Anyone who’s participated in a large-group charitable event will tell you it’s not the instructor or leader who creates the energy; it’s the purpose and the participants. The energy is multiplied a hundred-fold when it’s a nationwide  effort such as this one. When you know thousands are beside you, the sound is deafening.

Check it out, and if your local club isn’t enlisted yet, there’s still time to make it happen.

Back to our regular readers who wonder what the heck’s a spin bike: Here’s part one of a four-part spin bike tutorial.

Often we’re in pain here or there; other times we just don’t move as well as we used to. Everyone we know says, “Ah, getting older,” as if we’re not supposed to be able to move our joints after we hit our forties. The field of physical therapy has begun to develop new ways to teach people who to move again, and their work is expanding into the training rooms of pro and collegiate level sports and trickling down to us. Those methods give new life to beaten-up athletes and middle-aged desk jockeys alike, and somewhere in that group slides the likes of you and me.

Once on the structure and movement rehabilitation path, each time we find another problem we discover it’s connected to something else, another weak or tight or immobile or inactive bodypart that’s not working as it should. Sometimes it’s so confusing or overwhelming we want to give up, but usually before we get to that place we’ve had an amazing success… enough to keep us eagerly and greedily searching for more.

Because every body is malfunctioning to a different degree, and there are so many joints and muscles that might be involved, it’s pretty much impossible to tell you how to get started. Still, let’s take an overview, possibly enough to get you started on your own path to rehabilitation. Each bolded point below is a link to more information on that topic; when you get to one that intrigues you or sounds like something you’re having a problem with, click over and start your journey there.

• Joint mobility and stability—joint movement, encompassing both the ability of the joint to move through its widest safe range of motion, the ability of the nearby muscles to cause that motion, and stability, such as at the knee, low back, neck and elbow that have a short range of motion and the need to be stable
• Muscle flexibility—muscle lengthening, whether it can move to its full structural range, or if it’s instead shortened to a less than optimum length
• Hip mobility—tightness of some muscles and weakness in opposing muscles keeping your hip from its natural ability to move
• Pelvic tilt—anterior (tilts to the front) or posterior (tilts to the back); you may even have both
• Hip rotation—internal or external rotation; we need both, but in balance
• Strengthen weakness—discover and strengthen lesser muscles that are overpowered by larger surrounding muscles
• Fix the feet—if foot problems aren’t fixed, the structure will never be fully sound
• Activate muscles—waking up a muscle group that’s not firing well
• Thoracic spine mobility—optimal freedom of upper spine movement
• Pectoral flexibility—releasing tight muscles in the front caused by our forward-positioned lifestyles, creating poor upper spine position and mobility
• Core stability—the enduring power of the deep abdominal muscles that control posture and stabilize the spine
• Foam roller—a dense foam cylinder used in self-massage of the legs and torso, and even for the front delts, triceps and forearms
• Triggerpoints—adhesions in muscles or between muscles and tendons that cause surrounding muscles not to function well

Now let’s move over to the forum and get you some help sorting out your next step. Click here to review the topic list of our prehab/rehab and corrective exercise section; you’re welcome to join the conversations in progress, or to start a new topic with your personal concerns. Note: You do have to register and be logged in to post in the forum.

Want to skip all the reading and just get started? Here’s a three-week workout plan for those who don’t care much for the theories, and just want to get started on corrective exercise rehab work.

Yet, many of us can’t think of anything past the pushups and situps we learned wrong back in the third grade. Sure, a YouTube search will dredge up a few hundred clips, but are you sure you want to learn from the authority who calls himself iamdrunk?

There’s a guy, Steve Cotter, who’s well known in both the martial arts and the kettlebell worlds. He’s an outstanding kettlebell instructor, and a generous teacher; if you get a chance to join in a Cotter workshop, you’ll end the day having learned your money’s worth, and more. Just watching the guy is a jaw-dropper.

Meanwhile, for us at home, we have a chance to expand our exercise selection with his bodyweight conditioning dvd series. I expect you’ll plant your face in the floor a few times as he inspires you to try more than you’re able to pull off. I even had to drop back and relearn the basic pushup; somewhere along the time between grammar school and middle age, I picked up an elbow-flaring habit that Steve clearly and repeatedly advised against.

In his teaching, he demonstrates easy, beginning options to the movements, building on each one until only one in a thousand will be able to follow along. On top of these useful progressions of common exercises, we also lay our eyes on unusual ideas such as the side-to-side squat as demonstrated below.

His Encyclopedia of Bodyweight Conditioning is a three-dvd set that covers 56 upper body exercises, 62 lower body exercises and 42 core torso options. There are plenty of $40 and $50 dvds out there running a whopping 45 minutes; clocking in at almost four hours, Steve’s Encyclopedia is a gold mine as well as bargain.

Seriously, don’t you think you could learn something from this guy? Scroll forward to the 30-second mark for a mind-blower:

Byron calls Steve a mutant. You can be sure he means that most respectfully.

Long-term trainees with aching shoulders always start with rotator cuff work using thin rubber tubing. We started doing that in the mid-‘90s and the trend continues, both for rehab and for daily warm-up.

A few years ago many added shoulder YTLWs to the mix, on a stability ball if they were bold enough to do that in public.

A couple years ago wall slides and joint mobility came to the forefront, and the forward-thinkers jumped on board. And the desperate.

These shoulder rehab efforts work, unless the damage done is serious enough to require medical intervention… er, surgery. For most of us, pretty good is good enough.

But is it really? What if there’s one more thing you could do that would make your shoulders feel young again? Would you try it?

A couple months ago in Florida, I had Bill Peel run me through the Gray Cook Athletic Body in Balance version of the functional movement screen. I passed the overhead squat progression, but it was nothing to brag about, and there was room for more range of motion in the backward shoulder movement. The worst of the lot that day was the thoracic mobility screen; I claimed a pass, but barely.

A month of focused attention to shoulder range of motion and remedial thoracic spine mobility work didn’t change much, so what was missing? I thought about some of the practices of the past months and remembered my problems with posture; specifically that in the end it wasn’t back strength to hold my shoulders in position that was missing, it was that tightened muscles in the front were pulling the shoulders forward. No amount of strength would be enough to keep my shoulders back until the muscles in the front were stretched regularly to give them the length to rest in good postural position.

Huh. What if that’s the problem with the rear range of motion in the shoulders? Huh! What do you know? It’s magic!

If your shoulder range of motion to the rear is lacking, one side more than the other or both sides equally, give this a try:

Lie on your back on the floor, knees bent, feet flat as if standing. Raise your arms overhead to rest on the floor; if both arms are flat on the floor, move along… there’s nothing for you here.

If only the backs of your wrists or not much more of the arms are touching the floor, or if one side if touching more than the other, rest in position, breathing regularly and deeply into the abdomen. Occasionally, breathe deep, expand the ribcage and keep it expanded by letting out a tiny bit of air and refilling the space. The point of this is to use your full air to hold the ribcage open and as far as possible from its connections at the spine. Stay there, arms overhead, knees bent until you begin to feel the backs of your arms flatten onto the floor.

This is probably going to take awhile, five minutes, ten, maybe more. You’ll probably be okay with that, though, because as it happens it feels a bit miraculous. The muscles and tendons of the upper torso and the thoracic spine and rib cage are relaxing, lengthening, and you can feel it happening.

In a few days, what was stressful and took fifteen minutes will be easy, relaxing and will only take five.

Couple of tips:

If you simply can’t get your hands overhead, start with a lesser angle, such as hands outstretched in a T position. If (or when) the backs of your arms rest heavily on the floor, move your hands up a bit, heading towards a Y angle. This way you’ll ease your way into the overhead position over time; it may take what feels like too much time, but in the end, it will work.

If there’s a twinge in your upper back, different than the stretching that you feel throughout the upper torso, you may need to roll around on a tennis ball or medicine ball to address a triggerpoint or a tight lat before doing the stretch. The trigger point work can be outrageously painful, but the upside is releasing that triggerpoint may be a key — and immediate — factor in relieving your shoulder pain.

Final points:

Don’t do this early in the morning; afternoon or after a workout is best. A light and easy doorway stretch — not forced — is good in the morning to reverse overnight sleeping posture, but your thoracic spine and rib cage aren’t ready for this radical stretch before warming up to the day.

After resting with the arms overhead for awhile, has one side settled onto the floor with the other side still lifted? Try shifting the hip of the lifted side. Did the shoulder just flatten? Triple bingo going on here: Go back and read up on the troubles of hip rotation.

It’s remarkable, really. And it may be the answer to the last of your shoulder distress.

*****

Late edit: I’ve had a few private notes about this from people who were amazed at how this worked for them. However, one person pushed too hard and tweaked his shoulder, so let me bring up two more points.

Relax into this; don’t push it. The point is to wait long enough to allow your body to relax. You can’t make that happen… you have to be patient enough to lay there until it happens.

Which brings up point two: This may take days, weeks even. Dave’s doing this, and his hands overhead are nearly a foot off the floor behind him. Seriously… no, I’m not exaggerating. No amount of forcing is going to loosen up his upper torso. He’s going to have to wait it out, and so might you.

Think about how often you stand on one leg. Most of us do it regularly throughout the day, and it’s somewhat likely it’s causing a problem that starts at the hip and reverberates from there.

Get up from your chair. Seriously, stand up. You’ll have to feel this to catch the meaning.

From a standing position, shift your weight to the right leg. Go ahead and rest your weight to the side as you’d normally do. Does your left hip drop down and your right hip jut out?

Re-center yourself and put the palm of your right hand on the front of your right hip. Shift back to the right side, only this time slow it down. Do you feel how your hip actually turns?

What has just happened is your right hip rotated inward, moving the weight of your body off the muscles of your full leg and onto the weaker muscles above the back of the hip and at the outside of the leg. Over time, this common habit is causing both tightness and weaknesses that are not natural.

Next, still with your weight on the right leg, purposefully bring your hip around so it’s facing the front, which is its correct position. Do you see how hard that is to do, and to hold there? Those are the tightness and weakness issues keeping your hip from its natural placement. Interesting, isn’t it?

We’ve seen the problem at the hip and realize we’re reinforcing that bad position numerous times each day. You next question may be, “What’s the big rip?”. What’s the difference if the hip rotates inward?

Go back to the original side stance, the weight resting fully on your right side with the hip jutted to the right. Look down at your knee (you may have to drop your pants for this one; hope you’re not at the office). Is it still facing forward, the healthy way it should be? Nope, probably not – how could it be? You have knee pain? Stop and read this again, slowly; you’re onto something important.

No wait, let’s look a little further: The ankle’s messed up, too, isn’t it? The knee is turned in, so the weight on the ankle is toward the outside. And there’s pressure on your heel instead of having your weight balanced on your entire foot, am I right?

Just for kicks, check out the left side by shifting your weight over there. Is it as bad as the right?

You’ve just seen how our bad standing habits, our postures, have a ripple affect down the body. Over time, this puts strain on the joints, connective tissue and muscles causing the joints to become less mobile in an attempt to protect the body, causing arthritis due to excessive pressure in unnatural positions, causing muscle tightness and vulnerability at crucial points, all leading to a list of easily fixable pain that can last a lifetime.

And that can be prevented if you’re willing to recognize that Dave and his peers were wrong about one thing: There actually is a little more to this than just hitting the iron, and in this case, those science guys really are onto something.

We talk about this and more in the movement patterns section of the forum. This stuff is important, and I’m so thrilled it’s becoming part of the mainstream fitness discussion.

Here’s a guy who’s been training for 25 years and is thinking of quitting the weight room because of back pain. The forum members gather around with re-building suggestions that most readers would do well to practice.

Over here, Andy asked for clarification on central nervous system burnout. We’ll see some interesting comments, with a real zinger from Keith Wassung that makes clear the whole CNS question.

Ever wonder why anyone would stand on a stability ball? Let alone try to do loaded squats on one? Byron begins the discussion on balance work.

Every guy I know walks around the gym rubbing his shoulders (fewer women do this, because most of us aren’t as stupid about bench pressing). John Izzo contributes his 7-phase approach to protecting the shoulders, and a good group chime in with questions and additions on this important subject.

Wondering about Smith Press or barbell, behind the neck or in front, a member from the UK asks for views on shoulder pressing.

When would you choose a full body workout; when is a split routine better? The pros and cons of both are discussed in this thread.

In the IOL Co-op Training Log this month, Dan Manor leads a team through a fat-loss quest during April. There’ll be plenty to read in here this month, me thinks.

Spend a little time clicking around the 16,152 topics. There’s a lot to learn, and we promise some grins along the way. With 422,277 posts, however, it make take you a bit to catch up. How’s the weekend looking?

First you want to know what the heck is a foam roller. Simple: it’s a dense foam cylinder used (for this discussion; there are other uses) in self-massage of the legs and torso, and even for the front delts, triceps and forearms for the adventurous.

Think of it as a way to get a short massage daily, without driving anywhere or paying anything, where you get to zero in on exactly the spot the responds the most. Perfect! You’ll roll your way from calves to shoulders, staying on each muscle area for about ten short strokes, avoiding the joints and bony spots.

The key to enjoying the process and getting the most benefit is to settle in, relax and enjoy the process. Trying to hurry your way through this is a bit of a waste of time, unlikely to do much, even though it doesn’t take very long to run the body.

With regular foam rolling of the thoracic spine, my back stays loose and unbound, free and mobile with rare need of a chiropractor. Compared with pre-foam rolling, that alone is remarkable.

Those knots of spasming muscle you have, or those nasty, pain-referring adhesions in the fascia that connects the muscles into tendons and bones, those can all be released and relieved with your cheap home foam roller.

Calves, hamstrings, quads, IT band along the outside of the legs, glutes, spine, lats, back of the shoulder, front delts, triceps, top and bottom of the forearm, one tool, no waiting for a mate to feel like giving you a massage. I love this thing, and when you get one, if you have patience and try it daily for a week, you’ll love it, too.
I use a quick run over the foam roller as a pre-workout wake-up call that takes two minutes at most and prepares the mind and body for the warm-up moves to follow. Post-workout, five minutes becomes ten as the worked muscles welcome the gentle massage. A glance at the clock is required to remind me there’s still work to be done, time’s a’wasting.

It’s a wonderful feeling that will help athletes, week-end warriors, aging fitness enthusiasts, desk jockeys, hairdressers and construction workers alike. As those decades-old aches begin to diminish, you’re gonna write back and thank me for this one. In turn, I’ll refer you on to my pal, Dan Martin, who’ll tell you to thank Eric Cressey and Mike Robertson. I pretty much lose the trail there, and cannot tell you who first began rolling or who invented the foam gizmo.

Here’s our forum conversation on foam rolling if you’d like to read more or join in the conversation. Quick pointer: Spend a few extra bucks for the black or blue EVA rollers; the white foam seems to crush too easily for all but the smallest of adults.

Or not.
Easy solution: Skip the anxiety, arguing or subsequent frustration and order the tests you’re interested in via Life Extension’s Blood Testing Panels.

The only downside I can see is that you don’t know in advance where the labs are. LEF is using LabCorp as their lab, so before you order, make sure there’s a LabCorp location near you. Here’s a link to the LabCorp locations.

In case you need a refresher, this is a list of recommended tests for the status of your heart. And here’s a link to a great deal of cholesterol information, three years of cholesterol posts pulled together to keep you reading for the next couple of hours.

In this link, Life Extension provides an in-depth discussion of blood testing protocols, and the value of bringing our blood chemistry to optimal levels.

Do you have time for some price shopping? Compare the Life Extension costs with those of HealthCheckUSA, where they also use Labcorp facilities for the blood draw. A couple test prices I checked were identical, but not all. It may be worth the trouble to check both places for your needs.

I’m a big fan of regular blood testing. Try the Vitamin D test, what a trip that will be if you discover your Vitamin D is low, which it very well might be. This one’s a biggie, and until recently very few of us knew it. Check out that Vitamin D link if this is a new one on you, then make a plan to get your bloodwork done.

It’s a mess of small and large issues to write about, but since it’s a sure thing most who read this have one or two pain problems that are a result of weakness in another area, I wrote a long forum post describing all the exercises I’ve used over the past couple of months. Some are still in the rotation; others provided the needed results and have been dropped for the time being, if not forever.

My purpose was to try out a variety of movements to find out which felt most effective for me, what I personally needed the most. Those that were easy got dumped after the first try; the hard ones are the exercises that made it into the rotation. Remember, we’re looking for problems and fixes, not easy exercises.

That was my thought in making the long list for others to try. If it feels too random for you, pick the exercises you think you need and create your own workout/s.

I do think most people who’ve been training for a long time will be surprised at how feeble they feel on some of these easy-peasy exercises. Most of us have weak spots that need attention, and that’s why I hope you’ll continue on and give the post the time needed to simmer into your brain.

You’ll be surprised to discover the workouts each took only about 20 minutes to do a single set in the order listed. The first couple of times through will probably take about twice that until you get the hang of the exercises.

I’d do one set of each exercise the first week, two the second and up to three the third if you can spare the time. By that point, you’ll know which are hard, which are easy. The easy ones get set aside in favor of those that are difficult for you… those are the ones you need.

Off you go then: Bodyweight Rehab Introductory Workouts.

What a great time this is to be a young athlete, and what I mean by that is that over the next few years the new generation will get corrective exercise, movement screening and instructions such as daily foam rolling as part of their athletic training. Soon this stuff will be done by coaches down to the high school level, and, as the athletes age, they’ll take this knowledge with them into adulthood. Those athletes have an excellent chance at less pain in their golden years, something the Golden Era bodybuilders unfortunately were not able to demonstrate.

Corrective exercise and movement screening is how this is filtering down to the average weight training athlete.

I’ll give you a brief introduction so when your kid comes home spouting his or her coach’s instructions, you’ll be up on the lingo. Better yet, you’ll start taking note when the terms come up in forum conversations and exercise newsletters, because there are gems in this new work that can truly reverse some of your nagging aches and pains. I kid you not.

The term corrective exercise broadly refers to specific exercise or stretches designed to target a defect in a person’s physical movement. What happens is in our lives, either through our day-to-day work, unbalanced exercise selection in the weight room, lopsided sports activity like golf, tennis or softball, or just plain sitting around too much, muscle groups work at diminished capacity, letting others take over the tasks.

Often the wrong muscles doing the work, or one side of the body working better than the other, will cause a cascade of physical problems, such as back and knee pain. Sometimes the problems have gone on long enough they can’t be fixed without surgery, or can’t be fixed at all, but more often than not, a month of attention to corrective exercise rehab will reverse a future of pain, and with surprisingly little effort.

The guys leading us into this bright future come from two basic schools of thought: movement screening and structural assessment.

Gray Cook, the author of Athletic Body in Balance, and his business partner, Lee Burton, have designed what they call the Functional Movement Screen, a set of physical tests used by physical therapists, strength and conditioning coaches and, increasingly, forward-thinking personal trainers. Their philosophy in creating the screen is to test the movement and use the exercises they’ve come up with to correct the faulty movement pattern. The point with the FMS is to fix the problem, not dissect it down to the various causes; to their thinking it doesn’t matter what caused it, just fix it.

On the other side we find guys like Gary Gray, Justin Price and Anthony Carey, who prefer to assess the athlete or client’s structure, discover the discrepancies and prescribe exercises to fix the various issues.

Many of the suggestions will be the same, regardless of the method of discovery. The real problem for most of us in today’s environment is that, while increasing rapidly, the professionals able to do the assessments are still few and far between. Chances of a skilled pro in your town are relatively rare, which leaves us looking at the movement screening for our at-home fixes.

As an aside, I will say if I lived in San Diego, I’d be at Justin’s or Anthony’s clinic in a heartbeat, or if near Danville, Virginia, I’d be over at Gray and Lee’s place as soon as I could get an appointment. Ditto Gary Gray’s in Michigan. Another guy who can help you out in Connecticut is John Izzo of StandApartFitness.com. The beauty of this stuff is it can be as little as a one-time visit – get tested, get your assignment and get to work, so even if you have to make a drive to get assessed or re-assessed, it’s not like it’s a weekly appointment. It’ll be worth it, I promise.

Assuming you don’t live in those areas, here’s whatcha do next: Gray Cook took the Functional Movement Screen that he and Lee designed for the pros to use, and dumbed it down for the rest of us. In Athletic Body in Balance, you’ll find five simple tests (don’t read that to be easy tests) you can do at home to determine your weakest link. From there, the book goes on to tell you exactly how to fix it, which exercises or stretches and in what order you should best tackle them.

On Tom Incledon’s recommendation, I tested myself when the book first came out in 2003. I failed so miserably I bagged the project, thinking a book for “athletes” wasn’t for me. Failure in movement means pay attention… Get a clue!Unfortunately, I didn’t pick that book back up until a month ago.

This time, however, I knew enough about the corrective exercise movement to know the failures were signposts pointing me in the right direction. I followed the instructions and re-tested a month later, last weekend in fact, and the success of February’s exercise effort was remarkable. Instead of ramming the pvc marker into the doorway, falling over (yes, I’m talking about to the floor) or missing the position entirely, all five tests received a passing grade. I’m not done; nothing was perfect, yet the progress in four weeks was truly outstanding.

Lest this not sound like it’s simply about passing a test, let me tell you a bit about how things feel: My back feels better, my shoulders move better and without pain, my posture’s straighter, and my stride is longer and more athletic. I want more of that and have targeted the exercises suggested for last weekend’s lower-scoring tests.

I want this for you, too, so just go ahead and spring for Gray’s book, Athletic Body in Balance. Yes, I know you don’t feel like an athlete. Just do it anyway.