De-Railed – Staying on the Rails

Tim Irwin in his book De-Railed goes through keys to staying on track. I think we can use these when looking at how to stay on track with our exercise programs. He goes through some personal traits that we need to assess in ourselves: character, authenticity, self management, humility, and courage. While I would guess that most of us while younger were active and did not lack from activity, because as kids we love to play. But just like everything we do in life we ultimately pick paths to go down. Often times we may not realize the choices that we make will lead us to a destination, but it always does. Our destination is determined by our direction not our intentions. We all have good intentions when it comes to our health and not having any problems and being healthy people. None of us probably chooses to be overweight or be fatigued with walking up a flight of stairs. But the direction of our choices will ultimately lead us to our destination, not our good intentions. So let's look at maximizing some of these personal traits that can help us go the right direction and avoid derailment.
Our character is our inner compass leading us in that right path. Often times we are faced with decisions that are in the gray area, not necessarily right or wrong. We are best served to seek wise counsel in these areas to help with our decision making process. Talking to experts in the field of exercise can help. Let's look at an example of exercise that might be right for one person may not be right for you or not right for you at this time. Is running the right exercise for you if you want to get in shape? You maybe ran in high school or college, but it's been 10 years since the last time you ran. But your good friend wants you to start running with them and you know you are not in very good shape. It may not be the best exercise to start with, but after proper beginning training it may be great exercise for you at a later time. Don't make quick judgments with your exercise program because an expedient act often compromises your character. Staying on track is an exercise of character that you probably need to do almost daily to make sure you are choosing a wise path for your health.
Failure to be authentic often will lead to derailment. We have to be honest with who we are, what experiences we have had, and what are our expectations. We are given certain body shapes and metabolisms, we cannot change that. We probably won't look like the cover person on a magazine (unless we let Photoshop go-to-town making us look like something we are not like the magazines do). Some tips on becoming more authentic: get comfortable with your own skin, don't be arrogant, tell the truth, and share your true beliefs and convictions with those you trust.
Self management is defined as skill, insight, sensitivity, impulse control, optimism and persistence applied in the particular environment in which we live. Having control of ourselves is vital and this is often one of the most difficult things to do. Sometimes we may not like the rules of the game, but we have to accept them and not lose control. When it comes to exercise and staying healthy: yes it takes time, yes you might have to sweat a little, and yes it requires work and energy. To help us in this area we need to build on our strengths and observe our limits. Understand what exercises you are good at and do them so as to allow you to enjoy your exercise time. Understand your limits so you can work toward your maximum and not your minimum to get the most out of your exercise time. But also be observant of your weaknesses to do some work on them to avoid injury.
Humility is not about being self-deprecating or arrogant. Don't see yourself as a failure or as someone that has a horrible body image. Nor should you look at your body as perfect in every aspect. Instead we need to remember we are serving the Lord through keeping our bodies a temple on earth that is holy and pleasing to God. This allows us the ability to be the hands and feet of Christ to do good work on earth which is part of our purpose.
Courage – is ordinary people doing extraordinary things. I think everyone that takes time to improve their physical health through proper diet and exercise along with mental and spiritual health practices has courage. It is easier to not do these things, so when we take steps to choose the right thing when it would be easier to choose the wrong thing is a sign of someone doing something extraordinary.
With improving these traits we can help avoid derailment of our health. How do you work on these traits to improve your physical health with exercise and diet? Which one is hardest or which one is easiest?

De-Railed - Intro

My next series of posts will be based on some excellent wisdom from a book by Tim Irwin, Ph.D. called DE-RAILED – Five Lessons Learned from Catastrophic Failures of Leadership from Thomas Nelson Publishing.
He defines derailment through the analogy of a true train wreck – "When a huge machine intended to pull great loads gets outside the crucial limits of two parallel steel rails, there are always certain and disastrous consequences." This book highlights six different top executives in Fortune 500 companies that started with amazing potential and had an intended direction for their company, but due to getting outside the lines they eventually headed themselves and their companies to a derailment. This is the same for many when it comes to our health and fitness. Hopefully we can apply these principles to our health as well.
We all have strengths and weaknesses, while I am a big believer in focusing on your strengths we have to be aware of our weaknesses. He pointed out some great points:

1. We need to be humble and remind ourselves of our vulnerability because of our weaknesses.
2. While we should build on our strengths, so that our weaknesses become irrelevant. But some weaknesses can be so disabling that they can disqualify us.
3. A strength can quickly and easily become a weakness, when overused too much.
4. Excessive stress can compromise even the strongest and resilient of strengths.

I think these are important things to consider with our exercise programs. We need to be humble and realize that even if we are exercising we may have a weakness in our fitness program that may lead to injury. We all probably have exercises that we enjoy the most, but we need to spend some time with ones we may not enjoy as much to make sure we keep balance in our body, mind and spirit. If we have a weakness that we don't address it will lead to an injury that will affect our performance and movement. If we overdo our exercise program without proper control that to can also lead to injury. We need to make sure we are stressing our system to improve it, but we cannot put it into distress.
I think many people have seen their or someone else's health and fitness go outside the lines. Derailment occurs over time and is a process, a self chosen path. It actually begins before the crash. There are stages they go through this process. The first stage is a lack of self awareness; they begin down a path that has a predictable progression to derailment. They seem to be oblivious to the impact their choices and behaviors have on themselves. Next will often be early warning signs that are ignored (increase weight gain, a little shortness of breath with climbing stairs, pre-hypertension, increased blood sugars, etc.). The last stage usually before derailment is the attempt to rationalize their choices and path. They will twist info and deny responsibility and accuse others and outside situations as the cause and not their own choices. They take on the roll of the victim.
Over the next few posts I will discuss some ways to stay on the rails and avoid derailment and help those maybe on the path to derailment become aware it and begin the process of getting back on track.

Don't store Fat or your Talents

I came across an interesting concept talking about how fat is energy stored for later use.  Which is true, we utilize our stored fat to use if our other energy sources get depleted. So someone that is overweight might think they are just storing up more energy for a later time, which is true.  But this brought me to one of my favorite scripture passages - The Parable of the Talents.  This parable taught by Jesus, explains the importance of putting to work our gifts, talents and energy.  The servants that used their talents and made more were reward by their master "Well done good a faithful servant!".  The one who stored his talent and did not put it to work was rebuked "You wicked, lazy servant!".

Let's not store up our energy or talents, but put them to good use with physical activity and exercise.  If we utilize our energy and talents we will be rewarded and be able to share in our master's happiness!  Share some of you favorite ways to use your talents and energy.

Stretching

To stretch or not to stretch?

If you do much reading about stretching from various sites, authors and professionals there are different controversies surrounding stretching. When is the best time to stretch before or after a workout? Does stretching actually make the muscle longer in length? Are we stretching the muscles, fascia, or joint capsule with different stretches? What is the best method when it comes to stretching – static, dynamic, contract/relax? If static stretching how long should you hold the stretch? What are the best stretches to do? With all these questions someone might ask do I need to stretch, does it actually do anything?

Bring these questions up and you are bound to get a variety of answers and most people will have some research or personal story that backs what they think about stretching. Well I don't plan on solving or answering all these questions because I don't think we have all the answers. But let me shed some light on a few things that I see as important about stretching.

When stretching I don't think many of us think about it as an activation of our proprioceptive system. The proprioceptive system is our body's internal nervous system that helps with balance and movement. It is the nerves in our muscles, joints, ligaments, tendons and possibly even the skin according to some new research that send information to the brain to tell us where we are at. That is why if you close your eyes you can feel if your elbow is bent or straight and nearly replicate the same bend in the other elbow without looking. Any time our body moves our proprioceptive system is activated. It is most active with movement as it measures the velocity/speed of movement, vibration, pressure, touch, tension or stretch. So when we stretch we are activating the proprioceptive system, especially as we get to end ranges of motion as with stretching a motion our body maybe doesn't experience very often. The value of activating our proprioceptive system is found in many ways: it helps activate or "turn on" our muscles, it provides continual info to our brain to help us improve our balance and movement (this is valuable to the young person in making them more athletic – Michael Jordan was very proprioceptively gifted, or the older person in preventing falls). Just like any skill our body develops the more we use it the better we get at it. If we continually challenge our proprioceptive system it gets better. When we stretch we are actually improving our proprioceptive system. So with this concept in mind we see that answering the question does stretching actually do anything, we can answer with a resounding YES.

• So is it better to stretch before or after a workout? – both have there benefits from utilizing the proprioceptive system before and after.
• Does the muscle actually get longer after stretching? – it can be debated, but the proprioceptive system is activated throughout the full range the muscle and joints can move.
• What are we stretching when we stretch? – again it can be debatable, but we know for sure we are activating the proprioceptive system.
• So what is the best method (static, dynamic, contract/relax, others)? – all of them are important to do so we train the muscle to work proprioceptively through all the different types of movements.
• What are the best stretches to do? – all of them, but especially movements that we don't move through with our regular activities)

So spend some time stretching each day – your proprioceptive system will appreciate it.  Let me know what you think of stretching.

Importance of Breathing

Had a great day during our small group, we discussed "Breathe" from one of Rob Bell's Noomas.  Basic message was looking at God as Breathe.  God breathed into Adam to create life from the dust.  We all come into life with our first breath and leave this earth with our last breath.  The name LORD is Yahwey in the Hebrew translation or YHWH.  They often said these letters were breath sounds and that you don't actually say God's name, you just breathe the Hebrew letters.  Our discussion went into how God or breathe is in all of us. 

During the Nooma and our groups discussion I came to an interesting realization. We often don't think about breathing even though we take some 12-20 breaths per minute. To take a breath in it requires an active muscle contraction of the diaphram and other accessory muscles and is always requires active muscle to happen.  When we exhale it can be passive or active.  Which is interesting that God is always active in all of us, He is always active getting into our hearts and souls.  Just as breathing in  always active.  Yet we have a choice with what to do with Him.  We can be active or passive on the exhale.

Another interesting thing that I realized was thinking of patients that I work with that have chronic obstructed pulmonary disease (COPD).  These are patients that always feel short of breath, they are unable to get a deep breath.  The patient often feels like they can't get enough air in, which is partially true.  The real problem is they can't get enough air out to allow them to get air in.  Their lungs are actually hyperinflatted, they can't get rid of the "dead" air in their lungs to allow the "good" to come in.  Because these patients feel short of breath they often increase their breathing rate and take lots of shallow breaths that are inefficient in getting good air exchange and actually burn more energy from trying to take more breaths.  Thus they have an increase need for the oxygen they are not getting in to support the increase breating rate, a horrible cycle.  As part of therapy we work on getting them to control their breathing and slow it down and work to get them to exhale and be active in getting the air out. 

This is an important lesson we can take in real life. 

• The importance of slowing down and getting the bad things inside of us out, so that more of God came come into us.  It's not that God isn't in us, like the COPD patient they already have air in them.  It's that we need to work (be active not passive) to get the bad air out of us so God can come into us.
• We need see the importance of getting deep with God not shallow.  Just as the COPD patient gets into trouble with shallow breaths, and needs to work on slow deep breaths.

Let's take a look at breathing from a health standpoint. Something I find in some patients is poor breathing habits, which can be a part of their problem.  Patients may not fully use their diaphram and over utilize their accessory muscles.  This leads to these muscles overworking and the diaphram not working enough.  The diaphram is vital in it's function with the core stabilizing muscle of the spine.  Many back patients that have poor core muscles have poor diaphram activity.  Any easy exercise to help with this is laying on your back and work diaphramatic breathing.  This is done by taking a long slow breath and making sure your abdominal area rises and then slowly exhale.  Do 5 of these each day when you get out and into bed, it is an easy exercise that can often times do great things for your health.

Exercise right, never wrong

I have to post about a troubling research report recently posted in www.healthfinder.gov/news - Lots of Exercise in Midlife May Lead to Osteoarthritis.  The article's title leads one to possible consider not exercising much in midlife because who wants osteoarthirits.  If you actually read the article it talks about increase risk of those weekend warriors that partook in more high impact activities, according to some grading scale they created, had the highest level of injuries.  They listed activities such as sports, exercise, yard work and housework in the high impact activity category.  They stated things such as low impact swimming and cycling to be better for cartilage health.

I could not read the actual study, as it's results were presented at an annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America.  This means that it has yet to be accepted or not actually published yet.  So I can only take what this reporter reports on the study, but I have a serious problem with this information.  Here is my rant on a few difficulties I have with the study.

In a country where almost one third of our population is obese and another third overweight, an article or study that even remotely discourages exercise is not a good study.  I think most of our country is searching for any reason or excuse to do what it is currently not doing enough of which is exercising enough and eating right. Especially when published in an article produced by our government!!!  In 2000 the annual cost of obesity in the United States was $117 BILLION according to the surgeon general testimony on the Obesity Crisis in America in  2003.  That amount of money might help solve the health care crisis we are in and we would not even need to worry if there was a public option or not in a health care reform bill.

The article has one physician make an analogy that cracks or fissures in your cartilage is like driving over pot holes with your car and that causes damage over time which leads to arthritis.  While this I would agree with, but that is assuming that all people have these pot hole to give the advice to everyone that we should not engage in high impact activities.  I think we would all agree, that it is not wise to take a car out that has been sitting in the garage for 10-20 years and then drive it as fast as possible off road (high impact).  At least it might be best to do a little tunning it up first.  Probably would be smart to make sure the tires are inflated, balance and aligned properly, the oil pressure is correct, the timing is working right and so on.  This is a problem with many people that we exercise when our movement patterns are not as they should be and then that leads to injury.  I don't think Jimmie Johnson would have won 4 straight NASCAR titles without a car that was running near perfect all the time.  He drives his car at a pretty high intensity, but with proper preparation it works near perfection most of the time without a break down.

Gray Cook, PT has done some outstanding work looking at a principle he points out as- "don't put fitness on top of a dysfunction".  His book Athletic Body and Balance he goes into more detail about looking at getting the right movement patterns first then adding fitness on top of it.  If we have a dysfunction and then magnify it with  adding higher level fitness/exercise activities then yes we are heading down a path to increase injury.

While I think bike riding and swimming are great exercises, especially for those that have or are at increase risk for cartilage or joint damage.  The only problem with those exercises as they do not replicate what we do in game of life most of the time. They are not weight bearing exercises, so while they may protect our joints, they do not help build our bones as well, which can lead to osteoporosis.  Also they do not help our balance and nervous system adjust to ground reaction forces as we move across the room or yard.

So, yes we need to select the right exercises for everyone.  If you are not sure what those are find a good Physical Therapist in your area that has an understanding of some of these principles and have them help you set up a program that is best for you.  That may be starting with a few corrective exercises to get your body back in balance and your movement patterns working correctly, then cutting loose with any exercise whether high or low impact.  But please do not think exercising is wrong, just exercise right.