So recently I have received a flood of clients attempting to use movement to avoid surgery.
I think it is amazing that more people are finally recognizing that a band aid (surgery) is rarely the answer to repetitive areas injuries. But I also quickly realized that I cannot initially address long held compensatory strategies with fitness based patterns.
How can I teach a back pain client to perform a horizontal push in a front-back stance if they can barley stand?
The necessity of this experience has led me to step back and think about what comes before fitness. The softer patterns such as- sitting, standing and even lying down without generating excessive amounts of tension or just hanging off your ligaments all together. Feldenkreis realized these were our foundations decades ago and developing a template and classification system for these "health patterns" I call them has been a fun and interesting experience. Respecting the framework of Plane, Position and Pattern, has allowed me to work with virtually any client to truly build health and fitness from the ground up. It has also led to some interesting drills such as this lateral focused upper DR expansion Circuit: 1. Lateral high crawls- Begin on all fours and assume a high crawl position. Crawl side ways towards a wall or barriers. The side we are crawling towards is the expanding side with the opposite side the propelling side. I love this drill for wide ISAs to get alternating expansion of the ribcage. 2. Lateral stance open face wall slide- Assume a lateral stance position and place stance leg on a book or block. Turn palms to face you and inhale while sliding up the wall to get upper DR expansion. I've been performing these and similar drills daily as my yielding work for 30-60 seconds as a circuit.
Comments