Keeping the spine healthy

One of the most common problems in our world today, is a bad back.
This can have many causes but usually the cause is musculoskeletal.

Whether the cause be a muscle imbalances, strained ligaments or physical injury.
All of these can arise from lack of mobility and incorrect training methods.
The main problem is that people do not move their spine enough and have no awareness and knowledge of the spines mechanical and bio mechanical workings.

To move something you must first be able to feel it.
Therefore a program of spinal health should have a number of goals:

- Increase spinal mobility and flexibility and reduce overall spinal tension

- Increase awareness of the whole spine

- To strengthen the deep spinal and outer spinal muscles in a balanced way

- To eliminate any other muscular imbalances in the body.

Here are a few drills which cover all or most of the goals.

- Spinal rock - You start sitting down on the floor with legs held to your chest, now just rock backwards and forwards, Straight across your spine.
There is a certain point in the range that usually is bypassed and leads to a bump on the floor. This is the lower part of the lower back, Try and do this as slowly as possible and try to roll down every vertebrae for maximum benefit.

- Spinal stretch - Hang on to a pull up bar in pull up grip (wrists facing away) and now just hang there, now move your legs around underneath you. The object of this exercise is to extend the spine and separate the small facet joints to release synovial fluid and lubricate the joints.

- Google: Cobra stretch and downward dog

I highly recommend PAIN free by peter egoscue, for any musculoskeletal pain.

Have fun Training

Tom

Systema - furthur applications after BASE

Systema uses the methods of Systema Breathing to strengthen the student physically and psychologically and to get the student to the BASE level.
After the student has mastery or a high level of understanding of the the BASE then then they can progress to further applications of the training principles.
The Systema method of physical education allows a person to learn any skill or ability in an accelerated way through fun and exciting drills.
For example if a person wishes to learn how to roller skate, here are a number of drills which are Systema based,
but, teach the student to:

- become aware of a foreign object (skates) touching the feet
- Enhance awareness of your own body ,while wearing the skates, in a dynamic way
- Allow the student to learn the skills in an easy and fun way as possible
- teach the student to access the flow state for enhanced learning

Drills - while wearing roller skates (remember to breath

- Rotate the ankles to warm up the joints
- flex the ankle forward and backwards to strengthen the ankle
- stand on one leg and swing the other leg around
- now with both feet on the floor put on a blindfold and walk around in the skates, forwards, backwards, side to side, round and round you choose
- now perform all of the *core exercises(push up, sit up, leg raise, squat) with as good form as possible while wearing the skates
- Now stand up and try to get down to the floor any way you can, now get back up
- same drill as above but use no hands
- Now walk again with the skates on and now with one foot try to push off the floor and roll forward.
- Now standing up, try to inhale and tense every muscle in your body, then exhale and at the same time relax, try this a few times .
- now with a partner have them pull you along by your arms, then push you at the lower back level
- same drill as above but now the partner has to push you along (forwards or backwards) while pushing any part of your body - head, chest, hip, legs etc

*For correct form in the core exercises read the book "Let Every breath, secrets of the Russian * breath masters"

These are just some example drills of how to learn to skate. The number of drills you can create with Systema is limited only by your imagination, and as i said before, you can potentially learn anything with the Systema principles/ drills/ mindset.

Have fun
Tom

Exercise 101

Over the years i have read hundreds of books on exercise, a lot of them were contradictory, but many provided simple effective advice. The books i recommend are:
Anything by Scott sonnon (a genius)
The Systema Breathing book and the old guidebook (now out of print) any systema clips or articles on youtube
Any articles on HIT training, or the tabata protocol
Pace by Al sears
Relax into stretch or Super joints by Pavel tsatsouline
Pain free by Peter Egoscue

There are a number of themes that run through many of these books
here are just few:

1- Body control - To enhance health and physical ability you need to have a high level of body control. You might have heard of hindu yogis who can stop there heart, or people who can walk barefoot on coals or drink hot oil. All of these feats are accomplished by the power of the mind over the body. Something a bit more relevant to us however is - muscular tension - excess tension is detrimental to performance in any sporting pursuit or just in our daily life. A few ideas to become aware of your own tension or unconscious baggage are as follows:

- Circle every joint in your body from your toes to your neck and become aware of where restrictions exist.

- lay on the floor face up and try to relax any obvious tension in your body, then breath in through your nose and tense every muscle in your body, hold it for a count of 7, then exhale through your mouth and relax all of your muscles, repeat this a number of times and you will notice that with repeated effort, the resulting relaxation is deeper.

- try to shake any muscles that feel tired or tense. imagine you have water on them and you are trying to shake it off. Do this with any part of your body.

2 - Include high intensity training such as HIT training or the tabata protocol.
More and more research is now being done to illustrate the importance of high intensity training over low intensity training and the benefits that are being discovered are incredible.
Some include:
- Higher testosterone production
- decreased insulin resistance
- Higher amount of fat loss
- Decreased triglycerides

Here are a few links that discuss more about this:
http://www.alsearsmd.com/content/index.php?id=ha_366_-_get_your_gr
http://www.honewatson.com/11/10/tabata-protocol/
http://www.rosstraining.com/articles/tabataintervals.html
http://brn.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/8/3/177
http://jcem.endojournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/75/1/157

3 - Body symmetry and unity
Your entire body has to be in a state of homeostasis or balance physically and psychologically.
For this post we will concentrate on the physical aspect namely - posture.
The spines "s" curve is the centerpiece of a geometric construction based on parallel vertical and horizontel lines and 90 degree angles. These lines intersect at the 8 load bearing joints of the body: the shoulders, hips, knees and ankles. When a misalignment occurs due to bad posture habits, or over/underdevelopment of some muscles then other muscles start to compensate and this can be the start of chronic pain and many other physical and mental disorders.
So the main thing is - BALANCE. Train both sides of your body equally and train your back, arms, and legs in an equal way. The best way i have found is calisthenics, as they recruit more muscles and work on the stabilizing and core muscles to create a more stable, balanced physique.


Until next time
Stay healthy

Tom