According to one researcher, “excessive sitting is a lethal activity.”
Dr. James Levine at the Mayo Clinic has a strong interest in studying how our bodies burn calories through movement and activity. He designed special underwear with sensors that measure each and every movement throughout the day, or lack thereof.
In one motion tracking study, obese subjects averaged only 1500 movements daily and spent almost 600 minutes sitting. In contrast, Dr. Levine has studied Jamaican farm workers who average 5000 daily movements and only sit for 300 minutes daily.
In a recent New York Times article, Dr. Levine had a journalist wear these unique underwear to get a better idea what he was talking about. Levine had always been curious how some people seemed to avoid gaining weight even though they ate the same amount of food as others.
He found that some people unconsciously move around more than others, even if they didn’t consider this to be exercise. He came up with the term NEAT to describe this – Non Exercise Activity Thermogenesis. Apparently, thousands of micro-movements spread throughout your day REALLY matter when it comes to keeping your weight under control.
There are many great points made in this article which might impact your health. One thing they didn’t discuss much is the effect that excessive sitting can have on your posture and the ill effects that poor posture can have over the period of several years.
I personally believe that its almost impossible not to suffer postural problems when spending so much time seated, even if they may take decades to have an effect on someone….making it more and more difficult to move in some cases, compounding the original problem.
I’ll give you two examples from my life – my 71 year old father and 68 year old mother. Neither has spent much time exercising in their adult lives but my mother is definitely the healthier of the two. She also does a lot more moving around in her daily activities and I think this is a big reason for the difference between the two.
If you are someone who has an occupation that has you sitting for most of the day I think adding in those little movements, these micro-movements is definitely in order to help you burn more calories and possibly stay healthier.
It will definitely help to stand up and take a short posture break every so often, maybe every 30 minutes or so, even if it’s just walking in place or stretching out for 10 seconds at a time, walking around a little more, if possible.
There are no guarantees in life, but your best bet is with regular exercise that includes resistance training! Your muscles are the motors that power all your movements, so you better keep your motors (muscles) tuned up.
I’m currently training a couple that are 81 and 80 years old, respectively, so this gives me a little insight. Since most of my clients are in their 50’s, they have aging parents that are currently dealing with health issues at this moment.
I’ve known this older couple for about thirteen years and they have been off and on massage clients of mine. The husband started training with me about 5 months ago and when he first came in I was startled by how physically weak he had become and how poor his balance was.
He and his wife had been long time members of a healthclub, did ballroom dancing and did aerobic exercise in their basement, using a treadmill, elliptical machine and stationary bike. They’ve both had some health issues the past couple years and had eased off on the strength training.
It’s well known that we tend to lose muscle strength and lean muscle tissue as we age. It might not be quite as well known that this can be kept to a minimum with proper resistance work. Muscle strength is important in order to keep your mobility as you get older, as well as keeping your bones strong, reducing the risk of falling and staying independent.
Let’s take Jack LaLanne for example. While he had definitely not maintained all the strength and muscle mass that he had in his 40’s or 50’s, he did enough work to stay healthy and independent into his mid 90’s, without any long hospital stays or nursing homes. Maybe there’s a message in that statement – that it takes work to stay healthy, though there are never any guarantees.
Back to my client, after 5 months his leg strength has improved greatly and so has his balance….coincidence? Unlike most programs for the over 50 crowd, I put my clients in standing positions for the majority of their work, for a very simple reason.
Life’s activities occur mostly while standing so this provides the most carryover to your daily activities. What are some of the most challenging movements for seniors – getting up from a chair, going up stairs and bending over to pick something up. Coincidentally, I train all three of these movements with him.
The one exercise that we do lying down is a horizontal leg press. We have gradually moved him up to 160 pounds with both legs and will probably not go much higher, seeking to maintain this, as the force going through his spine might create some issues. He works on going up and down the stairs at his house to keep that function working well and we have him do step ups to reinforce that ability.
After listening to a podcast from a top strength coach I got the idea to have him do farmer’s walks, which is just holding some weights in either hand while he walks from one end to another. This is a simple way to work on grip strength and build functional core strength. We just started with this and he uses 12 or 15 pound dumbbells in each hand and we encourage him to look straight ahead to reinforce proper posture.
Since most people of this age have some posture issues, we work on rowing movements for the back of the body, with the hope of pulling them back to a more neutral position. Not sure if this can be totally corrected with everyone of this age but I believe it can definitely be prevented in most people with proper training.
Bottom line, he is working hard to delay the effects of aging and he is definitely walking with much better balance and he is a little more independent, as well. It takes work to stay youthful.
I’ve been using the inversion table for a week at this point and really like it.
I’ve also had several of the clients on it and they enjoy it, also. The key is to let your body GRADUALLY adapt to inversion, starting off with only a few minutes and maybe at 20-30 degrees.
It’s just like anything else, too much right away can be a bad thing. You don’t go into the weight room the first time and start lifting heavy weights. You start off conservatively and progress from there as your body adapts – same with the tables.
I’ve had all the clients practice deep abdominal breathing and they really feel it in their lower abs, where they attach to the pelvis. This area is already put on stretch and then the deep breathing with the diaphragm hits those muscles quite nicely.
In his book, Dr. Robert Martin mentions that inversion can help flatten your stomach. From what I have felt so far I would think that those with lower abs that seem to bulge, this would help to get those muscles to fire more efficiently.
I have been combining it with the Turkish get-ups and half get-ups and noticed some difference in myself. Saturday I did about a minute of light stretching for my clients’ necks while they were partially inverted and they loved it. I then had them stand with their back to a wall and do a posture exercise to help you stand straighter.
They all felt like they were a couple inches taller when they left. Combined with the Indian clubs and joint mobility class before, and they all felt relaxed and were moving more efficiently, which is a sign of good health, in my opinion.
I plan on regularly continuing to use the table and as we all get accustomed to it we can go a little farther in the inverted position. There is a strap which can limit the amount of inversion and even if you only did partial inversion you would likely see benefits.
This would definitely help to decompress the spine and bring fluids in and out of the discs, while allowing the vertebrae to elongate and shorten slightly. Those with very high blood pressure might not be candidates for inversion therapy – check with your doctor first.
A healthy person should be able to enhance their posture and health with the regular practice of inversion. For additional reference, you can read the book Gravity Guiding System by Robert Martin, MD.
What if gravity was actually a good thing for your posture and you could manipulate it to maintain a youthful appearance, good health and reduce the aches and pains commonly associated with aging?
I recently attended the Iowa state convention for physical educators and was fortunate to attend many great presentations from top-notch professionals, some of whom I have seen previously and others I saw for the first time, in person.
Among these presentations was something unexpected, a re-introduction with inversion training. When I was supposed to attend a workshop on Indian clubs and the subtle side of fitness, I was surprised when they started setting up two inversion tables.
My brother and I had received inversion boots for Christmas when I was 18. This was the early 80’s and we set up a bar in the basement to hang from, next to our Sears weight set. We would hang upside down for a little while and do inverted situps, making sure that you left enough energy to swing back up and dismount.
The boots came with a book by Robert Martin, M.D., which I kept all these years. So I found it interesting when Ed Thomas talked about going out to California and spending some time with Dr. Martin. We each got to spend some time on the inversion table while someone else guided us through various stages of inversion and did some light stretches with our neck, which felt pretty good, I might add.
Having done those same stretches many times with massage therapy clients, I was intrigued with the possibilities that this might hold. It caused me to dust off the book and do some reading. Dr. Martin talks about the different postures that man can achieve, unlike most animals and how we have the opportunity to decompress and lengthen the spine by taking up different positions.
He is of the belief that this is a plus, when many consider gravity to be a negative thing, causing sagging and drooping with age. He believes that by changing the position of our body relative to the constant force of gravity, we can use the force of gravity as a stress equalizer.
Dr. Martin describes six basic human postures: standing/sitting, lying down, flexion (forward bending), extension (backwards bending), hanging from your hands or legs (brachiation), and inversion (upside down).
It’s interesting that the inversion model that he mentions has someone in a handstand position with the feet against the wall. I find this interesting because Dr. Martin was a gymnast and gymnastics instructor, who seemed to find that this would sometimes have better results than his medical efforts.
This also becomes more interesting, as one of the presenters that weekend was Jon Hinds, founder of Monkey Bar Gym. I have seen video of Jon walking down stairs on his hands and this session provided a logical progression for doing a handstand.
Jon’s regular practice of doing handstands and swinging from suspended poles and chains – like kids do on a playground (monkeybars) – would be a very healthful one according to the book, not to mention a creative and fun way to get a workout.
Low back pain is all too common in our society and spending too much time seated is often listed as a contributing factor. If the force of gravity is constantly pulling us straight down, sitting with your head and shoulders forward for long periods of time probably isn’t a good thing. One of Dr. Martin’s suggestions might be to frequently change your position to decompress your spine and seek to balance out your body.
One way to address this would be working on extension (backward bending). Something simple I recently started doing is to reach up overhead while arching my thoracic spine, breathing deeply with my stomach and carefully extending my neck up and back, stretching many different structures from the waist up, all at once. Combined with some more precise work with the Indian clubs and I have noticed a BIG difference in the last three weeks.
Having injured a shoulder almost twenty years ago, mostly due to lifting weights with poor posture, I have come to realize the importance of having a balanced, symmetrical body. Unfortunately, I learned this lesson the hard way but I’ve managed to avoid the surgeon’s knife so far, after the recommendation to have surgery or quit lifting weights.
I recently moved my fitness business into a physical therapy clinic and am sharing their exercise room. I get some interested looks from some of the patients while they are walking on the treadmill. One guy in particular asked me why my business is called Gravity. I told him that I used a lot of bodyweight exercises that use the force of gravity for resistance.
I also try to place my clients in standing positions as often as possible and seek to enhance their posture and try to align them with gravity, so that they move more efficiently. This man is rehabbing a knee injury, has a protruding belly and his neck is probably two inches out in front of his torso, which is a less than optimal position.
Without knowing much else about his health history, it would obviously be important for this relatively young man to not go through the rest of his life, so misaligned with the forces of gravity.
Dr. Martin recommends hanging from your arms as a natural form of traction (assuming you have no contraindications). He states, “if you are suffering from extreme tension in the back, hang by your arms!” Again, not everyone will be capable of this.
With an inversion table, you don’t have to go to full inversion to gain some benefits and you don’t have to spend a lot of time in the fully inverted position. You can take your time in getting your body used to decompression and even slight inversion might be beneficial.
Bottom line, make sure to change your positions of posture frequently, however you choose to do so and not spend too much time in any one position. Here is an article on Decompression and Mobilization with Inversion.
Recently I had the privilege of attending a workshop on Indian clubs with Dr. Ed Thomas. He first learned to use them here in Davenport at the German Turner’s Hall in the 1950’s.
I have bought some pairs of clubs from his brother and practiced using them with myself and some of my clients. To say that our technique is somewhat primitive in comparison to his, is an understatement.
We had been using them as part of a dynamic warmup and I knew that the technique was lacking, but didn’t really know how to improve upon it. Four hours with Dr. Thomas on one afternoon and another hour with several of his university associates two days later….and I think I have some better ideas.
The purpose of the lightweight clubs (1-2 pounds) is to enhance posture, develop rhythm and coordination, maintain or increase mobility of the shoulder, elbow and wrist, along with increasing mind-body awareness.
With each of my clients I have focused on two basic movements, going very slow, almost slow-motion in some cases, and breaking down the movements into small segments. You literally have to go slow enough to think about what movement you are doing next.
I am having my clients “mirror” me during the movements, meaning, we are facing each other so they can follow what I am doing visually. Also, I am talking them through certain positions, in order to make sure the clubs are where they are supposed to be.
After going very slow and doing many repetitions you gradually pick up the pace, going from thinking about every single movement to doing it without thought, which is the big idea. Then you can make your movements even more precise and/or make new patterns, adding more challenge as the moves become more complex.
What I learned from them that recent weekend helped me greatly, especially when it comes to teaching others the different patterns. The amazing thing is that even with less than optimal form, my clients and I have been able to do fairly intense training without having shoulder or arm issues.
One of my newer clients is a barber/stylist and obviously is using his arms all day long, putting him at risk for overuse injuries. He’s had past shoulder injuries and the different movement patterns are really important for increasing or maintaining shoulder mobility.
He had a minor elbow pain, which has gone away with use of the clubs, particularly by doing a figure 8 movement with his wrist. This was prior to the workshop I attended and the continued focus on his posture and mobility is definitely what he needs.
I’ve had issues with both shoulders and my right shoulder has been limited, from a mobility perspective. Use of the clubs has definitely helped. My left shoulder has a long history of instability and had been doing fairly well, recently. The emphasis on pulling the elbows back during one of the movements has it feeling a little unstable and I may have to focus my mobility work on the right, while focusing on stability with the left.
I had watched a video that comes with the clubs and am too tall to watch it on TV and not hit the ceiling with them, so I had made up my own moves, which were less than optimal, which reinforces the saying that precise technique can turn an exercise from a good one (or okay) to an even better one.
All in all, I am very happy with what I have learned recently and I am definitely moving more efficiently and I know my clients will see some improvements, as well. Most of my clients are in their 50’s and some have some postural issues which can definitely be aided by focused club work.
They can also help improve your breathing patterns as you expand your chest and ribcage while moving. Breath and movement are definitely related, as I’m finding out. Stay tuned as I will be giving more updates on this topic. Here is a link to an article called Treasures in the Attic you will enjoy.
This weekend I had the pleasure of learning to use Indian clubs from physical educator Dr. Ed Thomas. This ancient art is highly useful for re-teaching or restoring proper posture, as well as expanding the ribcage and positively influencing your breathing patterns.
I had been using Indian clubs for a little while with my clients and myself as part of a dynamic warmup, but I must confess that the patterns used were very “primitive” at best, nothing close to the precise patterns that Dr. Thomas is capable of.
So first thing Monday, all my clients spent a couple minutes learning how to “properly” go through some of the patterns and could really feel their shoulderblades moving and their ribcages opening up to allow for better breathing.
I have to confess, after a weekend of using the clubs for several hours, along with a basic yoga class and I am standing taller and breathing much more relaxed. I also feel less tension in my neck.
It might interest you to know that it wasn’t just personal trainers or physical educators that were expressing the health benefits of diaphragmatic (abdominal) breathing, but physical therapists like Gray Cook, also.
Here is a link to an article that Ed Thomas wrote on breathing.
This is a simple video that can be used for 2-5 minutes daily to work on proper breathing. With the majority of our society being seated throughout most of their day, high stress levels and a lack of proper exercise, this is a simple way to help combat these issues.
Soon I will post an article on the clubs with some simple ways to increase mobility in your shoulders and increase your coordination and posture. Interestingly, Dr. Thomas learned to use the clubs in Davenport, Iowa as an 8 year old in the Fifties at the German Turner hall. I think its time to bring back some of these lost arts that have been around for hundreds or thousands of years in various cultures throughout the world.
Here are three simple exercises to help improve your posture and protect your back at the same time.
The first exercise is the bird dog, which has three different components. The first is the hip extension, which will work the lumbar erectors (low back), glutes and hamstrings. Start on your hands and knees, then extend your hip backwards until your thigh is parallel to the floor, keeping the knee slightly bent. Pause at the top and slowly lower your leg and repeat for 10-15 reps.
Try to keep your natural (neutral) spine position during the exercise, meaning, don’t let your lower back arch too much. Keep your neck in a neutral position as well, not tucking your chin or looking up, picking a spot on the floor directly under your eyes to look at throughout.
The second part involves lifting the opposite arm while maintaining the same position (both knees on the ground). Point your thumb up as you lift your straight arm towards the ceiling, pausing at the top for a second or two. You should feel this in the muscles between your shoulderblade and the spine (rhomboids, middle and lower trapezius).
The third part of the exercise is simultaneously lifting the leg with the opposite arm. Pause at the top for a second or two, keeping your neck from lifting up and not arching your back in the process. You would alternate arms and legs with each repetition, unless you have a scoliosis and are strengthening a specific portion of your spine.
You can do this for approximately 10 reps if holding the top position for a two count before lowering. Then you might hold the top position for 5-10 seconds as you get stronger, gradually working towards 1 minute or more of total holding time (6 reps of 10 seconds).
The first few sessions you might not do the third part of the exercise, instead, focusing on the individual arm and leg lifts. Focus on doing this in a slow and controlled manner, paying great attention to your technique.
The one arm dumbbell row is a staple exercise for developing your upper and mid-back muscles. There are two ways to perform this. The standard is by using a neutral grip and pulling the dumbbell upwards from a straight arm position, keeping your elbow close to your ribcage, similar to starting a lawn mower.
This version emphasizes the lats while the version shown above has a pronated grip, which shifts the focus to the muscles between the spine and scapula (rhomboids, middle traps) and also your posterior shoulder. Your upper arm should be approximately 90 degrees from your torso, leading with the elbow and keeping your wrists straight throughout the exercise.
Raise and lower the dumbbell in a controlled manner without using excessive momentum. At the top of the movement you should feel the contraction in the inner portion of your shoulderblade. 10-12 repetitions should be fine, completing 3 sets.
The third exercise is the kneeling band row/pull. This is a hybrid exercise, combining a rowing exercise with a lat pulldown. Kneel on one leg, keeping a straight line from your knee to your head (assuming natural spine curves). Pull the band or tubing down at an angle, finishing with your hand beside your ribs and your elbow slightly behind you.
Keep your neck in a natural curve and finish by pulling down and back, not letting your shoulder elevate towards your ear, meaning, contract the muscles forcefully, holding this end position for a second before letting the band go slowly back to the starting position.
While appearing to be fairly simple, these exercises will help keep your back strong and stable. See your doctor first if you have a history of pain or injury. Some people may need some mobility work for the thoracic spine before trying these exercises. Working on your diaphragmatic (abdominal) breathing first is also a good idea.
Here are some simple exercises to use as part of your warm up or to help improve your posture. The first two can be done with only bodyweight and can be done standing or lying face down.
You can use this to help stretch the front of the shoulders and “activate” or turn on the rotator cuff and posterior shoulder, as well as the upper back. The TRX is a great training tool and also great for reinforcing posture and strengthening the upper and mid back.
A great compliment to these exercises is using Indian clubs for increased flexibility and coordination involving the upper body.
The TRX suspension trainer is a great tool for golf fitness. One description of this piece is “all core all the time,” which makes it ideal for golf training.
It allows you to develop strength and flexibility while focusing on the abs, back, and hips. You can work on golf specific flexibility and strengthen the upper and mid back – areas which are important for posture and shoulder health.
In the video you will see how it can help your game. Its portability is another nice feature, enabling you to take it outside in good weather.
In the video with the Titleist Performance Institute, you will also notice the Power Plate vibration platform. This is another valuable tool for golf fitness. I think sandbags would also complete the overall effect, helping develop total body power.
I’ll share some “shoulder savers” with those of you over 35, like me. This is especially helpful for those who spend all day sitting at a desk and then go for a round of golf after work or on the weekends.
Cyclists are also prone to posture issues, due to the amount of time spent leaning forward, so if you also spend your work day seated, make sure to strengthen your upper back.
I’ve done damage to both of my shoulders in the past and have worked on plenty of shoulder injuries, so these tips might help.
Rowing exercises strengthen your posterior shoulders and the area between your shoulderblades. Both of these areas need to be strong if you want healthy shoulders.
When your shoulders are rounded forward, it puts unnecessary stress on them. A neutral position makes your movements more efficient, whether you are throwing a golf disc (frisbee, to some) or swinging the clubs.
Besides reducing your risk of rotator cuff injury, you’ll likely see improvement in your distance. If you’re like me, you might be interested in passing for a few years younger. Improving your posture and upper back strength sure doesn’t hurt your appearance any.
Increased stability with your shoulderblades can also increase the range of motion in your upper arm – something that often plagues older golfers.
