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In the previous sections, you first learned a few basics of anatomy, which were meant to help you understanding why some postures are healthy whilst others are not. With that in mind, you then read how you should build your body from the feet to the head, and then how this should be applied in your daily life.
The aim of the present section is to give you the means to train healthy behaviours. Exercises can be split into:
- Mobilisation exercises, meant to bring selected joints back into motion, useful for increasing body awareness and preventing muscle stiffness;
- Strengthening exercises, to be carried out rather when you are not at work, to increase the tonus of balance muscles;
- Post-isometric relaxation exercises, meant to stretch and relax specific muscles following a gravity-assisted technique described by K. Lewitt;
- Stretching exercises, used both for prevention and for rehabilitation, targetted at a specific group of muscles;
- Global relaxation exercises to carry out during the day, at work, during your breaks, and meant to prevent tension to build up and to restore the blood flow in large regions.
You can (and should) also exercise by carrying out slowly, consciously, and precisely your daily gestures (manual handling without weight, playing music without instrument, typing on a virtual computer). These "behavioural" exercises are meant to "re-program" the brains, i.e. to change bad habits you may have been taking over the years.
The philosophy behind the present selection is to show the reader that accessories and weights are usually not needed. To keep fit, you mainly need to learn how to control each of your joints in all directions, as independently as possible from all other body parts. Once you can do that, you will find out many exercises involving postures and movements that train your muscles thanks to your own weight. As long as you cannot do those exercises easily, repetitively and for prolonged periods, what is the point to involve external loads?
Pre-requesite for exercising in standing
Before doing any exercise, you need to assume a correct and safe posture, stabilizing the pedestal (i.e. the pelvis) of the statue (i.e. the spine). But even before this, you need to control the pedestal of the pelvis, i.e. the legs.
The first step is always to keep your knees and your enkels flexible. The second step is to train your balance, by shifting your weight towards the heels, then towards the tows and eventually to stabilize your weight distribution in direction of the heels, still keeping some weight on the tows. This should be carried out in different positions: standing, standing in the monkey posture, bending to the front, etc.
When doing standing exercises, you should then be able to keep the same weight distribution on your feet, i.e. to keep your balance.
Pre-requesite for exercising in lying
Before doing anything that is not resting, you should know by now that your back has to be protected: Avoid hollow backs!
The picture below shows the most typical wrong lying posture, with a hollow low back.
Like in standing and sitting, the pelvis should be tilted inward, so as to reduce the curvature of the low back, hence protecting the neck (see below). Use a small pillow to protect the neck further.
Bending the knees as shown makes it much easier to tilt the pelvis, on the back as well as on the side.
Fitness rooms...
I have numerous clients with complaints who practice fitness in fitness centres. With due respect to the quality and competences of the local trainers, I would like to emphasize the risks of this discipline as practiced by many.
First of all, the objectives of the training are often not reasonable, and not in the right order. The point should not be to gain impressive muscles in visible areas such as the upper shoulders or the arms. These are work muscles, which (schematically) need to do as little as possible. Instead of increasing the strength of work muscles, make sure that you are well in control of balance muscles, which should be those doing the actual job of lifting the load. Once you control them well, start training them progressively, and then only see if there is something to do about work muscles. Any other approach is not logical: How can you imagine to load a statue which is not even in balance on its foundations?
Therefore, the first phases of your training in a fitness room should target your physical condition (cardio) and your legs muscles. Then, your abdominals and lower back muscles, as well as (progressively and carefully) the spine extensors. Then, once the spine is strongly supported on well-controlled hips, which themselves rest on powerful legs, you may think of training your shoulder muscles, i.e. lower trapezius and latissimus dorsi (forming the "M").
Another major issue with practicing fitness is one's tendency to set heavy weights on the machines. Remember that pre-mobilizing the muscles that you want to target with a given exercise will render the latter more efficient, and thereby reduce the need for heavy weights. For example, bring your lower abdominals towards your spine and pre-mobilize your M before starting to use the rowing machine, and keep them in place during the whole duration of the training. This is also a safety measure to ensure that you do not overload the extremities (in particular, the upper trapezius).
Another risk of setting heavy weights on apparatuses is inherent to their construction and setting possibilities. Quite often, the handles or levers of the machine need to be brought from their rest position to the starting position for the exercise. Once the exercise is over, they need to be brought back. During these two phases, it is often impossible to assume a healthy posture (e.g., if handles are behind you, you will be most likely to reach them bending backwards, i.e. with a hollow back), and you mind is not yet (or anymore) fully into the exercise. Therefore, you will push heavy weights in unhealthy postures, thereby take the risk to injure yourself.
For all these reasons, I would generally advise to focus on one's physical condition when training in a fitness room, and to use machines with only (very) light weights, consciously mobilizing the muscles which you target with the exercise. Always pay particular attention to your posture: Keep a flat back, remain slightly forward, and keep your shoulder blades low at all times.
Keep in mind that gravity is a very powerful force that, when used cleverly, allows you to exercise at home, every day and with low risk.
