For me, workouts and workout methods, have a whole different meaning. I think that this is due to the fact, that I am gaining more knowledge about a human’s body, how it functions; I gain more personal observations about people, their posture, the most frequent imbalances they have; as well as, I am gaining more knowledge about the different methods that could help remove those imbalances.
My approach to workouts is so different, than it was two years ago. Lately, I am trying to convince people I work with, that there should be a deeper meaning behind each exercise, than just wasting some energy in the gym, with the mere goal of better appearance. Nowadays my main focus is health and the optimal posture. Initially people are really skeptical to some exercises, because more often than not, exercises which we need the most, are the most boring and annoying once. You couldn’t know if you are standing properly, if you don’t know the feeling of standing properly.
I’ve spend a lot of years among professional athletes and I can sincerely tell you, that most of them went through really bad injuries. And the saddest part was in the fact, that neither they, nor people around them, had the knowledge of how a human body, looks like in neutral position and what are the reasons behind bad posture.
Nowadays I realize, that I could get away with a lot less injuries, if back in the days, I knew as much as I know today.
And because, I am noticing that more and more people are having knee problems and almost each one of them is standing in the so called hyper- extension ( i.e. the joints are hyper- mobile, as the picture below shows it), today I decided to throw an accent on hyper- mobile and hypo-mobile joints. How this leads to problems with your posture, which lead to bad injuries and what you could do in order to change the outcome.
Usually, in order to decide what kind of exercises the person standing against me needs, I pay a lot of attention on his posture, the way he walks, stands and so forth. I use this as a foundation to make a brief analysis about the imbalances he has, which muscles are tights and which are weak. That way I decide which muscles should be strengthened and which should be “lengthened” by taking the time to stretch, to foam roll them or to massage them with a tennis ball.
There are specific tests, which could define the level of mobility in each joint, but tell you the truth, more often than not you wouldn’t need to perform the test, to spot that a person is standing in hyper-extension ( too much mobility in the joints) or hypo-extension ( not enough mobility).
When you notice hyper- extension, this means that you should work on strengthening these muscles. You should focus on exercises, which will help you strengthen the muscles, so you could decrease the instability in the joint and lower the risk of an injury.
The picture on the left, shows a hyper-extension in the knee, which is a common posture problem. And ladies, trust me it is not sexy. Don’t fool yourself that standing in hyper-extension makes your legs look longer and sexier. 😉 )
When there is hypo-extension, you should focus on “releasing” the tension in these muscles, in order to get rid of the tightness and the potential injuries that could occur.
As you know muscles in a person’s body pretty much act like pair of antagonists (i.e. muscles, which perform opposite functions). Usually some are responsible for the flexion and the antagonist is responsible for the extension.
Now let me get back to the example with people having knee problems. Most of them stand in hyper-extension in the knee joint. Their problem is that the muscles on their posterior chain ( the back of the thigh and the glutes) are too weak and “long”, and the muscles on the anterior chain ( the front of the thigh and the hip flexors) are too tight.
This is true for all antagonist muscles, where you observe hypo-extension and hyper-extension. When there is hyper-extension, usually the opposing muscles compensate by hypo-extension.
In the example above, the anterior and the posterior chain are antagonists and in the best optimal case, they should be balancing each other. When this balance is missing, these muscles compensate by going into hyper-extension and hypo-extension.
Without pretending to be specialists and use complicated terminology, let’s look it like this. Imagine your leg and your ligaments, which help to stabilize the joint. When your leg is in neutral posture, everything is perfect. When you stand in hyper-extension, your ligaments stretch way too much. Imagine them like a band. If you stretch the band too much, it will slowly wear thinner, till it comes a moment when the band will tear. Now imagine how you perform hundreds of movements, on a daily basis, where you are not just over stretching your ligaments, but you are doing it by exposing an additional pressure, through lifting weights or using your own bodyweight and so forth. This increases the risk of an injury.
How could you improve this?
By taking care of your imbalances. And do not fool yourself, that by going to the gym for 3-4 times, all the problems are gonna disappear. Usually it takes a lot of time, consistency and adequate choice of training method and exercises, in order to strengthen your weak muscles and release those which are already too tight.
Here comes the question about stretching. Have you ever thought, why you include a particular exercise in your stretching complex? I doubt it! I bet that most of you, pick the stretching exercises chaotically.
Remember that you should stretch the muscles which are already tight and strengthen those that are weak. But in order to define which muscles need stretching and which need strengthening, you should have some knowledge about “the symptoms” that point out for an imbalance. Often times, people would stretch their posterior chain, because they feel the tension there. And in reality this just makes the problem worse.
With the sedentary life we have today. Most of us have problems with tight muscles on the anterior chain and too weak muscles on the posterior chain. This means that we should focus on releasing the muscles on the anterior chain and respectively strengthen those on the posterior chain. And what are we doing in most cases? We stretch the weak muscles and strengthen the already tight muscles. This way we are unconsciously making it worse.
In this post, you could read more about when your body is in neutral moisture and when the imbalances you have point out that your posterior or anterior muscles are too weak. Then, define which muscles you should strengthen and which you should stretch. Pick exercises that you will include in your training session and your stretching complex, so you could actually fix the imbalance, not increase it!
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And one pic from yesterday 🙂
