Move to Live Yoga and Boutique Fitness Studio

07/24/2023

Question for you to think about, NOT to share: When was the last time pain kept you from doing something you wanted to do? Being really honest with yourself, how much did you really miss the thing you did not do?

07/22/2023

I am "never" going to say don't lift weights or do other resistance training. However, anectdotally as a 60+ woman who has done resistance training since the early -mid 1970s as part of competitive swimming programs. I chose universal weight machine classes for school PE because it made me a faster swimmer and fit into my twice/day pool workout schedule the best. My commitment to a weight training and gym schedule ebbed and flowed through my adult years, but I always came back to it.

Now long post-menopausal I have seen clear evidence of muscle loss for quite a few years, but I am convinced that stronger quads, hamstrings, biceps, etc. are not what is most likely to help me avoid frailty as I age. Helpful yes, for sure, but is it balance, stability and proprioception that will help most, in my opinion. Bigger muscles won't make it easier to avoid falls if I have crappy balance, instability in my hips/knees/ankles or have to look down to see where I am placing my foot with each step.

Because I have been a fitness consumer my whole life, and a provider for some of it, I get marketed to A LOT. And I see a lot of marketing around the concepts in this Washington Post article. You know pictures of really old ladies doing various barbell lifts. Great. Nothing wrong with it.

But please, please, please spend at least as much time on balance, stability and proprooception as you do weight/resistance training, because without those, all the muscles you gain lifting are likely, e.g. to be crumpled on the floor at the bottom of the stairs with the rest of you because you missed a step and couldn't get your balance quickly.

Any type and amount of weight training works to build strength and mass, whether people lifted heavy weights or much lighter ones

07/20/2023

To build real stability and mobility you have to focus on it. Sadly, other movement practices effectively teach us how to work around our instability and lack of mobility by moving faster and/or moving differently. Our bodies are quite happy to move in the easiest way possible and that is often not an effective way. We need to be accountable to ourselves to accomplish these goals because it is unlikely to happen consistently in a group setting. No criticism of group classes, it is just not possible for an instructor to see, comment, and assist all those in the class. This is super detailed work.

Try this to work on stability and mobility: balance on one leg without collapsing into it. Lift up and out of the standing hip. You will likely immediately feel the extra effort of the lift. Then raise the knee on the other leg and rotate it in the hip socket. Don't cheat the movement. Read the captions on each picture- there are two that have effective cheats and one that actually helps my hip stability and mobility.

07/19/2023

Strength doesn't make our bodies stable.

07/18/2023

What to do in Vegas when it is 115 degrees out?
Hip work, of course, on my travel mat in my air conditioned room! Air travel and sitting all day at the conference would leave me hurting if I didn't. Some targeted stability and flexibility work and everything felt better!

07/04/2023

I realized I had a problem after the third leg (of four) of my cross-country bike ride. My pain was focused in my hips, primarily in my right hip. I was lucky as it clearly could have been in my back and knees as well. In addition to cycling, I had been doing yoga, spinning and CrossFit for years. Few people would have described me as being weak or tight. But no one- including me- saw all the places where these weaknesses were lurking because I had become -over many, many years - very good at compensating. I finally started to see it in March 2022 when I was riding the Natchez Trace (440 miles from Natchez, MS to Nashville, TN) and one of the leaders was a professional cycling coach. He came up beside me on a climb and asked me "why do you collapse through your core when you climb?" I didn't know I did. I had the leg power to climb without my core and so I did. It was less efficient and poor biomechanics, but it "worked" so well I didn't even realize that is what I was doing. After completing the TransAm bike ride in October 2022, I was unable to ride. I was unable to do most workouts that had been my staples. I couldn't sit, including driving, without pain. Over the course of several months, I went to see 2 orthopedic surgeons, got physical therapy, and read a lot.

What was super-interesting to me was that riding my horse was not painful. Even though it was primarily sitting, the angle of my legs in my hip socket was totally different than any other sitting, and that started me on a new way of thinking. That path has reduced my pain to almost zero and I have better balance than I have had since I was a kid.

07/03/2023

Here is a short sequence to, again, isolate the movement of the leg in the hip socket and not more of the body get involved.

Warm up with a couple of cat/cows, making sure to keep your sternum parallel to the floor, not flaring in either position or in the transitions.

Let me know how it goes!

07/02/2023

Many of us have places in our body where we are locked up, where we can't/don't move parts of ourselves independently - for example, we have trouble twisting so that our shoulders are facing in one direction and our hips in another. If you struggle with twists, that is a great place to start and let me know if you want some suggestions about a variety of twists that can be incorporated into your daily routine in just a minute or two.

In this video, we start from a reclining twist and that becomes the focus for moving our legs independent of each other. One leg is unmoving while the other rotates in the hip socket while twisting. Start with very small circles and only let the movement get bigger when your pelvis is stable in the smaller ones.

Things to note:
--don't collapse your lower back at the start or when you twist. There should be room for one hand between your back and the floor. If your back is pressed onto the floor it is hyper extended and your deep core cannot fully engage. We want it active.
--don't let your ribs pop up to help facilitate the movement.
-- if you find your pelvis is rocking or wobbling, it is just a sign that the movement is one you need in order to be able to find stability. That is really good information.
--you may feel odd sensations, pops and thunks are common as your leg rotates around in the socket. It is normal.

06/26/2023

This weekend, I volunteered as ring crew at a working equitation horse show. I learned a lot about the discipline, which I am learning with Roði, but I also was on my feet, lifting and moving stuff around and walking all day for two days back-to-back. I would have been in a lot of pain a few months ago. I would have been feeling old and tired. My hips would have been screaming at me, my back would have had a few harsh things to say and my legs would have ached. Those feelings, ached and pains are what led me on this path of changing my movement mechanics. They led me to focus on waking up those long dormant muscles that had been overpowered by the bigger and stronger ones that, simply were not designed for the job I was asking them to do. After a very full weekend, and seeing just how far I have come, it is back to the mat for me! I do not want to lose all the progress I have made! I do not want to go back to that place where it was all falling apart! Onward!

06/22/2023

Goals:
1) stability in mobility, and
2)movement with stability