IOL Strength and Conditioning

Monday was Day One of my return to regular weight training after six months of corrective exercise rehab. Most of my forum pals can’t fathom why I would consider taking that much time away from the gym, and truthfully if I’d have known in advance it would take that long, I wouldn’t have done it.

At least, not until something decked me, which once you see the list you’ll realize was about to happen. Talk about a train wreck!

Tired of daily back aches and knowing there wasn’t an actual injury causing the problem, I decided at the first of the year to take a month and try to figure it out. Six months have passed, and take a look at the list of nagging niggles that are now either completely gone or at least mostly gone and fading fast.

Chronic pains that I’d had for months, years or decades – note the past tense:

Joints hurt, especially in the morning
Lousy posture, real lousy
Head tilted to one side slightly
Couldn’t turn head to the right very well
Twinge in the neck when turning head left
One shoulder raised
Internally rotated shoulders (palms facing rear)
Right shoulder ache
Impingement pain under left scapula
Elbow ache
Wrist ache
Thumb ache
Upper back ache
Lower back ache
Scoliosis (functional not actual)
One leg shorter than the other (functional not actual)
Shifted from leg to leg when standing, due to hip pain
Habitually stood on one leg with hip jutted out
Achilles tendonitis
Heel pain (resulting in a closet full of perfect left shoes and worn-down right shoes with costly insoles and heel lifts)
Dropped metatarsal, both feet
Duck walk (toes pointed out)

How did those get fixed? Surprisingly easy:

Worked mobility of all joints
Stretched some spots
Strengthened others
Worked out the triggerpoints littered throughout

I’m still waiting for a few things to settle in; that part takes a while. There’ll be a day of blissful pain-free motion — like I’m really moving well — then a day of lots of popping and shifting of the joints, or even a day of reminder of the old chronic aches. Following that will be another day or two of childlike movement that reminds me why I veered off the mainstream and onto this corrective exercise course.

I’m fully convinced most everyone who trains who has regular muscle and skeletal pain and those who get injured often in training, can make themselves feel better by a dedicated joint mobility program and by fixing relatively easy structural imbalances caused by one side being too tight and the other too weak.

It’s a pain in the rear because there aren’t too many people around — the personal trainers and the medical pros — who can do a hands-on analysis and simply tell us what to do. As this field grows enough that we can pop by the clinic and get a personalized exercise and stretching assignment, everyone will be doing it… for sure, because it works, and sometimes fast.

Obviously we can’t fix everything, but I’m 100% sure we can make things better. I’m also absolutely certain this past half-year’s effort has halted any arthritis that may have been developing due to poorly moving joints. In fact, let me give you a hint here: That thoracic spine of yours that doesn’t move very much is a nest for your growing arthritis. Get after it while you can!

My project for July: Are pain-free noisy knees fixable? We used to say if there was no pain, it was no problem; just ignore it. Now I’m not so sure. Maybe it means the knees aren’t tracking as well as they could be. I’ll let you know what I find out, and if somehow these crunchy knees go quiet, I’ll holler out with your fix-it instructions.

Which supplements should I buy? That’s one of the most common questions simmering in the IOL discussion forum. The confusion caused by over-the-top advertising combined with a petrol-powered shrinking wallet size will mess with a new trainee’s head, so let’s boil it down to something simple.

Start with this: Rarely is taking a supplement short term valuable. Occasionally we’ll have an issue such as a bladder problem that can be addressed with a short course of D-Mannose for example, but generally speaking, if you can’t afford to continue a supplement over the long-term, a single bottle of a $50 product “just to test it” is not worth your money, and even less worth the concern.

We want to select supplements that will help us over the lifetime, not the newest fancy-label ingredient popular this month with the gym floor gossip crowd.

But first, before anyone starts with the specifics, set a budget. That’s right… a budget. That credit card you’re using for your internet buys is not a magic money maker; you need to decide in advance exactly how much you can afford to spend on supplements each and every month. How much is it? $75? Less? More?

We’ll use the seventy-five number and see where that takes us. Not too far, I think you can guess, so get serious from the outset: Those testosterone boosters are flat out on this budget. If you get all eager-beaver and press the Buy button without thinking it through, you’re either going to forego your multi-vitamin and protein powder, or you’re going to eat into your evaporating retirement fund.

Before you can begin to choose the supplements that are right for you, you’ll next have to take stock of your circumstances. Look here:

Regular food consumption: Do you eat a variety of whole foods daily, or do you flake off on the vegetables or run yourself through the local drive-through at lunch?

Protein intake: Do you get protein several times a day, or just at dinner?

Fish as food: Do you eat fish regularly, particularly oily fish such as salmon?

Fiber intake: Is there plenty of fibrous vegetables, fruits or bran in your menu?

Training goals: Are you striving hard but not making the gains you hope for?

Access to the sun: Do you get outside daily, and does the sun hit your skin?

Vitamin C intake: Do you eat red bell peppers or citrus fruits?

Dairy intake: Do you get enough calcium?

Age: Are your joints beginning to ache; are you beginning to have trouble with digestion; do you sleep well?

Genetics: Does osteoporosis run in your family? Heart disease?

Given your personal answers to the above considerations, you can begin to hone down your list of priority supplements. Starting with our budget of $75, you’ll discover we don’t get very far down the list. Heck, we barely get a protein powder with our multi-vitamins!

Hint: Dave’s big idea… move the protein powder out of the supplement category and over to the food budget. That works pretty good, but it might be cheating some. On the other hand, a protein shake is probably replacing a meal, so I guess it’s fair; let’s do it.

1.    Quality vitamin/mineral
2.    Fish oil
3.    Protein powder
4.    Metamucil
5.    Creatine
6.    Vitamin D
7.    Vitamin C
8.    Vitamin E
9.    Vitamin B-complex
10.   Calcium, magnesium and zinc
11.   Glucosamine/Chondroitin/MSM

A sharp shopper who moves the protein powder and Metamucil over to her food budget, and if she tosses the creatine off the list (which I can do because I’ve switched our shopper over to the female gender, and women for the most part don’t like the water weight gain of creatine), can probably get that list done on budget. Nice work!

Past the basics most everyone should use, we begin to get to the specifics an individual might need, stuff like L-Glutamine for gut health and muscle repair, ZMA and melatonin for sleep issues, iodine to boost a sluggish metabolism, enzymes for an aging digestive system, or 5-HTP for a serotonin lift.

Those with an eye toward the most current nutrient science are already taking a second look at Vitamin K, a vitamin the rest haven’t yet heard about in the nightly news.

A hard-striving athlete will probably try to widen the wallet for some branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs) or a handful of liver tablets, and would find no quarrel here. He also might spring for a bottle of NO2 for a test run; most of the reports around the forum have been less than stellar, as was Dave’s experience (a dud is what he called it), but there are definitely some who keep rolling with it, so it’s worth a try if it fits in the budget.
The same athlete getting a little long in the tooth and stuffing a bigger bank account will be extremely pleased with Ageless Growth, no stretching the truth there. But again, none of those are on the month here-month there plan; if you don’t have the budget for them, don’t try a bottle to check ‘em out. No gains from BCAAs or Ageless Growth will hold after the initial supply runs out.

Digging a little deeper brings us to the serious issues of hormonal imbalance and heart health. Supplementation can absolutely help in some cases, but first we need to dedicate some time and finances to a doctor’s visit and a list of blood tests.

Buying all the latest forum rage of testosterone boosters and heart strengthening supplements is both expensive and stupid. If you need these, you need a baseline test and a real specific supplement plan, not a fancy ad-itorial or a synopsis of the newest research that may or may not suggest hope for some off-beat herbal preparation.

And you need to move those ingredients — worthy stuff like CoQ10, policosanol, an estrogen blocker like DIM or 6-OXO (quick tip: try daily broccoli first) — out of your supplement budget and over to your medical one. There’s no room left in your supplement category, particularly for some of these expensive items.

A long conversation spanning the past four years takes place here in the forum. Feel free to join in the discussion with your current thinking.

Last week, the half-way point in my ten-week introduction to Feldenkrais movement classes, I decided to spring for an individual therapy session. It was both an enjoyable experience as well as a breakthrough, so let me tell you about it.

In the group lessons, about a dozen women and one brave guy spend about an hour and a half on the floor, sometimes face up, sometimes face down. The instructor in this case is a woman who knows as much as any doctor about how the muscles work together and what input each bodypart needs from the others to do its job.

Using as little verbal guidance as possible, and even less visual — but as much as necessary — she runs the class through a list of tiny movements designed to remind the brain how to use more muscles. She doesn’t exactly tell us how to do it; the purpose is to use the micro-exercises to trigger a brain response, not for her to explain the action.

For instance, at the beginning of the session, the raising of an arm may start at the shoulder; at the end of the class the whole of the back beginning at the opposite hip will get in on the action. Little by little, more muscles at work to move the arm, the point being less fatigue and less pain when the body movements are optimal.

Now this may sound silly, and to a visitor watching but not participating, it must look as goofy as all getout. But I’ll tell you, I leave these classes moving very smoothly, very nicely for about a day, then sore all over the following day. We’re using muscles in these small, targeted exercises that usually don’t get much use, and it’s enough of a pain that I’ve had to schedule my regular training around the class instead of the other way around.

After a few classes, I began to get clues about which areas are giving me the most trouble, the thoracic spine and the hips… still. Since the instructor had seen what I can and can’t do, it seemed like a good time to schedule an individual session.

I expected her to walk me through a list of personalized exercises, but that wasn’t how this treatment turned out. Instead, it was hands-on, her moving my joints through their full ranges of motion with me on the table, passive.

Let me tell you first off, it was very pleasant, and the range of motion was a good deal better than I can perform on my own. This was joint mobility at the highest level; Moshe Feldenkrais again ahead of his time.

How about the results? That’s the real issue, and more than just that post-session afternoon, during which I *floated* around town doing errands.

Once home, I try my most important test — on the floor, face up, to gauge how the hips rest: flat. What’s that again? FLAT, that is to say, hips resting evenly on the floor.

Now I’m stunned, not quite believing what I’m feeling. I’m about six months into a corrective exercise, rehabilitation phase designed to fix a number of issues, the most difficult of which was an anterior tilt in one hip and a posterior tilt in the other; one hip shifted forward, the other back, which flat on the floor means one rests heavily as the other barely touches. That day — last Thursday — they rested evenly for the first time in twenty or thirty years.

Today, six days later, they’re still even. I’m nervous to write this, but I will anyway: This problem seems fixed. You notice I’m still too chicken to write that it IS fixed. But I think it is.

Here’s what I think happened. I spent the past months strengthening the back of one side and the front of the other, and lengthening the front of one side and the back of the other. All the prep work was done; the imbalance had been fixed. It just took the Feldenkrais practitioner to move the joints through their full ranges of motion — farther and smoother than I’m able to do using muscle action — for the brain to recognize the mobility.

It sounds as far-fetched as … I dunno… astrology, maybe. But I’m here to tell you, those hips are even, and I wasn’t able to do it alone.

It’s been frustrating to do all the right work, really attentively, with little or no results. Ugly work, one side getting one program and the other side a different one, with nothing to show for it these months later. Then, all of the sudden… poof… I’m done.

I’m wildly guessing here, but I wonder if it’s not a case of how long the problem was there, the duration of the imbalance. If it had only been a recent development, those oddly tilting hips, the corrective exercises may have worked alone, and I’d have been telling you of that success long ago.

Perhaps if you’ve had a problem for a long time and have worked the appropriate corrective exercise program diligently with no results, maybe, just maybe, you’ll experience a miraculous correction with an individual Feldenkrais session.

I’m afraid that this is going to be a rambling post, so if you’re not in the mood to indulge me…you might wish to look at other areas of the site. Due to a recently acquired shoulder issue, I’ve been forced to change my training and re-evaluate some of my thoughts regarding training, results, health, longevity and goals. Whew! Still with me?

Most of us train because we enjoy it. We look forward to our session with the Iron…if we don’t, something is amiss. Like any enjoyable activity, we engage in it frequently. Like any enjoyable activity, there is also a potential for abuse. If we engage in this activity so intensely and so frequently that it consumes an inordinate amount of our time and interferes with our daily lives…that is abuse. It goes without saying, that if it harms us, it is abusive.

For example, the first area where I found myself engaged in abuse was the quest for results. Like anyone else that is honest, I preferred that results from my training be quickly obtained, rather than slowly. To be totally honest, I wanted “overnight” results. In order to achieve this, I was willing to engage in some training “ideas” and protocols that upon later examination, harmed me rather than helped me. Let’s examine two of them - training in mechanically inefficient positions and training to failure of positive movement.

Vince Gironda is probably one of the best known proponents of modifying movement positioning and performance to target specific areas and obtain quick results - i.e. making a movement harder and training in a mechanically inefficient position. This causes the muscles targeted to work harder and grow quicker. Which sounds OK upon shallow examination…but in my case, it proved harmful. Any time you bypass the body’s natural patterns of movement, there is the potential for harm…and that is the “dirty little secret” of training Vince Gironda style.

Let’s examine some of his recommendations for pectoral development and specific movements - the V bar pec dip and the Neck Press. In the dip, you’re supposed to use vee shaped dipping bars with the ends spaced some 32 to 36 inches apart. You dip by holding your body concave and dip to the limit of your shoulder flexibility and then slightly “bounce” at the bottom. The wide grip and body positioning is supposed to minimize the contribution of the shoulders and transfer the stress to the lower pectorals. In an ideal world, this works…but in my world, it increased the stress on the shoulder attachments and elbows, eventually hastening injury. The same situation existed with the neck (bench) press.

The neck press is performed by taking a wide, thumbless grip on the barbell. The elbows are intentionally held wide and in line with the bar. The bar is lowered high on the chest, nearly to the base of the throat and then pressed back up. This really stretches the pectorals and directs the emphasis to the upper portion mainly…again minimizing the contribution of the triceps and deltoids from the positioning. If you have robust shoulders, this is exactly how it does work. If not, you are actually causing the shoulder to rotate in an unnatural manner and are again, stressing the attachments just as much as the muscles.

Herein is the problem. Your body is efficient, it seeks to accomplish a task with the least amount of effort. Usually, this is because many, many muscles are working together in planes of movements that have the most beneficial leverage. When you modify that, you cause multiplication of stresses in specific areas. One more example: Vince was big on the use of the sissy squat, to avoid the activation of the gluteus and to direct the stress to the lower portion of the quadriceps, just above the knee. This was done by rising up on the toes, leaning back and “hinging” the movement from the knees, with a straight body. This really minimized the gluteal contribution and really focused on the lower quads. The problem with that is that it changes what kind of lever your legs are and directs most of the stress to the knees. In a normal, naturally performed squat, you lean forward just slightly and this activates the lower back, the glutes and just about everything else. Rising is effortless, compared with a sissy squat and the knees aren’t stressed as much. Why? Because your body is working in the manner that is was designed to work.

When I was young and wanted instant muscles and results, natural movement didn’t matter to me. Now that I’m much older, the accumulation of dings and dents and numerous insults from less than natural training practices, has caused me to question the intelligence of how I trained as a young man. Were I to do it all over again, I’d work more along the lines of natural patterns of movement and let the chips fall where they would…and would probably have a lot less injuries and still be able to do various movements.

Have you had enough heresy? Stick around, there’s more.

Training to failure is another training protocol that appears to be very logical and well thought out upon surface examination. You want to work a muscle somewhere in the area of 60 to 80 percent of available output, to maximally stimulate the adaptive responses that cause muscle to grow rapidly. The problem with this thought is, how do you determine when you’ve reached this percentage of effort? The easiest way is to go well beyond that…and then you can be sure that in passing, you’ve reached it. Dig? If you train until you fail to complete the positive portion of a repetition, you can guarantee that you’ve reached 60 to 80 percent output. Simple.

However, training in this manner requires exacting attention to proper form. Since you’re trying to achieve literal exhaustion of the targeted muscle mass, you’re also going to exhaust stabilizing muscles as well. When these stabilizers exhaust, your ability to hold proper form is compromised and you’re likely to experience injury. If you’re like most folks, you’re also willing to sacrifice proper form in order to get a few more reps or use a few more pounds…again at the expense of potential injury.

This style of training is also hard on your body’s recovery system. As your strength increases and your ability to train intensely increases, your demand for recovery time and nutrients also increases. If you don’t provide both in adequate amounts…you harm your system, actually creating inflammation and other “emergency” responses. As a general, continuing practice, this is not good. Your training is actually creating a continuing series of “mini-emergencies,” and your body responds appropriately to the alarm. This is something that they are discovering with marathon runners - that they are burning out their systems and accumulating lots of repetitive stress injuries because what they are regularly engaging in is an “emergency” situation. You simply weren’t designed to run 26 miles with regular frequency.

To make a long story short…I try not to train to failure. (Although it’s tough, having trained that way for so long and having my head tell me it was “right.”) I try to leave a few reps in the tank, so that I leave a training session feeling well worked but refreshed, rather than exhausted and trembling. (Yes, I trained that hard…foolishly.) If I’m doing a final set of 8 reps…repetitions 7 and 8 are very hard but completed. I feel that if I really dig deep, I’m good for 9 and 10 but I stop at 8. Again, this is the way your body works. Your body and mind want to do just what is sufficient to accomplish a task. You’ll only contract the amount of muscle fibers that are necessary to complete a movement. Granted, results won’t come as fast training like this…but neither will injury or inflammatory responses.

If you’re still with me…I’ll wrap up my ramblings with this point. Your body is a machine. All machines are subject to wear, especially in response to the demands made on them. There is no such thing as a perpetual motion machine. Drive with your foot to the floor all the time and your motor will wear faster. Your body was “fearsomely and wonderfully” made to be self-repairing and long term useful…but it will still wear. Wouldn’t it make sense to moderate your training, move naturally and limit high level stresses, so that you could enjoy your body longer? Granted, when push comes to shove, I’d rather wear out than rust out…but I don’t want to unduly hasten the process, either.

I don’t pretend to know how to balance the desire for results with the desire for healthful longevity. I just wanted to toss the concept out to you so that you might consider it in the light of my experience. Good training to you.

as reported by Wayne Gallasch

September, 1970, I had the pleasure to be present at this very famous contest. Why was it so special? It was very special for two reasons.

The first was historical - it was Arnold’s last contest appearance in the British NABBA Universe. This was the contest which started in England in 1948 and where the first three winners were John Grimek, Steve Reeves and Reg Park. All legends of the sport of bodybuilding.

The second reason was personal. It was the first ever Universe contest I had attended on what was my first ever visit to England. I had heard that this would be Arnold’s last appearance in this event as he attempted to win his 4th NABBA Universe title. It seemed to be a perfect time to make the pilgrimage to London.

The Prejudging was held on Friday, 18th September in the Ballroom of the old Royal Hotel in London. It has since been demolished and rebuilt.

I arrived at the Prejudging and found that the audience mostly had to stand behind the judges as only a few chairs were provided. As I am not tall I found a chair to stand on, along with many others. A photo of the audience taken from behind Dave, Reg Park and Arnold appears on this site.

After the Amateur classes’ prejudging it finally got to the Professional Tall Class. To my pleasant amazement the class also included Dave Draper from USA, and 3 times former winner Reg Park. Reg was absolutely idolised by the British audience and even today is probably the all-time most popular British bodybuilder along with Dorian Yates.

As the class came out in front of the Judges, lead by a very confident Arnold, it was obvious that one man was missing. The contest organizer Oscar Heidenstam called for Dave Draper to please come out onto the judging stage area. Still no Dave. Then came a second call for Dave to please appear “immediately”. Finally a third and very testy final call for Dave to come out immediately or the judging would commence without him. Oscar said that Dave would be disqualified from the contest, and I was feeling worried for Dave. At the very last moment he came running out onto the stage to the great relief of everyone. The story I heard later was that Dave was left in the pump-up area a long way from the stage, and didn’t hear the subsequent calls that it was time to come out for the Prejudging. I believe there was only one call that Dave heard so I look forward to hearing Dave’s side of the story.

Dave was in superb shape and it seemed to be a battle primarily between Arnold and Dave for first and second. Dave Draper was the big, blonde, all-American guy; Arnold was the unbeatable champion and Reg Park was a great bodybuilder who first won the Mr. Universe in 1951. Reg was in his 40’s and past his peak and I noted from the Prejudging that most attention seemed to be focussed on Arnold versus Reg. Dave was hanging right in there too, but the audience cheered loudest for Reg.

Dave’s arms were absolutely outstanding with full round bicep peaks and nice balance in his triceps. Arnold’s arms in comparison were always great in their size and bicep shape but the complimentary triceps hang did not match the total shape of Dave’s arms. Chest was a close thing between Dave’s huge pecs with their deep, wide flair and Arnold’s thickness and shape. Dave clearly had the best back and lats in the whole competition and his lat spread had the rather conservative British fans whistling and screaming for more. A clear win for Dave in this compulsory pose. Abs and legs were both fine and in good proportion to the rest of the physique and certainly not a problem. Posing was a series of Dave’s trademark poses which were loved by the fans and his whole routine seemed to be over too quickly. Dave certainly left the fans begging for more.

The Prejudging came to an end with Arnold clearly the certain winner and in my opinion Dave in second place from Reg in 3rd place. The next day was the actual show, held at 1.40 p.m. at the famous Victoria Palace Theatre, London. To my amazement at the end of a wonderful show, Reg Park was announced 2nd and Dave placed 3rd. Boyer Coe won the short Professional Class with Arnold taking out the overall Professional title. Frank Zane won the overall Amateur Mr. Universe title.

I felt that if Dave had gone back to the Universe again the next year then victory in this class would certainly have been his. With his golden tan and shy good looks Dave was a hit with everyone.

There is an interesting side story to this event. I discovered at the Prejudging that cameras, both photo and movie, were not allowed. I was also warned that no filming was allowed at the show to be held at the Victoria Palace theatre the next day.

I duly arrived at the theatre with my super 8 film camera hidden in a brown paper bag with my sandwich! With ushers continually patrolling the aisles of the theatre looking for illegal cameras and unofficial photographers, I filmed what I could with my movie camera hidden inside the paper bag. Naturally the film is a bit jerky being shot from half way back in the theatre and with me hiding it when ever I saw an usher out of the corner of my eye. But a rare and classic piece of history was saved for posterity. As one of our local politicians said, “bad rules and regulations are meant to be broken”! This footage now on video constitutes the first contest video I ever produced and I am pleased to say it is now something of a classic (V-108). It also captures an image of Dave which although brief, is now a part of bodybuilding history.

Kind regards,
Wayne Gallasch, GMV Bodybuilding

What are the planes of motion and why do we care? Let’s sort this out, just between us gymrats. While it’s true that we don’t really *need* to know this stuff, it’s also true we’re going to bump into the terms more and more when reading modern training articles. It’s time we caught up with this generation of training lingo. We’ll take the simple route, I promise.

The main problem for most of us is that we weren’t introduced to the terms in our early training (today that reads: Who needs it?). Additionally, the actions along the planes don’t seem to match the describing terms; for example, the frontal plane motions are left to right, and our brains just kind of disconnect in a sort of “I can’t learn that” frustration when we see frontal associated with side to side.

At its simplest:

To picture the three planes, imagine slicing through the body, like so:

• First through the center, dividing the body from the left to the right to make up the sagittal plane
• Next through the body from the left side to the right, separating the front and back halves to create the frontal plane (front side and back side)
• Finally cutting straight through the hips to divide the top of the body from the bottom, the transverse plane

That’s not so hard. It starts to get a little more complicated when we begin to sort out which motions move along the planes. You want to think of the motion as moving along the surface of the plane, rather than visualizing the sectioned off body.

Planes of motion look like this:

Sagittal plane motion would include forward and backward motions, like sit-ups, back extensions or biceps curls. The sagittal plane cuts through the center of the body, so the motion is front to back or back to front, including straight forward running. Squats involve flexion (forward motion) and extension (backwards on the way up), so would fit into the sagittal plane.

Frontal plane motion would include leaning from left to right as in sidebends and lateral raises, or perhaps you might picture jumping jacks for a good image of movement along the frontal plane.

Transverse plane motion is the hardest to picture because the plane is horizontal as it divides the top from the bottom, so it’s hard to get our heads around it being a rotating action. The main thing to remember is rotation. An example of a transverse plane exercise would be floor to overhead diagonals with a medicine ball, and a transverse activity might be swinging a golf club.

Why would an average trainee need to know this? Two reasons, really. It comes up fairly often as we read the work of our favorite writers, because these folks know this stuff and it comes out naturally for them. It’s frustrating to have to skim sections because we don’t know the lingo, and in internet reading, skimming a section often means losing interest and clicking away before we get to the vital parts.

Secondly, what’s most important about the planes is to know they exist and to make sure our training programs include exercises along each. Our most common gym exercises are on the sagittal plane, moving forward or back such as in flat pressing, pushups, crunches or even squats and lunges.

When you create your training programs, be sure to add some frontal plane and transverse plane exercises to bring up your built-in injury prevention. That’s what’s going to help ensure good balance in your muscular body. Training only on one plane will pretty much do the opposite.

The way I figure it, the movement pattern and corrective exercise experts began their study of human motor patterns through the work of Moshe Feldenkrais. He’s the guy who started this trend back in the ’40s, although he didn’t live to see it hit the athletic world, or for it to trickle down to those of us on the fitness side. Of course the new generation of teachers expanded on his efforts to include strengthening weak areas and stretching tight ones, but the underlying idea of how the brain makes the body move began with Feldenkrais a long time ago.

Today’s rehab leaders probably don’t talk about the Feldenkrais influence much because most of their readers would think it sounds like some kind of voodoo magic; yesterday was my second class, where the six of us rolled around on the floor as the instructor pondered out how we first taught ourselves to crawl.

Pretty out there, but no less true, and the movement pattern guys who re-teach us to squat will often remind us of how a baby learns to squat, and how the body originally built stability on top of great mobility. Somewhere along the line, we lost it, lost the mobility and eventually forgot the movement pattern.

Here’s an example of both. Over the course of about 35 years, increasingly bad posture that began in my teens had my thoracic spine not moving, about as close as you can get to immobile while still moving around town. Daily effort on a tennis ball peanut, plus plenty of careful and consistent exercises brought my T-spine mobility from really poor to pretty darn good, so much progress that I was confident on that score. Yet the back pain remains solidly in place, and I’m still tinkering around with new ideas such as movement awareness.

During my first Feldenkrais class two weeks ago, as we were doing a sort of spinal wave movement, the instructor crouched in front of me and held my neck in her hands, immobilizing it. Suddenly I could no longer do the spinal wave… everything stopped. She told me later her effort was to trigger me to begin using the spine, that my upper back was moving as a block, rather than in smaller vertebral segments.

What had happened was over the course of my corrective exercise work, I’d gained exercise mobility, but not much natural movement. Mobility does not necessarily mean motion!

From the Feldenkrais point of view, and I’m certain most of the corrective guys agree with this, once mobility was compromised, the brain skipped over that area and found another way to bend and move the back. The other way is very likely one of the causes — probably the main cause — of the chronic back pain that triggered this whole rehab progression for me in the first place.

Not only do you have to regain mobility, flexibility and stability, you may have to relearn how to use it. This was quite a revelation to me as it occurred, made small today when put into words. The few readers who have made progress in the corrective arena, yet are still in pain may find it useful to ponder this the next time you’re lying quietly on a foam roller.

Introduction to Feldenkrais Movement Awareness Class:

Aside to our indoor cycle enthusiasts: Set aside June 28th for SpinningNation, a nationwide spinning event, a huge charitable fundraiser to be held at hundreds of locations around the States.

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.

We’ve got a dozen lengthy articles here in the blog, and another fifty or so threads in the rehab/corrective exercise section of the forum dedicated to sorting out our various physical dysfunctions. Let’s do a quick recap to bring it all together into a sort of introduction to fixing pain caused by a poorly functioning body.

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.

Bodyweight exercises have taken center stage as I attempt to train up a faltering structure; most of the corrective exercise experts remind us not to try to add strength to dysfunction, and they point to bodyweight work as a key in determining our fail points.

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.

The last piece of the shoulder rehab puzzle fell into place recently, at least I hope it’s the last piece. Feels like the last piece. The 15-year progression went something like this:

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.

We’ve been talking about corrective exercises a lot, and many readers don’t really know what this means and how it might apply to them. Let’s take a closer look at one common habit to demonstrate how a simple twist can expand up and down the body.

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.

Time and time again, our IOL forum discussions entertain while they educate. I can’t begin to measure all I’ve learned from my friends there, nor count the times they’ve had me giggling at my desk. Let’s take a look at some of this week’s top conversations.

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?

I was talking with my friend, Val, recently, and discovered I’d never told her about foam rolling. She’s a hairdresser, works hard with her hands outstretched at shoulder height hour after hour, day after day. If anyone’s a candidate for foam rolling, a hairdresser would surely be in the first balloting.

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.

One of our common complaints is the trouble we have getting a doc to order the blood tests we want. Or perhaps we’re just curious about something — Vitamin D, for a good example — yet don’t need any other doctoring at the moment. Most of us set our blood chemistry curiosity aside at this point, thinking we’ll remember the question during our next visit to the doctor’s office.

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.

The astute will have noticed a certain level of weirdness gaining steam in my training the past couple of months. It’s been all over the map as I jump to a problem area, make some progress and move along to another. The upside of training weaknesses is that progress comes fast; the downside is there sure are a lot of them to work on once you get to noticing, and hey, add to that the training sometimes looks ridiculous.

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.

Physical therapists and coaches for professional athletes have not always been ahead of bodybuilders when it comes to building a muscular body. In fact, in terms of nutrition and weight training, the guys of Dave’s competitive years led the charge for today’s athletes. Yet I must say that leadership role has been reversed over the past decade, and these days it’s the strength and conditioning coaches and the athletic PT folks who are making remarkable strides in revamping how we think about our training programs.

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 m