It is now time to look at the final element in getting an intelligent and effective work to your body.So far we have seen the results of this process as well as the rules which can guide you through this process safely. Now we can delve deeper into what needs to be done 😀
A few important things to note…. If you are unsure please ask before trying anything. Moreover, ALWAYS follow the rules from the previous post, especially safety: It is FOR your safety! This rule says: give your best effort, but respect your limits. In anything physical that you do there can be some impact… so, while it may look easy, the difficulty can quickly ramp up. You should always push yourself, train your mental resilience, train your strength, stamina and power. But, going beyond your limits can result in undesired outcomes…. so keep this always in mind!
Respect your limits.
For this reason I am going to refer to this Diagram which has been re-drawn from a book by Professor DeRose.
How do we read this diagram?
There are 2 dimensions and a lot of freedom within… The first dimension, on the vertical plane, refers to your spine and back movement. The second dimension, on the horizontal plane, refers to the position of your body in relation to the ground.
Let us being by exploring the movement of your spine. Undoubtedly your spine is important. Its flexibility, strength and health define well being and youth. If we are going to maximize its performance then we need to move it each and every way: achieving a perfect alignment (stability), moving sideways (lateral movement), forwards and backwards as well twisting. If you follow this range of motion your spine, and by consequence YOU, will stay healthy and youthful.
On the other dimension we have different effects of gravity on your body depending on your position. As we stand up our organs and systems are impacted by gravity exerting a force towards the feet — compare that to when you lay down and you can easily see how the force is so radically different. Similarly, when you sit down and your hips are on the ground, the effect o gravity on your all your systems will be different. Finally, if you are able to invert your position, feet in the air and head towards the ground gravity will have the exact opposite effect on your body as to when you stand. This is important as your organs, glands, tissues, systems, etc. will cope with different forces and thus develop differently than if you spent all your day say sitting…
We achieve a complete and balanced practice when we combine the two dimensions!
This combination is very flexible, the only rule is that you must have all movements of the spine and all angles of force on your body and least once. In other words, you can have a complete and balanced practice if you have a stability position standing, a lateral flexion, a forwards and a backwards positions sitting, twisting while laying down and then inverted. Just as you could have an inverted position, a twisting position sitting, a forwards position standing and everything else laying down… the possible variations are enough to keep you busy for years!
Finally, it is important to remember that there are other physical techniques you can do, to improve the flexibility of your hips, or the strength of your arms and legs etc. But all these would be secondary to the table above.
All in all this approach is so complete because it is working strength, flexibility and endurance all at once. Admittedly there is no mention of cardio-type work… but I assure you that to execute the positions on the video in the first post you must have a good heart!
Conclusion
When I started this series of articles I recalled a story of my very first teacher…. How could she outperform me then?Ok! So I was the typical “healthy” person, going to the gym daily and exercising A LOT in the conventional way. My cardio rate was good, i could cycle for a long time at a high rate, I could run an entire Ultimate game… But I suffered many of the issues which result from the conventional approach…
I had injuries… MANY… I also had accidents where I would have to move suddenly and this caused other types of injuries (imagine me slipping on some black ice…)
While I had strength, flexibility was absent… Moreover, I am a little lazy and I never really did proper warm ups before any exercise which resulted in…. you guessed it?….. more injuries…
My first teacher, and today me, can outperform people who follow the common approach and even those who take it to the extreme such as professional and Olympic athletes because the above approach increase efficiency significantly, it improves performance per pound and combines effective strength with great flexibility! The hidden factor here is also that as you remain in a position you increase your physical awareness allowing you to become not only muscularly more efficiency but more aware so you can use the distribution of weight of your to your advantage!
If you want to learn more contact me and we can certainly talk about how we could work this out!
If you did not read the other articles in this series, you can find them here: