Strength Training: Why and How it Can Be For Everybody

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Recently I started offering strength training sessions for my clients who have extensive experience with my DNS based training. After each client completed an introductory session, I asked them to email me some feedback, including how they felt after the session. Every one of them said that after the session they felt stronger. After just ONE session!

This surprised me a little. I was expecting to get comments along the lines of “I felt sore” or “I was tired the next day.” I was and continue to be concerned about the possibility that clients will get injured. After all, these were folks who were not already doing workouts with weights, and I wanted feedback mainly to be sure they weren’t getting hurt.

So to hear that, invariably, every client felt immediately stronger, was hugely reinforcing for me in advocating for this type of work. Think about it. Feeling stronger goes far beyond the physical. These clients had done a grand total of one session with light weights. They were very clearly not, in fact, stronger.

But they felt stronger, and I quickly realized that that feeling had HUGE benefits for their mental health and overall sense of well-being. Strength training gave them more than just a different type of workout. It gave them confidence. It gave them fortitude!

Of course the handful of clients who have continued strength training with me since are indeed getting stronger. And for these clients, the benefits of that strength have extended into important and unexpected places in their lives.

Just the other day I had 2 different clients tell me how they’ve been getting noticeably stronger, and describe ways that this strength has afforded them powerful and meaningful benefits. Both of these clients care for an aging spouse / parent, and both of them had occasion to help their loved one physically in ways they would not have been able to in the past.

Anyone who has had an aging parent or loved one knows all too well that we are one fall away from a life-changing shift in our circumstances. Both of these clients were able to catch their loved one during a fall. Being stronger therefore was, for them, more than a personal benefit. It meant potentially far reaching benefits both for themselves and for others, not to mention the elevated sense of well-being and confidence that goes with that. Their loved ones could have been hurt, perhaps seriously, and they had the wherewithal to prevent that and all that may have meant for themselves and their families.

Clearly these examples represent compelling arguments for taking up strength training. We don’t need to be caring for an elder or spouse to see how getting meaningfully stronger would enhance our own lives. Thus it might seem that strength training is something everyone ought to do.

But strength training is not without its risks. If we start out with little or no preparation, we may end up hurting ourselves, and this might put us at a functional deficit, rather than conferring the advantages we were aiming for.

I’m convinced that my clients are having such good outcomes with their strength training because they have all trained with me before taking it up. These clients have been working on their mechanical skills for a long time, skills I’d argue are crucial for executing the challenging strength training exercises I’m teaching them. In other words, they were well prepared for it.

This is why I feel that, while on the one hand strength training has the potential to benefit just about anyone, jumping right into it is not for everyone. We need to have reasonably well functioning bodies and good mechanics to get meaningfully stronger without setting ourselves back. We need, in effect, to train ourselves to be ready to strength train. Or at least we do if we want to fully realize the potential benefits strength training has to offer.

So if you’re considering starting strength training, consider your circumstances. You should already feel to some extent that you are strong and capable. You don’t want to start with nothing.

And if you’d like some help, feel free to reach out. I offer training at various levels of engagement and price from group classes on Zoom to small in-person classes to semi-private sessions to private training. Let me know what where you’re at and where you’d like to go and I’m happy to do whatever I can to help you get there.

Why WALKING May Be THE Most Important Weight Bearing Exercise

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Older adults often hear in the media or from their doctors that they need to do more weight bearing exercise for long term health. Weight bearing exercise (WBE) has been shown in studies to improve bone density, mostly in patients with osteoporosis, and there is evidence to suggest that it can also help with balance and muscle strength.

I spend much of my time working with the very people who hear this recommendation the most, and I often get insights into how these clients interpret it. My impression is that usually when a client hears “weight-bearing exercise” they think of weight training or exercises that involve the use of external weights.

Does Weight-Bearing Exercise Mean Lifting Weights?

Do we need to be lifting weights for health and longevity? I’m not really sure that’s the case. Lifting weights, while potentially valuable for some, can be problematic for many others, and often problematic for the very people who are told to do more weight-bearing. Perhaps if we were to better understand exactly what WBE is, each of us might better understand what exercises are best for us to do and how we should do them.

Let’s consider first a basic definition of weight-bearing I found in the NIH Library of Medicine:

“Weight-bearing is any activity that one performs on one or both feet. It requires that one carry bodyweight on at least one lower extremity. Weight-bearing is an activity that the skeletal system does against gravity.”

 

Notice that it says nothing here about lifting weights. Weight-bearing, and the exercises that employ it, are simply activities that we do that load our skeletal system against gravity. In fact, I’d argue that exercises that train us to manage our own body weight more effectively and don’t involve adding any additional weight are much more important, crucial really, to our health and function, than those that do.

Don’t get me wrong. I see a lot of value in weight-training, especially for athletes or anyone needing or wanting to build strength for a particular sport or a physically demanding activity. Weight-training is also fine for someone who simply wants to get stronger for the sake of being so.

What I’m saying here is that we don’t need to weight-train to have the necessary strength to be high functioning human beings. However, we DO need to do exercises or activities that involve weight-bearing, and we DO need to do them in the RIGHT way if we want to enjoy their benefits.

So what is the RIGHT way to do WBE? Before we get into that, let’s look at why WBE is recommended in the first place.

Weight-Bearing Exercise and Bone Health

Most of the research supporting the value of WBE centers on bone health. Studies consistently show that people who do WBE can improve their bone mass, and people who do not do WBE rarely if ever do. Bone mass is important for obvious reasons. We rely on our bones for support and stability. If the quality of our bone tissue degrades, we are prone to fractures and all of the challenges that go along with them, including a sometimes fatal loss of strength and mobility.

If you’ve ever had a DEXA scan to assess your bone density, you already know that your bone density is not the same throughout your body. If there is lower than optimal bone density somewhere in your body, there will also be normal bone density in other places. One of the places where bone density is often not normal and frequently deficient is in the hip, particularly in the neck of the femur.

If you’ve developed osteopenia or osteoporosis in the neck of my femur, you may improve your bone density by doing WBE. In fact, it’s very likely that you’re already doing the most important WBE you need to do that already, and have been doing it for nearly your entire life. Can you guess what it is?

Walking May Be THE Most Important Weight-Bearing Exercise

The weight-bearing activity that nearly all of us do and do daily is walking. When we walk, we bear our full body weight on our hips, legs and feet. Walking also provides the essential mechanism by which we load our femur bones (thigh bones), and this loading is essential for their health.

Theoretically, if I place my full weight on my femur bones, and I do so with sufficient frequency, I will establish and maintain the necessary bone density I need there, even without doing any other exercises to maintain it. But if that’s the case, why is it that the neck of the femur is one of the places where bone loss is most common? The reason is that while we may be walking, we’re likely not walking in the right way – the way that would otherwise maintain a healthy bone density in this and other parts of the body.

To understand why this is the case, we need to first understand the mechanism by which weight-bearing increases bone density. Our bones have specialized cells called osteoblasts. These cells, when stimulated in a particular way, produce more bone cells and this in turn increases and/or maintains our bone density.

The stimulation these cells need to produce more bone tissue is compression. By placing weight on a bone, the bone tissue is slightly compressed by the weight, and that compression stimulates the osteoblasts in the bone to produce more bone tissue and fill in any gaps in the strength giving matrix our bone tissue forms.

But for compression to happen, the bone needs more than just weight on it. It needs to be loaded relative to gravity, meaning vertically relative to the length of the bone. IOW, I can’t sit on my sofa and put heavy weights on my thighs for a period of time and expect my bone density to increase. Not that you’d do that (would you?). Instead I need to stand up from time to time and align my femurs straight up and down while I put my weight on them, preferably one at a time.

It sounds simple enough but the evidence suggests that many of us aren’t doing this. There are a few reasons why, the primary one being that when most of us stand, our femurs are not aligned vertically. Therefore, when we put our weight on them, we are not compressing the bone in the way necessary to stimulate its growth. Instead we are placing a rotational torque on the bone and unintentionally directing that torque into the soft tissue in our hips, into our knee joints and into our forefeet and toes.

This is not a recipe for a good outcome. Should we go to the gym and add even more weight to this scenario? Clearly the thing we need to do first is correct the alignment issue. Once we do that, then standing up will properly load our femurs and stimulate the growth of the tissue in them. Then once we’ve corrected the alignment issue, then adding more weight might be helpful.

And once we’ve corrected our standing alignment, why not head out and go for a nice long walk so we can keep stimulating our bone growth? Again, seems simple enough, just as long as we can maintain the optimal alignment we’ve achieved standing while moving, which, it turns out, is trickier that you might think.

Why a Functional Gait is Essential

This is where training gait mechanics comes in. My experience has shown me that, even though it’s not always easy, we can improve our gait mechanics, and when we do so we regain an essential mechanism by which we can improve and maintain our bone health, not to mention reduce stress on our hips, knees and feet.

And walking has the potential to do much more for us than just improve our bone health. It can also be excellent for improving muscle strength and balance, two other areas where research has shown WBE to help.

When we walk with a functional gait, we work some of the strongest muscles in our body – those residing along the back of our legs and hips. Muscles such as our hamstrings and our gluteal muscles get stronger when we walk with a healthy gait, and when these musics get stronger, they also keep us more stable when standing and more mobile when transitioning to sitting, a motion that’s frequently compromised in people with balance issues.

As we look deeper into the benefits walking, a weight-bearing exercise that requires no extra weight and no equipment outside of a decent pair of shoes, it’s extraordinary just how much it can offer us in the way of tissue health, improved strength and enhanced mobility. Considering the substantial cardiovascular benefits walking also provides, we might argue that walking is the perfect exercise.

Provided that is, you do it in the right way.

Your Diaphragm is a Back Muscle!

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by Tiffany Turley

When you think of your diaphragm you probably think of it as something that helps you breath and not much more than that. But your diaphragm is actually one of your major back muscles! Because of its attachments to the spine, ribs and sternum, the diaphragm is integral in supporting the joints and disks of the back and in keeping your spinal column upright and stable.

How do we keep this muscle strong and healthy? Diaphragmatic breathing. When we inhale and the diaphragm contracts, it moves downwards, not upwards like we might imagine. This downward movement creates an expansion of the lower ribs, waist, lower back and front of abdomen. This expansion is caused by pressure that builds with the downward movement of the diaphragm in the abdominal cavity called intra-abdominal pressure (IAP).

Optimal IAP causes a relatively even, 360 degree expansion of the abdominal cavity. To visualize this, imagine a circle expanding evenly into an even larger circle. The inner circle is the abdominal cavity while the outer circle is abdominal wall. The optimal expansion of IAP sends a signal to abdominal wall, formed by the trunk muscles including many of the abdominal muscles, to gently contract against this pressure. When these muscles respond appropriately to IAP, the abdominal muscles expand (stretch) and contract (resist) at once. This response maintains the pressure so that your organs, joints and disks are protected.

A healthy back is one that is upright without excessive lordosis (arching in) or kyphosis (rounding out). When we consider the essential role of the diaphragm in developing and maintaining a healthy spine, it is abundantly clear that diaphragmatic breathing is a necessity for spinal health.

So why is it that so many adults don’t breath diaphragmatically? As adults we may adopt one of several different dysfunctional breathing patterns. This is mainly due to 3 factors:

1) Cultural ideas about posture and breathing:

It’s common for many of us to have been exposed to certain ideas and expectations regarding our posture. We may have been told we need to “stand up straight” or “open up our chest.” Dysfunctional habits such as pulling our shoulders back or taking deep chest breaths to improve our posture often manifest as a result of misunderstandings about how and why to improve posture, and these habits often lead to chronic chest breathing rather than diaphragmatic breathing.

2) Breathing in and out of our mouth

When we mouth breath, the air is not pulled down as deeply into the lungs because the diaphragm does not fully contract. Mouth breathing is not only shallow breathing, it also recruits the upper back and neck muscles and this can, over time, contribute to chronic tension in the neck and shoulders.

3) Tightening the abdomen to “flatten the stomach” and brace the lower back.

For those with lower back pain, tightening the rectus abdominus, or our main abdominal “tucking muscle,” might be relieving, temporarily. But remember, in order for you diaphragm to support your back you need to have the appropriate amount of IAP. For the right amount of IAP, your abs need to need to be able to expand on inhalation. Also remember that your diaphragm needs to be able to move downward to create IAP, and it can’t do that if your abs are held tight. “Sucking it in” creates a dysfunctional tension that will only make your back tighter and weaker with time.

So how do you strengthen your diaphragm in a way that is good for your back? Just like with any other muscle it takes practice to re-learn how to use the diaphragm properly and time devoted daily to challenging it and making it capable of responding when called upon.

A very basic posture called “3 Months Supine” is a great way to start improving the function of your diaphragm and restore your abdominal responsiveness. Watch the video below for some simple cues on how to perform this very powerful and fundamental posture.

Diaphragmatic breathing will change your life. It has changed mine.

For more instructional videos and supporting content, follow us on Instagram at robertbrookyoga.

Managing Seasonal Changes with the Ayurvedic Daily Routine

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I was speaking with a client a couple of weeks ago who remarked on how dramatically the weather had changed. “This morning it was 42′ in Mill Valley and last week it was 98′!” This got me thinking about the various changes that happen with the start of the fall season and how they affect our lifestyle going forward toward winter.

The change in temperature is significant. Fall is the season of vata dosha, and this wind energy is increased by changes of any kind, particularly toward cooler temperatures. When the temperature drops. it can increase vata in us both physically and mentally and an awareness of this can help up manage these affects better. Cooler weather also tends to lower our agni (digestive fire) and this can sometimes reduce the efficacy of our digestive system and lead to vata type digestive issues such as gas & bloating or constipation.

When vata is in balance it manifests as freedom and ease of movement, sufficiency of active and creative energy, comortable digestive health and an overall sense of enthusiasm and wellness while still enjoying sound sleep. When out of balance – typically when vata is too high, it can lead to more pain, less stability, digestive inconsistency, difficulty managing stress and sleep disturbance.

In California where early fall lands during our driest time of year, managing vata is even more crucial due the fact that this dryness, combined with cooler temperatures, tends to increase vata even more. When considering how to manage vata now or at any time during the year, it is therefore important to consider these two major causes of increased vata – cooler temperatures and increased dryness. When we understand that these two environmental factors are going to push vata dosha up, then we can also understand how to mitigate the impact of these factors with choices and actions that push them down – namely increasing moisture and warmth.

To balance vata dosta, regularity and routine are essential

But when the season is changing, that change itself can have a significant impact on the balance of vata dosha. Vata is increased by changes of any kind, and it is balanced by regularity and routine. So another way we can think about balancing vata dosha, at the change of seasons or really any time of the year, is moving steadily toward establishing helpful and consistent routines.

Ancient Ayurvedic texts outline a daily routine appropriate for anyone with any constitution called Dhinacharya. The texts describe what each of us can endeavor to do each day to help keep our doshas in balance, our bodies moving freely and our digestive system operating efficiently.

The ayurvedic daily routine

What I love about the ayurvedic daily routine is that it places the activities that we are already doing every day without fail alongside those that either we’d like to be doing but may not yet have worked into our schedule, or perhaps have never even thought of. For example, we already brush our teeth every morning, (presumably), but does each of us clean our tongues? None of us questions the logic of cleaning our teeth every day, but cleaning the tongue using a spoon or a tongue scraper is much less common and has some important benefits that far outweigh the extra 10 seconds it takes to do it.

Tongue scraping can help improve our sense of taste, reduce bad breath, improve dental health, and help stimulate our digestive system. Scraping the tongue is also a way to self monitor our health as it gives us the opportunity to look at our tongue coating and color. If our tongue coating is heavier than usual, for instance, it can indicate a build up of toxicity in the digestive system and this can serve an an early warning to us to take steps to improve our agni and lighten our diet.

Most of us know that regular exercise is a good idea and that at Alignment Lab we are advocates of daily movement. It turns out that just like bathing every day, the ayurvedic texts recommend exercising daily, before breakfast. This is a habit I adopted decades ago when I started doing yoga and one that I continue to this day. If you are struggling to incorporate a regular movement activity into your life, try thinking of it as something as fundamental as bathing every day. Then try doing some amount of movement, however little, every day in the morning, before the inevitable demands of the day derail your best intentions.

A couple of years after I graduated from college when I was working in a restaurant in Berkeley, I was talking with the owner who liked to give advice. Somehow the conversation led to a discussion of bowel movements. He was the first person who ever told me that it was important to have a BM first thing in the morning every day, and he advised me that drinking a glass of warm water first thing in the morning would help to establish and continue the habit. I literally started doing it the very next day and sure enough, I started having regular morning BM’s.

Years later when I learned about the ayurvedic daily routine, I learned that the ancient texts recommend drinking a glass or warm or room temperature water first thing in the morning, Also recommend – evacuating the bowels each morning. I guess my employer at the restaurant was on to something!

As one of our readers you’re probably aware that Alignment Lab offers a cleanse program, typically but not limited to the spring. One of the activities we recommend to our cleanse participants is a daily self massage with warm oil. This is one of the features of the cleanse that I generally get the most positive feedback on. Clients love the way a week or two of applying oil to the head and body makes their skin feel!

It turns out, daily self oil massage is also one of the ayurvedic daily routines, and one that is particularly appropriate for the fall season. Again, vata goes up with dryness and coolness. Applying a constitutionally appropriate type of warm oil to our skin, rubbing it in to facilitate absorption and strengthen the tissue, then relaxing and giving it time to soak in is about as ideal an activity for balancing vata as I can think of. It’s also a great way to preserve the integrity and quality of our skin going forward.

Managing fall seasonal allergies

Another challenge some of us face during the fall season is seasonal allergies. I’ve addressed this topic in a previous post, but I want to reiterate that managing allergies of this type is much easier if you understand the mechanism at work. We’re all exposed to airborne irritants that we have little or no ability to avoid. We may very well have sensitivities to some of these irritants, but we are equipped with tools to help us manage them.

Our nasal and sinus passages have hairs and moist tissue for helping to filter airborne particles before we before we breath them into our lungs, and these tissues also help hydrate and warm the air that we do breath in. Thus our body has a natural defense mechanism against airborne irritants in the form of this filtration system. But if our nasal and sinus passages dry out, airborne particles are not filtered as well and we are more susceptible to them. Dryness also weakens the nasal and sinus tissue and makes it more prone to irritation and reactivity.

Ayurveda and allopathy both recommend using a saline rinse to help keep our sinus passages clear and hydrated, but ayurveda adds a second step not commonly recommended in allopathy in which oil is applied to the sinus passages. The oil, typically sesame oil or a medicated oil with a sesame base, helps to build the quality of the nasal and sinus tissue and improve its ability to filter and resist irritation. At Alignment Lab we often recommend Banyan Botanicals Nasya Oil to our clients for this purpose.

The daily application of oil to the nose is also another of the ayurveda daily routines and it is one that highly recommend, especially in fall and winter. The regular application of oil will also help facilitate the removal of built up toxicity in the nasal and sinus passages, further improving their health and function.

There are many versions of the ayurvedic daily routine

Online searches will yield several versions of the ayurvedic daily routine, so feel free to take a look and expand on what you’ve learned from this article. Personally I’m a fan of Vasant Lad and The Ayurvedic Institute for their wealth of experience and resources. You can read their version of the ayurvedic daily routine here.

It’s likely not every one of the ayurvedic daily routines will speak to you, and if you’re anything like me you may find yourself wondering how you can follow all of the recommendations and still hold down and job and have a life. But keep an open mind. Even adding one or two of these activities to your day can be impactful and in some cases, even life changing.