I have no idea why but lawyers seem to be a large part of my clientele. I guess my service isn’t cheap and it’s private and I know really well how to address body pain issues from people being on desks and computers and seats for silly amount of hours.

 

Now I think about it my injury may have  been my blessing. My injury was In a seat while I was in a car driving. Funny enough I think most people’s pains come from sitting and over sitting even though a lot of athletes injuries come from standing collisions with back breaks and knee and shoulder breaks predominantly.

I’ll focus now for this blog on people who sit for a long time and have back pain but not collisions or dessications of spines so basically inactive or underactive spines giving spinal pain.

I’ll use my client this morning as a good example. She used to mostly live in london has a very senior role in a large law firm, flies around the world has me as a personal trainer and she’s got me guiding her yoga teacher on prescribed yoga to help her with her back. Her hours are tedious.

A lot of times spent sitting. I like to give her mastery and simplicity over too much creativity and variety. It’s better to build foundations in your body over lots of exercises that don’t actually strengthen you in a useful way.  I’ve noticed a lot of people get pain in their spines due to underactive and weak feet leading to weak glutes and weak posture and therefore weak and painful spines. I used to give her one leg foot balances with her eyes closed thinking that it would get her hip flexors strong and her foot strength and mobility and balance better from doing one exercise and then moving on to another.

The thing I noticed this morning is that actually take one exercise and break it down into different components to actually perfect movement and positioning and support muscles and execution over the exercises rather than doing many exercises. I can imagine people’s frustration with their training as they could just be not knowing what to do and where to start and feeling useless and hopeless in the situation and really that’s not the case. They simply need someone trained to observe and to strategise for them.

With a one leg balance it’s hard to keep it under control with your eyes closed for 60 seconds and keep a perfect position so what’s required is another variation of the exercise.

 

The exercise is to do a foot hold with eyes open in the correct position and posture and then once you lose balance to open the eyes again until you regain balance and then reinforce the length of time of the position and muscles until you can do longer periods of time.

 

The effect of doing this one exercise for almost an hour is strong glutes, more balance and symmetry from the balance and activation of each foot, and a much better position of the upper body and function of the core.

Because to do this right your foot all the way up to the chest and head must be in alignment and in balance for you to be able to do it properly.

 

It teaches you better alignment. Better muscular activation. Better core and better diaphragmatic breathing. She’s also managed to keep her spine in better health and management from a single yet difficult movement she can do anytime and any day, absolutely anywhere.