The most popular class recording.
It’s so shocking. When I look at the class recordings that have been sold from the Balance Center website I am surprised. The three biggest sellers have to do with strengthening the buttocks.
I thought for sure that the most popular recordings would address pain relief. I assumed people wanted to know how to compute in comfort, how to sleep without a backache, how to ease shoulder and neck pain, etc.
In this post, I want to make sure that everyone is safe. Yes, keep strengthening your buttocks. But don’t skip the importance of bending at your hips. It will keep you safe, flexible, and out of the ER.
Has your back ever “gone out”?
What were you doing when your back “went out”? Were you feeding the cat? Did you sneeze? Were you getting into the car?
Ask any emergency room doctor and they will tell you that most backs go out when a person bends forward.
If this has ever happened to you, you know the pain is horrible if not agonizing. It may be that you can’t get up off the floor, or you get carried to the ER, or you spend three days in bed.
The pain makes you terrified of turning over in bed, and you dread going to the bathroom. When you finally walk you may be all bent to one side or the other.
Often it takes a couple of months to feel like yourself again.
Once you experience an event like this, it is likely it will occur again. With greater severity.
What to do?
The best insurance against your back going out is to learn to bend at your hips, not your waist. Most people who live in industrialized countries sit bent at their waist. It looks like this:
This sitting habit makes it likely that they also bend at their waist doing everyday movements. They bend at their waist when feeding the cat, sneezing, or getting into their car. Here’s an example:
He is bending at his waist as evidenced by the vertebrae poking out in the lower spine. Bending at the waist causes wear and tear in the vertebral discs and weakens the back muscles.
You can make a choice.
The person in white is wearing out his spine by bending at his waist. This is dangerous.
The woman bends at her hips and is less likely to have her spine “go out.” Bending like this is safe.
It’s an education to change the way you bend. At first, you feel awkward, the position feels extreme. You will experience a lot of stretches in your hamstrings. (Hinging at your hips to sit or to pick things up is the most efficient hamstring stretching you can do.)
It is likely though that the biggest benefit will be that you have no pain in your back. Can you imagine feeling better and not being afraid of your back “going out”?
Join me Friday, May 27th at noon to practice all things bending. We will bend to lift, to garden, to get up or down to the floor. Happy to field questions about your most difficult bending situations.
I want you to be safe.
~ Jean Couch
