Hi
Before I go into the rest of the human movements its important to have a think about muscles.
There are 640 muscles in the human body.
All are different sizes and shapes and the one thing
they all have in common is they have specific roles to play.
The body is a beautiful symmetry of pushing/ pulling/ twisting muscles working on the bones and ligaments to create movement.
THIS IS WHAT WE NEED TO FOCUS ON STRENGTHENING ABOVE ALL ELSE (i.e. Fat loss)
Can you tell how important the above statement is as I yelled it? ;-)
Put another way. Lift stuff and move lots and your body
will be become the shape you want as form always follows function.
When we lose this symmetry (due to poor posture or injury), movements change and muscles have to take on extra work to take the slack from injured or poorly functioning surrounding muscles.
Either this...or muscles can tighten up to protect an injured joint, especially in very important areas such as the spine.
Think of your team
at work. If one person leaves or takes it a little too easily the other colleagues need to take up the extra work to compensate.
This is ok if manageable...but too much and people get stressed.
The muscles in your body are just like this so to keep it all in harmony we need to look after all of them and make sure all the work we do is balanced.
Essentially we are all fighting gravity all day long. If our spine is
aligned with its natural curve, pelvis nice and central and our shoulder blades back and down we are in a perfect position to manage this.
However, if we slouch, let our shoulder blades rise up and spend hours in one position our bodies try to find the above position it can to counteract this....and this causes stress where it shouldn't.
Bearing the above in mind is why we need to add resistance either bodyweight (pilates/ yoga etc) or weight
training. This resistance strengthens all the muscles we need to keep us in symmetry so we don't add stress to muscles not 'designed' to do the job they end up with.
This is why we say muscle is youth..get them all strong and you will be in balance and those little niggles and twinges will be a thing of the past!
In other words...lift
HEAVY stuff.......often!
Stay strong,
J
