Showing posts with label joints. Show all posts
Showing posts with label joints. Show all posts
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Do your Shoes Pass the Twist Test? How to tell if your Shoes are Good for you (not just your feet)
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With all the debate about footwear of late, one may wonder what's healthy for shodding one's feet when shod they must be? Allow me to (re)present the Twist Test: does the shoe in question twist laterally, a la ringing out a towel? Alternatively or 
complementarily, does it bend at all places OTHER than just at the ball of the foot? Simple check: but the better they twist and bend, the better they're following the mechanics of our feet, and hence the movements of our body.
I'm not sure if it originated with him, but Eric Cobb at the Z-Health (what's that?) R-phase certifications presents the twist test as a way to check the responsiveness of footwear to our feet's actual mechanics.
Consider the joints of the feet - and a reminder that a full one quarter of the joints in the body are in the feet. These joints do allow all kinds of movement in the foot. Do our shoes support or impede this?
More recently i've also been giving shoes a squish. Are the super padded? or just sufficientlty to protect the foot from the ground? Even the largely twisty Nike Free's are still pretty squishy shoes (the 7's - or cross trainers being the least squishy of the bunch). What's the role of the squish? Does that impair signal or provide a good transition platform to more environmentally true conditions? What's the least amount of padding one can get away with?
I've written before about the relationship of speed and position information sent from joints to the brain to process where we are and how we are moving in space, and what happens when those information points are compromised or cut off. Suffice it to say here, that more accurate information from more joints is better. Imagine if we're mo
ving but because of the stiffness of the shoe our joints are saying in our feet well, we're not really moving, what kind of information the brain is getting? Ankle spraining information or just poor function for maybe setting up a back ache information? Is that cuff in that hiking boot really helping or hindering good body movement?
So, next time you're with someone you love and they're contemplating shoes, you might want to subtley give the shoe a twist - and maybe a squish.
Related posts
complementarily, does it bend at all places OTHER than just at the ball of the foot? Simple check: but the better they twist and bend, the better they're following the mechanics of our feet, and hence the movements of our body.Consider the joints of the feet - and a reminder that a full one quarter of the joints in the body are in the feet. These joints do allow all kinds of movement in the foot. Do our shoes support or impede this?
I've written before about the relationship of speed and position information sent from joints to the brain to process where we are and how we are moving in space, and what happens when those information points are compromised or cut off. Suffice it to say here, that more accurate information from more joints is better. Imagine if we're mo
ving but because of the stiffness of the shoe our joints are saying in our feet well, we're not really moving, what kind of information the brain is getting? Ankle spraining information or just poor function for maybe setting up a back ache information? Is that cuff in that hiking boot really helping or hindering good body movement?So, next time you're with someone you love and they're contemplating shoes, you might want to subtley give the shoe a twist - and maybe a squish.
Related posts
- Kick off your shoes and Free Your Feet
- four part series on bare footing with Dr. Mick Wilkinson starts here.
- Fast Review of Terra Plana Dopie Sandles
- Running Shoes as Single Factor Thinking
- Fitting Vibram FiveFingers
- Vibram Five Fingers Article Index
PDF
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Why DHA/EPA of Omega 3's (like fish oil) are Anti-Inflammatory - Q&A with G.Fear, RD
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Perhaps you've heard that one of the benefits of omega 3's like fish oil or algae oil is good for among other things, anti-inflammation. Some folks tend to blend things like glucosamine as well with fish oil to enhance anti-inflammation around joints in particular. Have you ever wondered why this stuff works or what the difference is between glucosamine, omega 3's and even what eric cobb refers to as Vitamin I, the NSAID Ibuprofen?
The following is part of a discussion with Georgie Fear, RD (of AskGeorgie.com), author of the awesomely easy and tasty Dig In recipe book.
The discussion took place on Precision Nutrition's Forum a little over a year ago. (by the way, this exchange is typical of the kind of discussion at PN - here's more about Precision Nutrition if you're interested).
So, the question was to unpack fish oil, glucosamine and NSAIDS. To begin, so how are fish oils anti-inflammatory?
Overall, another take away is that upping the ratio of Omega 3's to Omega 6's (eg eggs) may be a good idea for well-being.
Related Posts:
The following is part of a discussion with Georgie Fear, RD (of AskGeorgie.com), author of the awesomely easy and tasty Dig In recipe book.
The discussion took place on Precision Nutrition's Forum a little over a year ago. (by the way, this exchange is typical of the kind of discussion at PN - here's more about Precision Nutrition if you're interested).
So, the question was to unpack fish oil, glucosamine and NSAIDS. To begin, so how are fish oils anti-inflammatory?
Georgie Fear:So now you know! Taking omega 3 sources rich in EPA like fish oil is a Good Idea for healing and inflammation processing. For folks taking Algae Oil for omega 3 content, algae is higher in DHA than EPA. Work has also considered the effects of DHA on inflammation, and it's looking very good here too. Very new work considering DHA in the mix with EPA on COX2 in particular is strong. Likewise an article from the future (pub date 2010) equates DHA and EPA for their anti-inflammatory benefits. In other words, you can remain a vegetarian and get all these anti-inflam benefits.
Twenty-carbon long omega 6 and omega 6 fatty acids are metabolized in cells to eicosanoids, which are signaling molecules. Cyclooxygenases and lipoxygenases produce the eicosanoids from either arachidonic acid (omega 6) or eicosapentaenoic acid [EPA] (omega 3). The eicosanoids derived from omega 6 fats are potently inflammatory while those coming from omega 3 oils are antiinflammatory.
Critical Bit for Diet: Because the omega 3 and omega 6 fatty acids compete for the cyclooxygenases and lipoxygenases, the balance of omega 3 to omega 6 fats in the diet will influence the overall inflammatory or antiinflammatory effect. Skewing the diet with more omega 3's and less omega 6 produces fewer inflammatory eicosanoids, becuase the omega3s outcompete the 6s for the metabolizing enzymes.
Aspirin and other nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory agents (NSAIDS, like ibuprofen) work similarly, by inhibiting the cyclooxygenase which converts arachidonic acid to inflammatory prostagandin H2. (Ever heard of COX 2 inhibitors, like vioxx? COX = cyclooxygenase) Acetaminophen (Tylenol) has less anti-inflammatory effect, and the mechanism(s) by which it reduces pain aren't totally known. I've read that it may also involve the cannabinoid system in the central nervous system, but I'm not an expert in that so I cant give much detail.
Glucosamine is totally different. It helps mainly with osteoarthritis because it is a building block for the gycosaminoglycans which make up the cartilage in joints. Taking glucosamine can help rebuild the cartilage and cushion joints where the layer has broken down. But as far as I'm aware it doesn't act so directly on the inflammatory cascade.
mc - so fish oil is competing for the Cyclooxygenases but NSAIDS inhibit their production. is that right? Also, on another point: NSAIDS have some icky side effects - in particular water retention. hate that.
GF
Close, the omega 3's outcompete with omega 6s for the COX enzymes, while the NSAIDS inhibit the cyclooxygenases' activity altogether. (So the production of inflammatory eicosanoids is lessened. )
Of course there are more details, like COX1 vs COX2 vs COX3....hence all the different painkillers with different efficacies and side effects. The specificity of different drugs for each isoform varies.
Another anti-inflammatory group of compounds which can be obtained from foods are anthocyanins, thats what my PhD thesis research actually focuses on. I'll skip the mindnumbing detail, but the blue/purple compounds which give the bright colors to blueberries, blackberries, red cabbage, etc are also great functional foods for combating inflammation. And cancer, and diabetes...and cardiovascular disease......
There has been research done in which consuming about 10 tart cherries a day is equivalent to taking a daily aspirin. Personally, Ive seen remarkable benefits of eating fish (oil) and anthocyanin-rich foods in a few clients with rheumatoid arthritis. Not a scientific study, just my own experience. :)
mc so would you say tho that fish oil is going to "mask" an injury??
GF
No I wouldnt say so. Fish oil does nothing to your pain perception, so its not like you will be fooled into thinking an injury is gone when it isn't. It may reduce the discomfort caused by inflammation such as swelling, and in some cases, inflammation actually makes the injury worse. So perhaps taking fish oils could reduce the severity of the injury. Somewhat like applying ice and compression to a sprain keeps the swelling minimal and it heals faster than if you never iced it. [mc -hmm on the ice analogy - a b2d article in the offing about what we really do know about ice or not...]
I'd say its more part of the healing process than masking an injury.
additional thought: anti-inflammatories don't shut off ALL inflammation, (that would not be good!) they just tone it down a bit.
Timing of ingesting fish oil?
GF
The funny thing here is that fish oils don't work on such a short-term basis. Its not like taking them one day or not would make a difference that day. Fatty acids you eat all the assimilated into the phospholipid membranes of all your bodies cells- the downstream effects of the fatty acids are affected by overall fatty acid pool in your body (in this case the omega 6 to omega 3 ratio) - and that doesnt change in one day of taking or not taking fish oils.
Overall, another take away is that upping the ratio of Omega 3's to Omega 6's (eg eggs) may be a good idea for well-being.
Related Posts:
- About Georgie Fear's New Recipe Book for Lean TASTY EASY Eating called Dig In
- About Precision Nutrition on Sale till Dec 2, 2009
- Respect the Fat
- Bone Health (at nopain2.org/geekfit)
- other stuff for joint health: movement like z-health r-phase
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Move or Die? Movement as Optimal Path to Strength and Well Being, Part 1
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This post is an intro to why *good* movement is a big frikin' panacea to most of what ails us. No kidding. Move well; be well. In this series, we're going to look at different attributes of movement - joints, muscles, skin, lymph everything - but first, let's start with an overview of what movement seems to mean to our governing system - the "always on" part of our bodies that monitors and messages about every process in our bodies, our nervous system - and then consisder a pretty direct route to cuing up those happy messages to it via dynamic joint mobility.
Movement = well being. We are designed to move. And apparently to move at speed: our bodies are apparently designed to support running more so than even walking. Perhaps not surprisingly, Use it or Lose it for humans could be redefined potentially as Move It or Lose It.
Our physiology works on a move it or lose it principle: by Woolf's Law and Davis' Law, we get to keep only what we use, and use is determined by - yes - movement. Don't move our muscles, function degrades; don't use our bones, bones degrade, don't move the joints, joints degrade. Movement means strength, fitness, digestion, respiration, skin tone, joint health, heart health, everything health. Could it be that simple?
Everything about our beings responds best to movement: movement therefore seems to
mean a big neurological thumbs up. If we are able to move, we're good to go, to flee, to hunt or to gather.
On the other hand, if our nervous system either perceives or receives a threat of any kind, movement is what pays: sore shoulder means reduced range of motion; shoes too tight so joints are compressed and less able to function as designed means less muscle power for a deadlift. Loosen up those shoes (or get rid of them), do some foot mobilization work (ankle circles; toe waves) and power is restored to the system. We react *that* quickly, as reflected in the SAID principle.
SAID stands for "specific adaptation to imposed demand." Eric Cobb, DC, c0-founder of Z-Health adds "exactly and immediately" to the SAID mix. In other words, our bodies respond exactly and immediately to what we're doing.
We see evidence of this immediacy all the time. Go to pick something up, our muscles don't wait to turn on to support that position; they do so right away, courtesy of the nervous system. We are about to go on stage to give a talk, and our heart rate accelerates right at that moment pumping more blood to our peripheral limbs; likewise hormones are released to prepare for flight to deal with the perceived threat of our anxiety. That response happens as soon as we perceive the moment of threat - which may be long before, right before or during the event.
A huge part of that immediate adaptation is the speed at which information travels through the nervous system. Most fibers are sending info at 300miles per hour. That's fast. One might almost say immediate.
Not moving = We have a Problem, Houston. Movement is so basic, so fundamental an indicator of well being, that *not* moving is, on a gross scale, a sign of illness or duress. Our movement is reduced seemingly in proportion to the degree of perceived or actual threat to the system. Our movement is reduced if we have: a broken limb, a gut ache, a head ache, if we feel depressed. Likewise, we think of aging as a process of movement deterioration: the aged are often slower, less mobile, suffer from movement debilitations - or are entirely bed ridden, just like the acutely ill.
Irony. We are, despite our awesome craniums, embodied beings. Our modern lives, however, have moved us to a place where, to our nervous system we generally operate, if ya think about it, from postures of illness: we don't move; we sit at desks; we sit in cars, trains and planes. We are more sedentary than ambulatory.
Likewise those postures
often closely resemble what's know as threat response or startle positions: hunched shoulders, head lowered, legs raised towards chest (from sitting) - if our legs and hands were pushed up a bit more we'd be in total fetal posture. And the rolling up into a ball is the big threat protection posture: cover the internal organs, protect the head, eyes and ears. That's a little, er, sick, isn't it?
Response to Modern Life:
Dynamic Joint Mobility as a first step, or movement.
If we tell our bodies that we are non mobile, our bodies also respond immediately to this - as we have seen - with Wolff's Law and Davis's Law: we are rebuilding tissue ALL the time. If we continually sit slumped, the body will work to maintain that position - go to get out of it, we feel stiff. Over a long enough time, the bones remodel to better maintain that position.
A painless and effective way to counteract less mobility is to move: move every joint in the body through its range of motion - that is - through the degree of motion we can voluntarily control. Another name for moving each joint in the body in a focused way is dynamic joint mobility work.
There are lots of joint mobility systems out there; the one i prefer, practice and teach is z-health. I've written lots about why (article index) and here's Z-Health's FAQ, but the main reason is that the movements in the R, I and S continuum are designed to move each joint
Range of motion is a great way to see how our nervous system may be doing with our body. We may feel fine but if we go to raise our arm in front of us to beside our ear and it usually gets to beside our ear but today it's only going to beside our cheek something's up. We might not perceive what it is clearly, but our nervous system does.
Doing a few joint mobility drills will often improve that range of motion. Some joints, like the wee bones in the feet and hands don't have a great deal of motion - but they do move. They're joints for a reason - if there wasn't a need for a joint, there'd be a bone, as Cobb puts it.
So smaller joint motions mean smaller range of motion, but still movements - and precise movements at that for optimal efficiency (more on efficient movement here). How to hit the target and what those targets are are important to maximize benefit of this joint librating work.
Repetition Only One Way: Bad; All ways, good. Other joints, like the wrist, pretty big obvious range of motion as we bend the hands back and forth at the wrists. But also therefore important to move those joints through those ranges of motion. Carpal Tunnel or RSI is not usually the result of too many reps, but too many reps in only ONE direction of a possible set of motions. Like typing on a keyboard - flexion flexion flexion, no extension; same with musicians. And here's one: elbows have fabulous movement possibilities but do you know some ways to move them through their complete ranges of motion in multiple directions/speeds? How often do lifters in the gym complain of tennis elbow? More than 9 times out of ten, this is the similar problem as the typing desk jockey: too many reps in one direction, exacerbated by potentially poor form with load, or just overuse.
If i could talk to the Animals - or the Nervous System...
Simple concept of why joint mobility work, like doing ZHealth R-Phase and I-Phase is so important: mechanorecption and nociception.
Mechanoreceptors populate the muscles and the tendons around joints. The give our brain information, through the nervous system of where we are in space and how fast we're moving. The other big proprioceptor around the joints are nocicpetors - nerves that react to noxious stimulus, like a cut or a kick or an impingement. If limbs are not moving well, the number of mechanoreceptors fired are way less than if they do move. Significantly. Nociceptors, which are far fewer in ratio to most mechanorecpetors are free to fire. And 1 is always louder than zero.
Signal Processing. Pain is something the brain says about a signal through the nervous system. A nociceptor may fire, but if the signal from the mechanorecptors is louder because more of these are firing, the brain mayn't interpret the action as something that needs to fire up as pain. If however the nociceptor is the only thing talking because the other mechanorecpetors in the area are inhibited from lack of mobility, then that pain signal may just get amplified.
Oh, Canada! Here's a way you might model this signal processing concept. At a recent mobility seminar, i started to sing O Canada - large room but everyone heard me. No one else was speaking. I then asked participants in the room to sing - at a normal volume not shouting or anything - God save the queen - while i sang O Canada while someone at the door listened in. What song do you think the person listening heard?
Movement Sings. So movement, on one simple level - movement through the fullest possible range of motion - helps to send positive "all clear" signals to the nervous system.
Practicing movement helps the joints learn to move through their full range of motion. Here's an example. When i started doing R-Phase in Z-Health, i looked with amazement on the thoracic circles - moving *just* the upper spine in a circle - of a fellow RKC. Me doing thoracic glides just front at back: ok i'm doing them! And there was no movement. Practicing them even though it felt like nothing was happening eventually caused rather a lot to happen, to the point the other day where a master trainer said "well you have such excellent thoracic mobility this isn't a problem for you; most people need...."
One gets joint mobility the same way one gets to carnegie hall it seems: practice practice practice.
Healing off the Table: Doing it For Ourselves:
Self movement more so than manual work (being worked on by others or having limbs moved passively) engages motor learning. That self-initiated action to control a motion fires up way more of the nervous system, building new patterns of movement with each rep. This is fabulous for self-care. Practically, the number of athletes i work with and whom colleagues work with who come in complaining of shoulder pain, elbow pain or back pain, generally speaking
It's that simple. And while we've focused on the benefit of moving joints for the nervous system due to mechanorecptors around the joints, in future we can look at movement of the skin, fascia, lymph and gut that also comes into play - how mobilty assists these other movements to feel better and perform better.
In the meantime, i hope this for me unusually brief overview helps get a handle on why mobilty work may be a good practice to consider if it's not already part of your daily practice. And here's an example of controlled movement:
Next Time: threat, pain and threat modulation.
Related Posts
Movement = well being. We are designed to move. And apparently to move at speed: our bodies are apparently designed to support running more so than even walking. Perhaps not surprisingly, Use it or Lose it for humans could be redefined potentially as Move It or Lose It.Our physiology works on a move it or lose it principle: by Woolf's Law and Davis' Law, we get to keep only what we use, and use is determined by - yes - movement. Don't move our muscles, function degrades; don't use our bones, bones degrade, don't move the joints, joints degrade. Movement means strength, fitness, digestion, respiration, skin tone, joint health, heart health, everything health. Could it be that simple?
Everything about our beings responds best to movement: movement therefore seems to
mean a big neurological thumbs up. If we are able to move, we're good to go, to flee, to hunt or to gather.On the other hand, if our nervous system either perceives or receives a threat of any kind, movement is what pays: sore shoulder means reduced range of motion; shoes too tight so joints are compressed and less able to function as designed means less muscle power for a deadlift. Loosen up those shoes (or get rid of them), do some foot mobilization work (ankle circles; toe waves) and power is restored to the system. We react *that* quickly, as reflected in the SAID principle.
SAID stands for "specific adaptation to imposed demand." Eric Cobb, DC, c0-founder of Z-Health adds "exactly and immediately" to the SAID mix. In other words, our bodies respond exactly and immediately to what we're doing.
We see evidence of this immediacy all the time. Go to pick something up, our muscles don't wait to turn on to support that position; they do so right away, courtesy of the nervous system. We are about to go on stage to give a talk, and our heart rate accelerates right at that moment pumping more blood to our peripheral limbs; likewise hormones are released to prepare for flight to deal with the perceived threat of our anxiety. That response happens as soon as we perceive the moment of threat - which may be long before, right before or during the event.
A huge part of that immediate adaptation is the speed at which information travels through the nervous system. Most fibers are sending info at 300miles per hour. That's fast. One might almost say immediate.
Not moving = We have a Problem, Houston. Movement is so basic, so fundamental an indicator of well being, that *not* moving is, on a gross scale, a sign of illness or duress. Our movement is reduced seemingly in proportion to the degree of perceived or actual threat to the system. Our movement is reduced if we have: a broken limb, a gut ache, a head ache, if we feel depressed. Likewise, we think of aging as a process of movement deterioration: the aged are often slower, less mobile, suffer from movement debilitations - or are entirely bed ridden, just like the acutely ill.
Irony. We are, despite our awesome craniums, embodied beings. Our modern lives, however, have moved us to a place where, to our nervous system we generally operate, if ya think about it, from postures of illness: we don't move; we sit at desks; we sit in cars, trains and planes. We are more sedentary than ambulatory.Likewise those postures
often closely resemble what's know as threat response or startle positions: hunched shoulders, head lowered, legs raised towards chest (from sitting) - if our legs and hands were pushed up a bit more we'd be in total fetal posture. And the rolling up into a ball is the big threat protection posture: cover the internal organs, protect the head, eyes and ears. That's a little, er, sick, isn't it?Response to Modern Life:
Dynamic Joint Mobility as a first step, or movement.
If we tell our bodies that we are non mobile, our bodies also respond immediately to this - as we have seen - with Wolff's Law and Davis's Law: we are rebuilding tissue ALL the time. If we continually sit slumped, the body will work to maintain that position - go to get out of it, we feel stiff. Over a long enough time, the bones remodel to better maintain that position.
A painless and effective way to counteract less mobility is to move: move every joint in the body through its range of motion - that is - through the degree of motion we can voluntarily control. Another name for moving each joint in the body in a focused way is dynamic joint mobility work.
There are lots of joint mobility systems out there; the one i prefer, practice and teach is z-health. I've written lots about why (article index) and here's Z-Health's FAQ, but the main reason is that the movements in the R, I and S continuum are designed to move each joint
- really: each joint, from head to foot, precisely
- through as many positions as possible
- as many speeds as possible
- with varying loads
Range of motion is a great way to see how our nervous system may be doing with our body. We may feel fine but if we go to raise our arm in front of us to beside our ear and it usually gets to beside our ear but today it's only going to beside our cheek something's up. We might not perceive what it is clearly, but our nervous system does.
Doing a few joint mobility drills will often improve that range of motion. Some joints, like the wee bones in the feet and hands don't have a great deal of motion - but they do move. They're joints for a reason - if there wasn't a need for a joint, there'd be a bone, as Cobb puts it.
So smaller joint motions mean smaller range of motion, but still movements - and precise movements at that for optimal efficiency (more on efficient movement here). How to hit the target and what those targets are are important to maximize benefit of this joint librating work.
Repetition Only One Way: Bad; All ways, good. Other joints, like the wrist, pretty big obvious range of motion as we bend the hands back and forth at the wrists. But also therefore important to move those joints through those ranges of motion. Carpal Tunnel or RSI is not usually the result of too many reps, but too many reps in only ONE direction of a possible set of motions. Like typing on a keyboard - flexion flexion flexion, no extension; same with musicians. And here's one: elbows have fabulous movement possibilities but do you know some ways to move them through their complete ranges of motion in multiple directions/speeds? How often do lifters in the gym complain of tennis elbow? More than 9 times out of ten, this is the similar problem as the typing desk jockey: too many reps in one direction, exacerbated by potentially poor form with load, or just overuse.
If i could talk to the Animals - or the Nervous System...
Simple concept of why joint mobility work, like doing ZHealth R-Phase and I-Phase is so important: mechanorecption and nociception.
Mechanoreceptors populate the muscles and the tendons around joints. The give our brain information, through the nervous system of where we are in space and how fast we're moving. The other big proprioceptor around the joints are nocicpetors - nerves that react to noxious stimulus, like a cut or a kick or an impingement. If limbs are not moving well, the number of mechanoreceptors fired are way less than if they do move. Significantly. Nociceptors, which are far fewer in ratio to most mechanorecpetors are free to fire. And 1 is always louder than zero.
Signal Processing. Pain is something the brain says about a signal through the nervous system. A nociceptor may fire, but if the signal from the mechanorecptors is louder because more of these are firing, the brain mayn't interpret the action as something that needs to fire up as pain. If however the nociceptor is the only thing talking because the other mechanorecpetors in the area are inhibited from lack of mobility, then that pain signal may just get amplified.
Oh, Canada! Here's a way you might model this signal processing concept. At a recent mobility seminar, i started to sing O Canada - large room but everyone heard me. No one else was speaking. I then asked participants in the room to sing - at a normal volume not shouting or anything - God save the queen - while i sang O Canada while someone at the door listened in. What song do you think the person listening heard?
Movement Sings. So movement, on one simple level - movement through the fullest possible range of motion - helps to send positive "all clear" signals to the nervous system.
Practicing movement helps the joints learn to move through their full range of motion. Here's an example. When i started doing R-Phase in Z-Health, i looked with amazement on the thoracic circles - moving *just* the upper spine in a circle - of a fellow RKC. Me doing thoracic glides just front at back: ok i'm doing them! And there was no movement. Practicing them even though it felt like nothing was happening eventually caused rather a lot to happen, to the point the other day where a master trainer said "well you have such excellent thoracic mobility this isn't a problem for you; most people need...."
One gets joint mobility the same way one gets to carnegie hall it seems: practice practice practice.
Healing off the Table: Doing it For Ourselves:
Self movement more so than manual work (being worked on by others or having limbs moved passively) engages motor learning. That self-initiated action to control a motion fires up way more of the nervous system, building new patterns of movement with each rep. This is fabulous for self-care. Practically, the number of athletes i work with and whom colleagues work with who come in complaining of shoulder pain, elbow pain or back pain, generally speaking
- a) get their pain significantly lessened if not eliminated in a single session by getting at a movement pattern that is not firing correctly so good mobility is inhibited
- b) are able to take care of themselves afterwards because they know and have the tools on how to reduce the problem by the mobility work, so they can get on with their strength or health or life practices
- c) as their mobility improves, they have fewer flare ups
It's that simple. And while we've focused on the benefit of moving joints for the nervous system due to mechanorecptors around the joints, in future we can look at movement of the skin, fascia, lymph and gut that also comes into play - how mobilty assists these other movements to feel better and perform better.
In the meantime, i hope this for me unusually brief overview helps get a handle on why mobilty work may be a good practice to consider if it's not already part of your daily practice. And here's an example of controlled movement:
Full Motion: Herman Cornejo executes a seeming impossible
double tours en l’air as part of David Michalek's slow dancing project.
double tours en l’air as part of David Michalek's slow dancing project.
Next Time: threat, pain and threat modulation.
Related Posts
- can be found at the z-health article index
- Mobility vs Flexibility: is there a difference?
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Arthrokinetic Reflex: Joint action affects Muscle Performance
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This post is about the arthrokinetic reflex. The term goes back to 1956 and suggests that something done to a joint can reflexively cause muscle activation or inhibition. Eric Cobb in Z-Health (overview) makes use of this concept to show how something as simple as head position can have a negative impact on muscle activation, and that conversely, joint mobilization (and better head position) can have an immediate benefit for freeing up muscle activation for improved strength performance.
There's some interesting ideas around how these reflexes relate to threat and threat modulation, but we'll come back to those at another point. Right now, let's see the effect in action.
Just to walk through the following video because the audio seems to be a bit low, here's what's happening.
First: demonstration of a classic issue in the Kettlebell Swing: head is way back when going for the hip snap. Why might this be a problem? that head position, that far back on the neck, may actually be reducing available power and consequently compromising the work a person wants to do.
How can we demonstrate this claim?
Second: Rikki Prince kindly volunteers for a hamstring muscle test, head in neutral position.
All that's happening in the muscle test is that i am meeting the force that Rikki is producing so that there's equilibrium.
Third: Rikki cranks his head back for the second hamstring test
In this case, i'm using the same force on Rikki's leg as previously used to balance his leg pushing up, and his leg goes down - right down - to the ground.
Now, one could say ha you're cheating, you're using way more force. First, in the video - does it look like i'm pushing hard? face it, i'm not a big person, and Rikki's considerably taller and larger and more muscular than i. Second, this test could be done with a machine where forces are calibrated - so if you have the apparatus by all means do so. Third, you'll have to believe me, yes, that Rikki wasn't faking it - this you can also test with yourself and a colleague if you learn the technique to match people's strength. I've done this with a room full of people and there's always one person who says "didn't work for me" - I'll take that one stat of 1 out of 25. But it usually turns out when retested by someone else, it's there.
I also was asked to demo this at the May 09 RKC Denmark cert. Kenneth Jay volunteered (shown left using mark cheatham as "the wall") - for those who have met him, do you think KJ would fake this test?
Fourth: Head back in neutral, re- test. In this case we see the leg is a lot stronger than just a moment before, and that's just from getting out of the head cranked position.
Fifth: Going further to clean up the muscle test, and re-test. Without giving poor Rikki a break we do two Z-health neck mobility drills - just to open up those neck joints more deliberately. We retest. The bigger wobble is now out of the leg, and we're as stable as we were when we started.
If i was working with Rikki further, i'd keep going to do a movement assessment to get at that little bit of rumble that was there at the start and is still present at the end.
Sixth: applying this reflex notion to the swing
At the end, a quick demo of a few swings with the head in neutral, using the eyes to look up, rather than the head cranking back. You can't see it, but i'd encourage you to try it: this technique of keeping the head neutral combined WITH the eyes charting the movement actually provides a double shot benefit for the swing. It FEELS much smoother and stronger and more effortless.
This double shot is discussed further with liberal illustrations and Eric Cobb quotations and b2d synthesis/analysis in terms of "efficient movement" in yet another application: the kettlebell front squat.
If you'd like more detail on the eye position in the swing, see Cobb's article cited above, and look for "eye position kettlebell swing experiment."
Take Away: the Arthrokinetic Reflex - works both ways
What we do with a joint has a reflexive effect on muscular activation/inhibition. ANY joint; All Muscles - pretty much.
So what this demo shows us three things + a heuristic
Related Posts
Thanks for reading. Tweet Follow @begin2dig
There's some interesting ideas around how these reflexes relate to threat and threat modulation, but we'll come back to those at another point. Right now, let's see the effect in action.
Just to walk through the following video because the audio seems to be a bit low, here's what's happening.
First: demonstration of a classic issue in the Kettlebell Swing: head is way back when going for the hip snap. Why might this be a problem? that head position, that far back on the neck, may actually be reducing available power and consequently compromising the work a person wants to do.
How can we demonstrate this claim?
Second: Rikki Prince kindly volunteers for a hamstring muscle test, head in neutral position.
All that's happening in the muscle test is that i am meeting the force that Rikki is producing so that there's equilibrium.
Third: Rikki cranks his head back for the second hamstring test
In this case, i'm using the same force on Rikki's leg as previously used to balance his leg pushing up, and his leg goes down - right down - to the ground.
Now, one could say ha you're cheating, you're using way more force. First, in the video - does it look like i'm pushing hard? face it, i'm not a big person, and Rikki's considerably taller and larger and more muscular than i. Second, this test could be done with a machine where forces are calibrated - so if you have the apparatus by all means do so. Third, you'll have to believe me, yes, that Rikki wasn't faking it - this you can also test with yourself and a colleague if you learn the technique to match people's strength. I've done this with a room full of people and there's always one person who says "didn't work for me" - I'll take that one stat of 1 out of 25. But it usually turns out when retested by someone else, it's there.I also was asked to demo this at the May 09 RKC Denmark cert. Kenneth Jay volunteered (shown left using mark cheatham as "the wall") - for those who have met him, do you think KJ would fake this test?
Fourth: Head back in neutral, re- test. In this case we see the leg is a lot stronger than just a moment before, and that's just from getting out of the head cranked position.
Fifth: Going further to clean up the muscle test, and re-test. Without giving poor Rikki a break we do two Z-health neck mobility drills - just to open up those neck joints more deliberately. We retest. The bigger wobble is now out of the leg, and we're as stable as we were when we started.
If i was working with Rikki further, i'd keep going to do a movement assessment to get at that little bit of rumble that was there at the start and is still present at the end.
Sixth: applying this reflex notion to the swing
At the end, a quick demo of a few swings with the head in neutral, using the eyes to look up, rather than the head cranking back. You can't see it, but i'd encourage you to try it: this technique of keeping the head neutral combined WITH the eyes charting the movement actually provides a double shot benefit for the swing. It FEELS much smoother and stronger and more effortless.
This double shot is discussed further with liberal illustrations and Eric Cobb quotations and b2d synthesis/analysis in terms of "efficient movement" in yet another application: the kettlebell front squat.
If you'd like more detail on the eye position in the swing, see Cobb's article cited above, and look for "eye position kettlebell swing experiment."
Take Away: the Arthrokinetic Reflex - works both ways
What we do with a joint has a reflexive effect on muscular activation/inhibition. ANY joint; All Muscles - pretty much.
So what this demo shows us three things + a heuristic
- squishing up a joint, like cranking back the head in a swing or lift, has immediate effect on muscular activation. In the case of squishing, we get inhibition.
- We see that going to a more open joint position (head neutral) has an immediate effect on muscle activation.
- We see also that that effect can be enhanced further with self-moblization around that joint.
- heuristic: maintaining optimal range of motion in a joint enables best strength performance/efficiency.
Related Posts
- If you're interested in more of these mobilization techniques, i'd recommend starting with the z-health r-phase and neural warm up package (described here).
- overview of z-health - neurological approach - article index
- If you'd like to learn about z-health theory and practice and have it more directly applied to kb work, and if you're gonna be in the UK on October 18, please come to the kb essentials and z-heatlh theory and practice workshop.
Thanks for reading. Tweet Follow @begin2dig
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Why I? Loading for the Real - an Overview/Review Z-Health I-Phase
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In life we have physical things that we do that we'd like to do better. It may be as complicated as getting a technique down for a wicked lick on a guitar or as simple as getting off the steep stairs of a bus with a little more grace. Our goals may be a little more serious: we'd like to move more smoothly, and perhaps take fewer falls when going for a run or even walking about the house. Z-health's i-phase approach provides a suite of strategies to help with these real life movement goals. Before we get into i-phase a bit of z-health context
In an overview i did of Z-Health, focusing on R-phase, i wrote about how Z-Health (Zed for short in this article) focuses on communicating with the nervous system, and why that's important for improved well being, whether that's getting out of pain, or moving better for daily life or an athletic pursuit. For a quick review, R-phase focuses on moving each joint in the body through its range of motion. It does this not just because moving joints about is good for the health of the joint, but because joints have a TON of two particular kinds of receptors in them: noci- (detecting noxious stimulus - not just pain) receptors and mechano- receptors (excellent article overviewing joint mechanoreceptor types).
The mechano's in the joints are in large part communicating about where that joint is in space, as well as how fast it's moving. The brain processes all the inputs coming in from these joints to create a microsecond by microsecond map of where we are in the environment. Help all the joints move through their whole range of motion, and at least two key things happen:
(ok you too may have wondered why he didn't just step aside, but heh, that means there were a few options rather than just one).
The pay off here is that the more ways we can move the more choices we have to avoid a crisis. The more we practice moving, the more we work our balance and visual system to connect to those movements, the better our coordinated responses, or reflexes have in a given situation. This range of options and heightened reflexes that comes from such agility/balance work has been shown to be an important component as a strategy for people at risk of hip fractures, for instance. Enhance the signals as to where one is in space, practice using them, we give the body more options to adapt and remain vertical, lessen the chance of a fall.
It's a Map - a Map of the World. Eric Cobb talks about what our bodies do in space as Navigation. "And navigation is an action." The better information coming in from the body about position in space, the better off we are. When joints can move, they're sending off more points of information.
Think about the "light bulbs" that people wear on motion capture rigs for computer graphics. Only a few points are needed around the major limbs to be applied to a model of a human form in order for the computer to integrate those points and model to render a pretty convincing motion (movie, 275kb). But look closely at the foot. How "mobile" does it seem in the model?
Thus, entire strips of sensors have to be used to map finer joint movements accurately, like those of the fingers (movie 2.6mg). Way more sensors to give finer detail of movement - but check out how well or not even here, the fingers unscrewing the cap are mirrored in the computer model of same.
In other words, a few points certainly give a general sense of movement, but more points of information are necessary to get a truer picture of the movement. And that's just for a computer trying to render a passable realistic sketch of a anthropomorphic character. My fave work in this space is Mike Chat's from Discovery's Extreme Martial Arts, and mapping the skeleton onto the form (check about a minute into the clip).
Very convincing approximation from gross motor movements.But notice that the light suit to get that degree of movement detail has many more points (the white dots on the skin suits in the image below)
It's these multiple points of information of course that feed into why Zed heads talk about freeing your feet, getting out of non-bendable, twistable, overly squishy shoes: their "support" stops your joints from moving as they're designed, and hence lessens the signal back to the body about the foot's location in space.
It's no wonder that so many runners get sprained ankles: the shoe wear designed to "support" their foot deadens its natural ability to communicate, hobbling the body's ability to respond and get it out of trouble. R-phase therefore is about openning up all the communication channels of the joints to enable a better map, better signal to noise ratio for letting the body respond to the envirnoment. I-phase is training the body to put that new information to work.
Building on the Information Flow: Putting the Map to Work
Eric Cobb talks about R-Phase as learning the vocabulary of movement; IPhase is getting into the grammar - building sentences. What does that mean, practically?
In R-Phase, by learning the drills that move each joint of the body through its range of motion (with the exception of the sutures in the skull - that's T-Phase), we learn about those ranges of motion. Speaking for myself, i started unable to move my thoracic spine in any meaningful, mobile way. Thought it was impossible for me. Turns out not. Lots of practice, et voila: thoracic circles like no one's business. Standing still.
So R-Phase we learn how to move these joints to send off that information with very little load on the joints themselves. Great for learning, and teaching the body to create new patterns of movement. The benefits of this practice alone are legion. I could write idyls of joy to how much R-Phase (with a little T mixed in) has helped my back. Likewise, in working with clients, R-phase drills have wrought out and out remarkable benefits for many clients, helping them either into better performance or out of pain or both.
Once that practice/knowledge is in place to perform perfectly in "neutral" posture and load, I-phase adds load. With lunges. And foot positions. A simple pelvic circle in neutral stance suddenly has a plethora of combinations from 6 lunge positions and 3 foot positions for each of 2 feet. Nice.
Train for the Sprain; the Kobioshi Maru of Movement
So why add all these positions to a given neutral stance posture? Cobb argues that this puts the body in positions that are closer to real life. Get used to working in these postures (80% load on the front leg, feet neutral; shift to 80% load on the back leg, feet turned out), the body is more ready to respond to unusual circumstances, ie, life. This is the magic of practice, or the learning effect of making reaction reflexive rather than cognitive.
We see this practice effect all the time. One of the greatest examples of it was in the early Space program, where astronauts rehearsed and rehearsed multiple variations of space maneuvers in the earliest simulators in order to have that vocabulary of options at their finger tips, but in order to be able to call on them in a variety of less than optimal conditions. Like going for a run on a muddy chip trail (in vibram fivefingers of course. no stupid squishy trail shoes that kill the proprioception here) and starting to slide, but being able to recover.
There is no Spoon: I-Phase as a Template
Another aspect of I-phase work is that "it's a
template." Unlike R-Phase, while the I-Phase and Neural WarmUp II DVDs take one through a variety of combinations of the I-Phase movements, and while they introduce some moves not in R-Phase at all (like the powerful peg board drill), the DVDs are by no means exhaustive. Right elbow circles in a left lateral lunge with neutral foot position are demonstrated. But all the other lunge positions and foot positions are available, too.
To add even more dimensions, head and eye positions can also be part of the mix. How about practicing the elbow circles with a left anterior lunge, head titled left, eyes looking right (up). Sounds like a slightly wacky combination until perhaps looking at the picture on the right.
By following the guidance in the I-phase manual on how to learn and practice these loaded positions, one is not only working mobility, but adding strength/muscle work. The advantages are the same as in R-phase: signal is increased.
Adaptation for the Unexpected or the Fairly Usual.
If you've ever tried to hold a position that's new, you may feel your muscles shaking. That's a neurological adaptation happening: you may be entirely strong enough to hold the move but the muscles/nervous system are figuring out optimal firing patterns to adapt the muscles to that move. There can be quite a bit of initial shake in I-phase. But as the positions become practiced, neural paths are developed to get used to these positions.
What happens at the same time is again, more signaling information is brought to the body's central processor; better mapping happens. The muscles, like the joints have tons of mechanoreceptors too telling the body about limb position and the stretch position of the muscles. The more patterns practiced, the more the brain gets used to those new positions, the better it can navigate by putting just the right resources there (no more shaking) and having more available for elsewhere. Go from clutz in learning a move to grace in practice of a move; from conscious effort to unconscious response.
Faster Learning?
Another benefit to the I-Phase template approach is enhancing the rapidity of being able to learn new moves/adapt to new situations. Cobb talks about this kind of learning as that of the "natural athlete" - someone who has such unconscious body awareness that they can readily move their bodies into the forms demanded of that work. With I-phase practice in its varied positions, the body habits of natural athleticism can be learned.
One might protest, but i am a desk jockey, not an athlete.
Phooey!
If one has to walk stairs, open a car door in a rainy oil slicked parking lot, shovel snow or sweep a floor, reach for something rolled under the couch, stay vertical on a moving British bus, then one needs these I-phase teachable athletic skills for simple survival (especially in the case of the British bus. sheesh!).
I've personally noticed that my reflexes have improved without consciously working on them - when i can catch a bottle that's coming off the counter towards the floor, grab my hat 2 feet in front of me as the wind's whipped it off my head, or beat my cousin at a video driving game without ever having played the game, something's funny here. Especially when my previous image of myself was always of the person who was lucky if the lid to the jam landed sticky side up.
So when do I do I?
Some folks ask "when should i do I-phase?" I've also heard some people say, after a year or more of focusing on R, "i'm not ready for I; i still haven't mastered R."
My view? based on my experience and working with folks? Really being grounded in R is a very good idea. Doing the 12 week program that's in R-Phase to learn R-Phase is a very good idea. I worked on R-phase for about 6 months before really getting into I. I also did the R phase certification 3 months into that cycle, so i got a lot of attention on how to do R properly (get a coach; it's worth it). This is not to say all that time was necessary; it's just what i did. Your mileage may vary, as a colleague says. What i would say is if and as you've been practicing R-phase, do connect with a Z-health coach to check your form. As with anything, getting the form right makes huge difference in performance/experience. Those simple toe pulls go from "oh ya, ok" to "ahhh. wow" when you really get 'em. And that's what you want every time.
That said, R-phase is not a martial art; it's not yoga. It's learning how to hit particular targets cleanly and effectively to recover function and "clear the map." While one can do R forever fruitfully, getting into I, as i hope has been shown above, is doing your body a favour to take that knowledge and get into some Astronaut Training Time. That is, I-Phase's addition of load and position challenge is prepping the body for Life; it's the simulator to train for the sprain. My opinion? based on my experience and working with folks? If you've been doing R for awhile, have gone through the 12 week programs, have met with a coach to optimize your target hitting, you owe it to your body to get into I-phase.
We can Work it Out
And if you'd like to work with me on some of that Zed mojo, either in person or online (yes that too is possible), please feel free to contact me. My email's in my profile, and there's some feedback here, mainly from other trainers with whom i've had the pleasure to work. Otherwise, hope you'll check out the I-phase Neural /WarmUpII package. As with R-Phase, the I-Phase DVD goes through the suite of I-phase Drills in some of the lunge/foot combinations. The Neural Warm Up II is a power boost subset version of I drills and is more of a work out. It also has several new (and intense) super chargers, body openers and eye drills.
Later, let's talk about S, too?
:)
(update 1: review of S-Phase DVD, the Complete Athlete, vol.1, posted) Tweet Follow @begin2dig
In an overview i did of Z-Health, focusing on R-phase, i wrote about how Z-Health (Zed for short in this article) focuses on communicating with the nervous system, and why that's important for improved well being, whether that's getting out of pain, or moving better for daily life or an athletic pursuit. For a quick review, R-phase focuses on moving each joint in the body through its range of motion. It does this not just because moving joints about is good for the health of the joint, but because joints have a TON of two particular kinds of receptors in them: noci- (detecting noxious stimulus - not just pain) receptors and mechano- receptors (excellent article overviewing joint mechanoreceptor types).
The mechano's in the joints are in large part communicating about where that joint is in space, as well as how fast it's moving. The brain processes all the inputs coming in from these joints to create a microsecond by microsecond map of where we are in the environment. Help all the joints move through their whole range of motion, and at least two key things happen:
- more options to respond to the environment because there's more mobility;
- the brain gets a better picture or "map," as Z-Health founder Eric Cobb puts it,of where we are because more signals are firing;
(ok you too may have wondered why he didn't just step aside, but heh, that means there were a few options rather than just one).
The pay off here is that the more ways we can move the more choices we have to avoid a crisis. The more we practice moving, the more we work our balance and visual system to connect to those movements, the better our coordinated responses, or reflexes have in a given situation. This range of options and heightened reflexes that comes from such agility/balance work has been shown to be an important component as a strategy for people at risk of hip fractures, for instance. Enhance the signals as to where one is in space, practice using them, we give the body more options to adapt and remain vertical, lessen the chance of a fall.
It's a Map - a Map of the World. Eric Cobb talks about what our bodies do in space as Navigation. "And navigation is an action." The better information coming in from the body about position in space, the better off we are. When joints can move, they're sending off more points of information.
Think about the "light bulbs" that people wear on motion capture rigs for computer graphics. Only a few points are needed around the major limbs to be applied to a model of a human form in order for the computer to integrate those points and model to render a pretty convincing motion (movie, 275kb). But look closely at the foot. How "mobile" does it seem in the model?Thus, entire strips of sensors have to be used to map finer joint movements accurately, like those of the fingers (movie 2.6mg). Way more sensors to give finer detail of movement - but check out how well or not even here, the fingers unscrewing the cap are mirrored in the computer model of same.In other words, a few points certainly give a general sense of movement, but more points of information are necessary to get a truer picture of the movement. And that's just for a computer trying to render a passable realistic sketch of a anthropomorphic character. My fave work in this space is Mike Chat's from Discovery's Extreme Martial Arts, and mapping the skeleton onto the form (check about a minute into the clip).
Very convincing approximation from gross motor movements.But notice that the light suit to get that degree of movement detail has many more points (the white dots on the skin suits in the image below)
It's these multiple points of information of course that feed into why Zed heads talk about freeing your feet, getting out of non-bendable, twistable, overly squishy shoes: their "support" stops your joints from moving as they're designed, and hence lessens the signal back to the body about the foot's location in space.
It's no wonder that so many runners get sprained ankles: the shoe wear designed to "support" their foot deadens its natural ability to communicate, hobbling the body's ability to respond and get it out of trouble. R-phase therefore is about openning up all the communication channels of the joints to enable a better map, better signal to noise ratio for letting the body respond to the envirnoment. I-phase is training the body to put that new information to work.
Building on the Information Flow: Putting the Map to Work
Eric Cobb talks about R-Phase as learning the vocabulary of movement; IPhase is getting into the grammar - building sentences. What does that mean, practically?
In R-Phase, by learning the drills that move each joint of the body through its range of motion (with the exception of the sutures in the skull - that's T-Phase), we learn about those ranges of motion. Speaking for myself, i started unable to move my thoracic spine in any meaningful, mobile way. Thought it was impossible for me. Turns out not. Lots of practice, et voila: thoracic circles like no one's business. Standing still.
So R-Phase we learn how to move these joints to send off that information with very little load on the joints themselves. Great for learning, and teaching the body to create new patterns of movement. The benefits of this practice alone are legion. I could write idyls of joy to how much R-Phase (with a little T mixed in) has helped my back. Likewise, in working with clients, R-phase drills have wrought out and out remarkable benefits for many clients, helping them either into better performance or out of pain or both.
Once that practice/knowledge is in place to perform perfectly in "neutral" posture and load, I-phase adds load. With lunges. And foot positions. A simple pelvic circle in neutral stance suddenly has a plethora of combinations from 6 lunge positions and 3 foot positions for each of 2 feet. Nice.
Train for the Sprain; the Kobioshi Maru of Movement
So why add all these positions to a given neutral stance posture? Cobb argues that this puts the body in positions that are closer to real life. Get used to working in these postures (80% load on the front leg, feet neutral; shift to 80% load on the back leg, feet turned out), the body is more ready to respond to unusual circumstances, ie, life. This is the magic of practice, or the learning effect of making reaction reflexive rather than cognitive.
We see this practice effect all the time. One of the greatest examples of it was in the early Space program, where astronauts rehearsed and rehearsed multiple variations of space maneuvers in the earliest simulators in order to have that vocabulary of options at their finger tips, but in order to be able to call on them in a variety of less than optimal conditions. Like going for a run on a muddy chip trail (in vibram fivefingers of course. no stupid squishy trail shoes that kill the proprioception here) and starting to slide, but being able to recover.
There is no Spoon: I-Phase as a Template
Another aspect of I-phase work is that "it's a
template." Unlike R-Phase, while the I-Phase and Neural WarmUp II DVDs take one through a variety of combinations of the I-Phase movements, and while they introduce some moves not in R-Phase at all (like the powerful peg board drill), the DVDs are by no means exhaustive. Right elbow circles in a left lateral lunge with neutral foot position are demonstrated. But all the other lunge positions and foot positions are available, too.To add even more dimensions, head and eye positions can also be part of the mix. How about practicing the elbow circles with a left anterior lunge, head titled left, eyes looking right (up). Sounds like a slightly wacky combination until perhaps looking at the picture on the right.
By following the guidance in the I-phase manual on how to learn and practice these loaded positions, one is not only working mobility, but adding strength/muscle work. The advantages are the same as in R-phase: signal is increased.
Adaptation for the Unexpected or the Fairly Usual.
If you've ever tried to hold a position that's new, you may feel your muscles shaking. That's a neurological adaptation happening: you may be entirely strong enough to hold the move but the muscles/nervous system are figuring out optimal firing patterns to adapt the muscles to that move. There can be quite a bit of initial shake in I-phase. But as the positions become practiced, neural paths are developed to get used to these positions.
What happens at the same time is again, more signaling information is brought to the body's central processor; better mapping happens. The muscles, like the joints have tons of mechanoreceptors too telling the body about limb position and the stretch position of the muscles. The more patterns practiced, the more the brain gets used to those new positions, the better it can navigate by putting just the right resources there (no more shaking) and having more available for elsewhere. Go from clutz in learning a move to grace in practice of a move; from conscious effort to unconscious response.
Faster Learning?
Another benefit to the I-Phase template approach is enhancing the rapidity of being able to learn new moves/adapt to new situations. Cobb talks about this kind of learning as that of the "natural athlete" - someone who has such unconscious body awareness that they can readily move their bodies into the forms demanded of that work. With I-phase practice in its varied positions, the body habits of natural athleticism can be learned.
One might protest, but i am a desk jockey, not an athlete.Phooey!
If one has to walk stairs, open a car door in a rainy oil slicked parking lot, shovel snow or sweep a floor, reach for something rolled under the couch, stay vertical on a moving British bus, then one needs these I-phase teachable athletic skills for simple survival (especially in the case of the British bus. sheesh!).
I've personally noticed that my reflexes have improved without consciously working on them - when i can catch a bottle that's coming off the counter towards the floor, grab my hat 2 feet in front of me as the wind's whipped it off my head, or beat my cousin at a video driving game without ever having played the game, something's funny here. Especially when my previous image of myself was always of the person who was lucky if the lid to the jam landed sticky side up.
So when do I do I?
Some folks ask "when should i do I-phase?" I've also heard some people say, after a year or more of focusing on R, "i'm not ready for I; i still haven't mastered R."
My view? based on my experience and working with folks? Really being grounded in R is a very good idea. Doing the 12 week program that's in R-Phase to learn R-Phase is a very good idea. I worked on R-phase for about 6 months before really getting into I. I also did the R phase certification 3 months into that cycle, so i got a lot of attention on how to do R properly (get a coach; it's worth it). This is not to say all that time was necessary; it's just what i did. Your mileage may vary, as a colleague says. What i would say is if and as you've been practicing R-phase, do connect with a Z-health coach to check your form. As with anything, getting the form right makes huge difference in performance/experience. Those simple toe pulls go from "oh ya, ok" to "ahhh. wow" when you really get 'em. And that's what you want every time.
That said, R-phase is not a martial art; it's not yoga. It's learning how to hit particular targets cleanly and effectively to recover function and "clear the map." While one can do R forever fruitfully, getting into I, as i hope has been shown above, is doing your body a favour to take that knowledge and get into some Astronaut Training Time. That is, I-Phase's addition of load and position challenge is prepping the body for Life; it's the simulator to train for the sprain. My opinion? based on my experience and working with folks? If you've been doing R for awhile, have gone through the 12 week programs, have met with a coach to optimize your target hitting, you owe it to your body to get into I-phase.
We can Work it Out
And if you'd like to work with me on some of that Zed mojo, either in person or online (yes that too is possible), please feel free to contact me. My email's in my profile, and there's some feedback here, mainly from other trainers with whom i've had the pleasure to work. Otherwise, hope you'll check out the I-phase Neural /WarmUpII package. As with R-Phase, the I-Phase DVD goes through the suite of I-phase Drills in some of the lunge/foot combinations. The Neural Warm Up II is a power boost subset version of I drills and is more of a work out. It also has several new (and intense) super chargers, body openers and eye drills.
Later, let's talk about S, too?
:)
(update 1: review of S-Phase DVD, the Complete Athlete, vol.1, posted) Tweet Follow @begin2dig
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