Balancing the human body

Many of us sit at a desk for 8 hours a day, then go to the gym for an hour, bang out some cardio and a bunch of resistance exercises, and then go home and sit down to dinner all the time wondering why we have chronic back, neck, or knee pain.

During your hour long workout, how much time do you spend on opposing movement patterns, range of motion (ROM), and flexibility?

This is a very important question, and one worth asking yourself.

When we work on our flexibility, we are sending messages to our brain to calm down tight muscle groups and wake up weak ones. Increasing ROM in a movement is a good way to ensure correct movement patterns. And re-directing your habitual movement patterns creates more balance, strength, and flexibility. It's a positive cycle.

Here is an example: Gluteal dominance vs quadricep dominance.

If when you do squats you feel the front of your thigh much more than you do your glutes, you probably need to work on your range of motion in your squats and shift the weight further back into the glutes. One way to do this is to aim your butt for a lower surface, slowly increasing the ROM of your squats. This will help wake up your glute muscles and release your quads, so that your body is moving correctly and using the large muscle groups in the back of the body to stabilize the knee joint, thus reducing stress and pain in the knee.

Since, in our modern activities of daily living, we recreate similar movement patters with similar ROM, and hold static positions for many hours of the day, it makes sense that we should work in opposition to those patterns, while at the gym, to help balance the body.

If you spend 8 hours a day hunched over a computer key board and you want better posture, coming into the gym and banging out 100 chest presses and push ups isn't going to help you much. But if you take time to stretch your chest muscles and then strengthen the muscles of the back, then you are creating balance in the postural muscles.

Similarly, if you are seated all day at a desk and you want stronger core muscles, using machines at the gym that make you sit probably isn't going to help much with balance and stability. But, if you use a stability ball and free weights for the same exercises, you are working in opposition to the static stable base you are used to.

Another good thing to keep in mind: Every workout should include pulling exercises, pushing exercises, variations of squats, variations of lunges, and rotational exercises. And always set a day aside for flexibility training.

If you have questions about your workout and how to improve your flexibility and ROM, be sure to ask any one of our highly qualified personal trainers at Richmond Balance. We are here to help you move better.

Namaste,

Jennie