We were made to move. We were made to crawl, climb, jump,
sprint, throw, swing, and punch.
We were made to push, pull, squat, hip hinge, and more. We were
born with all of the mobility one could have, but we had to EARN every ounce of
stability we obtained.
What happened? Our movement patterns are "hard wired" into our
nervous system, but we lose them somewhere along the line. If I ask an 80 year old female to perform
a full squat for me, I literally get laughed at and have "Are you
serious?" following. If I go
to a 3rd world county and ask the same aged female to squat, I'd get a 3 on
Gray Cook's FMS Squat Test. Why? What
happened?
Chairs, computers, cell phones, iPads, iPods,
TV's, etc. have taken us from a society of movement to a society of slouchers
and chest breathers. We literally
suffer from movement pattern atrophy.
We have lost our ability to squat and hip hinge so we suffer from low
back injuries. We sit for hours on
end and our thoracic spine becomes over kyphotic and lacks CRITICAL movement
and we have compensatory movement in the neck and lower back. This leads to disc herniations and
degeneration in both the neck and the lower back. Poor thoracic spine mobility also leads to shoulder
pathology. And if you have surgery
(neck, low back, shoulder, elbow, hip, knee, etc.) and you do not address joint
restrictions/ joint stability problems away form the surgery site and faulty
movement patterns, it is only a matter of time before it happens again. I know, I've had 3 low back
surgeries.
So what do we do? How do we keep ourselves away from the
issues that comes with our "sedenterism"?
You have to take action BEFORE you are in
pain! Pain is the last to show and
the first to go. What I mean is
that the dysfunction was there before the pain started and most often once the
pain is gone the person still has dysfunctional mechanics somewhere in the
locomotor system that if not addressed will cause pain again, maybe not at the
original pain site, but somewhere else up or down the kinetic chain. All too often patients discontinue care
because they are out of pain and are "fixed". They are stuck in the medical model of
pain management and the western lifestyle that wants results fast and
cheap.
In order to take action on our poor movement
habits we have to wake up and realize that the answer is not to sit in a chair
and drive to work, sit in a chair at work, sit in a chair and drive to the gym,
and when we get to the gym sit in another chair to "workout". We need to quit facilitating poor
posture (chest flys, bicep curls, leg extensions, leg press, sit-ups, etc) and
break the unnecessary tone we create throughout the day by doing exercises that
are advantageous to the movements that we were born with. Don't get sucked into todays norm...
Don't get sucked into todays society of slouchers!
