02.28.07
Posted in Nutrition at 8:04 pm by Fit Guy
I won’t get into the creatine debate; essentially, it works and research studies have not documented any side effects other than water retention and possible cramping. Here’s another possible benefit: basically, the “new age” thinking is to add a pinch of sea salt into your 8-12 glasses of water each day to starve off “your bodies cries for water” – well, if creatine makes you “keep water” it’s actually working to keep you healthy beyond increasing performance…. unless of course it’s not safely regulating the amount of water you retain, but this is a post for another day! 
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Posted in General Info, Neuromuscular, Posture at 3:18 am by Fit Guy
I’ve received some emails about balance and posture and how the P.A.S.T. balance boards work to improve total body posture. Basically, the boards reduce your natural base of support to stimulate your centering reflexes and you instinctively align your body from the ground-up or you can’t stay on the center of the boards. It’s that simple!
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02.26.07
Posted in Core Strength at 5:38 am by Fit Guy
The term neutral wasn’t originally meant to suggest a static posture, but rather a safe of ROM. It’s become rather pedantic with so many people taking a literal approach and saying, “there is no neutral spine.” Actually there IS a neutral spinal, but it’s relative to a specific postural configuration and fleeting moment in time, it’s transitory.
IMO people are struggling with the concept, because they don’t recognize the difference between the needs of a rehab patient, regular Joe, and/or an athlete. For example, the training approach for a person with a flexion provoked lower back is done while maintaining a more rigid lumbar posture and an athlete will progressively increase lumbar spine ROM to a level right beneath tissue overload.
It’s all very relative to a person’s needs, but the nomenclature is very vocation specific or in other words fitness trainers, ATC, DC’s, PT’s and MD’s all use different lingo!
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02.25.07
Posted in Core Strength, General Info, Posture at 4:50 pm by Fit Guy
The most difficult concept for anyone to understand is that balance or the ability to deal with ground reactive forces and postural habits or how you deal with gravity largely determines the length tension about ALL the joints in the body and the core “transfer case” can’t do its job without the proper support below and above. Natural patterns of movement facilitate the motion through the center of the body and each muscle has its role; so, train movement and not muscles in isolation.
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02.24.07
Posted in General Info, Posture at 7:52 pm by Fit Guy
I’ve read where many experts, both real and wannabes, have decreed static posture to have very little relationship to actual movement. My first reaction is to cringe at this shortsighted understanding of posture, but then I realize it depends on a person’s perspective. For instance, how are they gauging static or in other words do they mean watching a person stand with poor posture and then be a phenomenal athlete and then state, “posture doesn’t matter?” If so, they are missing the idea of cumulative trauma disorder (CTD) and that the person who stands with poor posture will eventually develop muscle imbalances and this will ingrain their habits into their structure. However, the most ardent “static posture doesn’t matter” people might still claim muscle imbalances are irrelevant and don’t impede a person’s performance in life or on the field; however, just because the body can compensate doesn’t mean everything is ok. Heck, you can twist your body like a (yoga) pretzel without immediate injury, but this type of extreme adaptability is meant for short term survival needs and isn’t meant to be done daily! And yes, I understand Yoga was originally meant to expand consciousness, but that’s not how most of the power yoga crowd are using it….
Besides, what if people thought like me and didn’t believe a static really existed. The continuum ranges from postural sway (called static) all the way to agile reactions and thus, any imbalance in the length-tension of muscles around a joint will always impact the movement of your body thru space….
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02.23.07
Posted in General Info, Neuromuscular at 5:16 pm by Fit Guy
A joint needs to have stability, prior to mobility, right? Yes, unless it doesn’t! The joint integrity or optimal balance between mobility and stability needs to be ensured, but after that it’s not so straightforward. Often time’s mobility precedes stability or how else could a baby to learn crawl and walk? It’s no different than how the body NEVER stays still and a postural sway always guides are stance or in other words mobility is providing stability. The matter is complex like everything else to do with the human body and it’s not as simple as memorizing one way or the other, but it’s a matter of applying critical thought to each situation.
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02.22.07
Posted in Training Tools at 2:24 am by Fit Guy
Swiss balls are used in practically every rehab facility and gym around the country. Here’s am interesting fact almost NO ONE mentions: you get increased “core” muscle activation, but also up to double the spine load. What’s this mean? Well, for starters if you’re rehabbing a bad back don’t use the balls without supervision that understands low back pain. Also, the balls can have a place in your routine, but should NOT be your routine; remember, you need to train standing balance and postural awareness with movement patterns, not “core” muscles in isolation with a ball!
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02.19.07
Posted in General Info at 11:15 pm by Fit Guy
Here’s the skinny: it’s less about origin (where a muscle works from) and insertion (where it attaches) points and more about proximal and distal points. A muscle’s true action depends on which end of the lever arm is free to move and/or closed off. Here’s an example, if you’re foot is in on the ground, or lifted off, during walking it CHANGES the way the same muscles are being used and it’s not dependent upon the origin and insertion….
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02.16.07
Posted in General Info, Neuromuscular at 5:45 pm by Fit Guy
Dr Mel C Siff
Biomechanics and Movement Science listserver
Mon, 1 May 2000 23:18:21 EDT
The therapeutic and fitness training worlds still seem to place a heavy emphasis on an isolationist approach to physical testing and conditioning, without carefully identifying the situational limitations and scope whenever such as approach is used.
The therapeutic and fitness training worlds still seem to place a heavy emphasis on an isolationist approach to physical testing and conditioning, without carefully identifying the situational limitations and scope whenever such as approach is used.Attempts are made to test and train muscles individually. Few days pass without comments being made on isolating the upper or lower abdominals for training, selectively training the core of the body, activating transversus abdominis to ’stabilise the trunk’, testing for weaknesses or imbalances in certain muscle groups or explaining poor performance or injury on the basis of imbalance in some isolated system of the body.
The therapeutic and fitness training worlds still seem to place a heavy emphasis on an isolationist approach to physical testing and conditioning, without carefully identifying the situational limitations and scope whenever such as approach is used.Attempts are made to test and train muscles individually. Few days pass without comments being made on isolating the upper or lower abdominals for training, selectively training the core of the body, activating transversus abdominis to ’stabilise the trunk’, testing for weaknesses or imbalances in certain muscle groups or explaining poor performance or injury on the basis of imbalance in some isolated system of the body.
The body constitutes a linked system and, unless the scope and limitations of any given isolationist approach is meticulously identified, it is misleading and unwarranted to use and extrapolate findings based on isolationist methods. If one unquestioningly applies isolationist methods, then it is being assumed that the isolated area concerned constitutes a closed system. This implies further that this isolated system is not affected by or does not affect what happens in adjacent or other linked systems, or at least that any such interaction with other systems is insignificant.
The trunk, abdominals, lower extremity, knee and so forth are not closed systems and any action involving these subsystems influences what is happening in all parts of the body and the body as a whole. It is vital that the body be regarded in terms of a systems theoretical approach, rather than one which makes very tenuous assumptions about the closedness of conveniently isolated subsystems whose apparent isolation from other systems invariably is based entirely on convenience or convenience.
Even if one attempts to apply a systems theoretical approach, it may still be inadequate to regard the entire body as the superordinate closed system, as is implied, for instance, by the current somewhat simplistic emphasis on so-called “core training”. The limitations of the latter concept may readily be noticed if one observes that it is very rare in land-based sport for core stability to be manifested in the absence of contact with the ground or external objects. Peripheral stability, which usually is reliant on solid contact between the extremities of the body with some surface, is essential before core stability becomes implicated in a given sporting action on land.
Without adequate peripheral stabilisation, the functional capabilities of the “core” are meaningless. The entire body or the body-surface constitutes the appropriate closed system for our attention. Thus, if terms such as “core stabilisation” are to be used, then they need to be carefully applied within the appropriate context.
In this respect, articles such as the following (and the many references provided by this article) are most relevant:
Zajac F E & Gordon M F (1989) Determining muscle’s force and action in multi-articular movement Exerc Sport Sci Rev 17: 187-230
This is not to negate the value of approaches that use isolationist approaches for valid therapeutic or analytical reasons, such as those involving EMG mediated biofeedback, “Kegel” exercises, and post surgical respiratory exercises, but it is to stress that the unqualified application of isolationist approaches to sports conditioning needs to be viewed with careful circumspection.
If we do so, then we may also become far more careful to avoid referring rigidly to certain muscles as stabilisers, movers, agonist, antagonists, flexors, adductors and so on, instead choosing to refer to the stabilising, moving, agonistic, antagonistic, flexor and adduction roles of a muscle during any given phase of a specific motor action.
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02.15.07
Posted in Working Out at 11:58 pm by Fit Guy
I’m not really surprised, but “elite” personal trainers are still recommending limited range of motion exercises. It’s no use pointing out that MOVEMENT, NOT MUSCLES need to be trained, because it will fall of deaf ears. It’s scary to think certain people have taken joint isolation tests, and corrective isometric strengthening, to mean it’s how you should workout. On the other hand, it’ll mean more people needing my product!
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