Eric Creesy has a nice series of posts on his blog that relate to helping you correct/fend off poor posture. It’s well worth having a read through the 4 parts and incorporating the ideas into your routines.
Life style factors and lumbar disc disease
I picked this post up on my friend Chris’ Conditioning Research blog. You can get the whole study here but the study found the following results that would definitely be worth further investigation.
The results of this case-control study reveal a positive association between weight and lumbar disc herniation as well as lumbar disc narrowing among men and women. A medium amount of pack-years was associated with lumbar disc herniation and narrowing in men and women. A non-significantly lowered risk of lumbar disc disease was found in men with high levels of cumulative body building and strength training.
Getting your 5-a-day
We all know the importance of getting our 5 portions of fruit and veg every day well this is my take on the idea applied to some simple mobility/flexibilty work that we would all benefit form on a daily basis. Most people now have sedentary jobs and find themselves being in front of a computer either all day or a substantial part of it. The effects of this sedentary lifestyle on the body are often create a more kyphotic posture, flattening the lumbar curve and exaggerating both the thoracic and cervical curves. The musculature of the back, as a generalisation, gets lengthened whilst that on the front gets shortened and the joints of the spine start to stiffen and lose their mobilty. Along with this the hips also stiffen and the glutes get over stretched and switch off. The hamstrings shorten and the quads lengthen and so on it goes through the body. Continue reading “Getting your 5-a-day”
CORE Myofascial Therapy
At the weekend I completed the CORE Myofascial Therapy certification program. The class was run by George Kousaleos, the founder of the CORE Institute in Tallahasse, Fl, and ran for 6 pretty intense days. While quite “full on” it was a lot of fun and a great learning experience with the course covering; Myofascial Spreading, Arthrokinetics, CORE Foot Specific work, CORE Release, CORE Back Specific and End work. Continue reading “CORE Myofascial Therapy”
It might not be your back
When I get a new client one of the more common problem areas they come to me with will be their lower back. There’s also a pretty good chance that they spend most of the day sitting down so the source of the problem can, in some respects, be easy to identify. Aside from poor posture and its associated problems one of the biggest contributory factors are the gluteals and gluteus medius in particular. Continue reading “It might not be your back”