Holistic Exercise And Fitness

Sep 17 2016

ELDOA In Santa Fe For Less Shoulder And Neck Pain

How ELDOA’s Increase Spinal Mobility And Get Rid Of Neck And Shoulder Pain

Do your shoulders slump and round when you walk, sit, or stand?
Do you have trouble keeping your chest up when squatting?
Do you get lower back or neck pain when doing twisting or rotational movements?
Does it hurt lifting heavy things off the ground?
Have you resigned yourself to living with that nagging rotator cuff pain that flares up during workouts and in bed?

If you answered “yes” to any of those (and most people will answer yes to at least one), you may have poor thoracic spine mobility. Even if you don’t notice any of the symptoms leaping out at you, it never hurts to get more mobility, especially in the thoracic spine. And establishing good habits by actively maintaining and training mobility, as opposed to being content with what you have (even if it’s not optimum), is always a good move.

After the hips, thoracic spine mobility is probably the most crucial aspect of mobility. At least with the hips, though, people can identify them and grasp the concept of hip mobility just by reading text on the computer. Sticking your hips back is pretty self-explanatory. What about the thoracic spine? It’s a bit more nebulous.

Do you know how to use your thoracic spine? Are you even aware that it exists? It’s not that people ignore the thoracic spine willfully; it’s that they’re unaware of any distinctions between spinal and lumbar vertebrae. They know about the spine, and imagine it to be a uniform vertebral column, equally capable of bending, twisting, and rotating along its length. This is totally understandable. “Spine” is what we hear, not “thoracic spine” or “lumbar spine” or “cervical spine,” but it’s much more than that.

The human spinal column is composed of five segments: the cervical spine, which extends up the neck to the base of the skull; the thoracic spine, which encompasses the shoulder and chest area; the lumbar spine, also known as the lower back; the sacrum; and, finally, the coccyx, or tail bone. Each performs a different role. Each has different capabilities, different functions. Most importantly, each segment of the spine is designed for a certain range of motion.

The thoracic spine is built for rotation, flexion, and extension. It is highly mobile – or, rather, it has the potential for lots of mobility. Because of its mobility, the thoracic spine must be used, must be moved. But it has to be known. If people are unable to visualize and feel the movement of the thoracic spine, or if they’re unable to even grasp the concept of its existence, they’ll just attempt to twist, rotate, flex, and bend with something familiar to them: the lumbar spine. That’s bad news.

The lumbar spine is built for stability. It’s supposed to support the weight of the body (plus any added weights) and resist excessive rotation and twisting. It remains stable and acts as a conduit for power generated by the hips and fed to the mobile thoracic spine. It is not meant to twist and bend. It can move, obviously, but it’s not meant to be wildly mobile. It’s meant to be solid, reliable.

You’ll find that an immobile thoracic spine isn’t just bad for the vertebrae themselves. It’s bad for your lower back and your shoulders, too. In fact, you’ll rarely feel actual pain along the twelve vertebrae that comprise your thoracic spine. Instead, your lower back will take over work for which it’s really not designed, getting chronic pain for its troubles, and your scapula (shoulder blades) will compensate by moving away from the spine, making overhead shoulder work difficult, dangerous, and painful, and a rotator cuff injury nearly inevitable. Everything in the body is linked, remember, and you can’t remove a major player from the equation without seriously affecting the balance.

Benefits of improved thoracic mobility are: Lack of kyphosis, a less painful, more stable lower back, more lung volume, Healthier shoulders, Greater range of motion …

Do use thoracic mobility to:
a. Lengthen and straighten your thoracic spine with ELDOA’s
b. Breathe more deeply
c. Enable your shoulders to roll further back without swaying the low back

Don’t use thoracic mobility to:
a. Hunch your thoracic spine
b. Hyper-extend your thoracic ligaments creating laxity in the ligaments and hyper-mobility in the thoracic spine.

So, it is important to develop thoracic mobility in a precise way that allows healthy spinal architecture and movement and not in a way that threatens your skeletal integrity or scaffolding. Loosening up the thoracic spine and then using that extra mobility to round or distort the spine further while sitting or standing is in some ways worse than being inflexible. It is therefore crucial to be conscious of posture as well, so that your whole spine is well-aligned throughout your day, and any extra mobility you create in your thoracic spine works to your advantage and towards making you straighter and taller.

In sum … do your ELDOAs!!!

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Blue Sky

Jul 20 2016

What About Clean Water In Santa Fe?

Recently, at SolCore Fitness, I have had some conversations discussing the intake of water and I wanted to elaborate. Because we live in a dry, high desert environment, and the temperature has been rising in Santa Fe, staying hydrated is obviously very important. I also believe it is essential during exercise.

Water affects every organ and cell within your body. You may not have known this, but water even plays an enormous role in the health of your back and spine. The lack of proper hydration could affect your back and could be a cause of back pain. Between every two vertebrae lies a disc, which functions as a shock absorber. This disc has two parts: an outer, flexible and tough ring, and the inner, which is primarily water. All day long, as gravity works on our upright spine, water is slowly squeezed out of the discs.

At night, when we are lying down, the discs slowly rehydrate. Our daily dehydration and nightly rehydration of the discs is the reason why most of us shorter at night than when we woke up! Regular movement helps to keep discs hydrated – as the spine moves, the discs will absorb the water we have available in our bodies.

As long as there are adequate water levels within the body, nightly rehydration will occur. When there is not enough water available to fully hydrate the inner part of the disc, the whole piece becomes compromised. When the inner piece of the disc are dehydrated, it cannot support the load on your spine as intended, and it stresses your body causing pain. This means that drinking lots of clean water helps you to have less pain and easier movement. Don’t wait until you are thirsty to drink, that means you are already dehydrated.

Because discs do not have a blood supply, they exchange nutrients when pressure is decreased. This is why when you lie down or sleep at night, the discs will rehydrate. This process nutrient exchange can be increased even further and have more lasting results when ELDOA exercises are performed. One of the benefits of the ELDOAs is that they assist to reinforce the tissue responsible for supporting the spine in a more elongated state. The result is that the spine becomes more resilient to the compressive forces placed upon it throughout the day, as there is less water loss from the discs. However, there needs to be enough free water available in the body for the ELDOAs to be affective.

So, be honest with yourself, are you drinking enough water? Take responsibility for the health and longevity of your spine by doing these 3 simple things:

1. Drink water first thing in the morning before your coffee or tea and breakfast

2. Carry a water bottle that you really like – this will help keep you drinking throughout the day to reach your daily target of fluid ounces

3. Do 2 or 3 ELDOA exercises each night before bed

Happy Hydrating!!

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Apr 26 2016

A Holistic And Scientifically Based Cure For Back Pain In Santa Fe ELDOA

ELDOA, Along With A Holistic Personal Training Program Will Eliminate Back Pain.

Being in the health and fitness field and helping people get rid of back, neck and hip pain, I get a lot of articles sent my way for examination. And I love it! So keep them coming. I love reading about what is going on in all corners on the health and fitness field(s). I really appreciate that people are trying to learn more and are looking for solutions outside of surgery and consistent pain medications. This article is influenced by an article published in the Wall Street Journal about back pain. You can see the WSJ article here: ( http://www.wsj.com/articles/new-help-for-back-pain-1448311243 ).

A little Backgound On When I Had Back Pain

SolCore Fitness Personal Training Santa Fe was birthed out of the necessity. I had back pain from a pinched L4-L5 vertebrae and intermittent Sciatic pain. I tried medications (knowing full well it wouldn’t cure me), chiropractic (helped for a week or so), yoga (didn’t work and made it worse) and some physical therapy exercises that also didn’t work and made it worse. And even though I had all these failures I knew that there had to be some way to “put myself back together.”

Enter ELDOA.

Because of the belief that I could put myself together, I found a program called Soma Training/Therapy, which contains ELDOA. This program completely blew what I knew out of the water and got rid of my back pain. Prior to finding this system, I did what most people did and used general formulaic answers to problems that arose for myself and my clients. But after getting hurt and seeing that this formulaic way of thinking wasn’t working, I was forced to find what would work consistently.

Which brings me to the article. The first thing that caught my eye was the fact that people are realizing consistent surgery and medications are not the way. It has been said that only 1% of the people who go in for back surgery even need it. This article ( http://www.nbcnews.com/id/39658423/ns/health-pain_center/t/back-surgery-may-backfire-patients-pain/#.Vxu1iZMrLeQ ) talks about how surgery is being used as a cure-all and as a bi-product for pain medication (particularly opioids). But it’s not working. And as the article just prior states, it is really hard to see the cause of back pain from an MRI. Further, if you are looking at a person 30 years old or older, you are going to see some sort of damage to the spine. The problem is that the observed damage is generally asymptomatic and/or is not the root cause of the pathology.

The idea should be to look at the body holistically, to see how multiple different factors are playing into the issue. Once you do this, you can start to think about using specific stretches and exercises to normalize (correct) the different areas that are causing the imbalanced body. And when you talk of specifics you must take into the consideration the biomechanics of the body.

The initial WSJ article that was sent to me, lists four exercises that should help your back pain. However, as I stated before there could be numerous reasons that you have back pain. The exercise recommendations used in the article seem to assume that the issue is coming only from the spine. In an effort to analyze the exercises and for ease, let’s just go ahead and assume that indeed the problem is originating in the spine. Now let’s examine the exercises.

The first, is an exercise that you execute while seated and you roll yourself over between your legs. This exercise is working with the idea that leaning forward will open the back part of your spine, which it will. But it is not very specific as to the level of the spine and as to where the disk bulge/herniation is happening. When you subject a force on the discs, you are going to be working under Pascals Law. This law states that the pressure is distributed evenly on a spherical surface (like the nucleus) and it will go to the weakest point. Meaning that in this exercise you may be trying to open the back of the spine by flexing forward and closing the front. However if your issue originates in the front that creates a problem because the pressure will go to the weakest point.

The second exercise is performed lying on your back knees flexed to approximately 90 degrees with your feet on the floor. In this position you rock your legs back and forth. I am not a fan of this exercise… AT ALL! Here’s a little spinal biomechanics. Any time the spine is subjected to a rotational force it gets compressed. If you have some sort of pinch or bulge, a compression will make it worse. Now add the fact that your lower back is the fulcrum of the movement and you have the weight of the legs as you move into this rotational motion. Adding that force (your legs – weight and length) to the movement and you get MORE force compressing the pinch or bulge.

The third one is called the Mckenzie press-up or, in yoga, the cobra. The idea here is similar to the first exercises in that the move opens the front part of the spine by closing the back part, “pushing” the disc back in. Since most pathologies are posterior lateral (back and to the side) it makes sense that you would want to migrate it forward. The first problem with this is, again, Pascals Law. Laws are funny like that. The second issue is whether the spine is in a good enough place and whether it has enough space to move properly to allow it to go forward. Considering most people don’t because of our modern lifestyles, it would not be a good idea. This is one of the main movements that caused me to get worse. I tried it first in PT exercises and then in a yoga class that I was told would be good for my back. Woops.

The fourth is a standing side bend with your hand on the wall for a fixed point. A little more spinal biomechanics. When you side bend you will also get some rotation. And remember rotation causes compression which will more than likely cause the issue to get worse.

If you want to mobilize and give your spine some space, then the best things to do are to be able to translate it side to side and to do ELDOA’s. You can see an info video here and a montage of ELDOA’s and Myofascial stretching…. HERE. (This video is for example purposes only and was not designed to be followed).

Again your back pain could come from a lot of different sources and needs to be addressed as such. Don’t settle for a formulaic system to solve it.

If you are truly looking for a cure to back pain, find a practitioner near you who is educated in Soma training/therapy and knows ELDOA. I have been back pain free for 8 years and I’m not held back in the least. ELDOA along with a complete health and fitness program has also helped hundreds of our members get rid of pain and achieve a level of fitness greater than they ever thought.

If you are in Santa Fe and would like to attend a free ELDOA class this Saturday April 30th at 11 am please register HERE.
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