   

 

2) If you really are embarrassed, then just go to the bathroom.  People already think that you are exerting some sort of effort when you walk into the stall anyway, so you might as well embrace some movement other than your bowels.  Seriously, though. Get Moving!
One.

Questions?! Comments?

Is It True That If You Don't USE It, You LOSE It?

If there was one movement that I wish I learned when I was younger it would be the squat. What an athletic movement this is! The ability to bend the knees and hips at the same time while stabilizing the midline is not as easy as some people may think and asking high school athletes to perform one will surprise you. Some people think that squatting is bad for them because they have knee/low back/hip pain, but shying away from movements will only assure that you will continue to regress.

 When I broke my hand (spiral fracture of the 4th metacarpal), my wrist was casted in neutral for 4 weeks. When the cast was taken off my spiral fracture had healed and was in no pain. My wrist, on the other hand, was VERY stiff and it hurt to move in all directions (especially in flexion and extension). Had I not had taken the time to rehab, strength train, work on mobility, my wrist would still be at a deficit. Our bodies are kind of awesome. The human body will adapt to whatever stresses on which they are put, Wolfe’s Law. This means that if you were to turn your head only to the left for even 4 weeks, you will lose range of motion going to the right. How does this happen? 


The tissues all adapt! The ligaments will shorten, the muscles will be strengthened for turning left and weakened turning right, the joint capsule will physically be more willing to turn left rather than right, and should you turn to the right, you will feel pain. This is why people have rounded shoulders, forward heads, and the INABILITY TO SQUAT!


If you do not go through a full range of motion you are doing yourself a disservice. The squat it a full range of motion, but it is also ridiculously functional. It requires hip, knee, and ankle mobility, spinal stability, shoulder stability, and balance. If any of these are a weakness, it will show in the attempt of a squat. Two takeaways here, 1) frequently perform full range of motion activities (not just stretching, but actual functional movements), and 2) learn how to squat and address any issue that may be limiting your range of motion. 

One.
Questions? Comments?

What's the Deal With Twinge?!

Have you ever been in the middle of an activity when you feel a little “twinge”?  (Twinge: an instance of pain that may or may not have happened.  Your body definitely felt something, but your head will not let you believe that there could possibly be anything wrong.)  Then you go on with your life.  Two days later, that twinge came back, only twice though.  Two weeks later the twinge officially becomes predictable pain.  This has officially entered the category of being an injury.

"I didn't feel that, la la la"

Fiddlesticks.  Now your shoulder is stopping you from doing your daily swim; you are sitting out from volleyball at your own family picnic because you “did something” to your shoulder; you stopped your weight lifting routine and are just focusing on legs, but this gets old fast.  After two weeks of rest you go back to trying a swim, after all, you rested it so it must be all good now!  Twinge.  Frustration.  Pity Party.  Eat.  Lethargy.

I wish this was out of the ordinary, but I see this in practice all the time.  We do not want to admit that we may have a rotator cuff tear, so we will avoid some fairly logical steps to make sure that it does not get worse.  People get apprehensive of pain, but the truth is that:

PAIN IS GOOD! (as seen from my previous blog)

It is situations like this that bother me a little bit.  We live in a world with conservative care.  What is conservative care?  In my world, it is managing injuries (big or small) without using injections, surgery, or medication.  A “twinge” is a great sign that you may need to incorporate something else into your weekly life to PREVENT AN INJURY FROM COMING!  One month of rest and rehabilitation 3 times per week might be excessive for a twinge, but it could also be exactly what you need.  

There is nothing to be afraid of.

My favorite part of being a sports physician is prescribing additional rehabilitative exercises as a supplement to an individual’s routine exercise program.  This allows someone who is perfectly capable of learning one or two new exercises to care for his or her injury before it is actually considered an injury. 

This is not scary for the individual because an action step was made once a weakness had become evident (Yes, the twinge is actually an indication of weakness or faulty movement).  Sometimes adding in range-of-motion activities with some stability exercises will eliminate the twinge/weakness/faulty movement.  

Here is an example of a recreational swimmer’s weekly routine with an added shoulder PREhabilitation.  This was given after an examination to rule out anything major and we were able to prevent the regression of the injury:

Weekly routine:

Swims 1 mile 3 days per week (half freestyle, half back stroke)

Weight training 2 days per week (full body circuits)

Shoulder twinge PREhab prescribed:

Swim days:

Shoulder ROM 2 x 10/ movement

Contract/Relax mobility for 5 minutes prior to swim

Weight training days:

Raised surface child’s pose

External rotation 3 x 10 (light and easy, good form)

TGU light 2/side x 5

Shoulder setting with plank 10-30 sec holds x 3

These twinges just need a little love.  Give it to them. 

One love. 

~Dr. Yaun

Maybe It Will Go Away

 

"Aches and pains increase more and more with age."  "Getting older is tough."  "My knees are bad, I can’t do that anymore."  "It’s natural to have back pain as I get older."

Sound familiar?  Is this really all true?  I can imagine that this is a similar story that everyone has heard or told at least once.  The fact of the matter is yes, you have more pain now than you did when you were younger, and no, it is not natural to be in pain as we age.  The variable that changes your outcome is your chosen lifestyle path.  Lifestyle: the way one chooses to live with regard to career, home life, diet, hobbies, social status, exercise choices, and health maintenance (this is my personal definition without being that Webster definer guy).  

The key word is “choose”.  There are a lot of topics that can be branched out from this category, so I will stick with the pain. 

“Pain prevents injury when utilized effectively and limits performance when utilized ineffectively.  Further, the presence of pain inhibits specific muscle and motor patterns that may be essential to both injury avoidance and ultimate performance.”- Stuart McGill

I love this excerpt.  If you are an athlete who “plays through the pain”, you are ultimately limiting your performance.  The human body will find a way to get a certain job done, but this is problematic.  For one faulty movement, it takes 10 correct movements to re-learn the right mechanics.  So that means if you are a going for a run and changing the way you are running because your foot hurts, you may be running incorrectly.  So for EVERY STEP that was taken, it will take 10 correct steps to fix it. 

How many times will your right foot hit the ground in a 400m run (once around a track)? Math time:

-          Assuming an average stride length of about 7 feet

-          1312.34 feet = 400m

-          1312.34/7 = 187.477 steps.  Assuming that the right foot is the one in questions, we will divide by 2

-          187.477/2= 93.74 FAULTY STEPS

-          93.74x10= 937 steps to correct the dysfunction

All of this math nonsense means that for running a quarter of a mile incorrectly, it will take two and a half miles just to undo that faulty movement; bringing you back to square one!

Take away: Just because you can alter your movement and have no pain, does not mean that you fixed the problem.  Take the time to properly correct the CAUSE of your pain.  This will effectively boost your performance and, more importantly, prevent further injuries!

One love. Dr. Y

An Idea About Work, Daily Activities, and Your Exercise Routine

 Professional and semi-pro athletes have an obvious reason for training the way they do.  Weekend warriors train because they have some race in 6 months that they want to crush.  Most of the population probably wants to merely look and feel good, not really caring about any upcoming fitness event.  I would like to propose an alternative motive for having an exercise routine… that applies to everyone above:

Your daily activities (including home, work, leisure activities, etc.) should represent, at the very most, 50% of what you do for your exercise routine.

(The answer is yes, I did just make up that statistic, but I think it is a decent generality to make and I will explain why.)

Scenario: I am a construction worker and my job consists of lifting, moving, squatting, etc.  I can argue that I get eight hours of physical activity per day and I do not need to exercise any more. 

This way of thinking will ensure exhaustion by the end of EACH day because the worker is performing 100% of his physical activity during work.  What if this person had an exercise routine that trained him to lift more functionally, engrained proper squatting leading into weighted squats, aerobic and anaerobic conditioning, etc.?  This routine, of only 3 days per week, will condition this construction worker to perform his job with much more ease. 

 Quality of life is the backbone of this theory.  Your regular daily activities should feel like “no big deal” when compared to your exercise routine.  If you put this into play you will have more energy, be more productive, and FEEL BETTER!  As a chiropractor, I often am asked if I get tired from moving people around, adjusting, or performing soft tissue techniques.  I can honestly say no.  Specifically this morning I performed sets of deadlifts, tested a 30 second maximal effort on the air dyne (twice), and performed gymnastic movements on Olympic rings while training my aerobic capacity.  Handling things in my office is just physically not demanding and I want you to feel the same way.  

If you are not looking for a very demanding exercise routine, I suggest you at least incorporate these movements into an exercise routine.  If you have anything that is hindering you from exercise (like headaches, knee pain, low back pain, etc.) please contact Yaun Chiropractic for a free initial consultation. www.dryaun.com