Don't just stand there! How are you *actually* supposed to stand?

There's a lot of talk in the media these days about how standing is way better for you than sitting, but did you know there's actually a "right" way to stand?  Here it is: space your feet pelvis width apart, line up the outside edges of your feet, fully straighten your legs, relax your quads, and carry your weight in your heels (get your hips directly above your heels).  This advice may be different from what you've heard over the years, like "keep your knees soft (slightly bent)", or "tuck your pelvis under to engage your core".  So who's right?  How do you know which advice to follow?  In my opinion, you should follow the advice that doesn't do damage to any of your body parts.  Read on, you'll see what I mean. 

First image: hips forward, loading the feet.  Second image, knees bent, loading the knees and the feet.      Third image, hips over heels, loading the posterior muscles.

Let's start with the feet.  Your feet are like your hands, your toes are like your fingers.  If you did a handstand, you probably wouldn't let your body go forward and put your weight on your fingers, you'd keep it in the heel of your hand, closest to your wrist.  The rules are the same for the foot.  Your feet actually house 25% of your body's bones and muscles, and are packed full of nerves.  The fact that your feet are capable of an infinite number of positions and are so sensitive to pressure, shape and texture suggests that they are made to read information from the environment.

A nice, flexible foot will be able to form to the surface you are walking on, giving you greater stability.  If your foot can't move to accommodate a rock or a hole in the ground, or a rogue Lego, some other joint will have to (sprained ankle, knee), or you fall over and break a hip.

The side of my foot can come up over the block so I don't have to fling my whole body to the floor to avoid getting hurt.  If I carried my weight in my toes, this would be very painful.

When you carry your weight on your toes, your foot has to contract and grip the ground all the time to hold you up.  This puts a significant amount of strain on the small muscles and soft tissues of your feet, makes the muscle stiff and unyielding, and actually cuts off blood flow to your foot.  Your poor foot loses its fantastic range of motion and will be in pain and may even start to deform from the strain (bunions, hammer toes, flat feet, etc.)

The size of muscles and bones can give us a clue to their intended function.  Bigger muscles and bones should be doing heavy load bearing work.  Smaller muscle and bone is more for proprioception and other functions, like the delicate task of capturing nose goblins from a sleeping 2 year old.  When you carry your weight back in your heels and turn OFF your quads, you allow the large muscles on the back of your leg and your butt to hold your weight, rather than the teeny tiny bits and pieces that make up your feet. 

Another thing to look at is the effect of a contracted muscle on other parts of your body.  When you use the back of your legs and your butt to hold you up, your butt muscles gently tug your tailbone outward, which maintains a healthy tone to your pelvic floor ( it is attached to your tailbone).  Cool!  When you use your quads to hold you up, either by having your hips shoved forward or having your knees bent, it pulls your kneecap up and into the knee joint, grinding through the cartilage, creating lots of friction and inflammation, leading to chronic pain/disease, eventually knee replacement.  Uh-oh.  Also, you lose any toning effect on the pelvic floor.  Dang.

The last thing I'll mention is the effect that the placement of your weight has on your bones.  In order for your hip bones (femoral heads) to develop and maintain their proper density, your legs MUST be vertical.  Your leg bone is triggered to grow (ie, NOT degenerate over time) through the compression it gets between the ground and gravity. 

A tilted leg bone, as in hips forward OR knees bent, is not getting the right amount of compression, which means your bones are not as strong as they have to be for your weight.  If I weigh 100 lbs, I want my bones to be able to handle that weight when I'm walking, or if I have to jump to avoid getting hit by a bus, or if I'm going downstairs and I think there's another step but there's not and I land hard on my leg and get that jolt that reverberates through my skull (we've all done it) .  If I don't bear my weight on my bones properly, that means that maybe they'll only be able to handle 85% of my weight, which is bad news for me in the above scenarios.  I don't know about you, but I'd REALLY rather have my bones strong enough to hold me up, since I have an aversion to chronic pain and osteoporosis and hip fracture.

(A side note, this is why time spent sitting is such a big factor in the development of osteoporosis.  Those hours you spend sitting in a chair are hours that you're telling your bones to go on vacation.  A horizontal bone isn't getting ANY compression from gravity, so it isn't getting ANY signal to replenish!)


So there's my case for standing with your weight in your heels, and for learning how to relax your quads when you stand around.   Makes sense, doesn't it?

Don't bankrupt your joints with your poor spending (movement) choices!

The way you move throughout the day has a big impact on the health of your joints and spine.  Think about things like picking up a sock, unloading the dryer, tying your shoe, washing the bathtub, sweeping the floor, putting a DVD in the DVD player (assuming it's lower than waist height), getting up off the toilet.  Think about all the things you do with your body in the run of a day that require you to go from being vertical to being bent in the middle, or at the knee.  There's are a multitude of ways to get closer to the ground,  but depending on how you do it you may be causing a lot of wear and tear on your joints.

Knee over toes, no lumbar curve, even some neck compression.  I also had to grip the floor with my toes to keep from falling forward on this one. It hurted!

Let's say you have a bazillion dollars in the bank.  But over the years you spend all of it on stupid stuff.  You bought a  pale blue diamond studded track suit, you bought a helicopter made of gold, you ate take out sushi for every meal instead of buying groceries and making your own food...  Now you have one dollar left, and you spend it on a chocolate bar.  You blew your last dollar on a chocolate bar.  Tell me, did you go broke buying a chocolate bar, or did you go broke because you made bad choices with your money, and had poor spending habits?

Your joints are kinda the same deal.  When you use them improperly, their health is finite.  FINITE!  If you're always bending at the spine, letting your lumbar curve do the work of your hips, it's like taking a big fat $50 bill out of the bank.  At some point, you're not gonna have anything left in the bank, and you're not gonna have any health left in the joint.  So when you bend over to pick up your newspaper and you put your back out, it's because you just took out the last dollar in the account.  You did not injure your back picking up a newspaper, you injured your back due to years of making bad choices with your movements, and having poor postural habits, then you blew your last bit of health picking up a newspaper.

We always work to put and keep money in the bank, likewise you need to work to maintain the health of your joints and spine.  You can start right now by changing those mundane actions you do day in day out.  All those damaging little movements add up over time, turning into pain and disease.  My three helpful hints to keep your joints and spine from going bankrupt are:

1.  Try not to let your knees track over your toes when you bend them.  That might mean really backing your weight into your heels and bending quite a bit at the hip, you may not be able to bend your knees very much at first if you're trying to keep your shins vertical.

Lumbar curve in tact!  My shins could stand to be a little more vertical.  Some practise in a mirror will help me learn how to feel when my shins are really vertical.

2.  When you bend at the middle, make sure you're hinging at the hip instead of from the lower back, keep your tailbone untucked and your lumbar curve intact. Try bending over while looking in a mirror at first, sometimes it's hard to tell if you're moving from the spine or the hip.  You can also put your hands on your lower back and feel for movement as you bend (hint: there shouldn't be ANY movement in your lower back).  If you're not used to it, you may not be able to get very close to the floor.  That's ok.  Keep at it.

Let your fat ass back up behind your heels to keep from falling forward.  Otherwise you have to grip the floor with your toes, and they weren't designed to be used like that.

3.  Switch it up!  Sometimes try bending with your legs straight, hinging at the hip.  Sometimes try bending at the hip and knee, with your shins vertical, like a squat.  (click for more squat how-to)

It's difficult at first, but just changing the way you move will help you loosen up, and before long you'll be touching the floor without having to worry about hurting yourself.  When you move this way, you actually increase the health of your joints.  Your hips, knees, and back will really feel like...a million bucks.  ha.  ha ha.  ha ha ha.

What difference does it make how I squat, as long as I'm trying?

Good day!  I'm teaching my first class tomorrow and I did these drawings to illustrate the difference between a good squat and a bad squat.  It really does make a difference which version you do, as one is really really good for you, and the other is really really NOT good for you.  Can you guess which one rules and which one sucks?

If you guessed the one on the left is the squat that sucks, then you're wrong and you suck.  haha.  No I'm kidding, you don't suck.  But prepare to get schooled, son.  The squat on the left is the one that you always hear about, how it's so good for your knees, hips, pelvic floor spine, etc.  If you're doing the squat on the right, you're never going to see any of these benefits.

First lets compare the form.  In a good squat, the shin bone will be vertical, the feet will be wide and flat and the outside edges will be parallel.  The tailbone will be untucked, the torso fits between the knees, and the entire spine extends, right up to the crown of your head.  This lengthens the hamstrings and calves, and requires you to use your glutes to hold yourself up (it's a great butt "work out"). It helps tone the pelvic floor, and maintains hip mobility.  It doesn't overload the knees, and it doesn't open the spine in a dangerous way.

The bad squat allows the heels to lift, the knees to track over the toes (non-vertical shin) the tailbone tucks under (like the dog you yelled at on your lawn that time) and the spine curves forward, causing the neck to compensate by curving in the opposite direction.  This overloads the knees, doesn't do a damn thing for your pelvic floor, doesn't really work on hip mobility, it opens the spine dangerously (especially for all those people who sit a lot) and it causes unhealthy disc compression in the neck.  boo!!

So there you have it.  That's why one is good and one is bad.  Someone once asked me "but, isn't it better to squat rather than not squat, no matter what your form looks like?"  My answer would be no.  A squat is not really an exercise that you should do, but rather a movement you should be capable of doing, and one that you use multiple times throughout the day when you need to get down to the ground for something (maybe to pick up the present the dog left on your lawn).  When you can do a proper squat, you are in REALLY good shape, alignment-wise :)  Instead of saying "well, this is the squat that I can get into, so I'll just keep doing it this way" you need to pull back and do some stretches that will help you be able to do a full squat.  Start here, with this awesome tropical squatting video by our favorite Katy Bowman.

Then head on over to her blog to check out some other sweet squat stuff that you can do to get your body back to where it needs to be  :)

Why is walking falling?

I've been wanting to post about this for a while now, because it really seems to be something a lot of people are confused about.  I hear lots of people say they don't do it, but truthfully there are few who don't.  So, to clear things up, I'm going to give you my illustrated version of why you're not walking, you're falling.

First of all, just because you don't end up flat on your face after every step doesn't mean you're walking without falling.  The falling motion, when it comes to gait, is actually quite small, not the head over heels face plant you're thinking of.  The problem comes from the way we move forward.  If you're lifting your leg out in front of you to walk like this:

then I'm sorry to say this, but you my friend are falling forward with each step.  With your leg bent at the hip and knee, there is no other way for your lifted foot to hit the ground unless you fall.  See?

Either you fall, or you bend your other leg to get your front foot on the ground, but then you'd look like you were supposed to be in a Monty Python sketch.  This is a really high impact way of walking on lots of different body parts.  First of all, your center of mass is constantly thrown over the front of your body.  This overloads your knee and the front of your foot, since they weren't designed to carry the weight of your body from the knees up.

The second problem is that this motion is causing you to pivot on your foot.  Instead of your body just gliding forward, it is pivoting from a single point (your foot on the ground).That means your big fat head has to travel a further distance than any other part of your body!  Not only does it have to travel further, it also has to do it in the same amount of time...which means it has to go FASTER.  That's right.  Your fat stupid head has to travel further and faster through space than the rest of your body.

Something has to eventually stop you from pivoting, though, or you'd end up face planting.

Luckily for you, your other leg is bent at the hip and knee to catch you every. single. time.  Ouch.  So, the leg breaks your fall, but something still has to stop the acceleration of your fast, monumental head.  Otherwise:

Guess what you're gonna do?  You're probably going to end up using your lower back to stop yourself from kneeing yourself in the face.

So, let's see.  We've got excessive loading on the knees and lots of repeated impact (a life time of steps worth of impact).  We've got excessive loading on the front of the foot.  Your spine is being used like a jimmy-wiggler to stop your massive, ugly, stupid head from flying through space and to stabilize your torso.  I'm not even gonna mention what it does to the hips.  (Not because I dont' know, but I think this is enough for now.)  On top of it all, your feet probably aren't even pointed in the right direction (hint: the outside edge of your foot should be lined up straight, not the inside edge).  Foot pain?  Knee pain? Back pain? Acceleration headaches? (I made that one up. but you might have acceleration neck pain...)  Big surprise.  You're bouncing around on your gear like a paddle ball.

So you're thinking "Thanks, GAIT keeper" (haha, get it?) "how the eff am I supposed to locomote then?"   Well, simply put, you're supposed to put your weight on one straight, vertical leg and push yourself forward.  Then you land on your other leg, which stays vertical beneath you, and that becomes your straight, vertical weight bearing leg which you then use to push yourself forward again.  This way, your weight is always stacked where it should be, and your whole body moves through space at the same speed!

Walking this way does require lots of lateral hip and butt strength, and nice long hamstrings.  But once you get it you can pretty much say good bye to shitty stuff like pelvic floor disorder (peeing when you laugh) back pain, and osteoporosis, to name a few.

A final note about walking: you cannot walk on a treadmill.  Walking requires that you push your weight forward off a fixed ground.  On a treadmill, the ground is already moving, so you have no other choice than to....*drum roll please* lift your leg out in front of you and fall down onto it.  And that, my friends, is not walking.

If you think you know more than evolution, you're an idiot.

I wrote this post before I made this blog, so it is a repeat from my blog Little Green Room.  I think it works better here though :)  

Has anyone ever heard the saying "the more I learn, the less I know" ?  That's just how I feel lately.  The incredible things that I've been learning over the past few years are showing me the fantastic intricacies of life, and the amazing interconnectedness of it all, all of which we're just beginning to understand.  I am ceaselessly astonished at how one factor can affect the whole of a being and have impact on a myriad of things that you would never EVER be able to guess without science.

I'll start small, so I don't blow your mind.  The direction in which you point your foot while it is weight bearing affects the height (or even the existence of) the arch in your foot.  But get this, the way you rotate your THIGH while weight bearing affects your arch too!  As soon as you straighten your feet, and then roll your knees outward, POP!  Up come your arches, which you thought you didn't have.

Here's another one.  You must know that the length of your hamstrings affects the angle of your pelvis.  Having short hamstrings makes you stand like a shitting dog.  Attractive, yes?  By stretching your hamstrings, you can tilt your pelvis back to where it's supposed to be, regaining a butt and a lumbar curve, and reducing back pain.  When I started stretching my hamstrings though, it reduced the pain in my neck.  The shortened muscles of my calves was hurting my NECK.  Madness.

Here's a crazy one.  The way a baby feeds literally determines the chemical make up of your breast milk, so allowing a baby to feed however and whenever they want means they are controlling their diet.  Not just the amount of milk made, but the amount of fat, water and protein they take in at each feed.  Lactating breasts respond to cues like fullness, length of time the baby spends on the breast, and the spacing between feedings.   That means that using any other method of feeding besides direct mouth to breast takes away the baby's ability to get exactly what they need. (No judgement, just stating fact here, friends!)

 I love those studies that go on about the dangers of sleeping with your baby.  Oh wait, did I say love?  Cause I meant hate.  Infant mother sleep interaction is fascinating.  A mother who is breastfeeding her baby has hormones to keep her alert enough to not roll over her baby.  Not only that, she'll wake up at the same time as the baby (not being woken by the baby, just waking simultaneously).  Not only that, she'll wake up if the baby has stopped breathing for longer than normal.  Not only that, the mother's breath on the baby's face literally teaches the baby how to breathe during a transition at 3 months, during which time babies are especially prone to SIDS.  Not only that, but when a mother and baby sleep in close proximity to one another, their EEG readouts will be almost the same as they drift into and out of different sleep stages at the same time.  That means their brains synchronize DURING SLEEP.  WTF!?  Anyone else totally amazed??

The tightness of your hands is related to how effectively you are able to breathe (how much oxygen you can take in). Skin to skin contact regulates a newborn's blood sugar!  Breasts heat up and cool down according to the baby's temperature that's resting upon them, to keep the baby at the perfect temperature.  Bending a certain way in the middle of your spine (thrusting your ribs outward) can literally give you cardiovascular disease.  Chewing your food mixes it with saliva, which starts the digestion process in your mouth, but it also keeps your teeth from falling out (given that it's something tough like raw food or something which puts pressure on the bones which causes them to regenerate).  Carrying your baby as opposed to using a sling or a stroller reduces the incidence of osteoporosis later in life.  Need I say more?  No seriously, somebody stop me before i start up on diet and health.  My head is gonna explode.

Please know that I'm not writing all this stuff to make anybody feel bad about the choices they've made in life, I'm not writing this to pass judgement or to boss everyone around like a stupid jerk.  No one needs to justify themselves to me! I'm just saying we must be aware that evolution always has something specific in mind, nothing is without rhyme or reason, and all things are connected in life.  The way you spend your time, the food you put in your mouth, the way you parent your children, all these things have an optimal approach that was perfected over millions of years.  Your choices now can affect something way down the road that you don't even know exists yet.  The point I'm trying to make is that we are ancient bodies living in modern times, and to make it into the future, it wouldn't hurt to think and act like our ancestors sometimes.