Twist and (try not to) Shout!

Do you ever feel like you’re auditioning for the crappest break-dance routine ever, due to your robotic, mechanical moves? Do you avoid rotating the torso for fear of a blood curdling scream of agony?!

For 18 months my muscles have had to honour my discs and stay relatively rigid - sacrificing their flexibility in the process. This has, in turn, caused a compound effect and delayed recovery. 

This week, during a yoga stretch - known as a revolved side angle twist (from a kneeling position) - I yelped with pain, not from a disc issue, but a muscular response. I'd barely rotated, just 20 degrees if that, when it flatly advised it would not be twisting any further!

Torso flexibility is highly important and I now highly lack in this area!! I want to be more like The Destroyer from Thor and less like the Tin Man from Wizard of Oz!

So? Stretch! you might say! Sure, but it’s the type of ‘stretching’ I choose which will alleviate further issues. The best form of stretching one set of muscles is to work the opposing muscles. The ones who've been enjoying the ride for way too long; the muscles who have not been contributing will have atrophied/weakened and now need to (quite literally) pull their weight and return the favour for a while.

Most training tips these days will advise that the best way to train our abs is on a fitness ball, or to do static/isometric exercises such as ‘the plank’ etc. Well, not in this instance. We’re in rehab, so we can’t start there (or return to that point straight away if this sounds like the training you were doing before your back ‘advised’ you stop).

So yes, I guess I am referring to Isolation exercises. That should rock the functional training world!  Functional and balancing exercise routines come much later down the line after we’re fit and strong enough to take that on. When your abs, glutes etc are lazy, your back muscles have to pick up the slack (and they would only continue to take the heat, if you choose to train using the advanced ‘functional’ workouts).

So, let’s work our opposing muscles:

This form of stretching is known as passive stretching and it's the best kind. Stretching a muscle alone will not resolve the tightness. If you simply stretch a muscle, it will ping straight back again as soon as you start doing something as it still has a role to perform until you sort out the opposing weakness. Whereas if you train the agonists, the antagonists have to ‘relax’ at the same time and balance is restored.

Please Note:

If you have a weakened back because you have lived in a gym working your ‘mirror muscles’, that’s another ball game entirely and the opposite of the above blog will be true for you.  And so, this blog is for the sake of those people like me, who have done next to zero in the way of training for a very long time.

Play Small, Win Big

Play it small now, make a big difference later

Well who’d have thought it? This week, I’ve been busy following a daily advent of no more than 20 minutes exercise videos per day. Within that, I have sometimes had to forego the odd position and make some of the movements demonstrated smaller for the sake of my back.

However, overall, bar a couple of days where the back had a hissy fit as it attempted to show me who was the real Boss around here, I have actually had about 5 days out of 7 where I’ve felt…ok. Sure, that’s not knicker-dropping fantastic news, but believe me, to just feel ‘ok’ for once after 18 months of feeling vile and pain riddled every spare millisecond of each day, this has been nice to have gaps, or little breaks from the pain.

Now, before I get too excited, I have been here – briefly – before. In fact, I became over confident and ruined it as quickly as I had discovered it. So, learning from those previous lessons, taking things glacially slow, I will continue my little mini workouts extracted from my DVD workouts (if that makes sense? Maybe ‘half arsed’ versions of the real instructor on the TV screen would better define my workouts right now?) and build up on that so that instead of my consistency/rally ending after 2 attempts or 3, it would be great to talk in terms of weeks, rather than days of feeling good.

I’m on it. I’m not backing down. But when my back sends those almighty lightening bolts, I do unfortunately have to ‘get back in my box’ on those days.

When I’ve had a long enough rotation to see which exercises help and which hinder, I will of course, Dear Reader, pass that privy information on to you!

Good Habits for Life

Small tweaks can become big changes, if we do them often enough. How else do you go from “oh please no, not that” to “yay! It’s that time again, I can’t wait!”

I’m a huge fan of chocolate and, these days my body craves it as it would air, sleep or sex. But I remember my very first Mars Bar. I was at nursery school and a girl gave me a mars bar at lunchtime. During Jackanory that afternoon, I threw up everywhere!  Even so, over the years, like a Trooper, I pushed through that 'pain barrier' on a regular basis and now I guess I could be the World's Leading Chocolate Expert!

I recently read that Nicole Scherzinger had explained how you can crave exercise just as much as you can chocolate. She said that exercise is a natural high and that anything you do in repetition is what you crave the most. The girl has a point. A very valid point. When I first left the personal training industry, I used to crave running; I remember feeling like a caged Tiger when I took my first desk job after having had the freedom of being a gym warrior all day every day!  So I know Nicole’s statement to be true.

But it’s all about pushing yourself over that first bump isn’t it? Always the hardest bit. I guess what I’m trying to tell you is; don’t worry about throwing up during story time, just make sure you get back on the horse and chuck up less next time…

No wait, that’s not quite right! What I mean is; the first week or so might be the hardest days in your life to get out of bed early and push through the pain to do your rehab and additional exercises, but – before you even realise it, by as little as just 2-3 weeks later, you could be annoying the crap out of all your friends and telling them what exercises you did today on your social media page…..!

The key then is never stopping! Please, don't even think about stopping, it was my worst mistake I ever made and although it was during a motor racing session that I caused this back injury, if I had taken better care of myself physically, i.e. was fit enough for my sport, I probably wouldn’t be writing this from a ‘broken person’s’ point of view!

I hear you; the starting is your problem because the thought of having to do this 'forever' puts you off...right? Well my first choccy high overrode the sensation of being sick didn't it? You may think you'll groan about this forever more, but soon, you'll be growling at anyone who tries to steal your chocolate bar off you. I mean, tries to stop you exercising! There I go again...