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.