Moving to http://www.osteopilates.com

Gentle stretching.  The key word is gentle.   Most of us tend to over-stretch and push into the ‘grimace-range’.  If you are grimacing you may be over-doing it.  Don’t inflict pain on yourself.  Seems obvious, doesn’t it?

The point of this stretch is to improve posture and to get the spine moving in a direction that we don’t often move: side-to-side.  We spend our days bent over computers, kitchen counters and steering wheels.  This exercise gets the spine moving in a way that will help remind your body that there are other options than slumping forward. By the way, little note here…. don’t stretch your spine by slumping forward and hugging your knees.  More forward slumping is the last thing your spine needs if you are achy.

Also, this exercise addresses the less flexible side of the spine.  Most of us are not ambidextrous.  What that means to our spines is that we spend most of the day leaning into the strong side: think about carrying heavy groceries and how the weight-bearing shoulder will be higher while you are holding the extra weight.  Or even consider your mouse hand.  Ever notice how that shoulder tries to hug your ear?  This extra work consistently being done on the same side creates a slight scoliosis or curve of the spine.  Muscular imbalances result.

I do want to emphasize that these imbalances are normal.  Much the same way as when you look in the mirror you see a slight difference between the right and left side of your face.  No one is perfectly symmetrical: not from one side of our faces to the other or from one side of our spines to the other.  Now, having said that, it is still very worthwhile to work both sides of your body equally when you exercise.  Become aware of the imbalances and see if you can’t create more strength on the weak side and more flexibility on the stiff side.  Working on these imbalances will help prevent undue imbalance and the possible resultant muscular discomfort.

With the hips stabilized and pushing into the mat the upper back has the opportunity to move. If the hips are not anchored then the upper back stays stuck. Anchor the hips and allow the spine to move as far as it comfortably can.

Try this exercise.  If you have back pain, be sure not to stretch first thing in the morning.  The discs take on water at night (just like our hands can be swollen and our rings can be tight when we wake up in the morning).  This extra water stresses the muscles around the spine and stretching is an additional stress they do not need first thing in the morning.

Karena

Oh, My, my hair is stunning this week….

When we have back pain, it isn’t just our back muscles that stop cooperating.  Our gluteals (read: butt muscles) almost always stop playing well with others and in fact they tend to not play at all.

Check your gluteal strength with this week’s exercise:

When we have a back or hip injury or period of pain, the gluteal muscles just stop firing.  The kinesiologists who study this kind of stuff don’t really know why.  In fact, they don’t know what happens first:  Do the gluteals stop working first or Does the back start hurting first.  Interesting question.

I’d be really interested in hearing if you can ‘feel’ this exercise.  If you have back pain you have to really, really focus on making those gluteals squeeze.  Don’t let those butt muscles get away with just being a saggy mass on the back of your tuckus.

If you have back pain, this exercise is a keeper.  Keep it in your archive of exercises you must do to increase the health of your spine.  So now join me.  Scroll up and Push play!  Karena

Do you do the famous ‘I Have Back Pain’ Walk?  The one where you sway side-to-side when you walk?  The one where you would make anyone seasick if they were to watch you walk across the room?  Or do you make people queasy when you stand in line as you constantly shift your weight back and forth from one leg to the other?  We back pain people think we are hiding our pain so well.  HA!

When you start the ‘Sway’, it is a signal that your gluteal medius muscle has decided to check out.  It’s the muscle on the side of your hip.  If you put your hands on your hips and go down and inch or three, that’s where your glut med lives.

The glut med gets worn out and tired when you have back pain and then it gets weaker and weaker.  Strengthen the glut med to stop the vicious cycle of pain begetting more pain.  The longer your back hurts the more the muscles supporting the back weaken.  When those muscles weaken then more pain around those joints quickly follows.

Try this week’s exercise.  Scroll up and Push PLAY!  Waiting to hear your thoughts…. Karena

Buy the DVD with a complete program for back pain.  The DVD also includes my PBS special ‘Pilates for Healthy Bodies’.

In the first part, we very simply reduced the viscosity in the spine. Something that is very easy to do and prepares the spine for moving by allowing the spine to move more freely. Next we wake up the core muscles of the spine.

This exercise works the core muscles of the spine in the front, side and back of the spine. The core muscles of the spine are the tiny muscles that connect one vertebra to the next. These are not the large muscles that you can feel when you touch your back. They are small muscles that are responsible for the proprioception or correct positioning and awareness of positioning throughout the body. These muscles get knocked out of commission either through age, injury or lack of use. If these muscles are never challenged then naturally they never work. I have worked with some very strong amateur athletes that push themselves really hard in their individual sport but are unable to easily perform this exercise. Give it a try! And let me know how it goes. Karena

PIlates Exercises are great for back pain. Why? Because they are easy and they are effective. They are effective because they focus on the small muscles that support the spine. During episodes of back pain these small muscles stop working. Pilates wakes them back up again.

You have low back pain. An exercise isn’t going to change that fact a whole lot for today. But an exercise (or quite preferably a series of exercises) may change your pain level for tomorrow and for next week and for next month. Speaking on my personal experiences, I am in a lot less pain today than I was a year ago. Overall, my back pain was less in my 30’s than in my 20’s (except for that nasty surgery at 39–icky, icky, icky) and I fully expect as I embark on my 40’s that my 40’s will be even more pain free than my 30’s.

Here’s how back pain works. You are in pain. Usually the pain is from a spasm of some large muscles (erector spinae of the spine for example) that are trying to brace you. That’s right the muscles are actually trying to help you by bracing (read: spasm) you into a position that will prevent further injury. Think of it as a body cast from the inside. Not a bad self-preservation tool that our bodies have, huh? The not-so-great thing about this self-preservation tool is that it can create further weakness and then further bracing of adjoining muscle areas. Just because a muscles is tight and in spasm doesn’t mean it is strong. It usually means quite the opposite. The large muscle that is spasming becomes weak and the smaller muscles that generally support a joint totally begin to drop out. So big muscles are in spasm and weak and little muscles have gone to sleep. yikes. It’s a combo that leads to a vicious circle of more pain and more weakness. Your job is to stop that cycle. You’ll need to build up to about 7 -12 exercises that you can do on a regular basis. Here’s the first one.

I’ll add a new one every week along with my other posts for job security. Does every Pilates instructor love to bake or is it just me? I have this ’self-preserving’ instinct to fill people with calories so they have to exercise.

This is recession-proof job security is for everyone in the fitness industry. Pass it on……

Pilates Instructor Job Security. Please make, eat and call us in the morning. Also Known as toffee….

This recipe is from Diana Cusumano who got it from Rosemary St. Cyr…. My how recipes travel.

Pilates Instructor Job Insurance

Okay, here it is. I have included notes for the non-cook (read: Pilates instructor making this for their clients)

1 stick of butter (that’s 1/2 cup) (I used unsalted and added a pinch of salt)
1/4 cup water
1 cup of sugar (I used organic cane sugar and it turned out fine)
2 cups of chopped pecans or walnuts or whatever you like/divided
1 cup of semi-sweet choc. chips

Diana said to use a heavy pot. ????? I didn’t weigh mine but I do have one that feels heavier. I used that. It’s not a real small pot and definitely not big enough to make pasta in. This is all important because the non-cook (read: yours truly) would generally have used the ‘clean’ pot.

On almost high heat (but without the flames coming around the pot so it can boil your hand) put in the first 4 ingredients. But only use 1 cup (mounded) of pecans. Save 1 cup for later.

Let it boil. This is the tricky part. Don’t turn the heat down when it boils. Keep stirring. If your hand is burning you are doing it right. Keep stirring and keep it boiling. Soon they will turn frothy like sea foam at the beach. If you are in the mountains then it is still like sea foam at the beach. Take a trip.

Diana said, ’see how it turns a nice color when it is close to being done?’ It is the same color as beach sand. But not wet beach sand. And not bleached beach sand. Kind of that in between beach sand where the tide came in and now the sand is drying out. Again, you made need to take a trip.

Next, Diana said, ’see how it is pulling away from the sides?’ Remember it is boiling on ‘almost’ high heat the whole time… Pulling away from the sides is to say that it is forming a glob in the middle of the pot and it no longer looks like sea foam. More pasty. Like mud pies. Very hot mud pies. And where it isn’t touching the sides of the pot anymore those bits are getting really brown (burning) but not black burning.

Diana said, ‘look. It’s smoking. That means it’s done.’ Okay this is tricky too. When Diana saw smoke all I saw was a very light steam. It wasn’t steam because it was smoke but it looked like steam. So don’t look for ’smoke’ look for ’steam’ and not even heavy steam. Not the kind of steam that comes out of your teapot.

I think i probably stirred for 8-10 minutes before it was done. but it will depend on the weight of your pot. Again, ?????

Have a tinfoil lined cookie sheet ready. Pour the toffee out quickly in one sweep. spread it quickly just a little bit. it hardens fast. then pour the choc. chips on top. start spreading them around and they’ll melt and get gooey. When you’ve spread everywhere and can’t see the toffee anymore then throw on the rest of the pecans.

throw it in the fridge because if you eat it now it will burn your tongue. Eat when cool.
Call your pilates instructor in the morning.

Okay, so sit-ups cannot make you fatter but they can make you look fatter. omigosh…. who knew? (smiling smugly, giggling behind my hand, raising my hand, ooh, ooh, pick me: ‘I Did! I Knew!”‘)

So, I thought I’d share my non-rocket science info with you so you can do your sit-ups and NOT have to buy a larger pant size as you get stronger. It’s the little things in life that make us happy, right? Next week, I’ll share the secret of life but for this week: plain old flat-tummy creating sit-ups.

Here’s the deal. Your muscles will form in the shape you put them. If you pooch your tummy while doing a sit-up then you are forming a permanent poochy tummy. If you flatten your tummy while doing a sit-up you create a flat tummy. See? Not rocket science. Just a well-kept secret. It makes me, as a Pilates Instructor, feel important and needed.

Here’s how you do it. Engage your transversus abdominus muscle. (Yup, that muscle you were just talking about with your girlfriends at lunch today.)The transversus works like your mother’s girdle. It sucks everything in and streamlines and makes everything flat and sexy. How do you engage it? That’s a little trickier. First you have to find it. Cough. Laugh. Feel your stomach engage? That’s your transversus. To engage it without hacking or guffawing then you can imagine that a 2-year-old is getting ready to punch you in the gut. So you tighten. Like a girdle. Remember this is a 2-year-old we are talking about so just a little tightening. You aren’t practicing to be the new circus act where they shoot cannon balls at your gut so don’t overdo it.

Now add this to your ‘girdle tightening’: Pull your abs away from your panty line at your hip-line. We are talking about the new ‘lower’ panty line here; not the panty line when you were pregnant or six-years-old. This isn’t something you do just when you do sit-ups. You can do this all the time and then never do a sit-up and still have flatter abs. cool, huh? But it is very important to do this when you are doing sit-ups or you are going to create poochy, bunchy ab muscles. I don’t want to hear it when you have to wear sweats everywhere because you have GINORMOUS ab muscles. Do ‘em right. Flatten your tummy. Look great.

Teaser: secret to life in the next post…

My first blog was posted on www.wheresmydamnanswer.com

In fact, Kristy and Cathy from Where’s My Damn Answer Dot Com are the trouble makers that got me into this blog world.  Just to remind them:  I AM your Pilates instructor and I can hurt you if this turns out ‘not so good’ for me… There won’t be any bad experiences, you say?   It’ll ALL be good?!   In the words of my grandmother, and I quote:  ‘Hmmmm.’

The first topic has to be about doing crunches correctly.  I’m not a big fan of doing sit-ups OR crunches for that matter but if you love ‘em then you might as well do them so that you are not increasing your waist size.  Muscles bulk, right?  so do your stomach muscles–unless you train correctly. More later….  It’s getting late and the dog needs something to chew on…..