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How To Fix Neck Pain Upper Back Pain, Shoulder Pain, Rotator
Cuff, and Tightness Without Drugs or Surgery
http://www.drbookspan.com/NeckPainArticle.html
This summary covers: Neck Pain, Shoulder Pain, Bad Cervical
(Neck) Discs, Nerve Impingement. Pain Down the Arm, Reduced
Cervical Lordosis, Forward Head, Poor Posture, Round Shoulders,
Rhomboid Pain, Upper Crossed Syndrome, Spondylolisthesis, Muscular
Pain, Rotator Cuff Tears, Numb Fingers,
Repetitive Strain, "Stress" Pain, Tightness. Dr. Bookspan
pioneered functional exercise and fitness, and developed methods
used by military and top spine centers around the world.
Copyright & Reprint Instructions
Copyright © Jolie Bookspan, MEd, PhD, FAWM Named "The St. Jude
of the Joints" by Harvard School of Medicine clinicians
Director Neck and Back Pain Sports Medicine Director AFEM -
Academy of Functional Exercise Medicine
Hello, You're on the Fix Neck and Upper Back Pain page of Dr.
Bookspan's web site. This is a no-ad, no hype site dedicated to
getting you back to your life - healthy, mobile, and happy. There
are hundreds of free articles here for you.
Neck and upper back pain (and numb fingers that sometimes occur
too) is usually easy to fix. This article shows you how to
understand and stop several major causes of neck and upper body
pain, and learn healthy ways to move so that you do not get the
pain in the first place. That is different than doing stretches or
exercises to stop symptoms (then return to the same bad movement
that caused it). Stop causes, and you will no longer get the pain,
and your neck, shoulder, and upper back can heal. You can enjoy
your favorite activities instead of giving them up.
Not All Exercise is Good Medicine. I show you how to change
daily movement and exercise into Healthy Medicine.
No health insurance needed for this innovation in health care
and major health care initiative. Much cost, time, and worry
currently spent in medical treatments are unnecessary, and often
unhealthful. It's not
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health care if it's not healthy™. Welcome to our Health Care
Reform School™- We call it Fixa U™. I have developed information
through years of research in the lab, and put it here on my web
site for the benefit of the world - evidence-based primary source
sports medicine. Get better and the world will be better.
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A Short History of My Work To Develop These Methods (skip this
if you prefer to go straight to fix pain with article, below) This
information is not copied from someone else who said it, or
something I heard in a gym or in exercise science school. I am the
scientist who researches what really happens. This is what I found
through years of work and years of schooling in research design. I
started lab research studies in the 1970s to find why standard neck
pain, back pain, and other pain exercises and treatments didn't
work. I saw that rehab info was not being applied to how people
move, sit, and live in their ordinary daily activities. I applied
it. People got better. I saw that common treatments and in fact the
assumptions about why pain occurs, were not done by real
researchers but repeated from myths people liked and bad studies
with flawed design and stats. I did painstaking studies and also
kept careful records (hundreds and hundreds of real patients) so I
would know which things actually worked in real life, and which
were due to other things including just time passing. When I was
working on studies of the human body during immersion for combat
swimmers, the experimental subjects, the lab physicians, and others
in the lab kept saying they had all these aches and pains.
Exercises their own physical therapists and docs gave them did not
work or made them worse. I fixed them up. Their doctors started
calling me (calling the lab actually, as I don't have a phone)
asking how I fixed them so well. They (and their physicians)
started taking classes with me. In the 1980s, class participants
asked me to write everything down for them. I was surprised. I
thought they should have taken notes. I typed information sheets
for them. More doctors came to me after taking my classes, saying
they knew their standard Patient Handouts were ineffective
exercises. They asked me to make handouts for their patients. I was
surprised. Again. I thought they could do that themselves. I typed
Patient Handout sheets for them. I kept collecting data like a good
scientist, doing studies to test and retest methods, and develop
better ones. When the internet came out, I sent handouts
electronically, instead of photocopies. In the 1990s I typed
everything in several training manuals that became books. One is
Health & Fitness In Plain English - How To Be Happy, Healthy
and Fit for the Rest of your Life. After two different publishers,
the new THIRD edition of How To Be Happy, Healthy and Fit...
eliminates wrong things previous publishers added over my
objections. Another book is Fix Your Own Pain, with patient stories
in every chapter showing why patients get better, or don't, and
why. Several more books of my life's work tell how to make life
pain free, stronger, and more fun. Each book is different. I have
seen fitness and rehab myths and fads come and go, but these
methods remain effective over time. More about me in Adventures.
Limited Classes and appointments to train directly with me, and
workshop certification by me through AFEM for top students. Get the
books for reference while you keep getting better:
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To keep this quick and easy, much is shortened. Use this summary
to get better now, and get the books and eBooks for the rest:
Info, Drawings of the figure Backman!™ and photos in this
article copyright © Dr.
Jolie Bookspan
Now, go fix your pain.
Answers In A Nutshell
1. My work is not alternative medicine. This is
standard-of-care, evidence based sports medicine techniques,
applied to real life - where you actually need it.
2. Neck pain and upper back pain are not a disease or
"condition" or something that once you have, you have it for life.
It is an injury like a sprained ankle, that with a little common
sense and information, can heal and you can be better than
before.
3. You do not need to have surgery or extended medical
treatments or rest to relieve neck pain or most rotator cuff
tears.
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4. You do not need to give up impact activities like running or
martial arts, give up weights or heavy occupational work, or
activities you love.
5. Many common exercises and well known stretches, even rehab
stretches cause (or don't fix) neck pain because they are not
healthy movement. They are found in gyms, yoga, Pilates, and many
popular fitness books and videos. They are done out of tradition,
and like smoking they may "work" but are not healthy. By changing
your movement and body habits to healthy ones, you will get the
built-in exercise you need for health while you prevent causes of
much neck and upper back pain.
6. You do not need to give up computer or other desk and sitting
work to stop neck pain. Sitting and moving in unhealthy ways can be
easily changed to healthful habits. This article will give you the
concepts. After understanding them first, use the free Sitting
Healthy article. This is different from doing sets and reps of
exercises, then going back to injurious daily habits.
7. Neck muscle, disc, or joint injury are not the cause of the
problem - they are RESULTs of what you are doing to hurt your neck
- things you can fix yourself. Even when inflammation or immune
response are identified, they are results, not causes. This article
will show you how to understand and fix causes instead of using
drugs and surgery for the results. This means you do not fix pain
with a bunch of exercises and stretches. We fix the injurious
movement habits that cause the problem.
8. You may have several causes of pain. If you fix only some of
them, you will fix only some of your pain. The answer is not to
continue on, missing the rest, saying "it just takes time." Don't
allow the other damaging causes to continue. Check for other causes
you may have missed and fix them all. Then you will stop all pain,
and instead of alternating feeling better from fixing one thing and
hurting from other causes, wondering why you have intermittent
results, you fix all and heal all and go on stronger and better
than before.
9. Not all neck pain is from what may show on an x-ray or other
test or scan. You are not doomed by scan results.
10. Many common medicines and prescription drugs can cause pain.
Un-needed treatments and surgeries are done - causing more pain and
reduction in physical ability. Easy changes can stop the need for
harmful medicines.
11. This article explains all the above. Make sure you
understand the concepts (many highlighted in green).
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1. Bad Discs
The pressure of your own body weight on your neck muscles and
discs over years of poor sitting, standing, and bending habits is
enough to injure your neck as badly as a single accident.
After years of squashing the discs in your neck with a forward
head posture - letting your neck tilt forward, jutting your
chin
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forward, so that the weight of your head unevenly presses the
vertebrae and the discs between them, the discs start to be pressed
outward toward the back. They break down (degenerate) and bulge in
the direction you've been pushing them (herniate). The disc and the
swelling from damaging the area can press on nerves, pain goes down
your arm. This is not old age, it's bad habits that you can
stop.
Tightness from years of poor positioning can press on the same
nerves mimicking nerve impingement and disc pain.
A degenerating disc is not a disease, but a simple, mechanical
injury that can heal, if you just stop grinding it and physically
pushing it out of place with unhealthy habits.
Left - side view of normal disc between two vertebrae. Right -
disc pushed out (herniated) from bad bending habits.
Lift and bend properly to avoid damaging your discs.
Sitting, standing, and living with your neck and head forward
can eventually push cervical (neck) discs out
As you can see, it is not a matter of strengthening muscles to
stop pain. Strength does not make you sit or move in healthy ways.
Many people do strengthening exercises and become stronger people
who still slouch. No special chairs or devices make you sit right
(although many can encourage worse sitting, so see the article on
Healthy Sitting.) Sitting well won't happen automatically from
exercises, stretches, special chairs, or devices. Sitting,
standing, moving, and living your life with healthy movement
mechanics is up to you.
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Instead of doing a bunch of artificial rehab exercises, and
using stiff, uncomfortable posture drills, then going back to
damaging daily life movement, try living and moving in healthy ways
- functional movement mechanics. Here is how:
2. Muscular Pain, The Forward Head (Reduced Cervical Lordosis),
Upper Crossed Syndrome
Tilting your head and neck forward is called a "Forward Head." A
"forward head" is the source of much neck, upper back, and shoulder
pain. Sufferers are often told they have a condition or disease or
problem that is inherited and they need to live with it and take
months of treatments, even medicines, when the causes are simple
mechanical injury and the ways to fix it are easy and quick.
The head should be vertically over the body, not forward. Check
to see if you let your head and neck tilt forward, shown in the
first drawing at left below.
Are you too tight in the upper chest and shoulder (left drawing)
to comfortably stand upright? (right)
The forward head (#1 left) commonly results in sore shoulder,
neck, and upper back. Such pain can be easily fixed.
A Forward Head makes your upper back muscles ache. The pull and
strain of the weight of a forward head is like the weight of a
bowling ball yanking forward on your upper back muscles. A forward
head can eventually damage neck and upper back structures, over
years of moving and rubbing at angles they were not built for.
Chronically holding neck muscles in an overstretched position
weakens them. The forward head creates shortened, contracted
muscles in front, and a stretched, weakened back. Cervical (neck)
discs are pressured posteriorly. This creates a cycle of forward
positioning that herniates discs and makes sore aching muscles, and
the tightness and habits that keep you tilting forward. The result
is that the average person has upper body pain from the poor
positioning and at the same time, the chronic poor positioning
makes them too tight to stand up straight. Check Yourself - you may
be surprised to find that you do much of your standing, sitting,
activity, and exercise with a forward head. No wonder you have
pain. Look in any fitness magazine and see all the photos of people
doing exercise with their neck tilted forward and chin jutting
forward. Look at how people jut their chin and neck forward when
they eat. See how they often tilt the neck forward and pinch the
back of the neck at a sharp angle to jut the chin upward when they
drink, instead of gently "unrounding" the upper back and keeping
the neck more neutral. Look how they carry backpacks and bags -
neck tilting
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forward against the load instead of using muscles to hold the
spine in upright healthy position. Then they do shoulder stands in
yoga, which simultaneously overstretches the posterior ligament,
pushes discs outward, and creates forces that generate bone spurs.
The average person overstretches and unequally stretches their neck
and upper body so much, it is no mystery that they hurt - it is a
mystery that they don’t hurt more.
Upper Crossed Syndrome. The pain and other problems of the
forward head are sometimes referred collectively as "Upper Crossed
Syndrome." It is not a disease or "condition" or structural
problem, or something to live with. It is mechanical pain from bad
posture - slouching. It is easily fixed. Stop holding your neck and
head forward. It is simple. Don't "do exercises" for your pain then
go back to the forward head. Methods follow below.
Muscular Pain From The Forward Head Poor standing and sitting
ergonomics are a common cause of numb shoulder, upper back pain,
and headache. It makes a classic "tension" pain across the
shoulders, in a diamond pattern down the middle of the upper back,
in the neck, up the neck to the head, and sometimes down the arm.
Forward head is a common source of headache. Yet, after
mechanically pressuring their neck all day, people call it stress
and do not fix the very forward posture that would give them relief
and stop the injury process.
Surprising Source of Shoulder Pain and Rotator Cuff Tears The
forward head and rounded shoulders are a surprising hidden source
of shoulder and rotator cuff pain and impingement. With the head
held forward, and/or shoulders rounded, the upper shoulder rotates
forward which gets in the way of normal motion when you raise your
arm. The upper arm bone squashes the soft structures of the
shoulder capsule against the shoulder bones (where the scapula
meets the clavicle). This can cause pain, squashing (impingement)
and rotator cuff injury. How often does this happen? Every time you
wash and comb your hair, pull off a shirt, put away groceries,
scratch your head, brush your teeth, and reach for anything you can
be causing mechanical injury to the area and / or cutting into
rotator cuff tendons a tiny bit at a time, until they fray and
eventually tear. In short, a forward head and rounded shoulders can
cause shoulder and upper back and neck pain through many dozens of
injurious movement mechanics a day. Injury adds up over time.
3. Making It Worse Trying to Stand Straight - "Craning" Hurts
Discs, Facets, and Soft Tissue
Check yourself - when you try to stand straight or "pull back
your shoulders" do you do it by increasing the inward curve of your
lower back, by craning your neck, or both? "Craning" the neck means
folding or pinching the neck backwards, with the chin and face
lifted. Craning the neck is surprisingly common, and a major source
of neck, disc, facet (spine joint), and shoulder pain. Craning may
be confused for, even the cause of spondylolisthesis in the neck -
a sliding of the vertebrae.
Check to see if you crane your neck to look up, to drink, eat,
to reach overhead, to try to stand straight, to read, to dress
yourself, and wash in the shower. Check yourself to see if you jut
your chin forward so often in daily life, continuing injurious
habits and pain.
People are often told to stand up straight by bringing "ears
over shoulders" or pulling their shoulders back. The result is that
they tip their head back and crane the neck instead of getting the
point - which was to straighten your positioning (posture), not
make it worse. See the drawing of Backman!™ below demonstrating
craning. To stand and sit straighter, don't tip your head back,
yank your ear over your
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shoulder, or merely bring shoulders back, leaving the neck still
tilted forward. Get the concept of straightening your neck and
upper spine together to make comfortable healthier upright
position.
Are you so tight that you crane your neck to look up, or to try
to stand straight?
The forced, pinched neck position hurts and can even create a
sliding of vertebrae on the one below it, called spondylysthesis
(in general, the top or bottom bone sliding more changes the name
to retrolisthesis
or anterolisthesis - covered separately). No surgery or pills
needed, just stop craning your necck.
Use the two stretches below to become comfortable holding
straighter position, then stop craning!
WALL TEST
Try This Wall Test To See If You Need to Fix Upper Back Pain and
Poor Positioning. This is a diagnostic test, not an exercise:
1. Stand near a wall, with your back close to, but not touching
the wall.
2. Back up toward the wall. See what touches first, and how it
feels most habitual for you to stand.
3. If your heels, backside, upper back, and back of your head
all can easily and comfortably touch the wall (Figure # 5), without
trying or straining, then it's a good probability that you can
stand healthfully upright and straight. That is the goal.
4. Do you like to, or feel most comfortable to stand with only
your behind touching, as in figure # 1 in the drawing below? You
may stand flexed (bent forward) at the hip.
5. Do you like to, or feel most comfortable to stand with your
upper back leaning back to touch the wall with the rest of your
body forward of the wall (figure # 2)? You may stand with upper
body slouched backward.
6. Does it feel most "normal" to keep your head forward? Figure
# 3
7. Do you need to arch your lower back or crane your neck back
to line up - figure # 4? Tight, painful, and needs fixing.
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Do this wall test, described above,
to see if you have the healthy positioning needed to avoid neck
and upper back pain.
If you are too tight to comfortably stand as straight as in
figure # 5, then you are too tight to stand up straight. Pain can
result from the bad positioning (slouching) your tightness creates
all day, every day. (Note to large people - if you have a barrel
chest and big back, you'd have to have a jug sized head to reach
the wall without leaning back In that case, no need to reach the
wall. Check if you can comfortably hold in line with midline of the
body).
For everyone else, being too tight to stand upright in health is
common and no mystery. Here is what to do:
Two Retraining Stretches
Tight pectoral (chest and front of shoulder) muscles rotate your
arms inward. To see if you do this, put your arms at your sides,
look in the mirror and note direction of your thumbs. Do they face
inward – toward each other? To restore this muscle group to
functional resting length do these two stretches, then *use* the
new straight positioning for all you do. It is not the stretches
that fix the problem, but the purpose of the stretches - to allow
you to hold healthy position the rest of the day:
1. Chest Stretch (also called Pectoral or "Pec" Stretch, even
though it includes other muscles and structures in front /
chest)
Face a wall, left-hand photo below. Lift one hand up, elbow bent
out to the side. Shoulder down and relaxed.
Turn away from the wall, using the wall to gently brace your
elbow back as you turn away, shown in the middle and right-hand
photos, below. Hold only a few seconds - 3-6 should be enough:
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.
Instead of "doing" a stretch, get the purpose - to feel the
stretch in the front of your chest on that side. Then you move
accordingly, instead of doing strange rules that you can't feel or
understand.
If you don't feel the stretch in the front chest, you are not
doing this stretch right. See if you arm is behind you or merely
out to the side. Remember, understand what you want to feel, then
you will know how to move.
Don't ruin the posture of all your other segments. Don't let
your lower back arch or your chin jut forward. Stay upright and
relaxed without straining any other areas out of line
If anything hurts, you are doing it wrong. If your fingers or
arm goes numb, you are pushing too hard.
Hold properly just a few seconds, then switch arms. Keep good
positioning - avoid the three mistakes
pictured next.
Avoid hyperlordosis by flexed hip (left), forward head
(center), and hyperlordosis by thoracic lean (right). Thank you
to participants of the Snowmass 2004 Wilderness Medical Society
Stretch Workshop for demonstrating in the photo above.
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Drop your arms and look at your thumbs again. Thumbs should face
forward now. Try the Wall Test again. It should be easy to stand
straight now. If not, see if you have done this stretch
correctly.
2. Next - the top of upper back/ shoulder (name is shortened to
Trapezius Stretch, even though it includes Levator Scapulae and
several other muscles and structures, of course)
Stand against the wall, with your back and the back of your head
against the wall, gently
Put one hand behind you, as if in an opposite pocket, photo at
right.
Breathe in. While breathing out, slide your other hand down the
side of your body toward your knee, photo at right.
Tilt your head downward to that same side, gently. Keep it as
much against the wall as you comfortably can.
Don't round or hunch forward, or drop or raise your chin. Feel a
nice stretch along your entire side. Hold a second or two while
breathing. Switch sides. If your lower back hurts or pinches to do
this trapezius
stretch, you may be increasing the arch in your lower back. If
you don't know how to tuck your hip to reduce overarch, see the
free article on hyperlordosis to fix this.
Try the Wall Test again. It should be easy to stand straight
now. If not, see if you have done this stretch correctly.
Repeat correctly until your Wall Test shows you have fixed the
problem. Your wall test should become straighter starting the first
day you use this two-stretch method correctly.
How These Two Stretches Fix You
Do not do these two retraining methods "as stretches" then go
back to forward head. They do not fix the forward head. They fix
ability to be comfortable without a forward head - standing
straight. Do both stretches many times a day to allow you to stand
and move the rest of the day without the forward position that
injures and brings on pain. Use the Wall Test to check if you are
straight. If not, do the two stretches above (pectoral and
trapezius) again, then check if you have accomplished the purpose
of the stretches with the Wall Test again until you have corrected
the problem right then and there Do not walk away with a tight,
forward neck. That would be silly.
There is a third stretch in this series that I teach in my
books, classes, and private appointments.
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More good stretches are also in the Stretching Article on this
web site.
Exercises to Strengthen and Retrain Muscles
Neck pain exercises are misunderstood. Do you injure your neck
all day then hope to fix it with a few exercises? It will not work
if you "do exercises" then walk away with no use of the positioning
or strength you just practiced. It is like eating butter and sugar
all day, then doing 10 minutes of exercises and wondering why it
doesn't "work." When you stop sitting, standing, and bending wrong
and injuring your upper back and neck many dozens of times each
day, it can heal.
The key is what you do all day. Try these retraining drills
slowly. See how you feel the next day, then increase. Use these
movements, not as exercises to do 10 times, but to retrain how to
stand, sit and move with straighter healthier positioning all
day.
Holding Healthful Upright Position is Upper Body Exercise
One of many conventional exercises often misused and
misunderstood is the "double chin" (also called "dorsal glide"). It
In this not-so-helpful exercise, people are told to pull the chin
in 10 times (or 15 or 20...). Often people do this in stiff,
painful ways. Then they go back to walking and sitting all day with
their head
forward, wondering why their neck still hurts. Or they force
their chin in, causing more pain. Don't do
that. Even people who have never had neck pain, hurt when they
do this uncomfortable not-so-helpful exercise.
Instead, understand that "the double chin" exercise is not
something to "do 10 times" then stop. It is something you use in
relaxed way to learn the concept of not holding a forward head.
Then you can use it to keep
healthful relaxed but upright head position all the time. In
other words, you do this concept one time. Also you use it to see
if you are too tight to stand comfortably straight. You fix that
first, then go on to use the straighter
positioning.
People who think they must keep the chin pulled in stiffly often
notice pain at the bottom of the neck where it joins the shoulder,
and/ or pain behind theeears. Keep chin from jutting forward, not
stiffly or so tightly that it
hurts, but easily so that your ear and back of your jaw is above
your shoulder, not forward of it. Also don't retract so sharply
that the double chin forms. Change the bad "double chin exercise"
into a more useful,
functional way of standing simply, straight, and healthfully.
When you try to "straighten up" make sure you can tell if you are
straightening from your upper back, not by
increasing the inward curve of your lower back, or leaning your
upper body backward.
Test your position with your back against a wall often during
the day, to see if the back of your head touches, without pain,
strain, craning your neck, or arching your lower back (described
previously).
If it is not comfortable, do the two easy stretches (described
previously) to restore ability to stand upright, then use that
ability all the time, in intelligently applied, relaxed, healthy
way.
The idea is to do this without strain, not to
cause it.
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The Point of Exercises
Strengthening and stretching are important, but do not change
posture or lifting habits, and so, do not “cure” neck pain or
posture problems. Use this new Dr. Bookspan method of using your
brain and voluntary healthy movement habits to stop the source of
pain. I have redesigned back exercises to be used to retrain you
how you hold your body all the time.
Doing neck exercise is not like getting a shot of penicillin or
going to confession. It does not “fix” bad habits the rest of the
time. Neck exercise is supposed to retrain your thinking and habits
*all the time* not just something to "do 10 times." Strengthening
has no effect on posture if you don’t apply the strength the rest
of the day to control joint angles for all activities.
Neck pain has a large component of bad movement mechanics, not
weak muscles. Strength does not make you stand or move in healthy
ways. Many people do strengthening exercises and become stronger
people who still crane their neck, look upward constantly pinching
back from one neck vertebra instead of runrounding their upper
back, and slouch their neck and head forward. "Core" exercises are
especially misunderstood and repeated and prescribed without any
understanding that stronger abdominal muscles have little to do
with the most common causes of back pain. Moreover, most
conventional core training exercises are done in bent forward ways
that reinforce the same bad mechanics you started with. For the
research and interesting story on what abdominal muscles really
have to do with back pain, see my article on Abdominal Muscles -
what they do may surprise you. Bending, standing, moving, and
living your life with healthy movement mechanics is up to you. The
rest of this article tells more on how.
Where strengthening helps - Someone may use good body mechanics
all day, yet ache with fatigue at the end of the day. That is not a
back injury or true back pain that needs treatments, and should not
be addressed with medications. Another instance is someone who
really is so weak that they can't hold up their own body weight or
the weight of their shoulder bags and instead, shifts it onto their
joints, which wear with time and grind under the weight
(slouching).
A little strengthening allows you to do more before fatigue pain
sets in, and to be more able to use good mechanics instead of
slouching. Strengthening will not keep you from slouching, and
don't fall prey to unhealthful exercise programs claiming to cure
back pain. Almost any movement can make you feel better for the
moment. Over the long run, it's better not to use injurious
movement techniques for your health. Use good mechanics for all you
do and healthier ways to exercise explained in this article, other
free articles on this site and the books with more.
Do You Exercise in Ways that Damage Your Neck, Shoulder, and
Upper Back? - Neck Pain FROM Your Exercises:
If you hurt from excessive forward bending all day over their
desk, steering wheel, work, and TV, the last thing you need is more
upper back and shoulder rounding. Many exercises, ironically even
those commonly (but mistakenly) prescribed for back and neck pain,
involve more forward bending - toe touches, knee to chest,
crunches, and shoulder stands like "the plow" and "The Frog" (lying
backward, raising legs over head so that all weight is on your
upper back and neck).
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. You already are good at rounding your shoulders. Don't add to
your round shoulders with more stretching
in back. Round shoulders are part of the problem in the first
place.
Instead, stretch the front, as taught earlier in this
article.
Why add to a forward head with these?
Adding body weight to a stretched-forward neck accelerates disc
degeneration, gradually pushes discs outward to the back
(herniate), and can eventually make the bone protect itself by
growing a bone spur.
I did studies that found no relation between hamstring
flexibility and lower back pain (except for all the people hurting
their back by DOING hamstring stretches) - click to see why it is
so often mistakenly prescribed for back pain.
Is Your Drinking Killing Your Neck?
Check if you jut your chin forward to eat and drink. Pushing the
neck forward while lifting the head (chin forward and up) creates
severe forces on the discs, presses the joints together in back,
and in general produces unnecessary pain and injury. Instead, keep
chin in. When eating and drinking, get more of the
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lift from your upper back, "unrounding" and straightening the
forward curve of the upper back, instead of only pinching back from
one spot in the neck.
Easy, fun Neck Saver reminders for drinking and sitting click
items.
Discs Can Heal
Disc injury is not a life sentence. Disc degeneration or
slippage (herniation) can heal - if you let it, no differently than
a sprained ankle. Stop damaging your discs with bad bending,
standing, and sitting habits and the discs can heal. It takes years
to herniate a disc, and only days to weeks to heal it by stopping
bad habits.
Muscles Can Heal
When you over-tighten muscles with hunching and bad habits, they
can remain too shortened to let you stand properly. Or they stay
tightened in “knots” or spasm. This changes their muscle chemistry.
When you slouch, you keep some muscles overly shortened and others
overly stretched, which weakens and strains them. Massage does not
stop the cause. Are you paying good money gimmicks and medical
devices and massages and treatments and adjustments then go right
back to causes? Stop bad movement habits and you will stop causes,
and muscle knots and triggers and sore spots will quickly heal.
Pain When Your X-Ray is Normal
You may be in great pain from simple damaging mechanics. Your
X-rays and scans are normal. You may be told nothing is wrong, or
that it is "stress" or to give up favorite activities. Your pain
persists from bad postural habits. This is no mystery. Change the
bad habits to change the pain. You will be able to keep your active
life and do more than before.
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When Pain Is Not From What's On Your X-Ray
Other times, the scans show some minor problem like arthritis,
herniated disc, or degenerating structures. Just like car tires
that are mid-life, but perfectly good, some wear may show on exam –
but this is unrelated to performance or pain. Pain is falsely
ascribed to the arthritis or to the disc. Patients feel doomed, and
are often told to give up activities. Pain (even the herniation
itself) may mostly result from poor mechanics. This is no mystery.
Change the bad habits to change the pain. Keep your active life -
it's important for your health. Sometimes, the scans show some
major problem, and major surgery is performed to correct it (taking
out away from healthy outdoor fun and indoors, sick, eating
institutional food, away from fresh air and sunshine - that's not
health). When the original problem was from the bad positioning,
often pain persists or returns because you never corrected the
mechanics that caused it. The defect itself may return from
uncorrected mechanics. Surgery can be avoided. Fix the source of
the problem and the results of the problem can heal without
surgery. Instead of being forced into reduced health and activity,
you can do more and have a fun active life.
Pain From Your Medicines
Common prescription medicines cause much joint and muscle pain.
The pain is not a rare effect as previously thought. It is
common.
Are you on medicines for lowering cholesterol? Sleeping
medicines? Drugs for depression and anxiety? Irritable bowel drugs,
stomach acid drugs (a large contributor to osteoporosis and
thinning bones, too) drugs to concentrate, to help wake up, to calm
you, for allergies. More and more drugs are found to have pain as
side effect, even, of all ironies, drugs for pain.
Stretches and exercises will not fix this kind of pain. People
with existing pain are often put on new medicines that cause more
pain in an expensive, unhealthy cycle of pills, payments and pain,
all needless.
In an ever worsening cycle, side effects are "treated" with yet
more drugs with effects that lessen and degrade your health. That
is not "side effects" and that is not health care. Many of these
drugs are not needed. Some, like stomach acid drugs, cause the
problem in the first place. Others have even more serious
consequences.
A top health priority is to stop the need for these drugs so
that you can lessen, then stop the need to take them. If you are in
pain, so don't exercise, then get cholesterol and other health
problems from not moving, can't sleep, then take cholesterol and
sleeping medicines that cause dependence and more pain, use the
healthy principles in my free summary articles and all my books so
that you can move again, and be healthfully tired at the end of the
day and sleep well at night. Not all exercise is good medicine.
Healthy exercise as healthy medicine will stop the pain and need
for medicines that cause more problems.
Pain From Your Expensive Ergonomic Pillows, Beds, and
Devices
Check for large pillows, firm pillows, and beds that press or
curve you into specific positions. They are a common source of neck
and upper body pain, even headache. Often they are designed for
people with
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unhealthy tightness to hold them in that same unhealthful
position. Save your money and get free preventive medicine and
relief - use healthful stretches and movement in the day time so
you can straighten out more comfortably while sleeping.
How Long Does It Take To Fix Pain?
Using everything presented above, you should feel the difference
as soon as you stop the causes of pain and try the two easy
stretches and reposition your head and neck during all you do. If
you're not feeling better right away, check what you are doing
compared to what you have learned above and in the other free
articles, for example, are you still sitting badly right now
reading this?
It takes years to hurt a disc or neck muscles, and only days for
it to start healing once you no longer are injuring it. Make sure
there is not something else contributing to your pain. It is almost
always quick and easy to start getting your life back and start
feeling better right now. Don't wait.
When you look upward or reach up for all your daily activities,
don't jut your chin forward and pinch your
neck back at an angle. Instead, "unround" your upper body, which
is a great stretch that you need anyway.
What To Do Every Day To Prevent Neck Pain To restore proper
muscle length to allow healthy posture:
First thing in the morning, don't sit on the bed. Instead of
sitting and rounding your back first thing, turn over and lie face
down. Prop gently on elbows, but not so high that it strains. It
should feel good and help you straighten out first thing. Get out
of bed without sitting.
Don't droop and hang your head forward when standing, sitting,
and other movement. Remember that posture and body positioning is
voluntary. This is the whole key to stopping upper back and neck
pain when standing, sitting, exercising.
During the day, check if your positioning is straight with the
Wall Test - described above. The wall stand does not fix the
posture - it is a test.
If standing straight with the Wall Test is not comfortable, use
the Pectoral (pec) muscle stretch and Trapezius stretch - described
above.
To look downward for reading and working, simply keep chin
comfortably in, and neck straight and upright, not forward. Tip
your head down
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instead of hanging the weight of your head forward on your upper
spine and muscles.
Lie on your back on the floor (diagnostic for tightness and
repositioning). Can you lie on your back without needing a pillow
under your head? If not, your forward head has become dangerously
tight. Do everything above to relieve it. Be careful and use your
brain not to do unhealthy things that hurt.
Sit without rounding your shoulders and upper back. Sitting
article. Count how many times you let your head tilt or hang
forward each day.
Imagine the injury to your neck by doing that many times each
day. When sitting, it is not important "to keep feet on floor" or
keep “flat thighs”
- parallel to the ground. That is often repeated as advice to
prevent pain, but it does not change injurious mechanics. Focus on
the main issue, not the trivia.
Do upper back extension exercise (described above). It will feel
good. When you pull your chin in to fix your posture, don't do it
by arching
your lower back. The postural change needs to come from your
upper body, not by creating another strain on another body
part.
Don't think you have to live your life "on eggshells" constantly
holding yourself rigidly straight. Restricting your movement to
limit pain is not how to live, isn't healthy, and isn't fun. Get
more active. Learn the principles and apply them, instead of
memorizing "rules" and buying expensive ergonomic chairs and
beds.
(to keep this article quick and easy, much is left out. The
books tell more.)
Summary
Neck, upper body and much shoulder pain is not a mysterious
"condition." People spend their day sitting, working, walking, and
driving rounded forward, lifting and bending with rounded forward
bad positioning all day, then exercise rounded forward, physically
pressing discs outward and overstretching muscles in back. They do
yoga and Pilates moves with their head forward or pinched and
craned backward, then do shoulder stands, plows, and other
stretches that forcibly push discs outward. They take
anti-inflammatory medications for mechanical pain that is not
inflammatory, try remedies that do not address the cause of the
problem while they continue doing the causes, do physical therapy
in bent forward ways that exacerbates the original problem, give up
favorite activities, have surgery then return to previous bent
forward habits. Then everyone is astonished that they "tried
everything and nothing seemed to work." It's like eating butter and
sugar all day, waving your hands in the air for five minutes, then
saying "I don't understands why I don't lose weight, I do my
exercises."
Are you letting your weight rest on the joints and discs of your
neck by hanging it forward, instead of holding body weight up on
muscles with straight positioning? Using muscles to hold healthful
straight positioning would stop the pain at the same time that you
burn calories, strengthen, and be a free workout.
Use healthy positioning to stop the cause of pain and damage.
Then no need for pills or surgery, and the injury can heal.
Pain can be avoided by no longer damaging body structures with
poor mechanics.
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It's simple - Don’t memorize complicated rules. Just use muscles
easily to reposition for daily life.
How is your body positioning right now? Rounded, bent forward to
read this? The whole point of exercise and therapy is missed when
you don’t learn to consciously use your muscles the rest of the day
for standing, sitting, bending, and shock absorption. Use your
muscles to stand and bend properly for all daily tasks. Bonus: It
burns calories, strengthens, and is a free workout.
Watch other people’s posture, gait, and movement habits. It will
remind you to straighten up.
Notice injurious "fitness and health" moves featured in fitness
and yoga magazines and books.
Make sure your pain is not from medical conditions (vascular,
infection, other) or from many medicines known to have body pain as
side effects.
Send me your success stories and photos showing the principles
in action. Prizes for best ones
Please do not e-mail me saying you are "doing the exercises 10
times" and want me to "tell you how to fix your pain from the
forward head." Here is the answer now: Stop slouching your head and
neck forward or forcing and yanking to straighten, and the source
of pain can stop. It is not the exercises that fix things, it's
you.
Send success e-mails and photos. First make sure you understand
everything in the article above.
Send typos, ideas to improve this site, funny jokes (clean only)
- typos @ DrBookspan DOTcom
Get the books to get even more.
You Don’t Have To Live With Pain
Student Comment:
"It is an honor to know you! The best part about all of your
work is how you infuse it all with a sense of duty, honor, and
commitment to bringing out the best in all of us - I don't know how
you do it, but that is
what makes you exceptional. I agree with that student of yours
who thought you were a superhero." ~ Linda Hsu, Massage Therapist,
AFEM Certified, Fixing Neck & Back Pain
What To Do Next:
Now that your neck and upper back are better and you have hope
again, you can take what you saved and have a vacation, give to the
poor and still Click DONATE - secure and safe through
PayPal. Thank you !
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If you sent what you saved on years of pills, gadgets, and
treatments that don't work, it would be thousands. A few bucks out
of that is gratefully appreciated. I provide breakthrough
information not
available elsewhere - no ads, no hype - to stop pain and get
your life back. This is my work.
Why donate? So YOU can get more free real ongoing pain-free
life. I have no salary to write this, no paid desk job. All my
patients got better so no income from "rerun" patients. Anything
you send is appreciated
and lets me write MORE ARTICLES FOR YOU.
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http://www.drbookspan.com/FitnessLifestyle.html
Fitness as a REAL Lifestyle - Functional Fitness, Exercise,
& Daily
Movement
Healthy Movement Mechanics Builds Health and Strength Into Your
Real Life Where You Need It Most,
Prevents Pain and Injuries - Fun, Free, Real Daily Life
Copyright © Jolie Bookspan. MEd, PhD, FAWM Director Neck and
Back Pain Sports Medicine
Headmaster AFEM - Academy of Functional Exercise Medicine
Copyright & Reprint Instructions
This is the Functional Fitness page of Dr. Bookspan's web site,
a free, no-ad site dedicated to getting you back to healthy,
strong, happy life. No hype, no sales of silly fitness products.
Dr. Bookspan's work is evidence-based primary source sports
medicine that you can use yourself, right away, to make your own
life better. There are hundreds of articles on this site for you.
This page gives you an important group of articles of a practice
pioneered by Dr. Bookspan - fitness as a (real) lifestyle. At the
end are links to more, including functional programs for your
groups using Bookspan Basics - skill sets all written out for
you.
FUNCTIONAL FITNESS SUMMARY
Good movement and body mechanics are a powerful prescription for
health and fixing pain.
Fitness as a Lifestyle does not come from going to a gym or
doing reps of exercises. It is how you move in all your regular
daily activities at home, at work, and everywhere. Moving, sitting,
living, and working in tight injurious positions that reinforce bad
posture and injurious joint positions all day is why most exercises
and rehab and PT don't fix injuries, and why people don't get all
the strength and ability they could - they are missing the most
important time to use healthy movement - real life. Fitness as a
Lifestyle is moving in healthy patterns all the time - getting
strength, stretch, and injury prevention built in to your regular
ordinary day.
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FUNCTIONAL FITNESS - "Gyms With Benefits"
These skills are basics for healthy fit pain-preventing daily
life - built in to all you do.
No gyms, gimmicks, trainers, PT, or devices needed. Functional
movement is a free gym that builds awareness and discipline as
it
strengthens and increases your physical abilities during your
daily activities at home and work.
Paying to go to a gym to burn fuels to power machines to
exercise you, is obscenely backwards. Instead, you burn calories
and strengthen using functional healthy movement to clean your
house, your neighborhood, and make a better world.
Paying to go to PT to fix pain, and going back to the injurious
body mechanics and movement habits that caused the injury, or using
habitual poor mechanics to do your PT (because it's what you know
and go back to) is sad, ironic, indefensible, preventable. Instead,
we use healthy mechanics to prevent pain and let existing injuries
heal.
Functional Fitness adds much movement for strength, mobility,
injury prevention, awareness, stretch and other benefits that would
otherwise be missed out on every day. It reduces injuries and helps
you get healthy movement to fix existing ones.
This curriculum is part of my own teaching and sports medicine
practice, and is incorporated into the classes of my Academy of
Functional Exercise Medicine (AFEM) and Bookspan Basics. If you are
using and learning healthy ways of body and actions, you can be a
part of the fun - Certification, awards, community health, making
medicine and health care healthy, building health into daily life,
teacher training, and innovative projects for human powered fitness
- click Academy. No charge to participate. This is for health.
For a wonderful place to come learn, fix injuries, gain skills,
build a better greener world, see Project 5 on my Projects
page.
More Functional Fitness - for your mind and spirit - see
Emotional Training. This is all included in Dr. Bookspan's
innovative program of
#GymsWithBenefits. Have fun!
Readers - send in your stories of how you use these training
skills in your life and your exercise
to:[email protected]. More Sharing ServicesShare this
page
Why Fitness as a Lifestyle? by Jolie Bookspan, MEd, PhD,
FAWM
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An injury survey by US military revealed that 62% of American
injuries in Iraq are occurring in the gym. The same is happening at
home. How can this be? Several things are happening. Just as not
every medicine is healthy, not all exercises and stretches are
healthy.
Just as smoking "works" for weight loss, but is not a smart or
healthy way to do it, many exercises "work" for cosmetic results,
but result in long-term injury, and promote bad movement habits.
Other common exercises don't work your body the way you need to
move in real life, resulting in strains and injuries when going
about daily activities.
1. My work shows you hundreds of simple ways to change your
exercises, stretches, and daily movement, to make them fun,
healthy, and the way you really need to move for healthier daily
life.
2. Instead of repeating what others claim about health, I do
original research. In my laboratory research in human physiology,
and my sports medicine clinical practice,
3. I see patients every day who are hurting and unhappy, despite
all the exercise and fitness they do. Many of my patients are yoga
teachers, physical therapists, and Pilates teachers with back pain,
hip pain, and neck pain. I see personal trainers with herniated
discs and knee pain. I see body builders with back pain, despite
all the abdominal exercises they do. I see patients, including
fitness instructors, who aren't getting more flexible no matter how
much stretching they do. I see people who are stressed, tired,
achy, and not in shape, even though they spend hundreds of dollars
a month on supplements and pills, gizmos, equipment, trainers, and
classes.
The answers are simple, and my work and articles cover many easy
changes you can make so that your fitness becomes not only more
effective, but fun and healthy.
Get started now with the next in this series - What is "Fitness
as a Lifestyle?"
Photo © copyright Dr. Bookspan of of Paul Plevakas,
contractor
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What is Fitness as a Lifestyle? by Jolie Bookspan, MEd, PhD,
FAWM
To many people, fitness means stopping your "real life,"
changing clothes, driving somewhere else, and doing uncomfortable
things without similarity to movement in daily life. Then they go
back to "real life" - slouching, bending wrong, walking heavily,
sitting rounded, leaning back to carry packages, taking elevators,
and avoiding movement.
1. At the gym, people do squats with a trainer, paying to learn
proper form and upright back, then bend over wrong to put the
weight down when they’re finished.
2. They do proper lunges for their legs in exercise class, then
bend over wrong without using their legs to pick up their things
when they leave. They work with weights to isolate arms but never
learn how their entire body stabilizes a weight, then hurt their
back opening a window at home.
3. They work on a treadmill or elliptical trainer but sprain
their ankle when out walking because they haven't trained balance
and stabilization. They sit hunched in bad posture waiting for
exercise class to start. In modern life, exercise is something you
go and specially "do," then destroy and ignore your health the
other 23 hours a day. Fitness has become “fast food” – stripped of
value, sweetened up, and mass produced, even when unhealthy.
Changing your real life into healthy movement is a big and
inspiring area of rethinking and retraining.
Instead of sitting slouched then stopping to stretch because
your back hurts, sit and stand well so that you do not get stiff
and sore in the first place. Instead of lifting packages, babies,
groceries, laundry, and everything else wrong all day, then
stopping to do back exercises because your back hurts, lift
properly.You get built-in exercise, strengthen your knees, and save
your back.
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You don’t need to go to a gym; move, balance, and reach in
healthy ways in order to do your real life. Instead of thinking you
must stop your life to get health and exercise, fill your life with
built-in healthy movement.
Thank you for photo: National Cancer Institute, Linda Bartlett
(photographer)
Bending Right is Fitness as a LIfestyle by Jolie Bookspan, MEd,
PhD, FAWM
Readers asked for more pictures of healthy bending around the
house and workplace during daily life. They've been getting excited
about the idea that daily life is the way to physical ability and
health, instead of stopping life to do a bunch of exercises. People
spend time and money for endless treatments and gadgets for back
and knee pain and tight Achilles tendon. Healthy bending prevents
the commonest sources of all of these.
A major predisposing factor of knee and hip arthritis is weak
thighs.
A major risk factor of hip osteoporosis is lack of weight
bearing exercise.
A major risk factor of falls is weak legs and poor balance. The
Achilles tendon gets a natural stretch with each time you
bend right with heels down, and loses this constant normal
source of stretch without good bending.
The most important contributor to making a lumbar disc
degenerate, or slip out of place (herniate), and press on nerves
causing sciatica, is bad bending forward.
The biggest contributor to upper back and neck pain is keeping
the upper body rounded and bent over forward.
If you would like to reduce risk of falls, osteoporosis, bad
discs, sciatica, achy upper back, and arthritis, get a built-in
Achilles tendon stretch, and get strong shapely legs all at the
same time, just use your legs with good body position for daily
healthy bending.
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Why go to the gym or to physical therapy to do knee bends to
strengthen your legs, then spend your "real life" weakening your
legs and degenerating your lower back discs with bad bending, and
say, "I don't have time to exercise."
You will get free built-in exercise just moving in life. My
friends and family in Asia are astonished when I tell them I teach
Americans how to bend to look in the refrigerator, and that
Americans tell me it is too much work to bend right to load dishes
in a machine that washes for them. Then they pay money to go to a
gym or buy equipment to exercise their legs.
Here is a fun way to change mind set to exercise as a
lifestyle:
Count how many times a day you bend and how many times you can
choose to harm yourself or help yourself.
If you would like to try "fitness as a lifestyle," this is the
best place to start. Think of it:
when bending to make the bed, to pick up laundry, look in the
refrigerator, load and unload the dishwasher, to pick up your
shoes, open a lower cabinet, lift a child or pet, feed a child or
pet, pick up things from the floor, pick up hand weights to do
exercise, put down weights after exercising, many daily
activities.
Drawing of BackMan! (tm) copyright © Dr. Bookspan
How Often Should You Be Healthy? - When Do You Do Lifestyle
Exercise? by Jolie Bookspan, MEd, PhD, FAWM
A reader sent in the photos below to help others recognize
unhealthy bending. She asked, "What is your advice when someone is
having to bend to put dishes in the dishwasher? It just seems so
uncommon to think to squat while loading the dishes."
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1. There is no better time to bend in healthy ways than your
real life.
2. The whole point of fitness as a lifestyle is that your daily
life is healthy movement - not to change clothes to do squats at a
gym three times a week, then change clothes again, go home, and
bend wrong all day.
3. Healthy bending is for every time you bend. How often is
that? My article "How Good Would You Look From 400 Squats a Day -
Just Stop Unhealthy Bending" showed how we estimated that active
people wind up bending up to 400 times every day for ordinary
activities. Even sedentary people are over 100 bends a day if they
do things around the house like pick up the paper, feed pets, and
reach in dishwashers and refrigerators. Why harm your back and miss
free exercise for your legs hundreds of times a day?.
Most people know and repeat, "bend your knees" if you quiz them
on healthy bending. Bending knees slightly, as in the above photos,
does not make bad bending healthy. Bending over forward pressures
your lower back discs, whether your back is rounded (photo above
left) or straighter (above right). You are still bending over and
the leverage point is your lower spine. Bending right is
simple:
With feet side-by-side, comfortably apart, bend knees, keeping
your torso fairly upright - as if not wanting something to fall
from a shirt pocket (right drawing)..
Keep both heels down and shift your weight back to your heels.
Pull your knees back over your heels. Don't let them droop
forward under your body weight. When you shift your knees
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back, you will feel the effort shift away from your knee joint
to your thigh muscles.
Don't stick your backside out or exaggerate the lower back
arch.
Unless you are moving in healthy ways for your real life, it is
not a lifestyle and it is not healthy. Healthy bending is easy and
life changing. It is free exercise and injury prevention. When
should you do it? Each time you want your daily life to be
healthy.
Drawing of BackMan! (tm) copyright © Dr. Bookspan
Are You Making Your Exercise Unhealthy? by Jolie Bookspan, MEd,
PhD, FAWM
Most people know that sitting badly at your desk, as in the
left-hand photo below, is unhealthy:
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1. It is easy to see that he is rounding his back forward.
2. His ear is far forward of his shoulder (even with his
shoulders so rounded that the shoulders are forward too).
3 He is jutting his head and chin forward - The weight of his
head is straining on the muscles and joints of his upper back.
The bad body ergonomics of rounding forward is a common cause of
upper back and neck pain, often mistaken for "stress," even
contributing to pain down the arm as you slump the weight of your
upper body on nerves that go down the arm, compressing them. The
forward bend to the spine squeezes your discs of your neck and
lower back, gradually degenerating them and forcing them outward,
which is called herniation.
Now look at the right hand photo of the bicyclist. The rounded
forward positioning is the same. It does not magically become
healthy because you are calling it an exercise. It is just as
unhealthy whether you are at your desk, on a stationary or real
bicycle, on an exercise ball, motorcycle, or in the car. What to do
instead is simple. Sit up. Don't round your back. Are you rounding
forward reading this right now? How to start fixing it - get the
concepts, not rigid rules of angles and placement:
Pull your chair in close to the desk. Put your hips all the way
back to the seat back. Lean your upper back against the seat back,
not your lower
back. Notice your shoulders and chin. If forward, place them
back. Move your chair far enough in to rest your arms on the
desk.
Don't crane your wrists to type. I will write more about wrist
pain. There should be no pain when keeping arms comfortably on the
desk, which keeps the weight of your arms from hanging forward on
your neck.
Don't push your lower back against the seat back. Many seat
backs are rounded outward so that you have to sit bent forward if
you rest your back against them. If the seat back is concave, put a
small soft cushion (or loosely rolled small towel or shirt) about
as small as your forearm in the space between the seat back and
your lower back. Do not press against the roll - that makes the
useless to stop back pain.
Don't tighten and strain to sit straight. It is common to be so
tight from a lifestyle of forward rounding that sitting straight is
not comfortable. Do the pectoral stretch in Fixing Upper Back and
Neck Pain, then use
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the wall test in the same article to check if the stretch
worked. On a bike, unless you are in a high level race, straighten
up. It is simple. Healthy.
Why exercise in unhealthy ways? Watch people at the gym and in
life. Notice how often fitness publications ask you to practice
being bent over forward. Instead, get free built-in back muscle
exercise and prevent strain and pain just by sitting with healthy
positioning.
Thank you clipart.com and creative commons for photos- they own
the copyright my copyright is for the photo composite of the two
together only
Lifestyle Balance, Hip Stretch, Upper Back Positioning Awareness
- Ancient Shoe Exercise by Jolie Bookspan, MEd, PhD, FAWM
In the yoga classes I teach, students learn that the poses
themselves are not what gives good posture and focus. We learn what
healthy positioning is, then apply it to how to move for daily life
after walking out of the class.
In my sports medicine practice, I regularly see yoga teachers as
patients for back, knee, and neck pain. That is because several
yoga moves are not good for anyone - just as not all food is
healthful. Many moves are fine, but other traditional poses injure
joints, even when done "right" (or especially when done right),
like bending over from a stand or a sitting position, whether the
back is rounded or straight, as shown in the above articles on this
page. We omit those moves and use others that are better stretches
without the degenerating forces on the lower back and neck discs,
for example, healthier hamstring Stretching in my healthier
stretching article on this site. You don't have to injure yourself
to get exercise. Fitness is supposed to be healthy.
In my yoga class, I use a fun, effective hip stretch. We stand
on one foot and reached for the other ankle crossed over the bent
standing knee (drawing at right). When we do this, we practice the
daily healthy position of keeping the upper body upright and
straight, with the chin in, not craned forward. One new student was
not happy with my class. She was used to sitting on the floor in
classes she ordinarily took. She was peeved that we did so much
standing. Although people call yoga "mind and body," she didn't
like that we used the body. Although people frequently say that
yoga is about understanding and light, she whined and complained
and cursed me under her breath for most of the class. She wanted to
know why I was making everyone do an extreme and bizarre
movement.
I told the class it was healthy and happy to do this move every
day. I pointed to my crossed foot and spoke the name of this
ancient move - "Putting on shoe."
I hope you will try this too, to get a normal and healthy hip
stretch and better balance everyday. Remember that most of the
world stands to dress - the ones lucky enough to have shoes. Stand
up now
http://www.drbookspan.com/StretchingArticle.html
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and try it. You will get free balance, healthy hip stretch, and
leg strengthening every day from daily life. When you get good at
this fun move, keep your ankle crossed and bend the standing leg
enough for you to reach to the floor to retrieve your other shoe or
sock. Keep your chest up and your back straight to prevent
practicing unhealthful rounded position. Even though this one bends
over, it does not transfer the pivot force to the lower discs for
several reasons.
Have fun adding new healthy movement to your life every day.
Write your stories and take photos of how you make your life better
by fixing your fitness to be functional and healthy. Send me the
photos, or a link to your photo sharing site of your examples, and
I can put you up in lights as a role model for healthier life.
Drawing of BackMan! (tm) copyright © Dr. Bookspan
Household Fitness as a Lifestyle - Every Day by Jolie Bookspan,
MEd, PhD, FAWM
Fitness as a lifestyle at home is using healthy movement and
body positioning as you go about all your daily activities:
Making the bed. Ivy from New Zealand uses a half squat instead
of bad bending (bending over) to functionally strengthen
her legs and prevent back pain.
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Feeding the dog. How often do you bend around the house in a
day? Do you bend over wrong putting weight and leverage on your
discs, or bend with legs, getting built in strength and stretch.
The more you use it, the more you
get the practice, strength, and stretch you need to do it.
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Vacuuming with a good half-squat.
and full squat. For more on knee strength and injury prevention
squatting see my knee pain article
http://www.drbookspan.com/KneePainArticle.html
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Good lunge with front knee over foot. Gives stretch and strength
for legs and is good for knees. Good bending helps fix knees.
Avoiding good bending does not get your knees the built in movement
and
strength they need for doing and enjoying daily life
activities.
Full squat for chores with feet facing the same direction as
knees, and both heels down. Good full squats, done right, can be
healthy for both back and knees. Lower back gets a wonderful
stretch without bending over, and then knees can go through
range of motion without harm when you use good mechanics, as above
- feet facing the same direction as knees, and both heels down.
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A Thai villager sits straight, getting nice hip stretch, and
keeps ankles straight It is common to bend up the ankles when the
hips are tight. Keeping ankles straight shifts the stretch to the
hip where it is needed and stops overstretching the outside of the
ankles, where is is not needed or
healthy.
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Gardening and washing dishes. Our friend Mom Pon is relative to
the Abbot of the Muay Thai Monks on Horseback near the border
of
Myanmar (Burma). We stayed with her during the time we spent at
the monastery. She sits straight and comfortably in full squat to
get things for dinner from her garden, then to wash dishes in her
kitchen. We do the same when we help. She stands straight with chin
in to reach overhead to get tamarind fruit from
her tree
Our friends, the elder Thai ladies, sit straight while they
watch a parade
A hill tribe mother stands straight without rounding forward or
leaning backward from the weight of her baby -
Healthier Carrying gives you Free Ab Exercise and Stops Pain
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A villager takes his children for a fun ride, while sitting
straight.
Sitting straight to wash the kids.
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I gave these villagers soap bubbles for their baby. They played
for hours.
Enjoy life, laugh, and share good times.
Thank you for photos - David from Belgium, Ivy from New Zealand,
and Dr. Bookspan
Fitness and Health as a Lifestyle for Holidays by Jolie
Bookspan, MEd, PhD, FAWM
If you think you won't have time to exercise over the holidays,
here is good news. This post will show you how to move in healthy
ways so that you have healthy exercise built-in to all the cooking,
shopping, furniture moving, and social interactions. Here is more
good news. You don't have to go to a gym to work off the stress and
eating too much from the holiday. Life is not supposed to be a
poison that you deliberately take, then need an antidote to
offset.
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Here are four of the healthiest, quickest ways to make your
holiday preparations and participation into fitness and health as a
lifestyle:
1. To pick up chairs, babies, and grocery bags, to move
furniture, and for lifting things from the floor, bend your knees,
keeping your knees over feet, weight back toward your heels, and
your body upright - upright enough to keep things from falling out
of a shirt pocket.
2. To carry chairs, babies, grocery bags, furniture, and any
loads in front of you, don't lean back. It is a common bad habit to
lean the upper body backward, increasing the lower back arch.
Leaning backward shifts the weight of the load off your core and
arm muscles and onto your lower spine. Get free, built-in exercise
for your abs and arms and save your back by standing upright, not
slouching back. Don't lean and arch backward to carry things.
3. Notice all the times you round and hang forward over things
that you can easily reach by standing upright. Check your upper
back positioning when standing over counters, sinks, grocery bins,
vacuum cleaners, cribs and baby-changing tables, and when setting
food tables. Don't let your body weight hang forward or your upper
back rounded. Stand upright, chin loosely in (not strained and
yanked inward to force "good posture" - just as unhealthy as
slouching). Too look downward, tilt your head instead of pushing it
forward to see what you are doing. Relax shoulders downward. Smile.
Breathe.
4. Preparations and family interactions are no excuse to do
unhealthy behaviors out of habit, like smoking, overeating, and
arguing, then blame it on stress. The bad habits are even more
stress on body and mind. If something is wrong, see about fixing it
in a good way. Don't suffer in silence with people telling you that
you have to be happy just because of a holiday. Make your home
healthy for yourself. There is no place it matters more
Get exercise cleaning the house of junk and clutter. Take the
extra clothing, toys, and household items to a shelter. Carry the
bags with healthy positioning to the people who need it.
Make a healthy meal with family or alone, without television or
phone. Carry the meals to shut-ins and isolated elderly in your
neighborhood, and the homeless on the street.
Volunteer at a soup kitchen. Do grocery shopping, cooking, and
vacuuming for those who are too sick or disabled or alone to do it
for themselves. If you think you don't have time because you have
young children, take them with you to help carry things and to
teach them healthy ideals, and how thankful they can be for the
home you provide.
Don't smoke, drink soda (diet soda is just as unhealthy) eat
junk food (even if it has marketing words like "organic" on the
label), or undo the health benefits of fruit and vegetables by
junking them with cream, sugar, and cornstarch. Add up all you
spend on cigarettes and junk food that take a healthy body and give
it health problems. Take the money and give to the poor. With what
you save on prescriptions and treatments for all the pain and
jitters you cause yourself, you can feed a village and still take a
vacation.
When you eat the holiday meal, say thankful things. Taste your
food. Turn down seconds. Breathe. Smile. Help clean up. Shoulders
back. Enjoy the roof over your head. That is health as a
lifestyle
Drawing of BackMan! (tm) copyright © Dr. Bookspan
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Don't Confuse Exercise With Real Fitness by Jolie Bookspan, MEd,
PhD, FAWM
One of my readers, Dr. Zoe Eppley, e-mailed, "I have been trying
to apply your "bending right" approach to my daily activities. I
find my tight leg and hip muscles seriously limit my ability to
squat. Could you please recommend some stretches that will
help?"
I receive this inquiry often. People are realizing that they are
too tight to move in healthy ways for normal everyday life. I hear
it from instructors of aerobics, yoga, Plates, personal trainers,
and many others. This is an important epiphany. If you are too
tight to move in healthy ways, then it is likely that you spend
every day of your life moving in tight ways that create pain and
perpetuate tightness.
The good news is you do not need to "do" stretches and
exercises. Keep bending right and you will get exactly the stretch
and strengthening you need. My most important message that I stress
in all my work about exercise is not to "do exercises" but get
crucial, functional, effective exercise by moving in healthy ways
during normal everyday life.
People spend fortunes on treatments for pain, gadgets, potions,
pills, prescriptions, adjustments, and ongoing medical scans and
tests. Tightness and body pain is often made to be a mystery
because it persists even after surgery and exercise programs. The
reason is that they don't stop the cause. My successful techniques
for fixing pain, even the most resistant back, neck, knee, and
other musculoskeletal pain, emphasizes that you don't "do
exercises" but simply stop the source of the injury by stopping
unhealthy injurious movement patterns, and using healthy ones. Many
people do ten repetitions of an exercise and hold each stretch for
30 seconds, then go back to unhealthy moving, sitting, bending,
walking, exercising, and everything else that caused their pain and
tightness in the first place.
If you are too tight to use your legs to bend down and get back
up without using your hands or getting help, you need th