Diary
Parents occasionally bring children (or even early teenage years) because of bed wetting. There is plenty of advice on the internet but one often overlooked factor is the pelvic ligaments putting a strain on the bladder. When you are a foetus your bladder descends from your umbilicus as your body uncurls. The bladder remains partially suspended from a ligament called uracus. That is one possible area of tension. Another area is the large pelvic bones themselves. If a muscle strain is one sided it might draw one pelvic bone down and forwards, like a pulley wheel rotating. This was a finding in each case of children with bladder control issues. It is also common in adults. Another factor is to look at the feet. One foot persistently rotating outwards when standing or lying on the back indicates short pelvic muscles. Sometimes this is called piriformis syndrome. The common factor in the children was frequent use of a trampoline. When tampolines first became popular a number of parents both came to me themselves and then with their children for rebalancing the hips. In most cases the trampoline was not accurately levelled using a spirit level. Trampolines are good exercise but not appropriate for constant use. Skipping or jumping are alternative that strengthen your ligaments and tendons, especially the achilles. Ligaments join bones to bones and stabilise joints. Tendons are more elastic and join muscles to bone.
Scoliosis
Scoliosis is an S shaped curve in the spine. Sometimes it is pronounced, possibly genetic, related to an underlying condition or a result of trauma. Sometimes it is functional and varies in shape. In many instances the scoliosis can be made more comfortable or even reduced by balancing the sacrum between the ilia or pelvic bones. Pilates is good for scoliosis.
All sports put a repetitive strain into the body. Golf is one example. As the whole of the golf swing involves rotation why not work on it? Limited rotation of your rib cage puts a strain on your hips, shoulders and makes you cock your wrist even more than you need to. We will put some exercises on the site soon but come and see me if you are local to Milton Keynes.
The hamstrings are three muscles that run from your sitting bones and the top of your leg bones (femurs) They cross your knees at the back. Imagine the pulley wheels again. If one pelvic bone is rotated forwards the hamstrings will never relax and bend your leg.Work on the warrior stretches in yoga, the trichonasana, triangle and reverse traingle are great stretches. So are the piriformis stretches.
There are lots of stretches and good yoga practice on the website: Ekhart Yoga
Someone asked if the sacrum getting “stuck” between the ilia was a design fault. On the contrary it is a brilliance of design but with a compromise. You walk because your spinal vertebrae rotate. They are the engine that provides the power to move. The rotation or torque is passed into your sacrum, the fused bones at the base of your spine. The sacrum is not attached by muscles to the ilia but passes this energy straight through the piriformis muscles into the femur causing your hips to rock and your legs to swing. If you run a mid-foot strike is more efficient than a heel strike. Increasingly I use trainers for mountain walking unless the weather is challenging. The energy from striking your foot on the ground is passed back to the middle bone of the outer arch in your feet. It is called the cuboid. This energy travels up the fibula and IT band back into the pelvic muscles to counter balance the torsion or twisting energy of your spine. Rotating your shoulders and swinging your arms counter balances and neutralises the torsion. Constantly carrying a bag on one shoulder or keeping your arms still not only affects your neck and shoulders but makes your movement harder work. People with a hip strain often have a shoulder strain as well.
Someone came with one shoulder “clicking” and the other one weak from an injury. He was waiting for an operation. Commonly the arm bone (humerus) slips a tiny bit forward or down onto the lip of cartilage at the front of the capsule. It is called the Labrum (Latin for lip). If you concentrate on strengthening biceps, triceps and your deltoids you will stabilise the arm bone. Always lift with the palm of your hand or your thumb, facing upwards. Your shoulder will be stable as long as you engage your biceps. The word bicep means “Two heads”. It refers to the two tendons, one long tendon runs across the head of the humerus onto the scapula or shoulder blade. The other tendon runs from the bump on the scapula just under the front of the collar bone.
Body Building
Watching body builders in the gym, without exception, they fail to gain advantage from their breathing and from making full use of their muscles. When you breathe in it is not just your lungs but every cell in your body that respires. Your body expands a little. When you breathe out every cell in your body expires. Weight lifters often hold their breath to turn their bodies into a kind of piston, then suddenly expire. This puts up their blood pressure dramatically and cuts off oxygen to their muscles. Tip: Breath out as you exert yourself and you will not exceed the weights that your body was designed to lift. Roughly speaking we should be able to move our own body weight. Tip: Put your muscles through their full range of movement. Have you seen body builders do biceps curls? It is a short movement aimed at increasing the bulk of the muscles. You would last longer in life if you put your muscles through a full range of movement when you lift. Slowly lowering weights after the lift has a better result than lifting under impulse.