GREEN TEA PANNACOTTA

This Amazingly Creative Desert is made by LYS POET

Personal Chef

LYS is born in Belgium

This entry was written by scrawford, posted on April 20, 2010 at 3:50 pm, filed under Food, Nutrition, Santa Barbara and tagged Chef, Lys Poet, Personalized Chef, Recipe. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.

Hollywood Weekly Spotlights the Alexander Technique

This is a review of June Chadwick

Presenting the Alexander Technique

This entry was written by scrawford, posted on April 6, 2010 at 7:20 pm, filed under Alexander Technique, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and tagged Alexander Technique, Healing, health, Hollywood Weekly, June Chadwick. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.

Soma’s Karen Keltner Shares Her Tips For Earth Hour

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Check out this interview on how Santa Barbara locals including our Karen Keltner are celebrating Earth Hour.

This entry was written by scrawford, posted on at 7:14 pm, filed under Green Lifestyle, Outdoors, Santa Barbara, Yoga and tagged Green, Karen Keltner, Outdoors, Santa Barbara, Yoga. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.

Low Back Discomfort and Ways to Address It

Well, I got such a great response from folks about my knee discomfort post last month that I thought I’d discuss a similar issue around low back discomfort. Now to start off let’s be sure that we distinguish between pain and discomfort. We’re going to categorize “pain” as something that is sharp, chronic, rarely subsides, and often comes with referred pain, numbness or tingling down to the legs and even feet. By discomfort I mean the achy feel that comes from prolonged sitting, prolonged standing, or the classic “not sure what I did the other day, but my back is stiff”. This usually comes from an overdone level of activity such as heavy lifting, reaching, gardening, workouts, etc.

Discomfort is what we’re are discussing here. Remember, our job as fitness professionals and as active individuals is NOT to diagnose or treat medical conditions, including low back pain. This is NOT to serve as a guide for diagnosis, but an article to recommend some strength and flexibility exercise choices for clients that report discomfort in the low back. If you at all suspect other structural issues, always refer the client or yourself to a qualified health-care provider. Remember folks, our world is about motion and exercise, not medical conditions. Now on with the show…

So why would someone’s low back be prone to being sore or stiff with extra activity? Most likely it is because their back is what we like to call “hyper-tonic”. It has more tone to it than normal. Now I know we all want to be toned up, but not like this. A hyper-tonic low back is one that has a level of constant tension in it that is higher than normal. This also generally means that the fibers in it are shorter than normal. We also may not feel the effects of this tension until we overdo something. So, a group of muscles that sits at this level of tension let’s say, is already angry. An increased level of work placed on these angry muscles, well, gets them really ticked off, and they in turn let you know it. Along with angry low back musculature, the hip flexors are often just as angry and as they go, very often so does the low back.

Now without having to go into detail too much about how this works (if you want to know the detail just email using the info below), the ab muscles and glutes (butt muscles) are actually the opposite. They are a bit more mellow than normal, in fact we’ll call them drowsy. This all puts the body in a position that favors this mish-mash of angry/drowsy muscles and leads to more and more discomfort and maybe even more serious issues.

How does this all come about in the first place? Well there are a couple schools of thought on this and I happen to believe both play a part in this widespread problem. The first one being quite simple, we sit A LOT as a society now. When we’re seated, our hip flexors maintain a shortened position and are just asking to become hyper-tonic (aka angry) over time. This can often lead to an angry low back. The second one being about available motion. Just like we talked about with the knee, if the segments above and below the one in question don’t have enough motion, our body will find it elsewhere. In this case, we’re talking the shoulders/thoracic spine and hips/pelvis. Our low back vertebrae (or lumbar spine) are fairly mobile relative to the thoracic (stabilized by the rib cage) and sacral/coccygeal (stabilized by the pelvis and/or fused) vertebrae. So whatever motion my body may not have at the shoulder girdle and hips, my body will find at my lumbar spine since that is a nearby segment with some extra mobility to it. That is, my low back takes the hit for what my shoulders and hips cannot do.

So how do we work with this?

1) Open up the front of the shoulders (increase mobility)
2) Strengthen the back of the shoulders and upper back (helps with posture maintenance)
3) Open up the hips (quiet angry hip flexors)
4) Increase glute activation (wake up drowsy glutes)
5) Stretch the low back (quiet angry low back muscles)
6) Wake up the abs/core control (wake up drowsy ab/core muscles)

That’s a tall order, so I’m going to give you a few suggestions when consulting with other fitness professionals, or if you are a casual exerciser, about what to look and ask for.

1) Pec major/minor stretches, latissimus dorsi (lats) stretches: usually shows up as stretches that you see people doing in a doorway or with their arm up on a wall
2) Scapular (shoulder blade) retraction exercises: usually some form of bringing the arms from a position in front of the body to one behind it while maintaining elbows out away from the torso
3) Hip flexor stretches
4) Types of squats, lunges, or deadlifts: these need not at all be heavy and must be done perfectly to target glute activation otherwise other muscles may try to step in and take over the motion
5) Low back stretches: usually involve a rounding of the low back while standing or “on all fours”
6) All types of core exercises including, but by no means limited to, variations of ab crunches

There are all kinds of ways to accomplish the above and this should serve only as a starting point of discussion and research for the best selection of exercises to “wake up” and “quiet” the right muscles for your or your client’s specific needs and body. This is to get you thinking about programming, not serve as the detailed guide on it. There could be other muscular imbalances at play and a thorough motion analysis is warranted before beginning individualized programming. And don’t forget my mantra “When in doubt, refer out.”

Got questions? Please email me at rich@oraclefited.com

Thanks for reading and talk to you soon!

Rich

About the author:
Rich Fahmy MS is the Director of Education for Oracle Fitness Education, a company that specializes in continuing education for health and fitness professionals (more info can be found at www.oraclefited.com). He is a trainer’s trainer; and some, although very few, would say he’s a cross between Chuck Norris, a Real Man of Genius, and The Most Interesting Man in the World. And by some, that means just him.

This entry was written by rfahmy, posted on March 28, 2010 at 10:40 pm, filed under Life is Fitness, Lifestyle and Spa, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and tagged Exercise, Fitness, low back pain, oracle fitness education, Rich Fahmy, SOMA GET FIT, spine issues. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.