Cheat patterns in injury and fitness

#Cheatpatterns #injury #Fitness #sportsperformance #beactivated #movementpatterns #strength #power #breathwork #diaphragmbreathing #bellybreathing #compensationpatterns #sports #sportsinjury #sportstherapy

So, you may think you are fit and strong and effective in your movements.

You are most likely not as efficient as you can be! I want to introduce you to concept of #BeActivated. It is an injury prevention (and treatment) system that works on the body's basic principles; that we must breath and move in order to survive. If we are doing either of these things in a way that is less than preferable, the body will always find a way to compensate and cheat and use other muscles to make up for short comings elsewhere in the body.

You may have been told you have been over compensating with a different body part when you've injured yourself, or perhaps that you are injured because you are over using a certain area or muscles. But how can this be prevented?

This is where Be Activated comes in. #DouglasHeel, Be Activated's founder and advocate, has been teaching this technique around the world for well over 10 years now. How come it is not used by everyone yet? Well, it definitely goes against most principles of health and fitness and sports medicine. No lengthy #rehabilitation programs, isolating muscles, or core strengthening. No need to work for months to regain #strength, #flexibility and #power etc. The techniques are simple, easy to learn and give instant results. By doing the right thing to the body at the right time, you will get the right result...an increase in the muscle's strength, flexibility and power. #Balance, #speed and #co-ordination can also therefore be improved when the whole body is back running it's most efficient pattern of movement and breathing.

We all live in a stressful world, whether we are just numb to those feelings or we truly experience everything our bodies and minds want us to.

Because it can be overwhelming at times, physically and/or emotionally, our body will start to go into it's protective mode....it's defense pattern. And what is the ultmiate defensive position we can adopt? The fetal position. Where everything is collapsed inwards and tight and we start to move towards a curled up ball. This is evident if we look at people who are depressed, or in pain, or maybe the elderly. We can see this progression towards a forward folded, curled up posture.

What does this mean in terms of physical fitness? Well, with hunched tight shoulders, and a collapsed #diaphragm our breathing, ribs and chest will be tight and restricted. Our heads may be jutting forward with an extended neck causing tightness, painful shoulders and necks as well as headaches. Generally poor #posture.

Our hip flexors #psoas (muscles at the front of our hips) will be shortened and tightned and become weak. Since these muscles drive all forward movement, our body has to find the next best thing to help and compensate. The same will occur on the posterior of our body with our #glutes (butt muscles).

This is when we get tight thighs (quads) and hamstrings, and tight abdomials and lower back muscles as these are the muscles above and below the hip flexors and glutes, therefore the next in line to help the body find some strength and a way to keep moving. If the quads are now working to be our hip flexors and the hamstrings our glutes; our calf and shin muscles will have to help protect our knees somehow. These will shorten and tighten to help do so....as you can see this cascade of over compensation is not good for any area of the body and before long the body can break down completely into fatigue, and chronic exhaustion when it runs out of compesations and muscles to help other muscles.

Next time we will look at breathing and how this links to our movement or defensive patterns and how we can improve our breathing with simple exercises.....

For more information see www.douglasheel.com. Christie teaches a class at Splashpoint Leisure Centre (Southdowns Leisure) helping participants to breathe with their diaphragms and activate themselves. Group sessions for companies and employees, sports teams etc to learn the techniques can be arranged.

Look out for the next 6 week course in conjunction with Nuffield Health in Broadwater for how to BE ACTIVATED. (see BodywavesSportsInjuries on facebook and bodywavesYoga on instagram for up to date classes and courses)