How much emphasis on tight abs restricts a athlete’s ease of movement. Would Michael Jordan have had such a tense abdomen as recently featured in a pic of Dwayne Wade? (There’s no need to talk about Larry Bird, or Magic Johnson.) Is there a disconnect between the look and true functionality here? We’ll see. It was interesting to me that last year, when the a/c went out in San Antonio, it wasn’t the oldest and most supposedly out of shape players who went out of the game; it was the in-his-prime Lebron James who could not take the heat. The biggest engine was the least efficient and adaptable. Teamwork and intelligence probably helped the Spurs stay cool too! Food for thought. To me, it is tragic how many players fall to injury every year. Some of that is the playing schedule, but how many injuries could be avoided with a more kinesiologically -correct approach to training that adequately prepares, and regimens that help maintain responsiveness and coordination, not just muscle mass.
If I sit meditation on a very low wood platform ( maybe 4 inches off ground) with palms up on my thighs, I can enjoy breathing through the back of my armpits and sides of my ribs. Palms are up up to avoid the reflexive down-pushing that results when the palms are down. This is calming and very supportive to release, for me. As I inhale, I allow extension up through my spine, even as the organs in my abdomen get massaged by the upside-down plunger pressure of my diaphragm. As I exhale, I enjoy the sense of stability and grounding feeling from the base of my pelvis. I enjoy the feeling and shape of my Ischial tuberosities and perceive the shape of my Illia and Pubic bones as they give me containment and strength, passing effortless support up through sacrum to the spine, torso and effortlessly supporting my head. Often I need to recover this sense, and I enjoy doing so each time. It’s part of my meditation, the weight rocking subtly forward and back, and happier when the shift is smaller around an easy center line.
This is the home made fitness device using a dowel rod, a length of rope and a weight.
My own tennis elbow condition got so bad in 2012 that I could not pour milk from a gallon container without a lot of pain. I had learned some new Rolfing® techniques and in my eagerness I lost good coordination, self-awareness and self-care. I also learned that, like for me, it is common for such an injury to move from not feeling especially painful to total debilitation in a day.
Any injury like this is a complex affair of missed opportunities for coordinative action – in this case, lack of support in the back, ribs and shoulder girdle through the rhomboids, middle trapezius, serratus anterior (the magic muscle), and good sensing in all the affected joints: fingers, hand, wrist, elbow, glenohumeral and all of the physiological mechanisms that allow supported gliding of the scapula on the ribs. AND…when it’s messed up, it’s messed up and needs to be treated. Otherwise, ain’t no way just helping the coordinative pattern is really going to work. Now that my elbow is over %95 better, I am really enjoying re-patterning my use of the arm while I work, dance and drink milk (actually not drinking dairy right now. Hmmmm…hoist the large laundry detergent bottle, then.)
From what I understand, a tendinosis condition means that there are actual tiny tears in the tendon that will not heal without concentrated work. A lot of pain ensues when people try to strengthen this area when there is a tendinosis. An injured muscle or tendon needs good blood flow and actual loading (work) to heal. Unfortunately the body resists doing any work through that tendon, to protect the tears in the tissue, and will divert movement around it in any concentric contraction (curling the weight up). It was Sam Ianetta of Functional Fitness in Boulder CO who taught me that a tendon put into eccentric contraction (lowering the weight) must fire, even if there are tendinosis tears. It cannot help it. Because of this, it re-activates tissue growth and repair in the tendon! He taught me a few eccentric contraction-type exercises. Once I had figured it out, I made up my own, and figured out how that could work inside of a manual therapy treatment or home self-care session.
The area of tendinosis feels like it collects little globular areas on and around it. They feel to me like the tiny balls of tapioca in that tea drink so favored by the smart tea drinking set around Boulder CO. This is probably the body’s attempt to buttress the injured tension with dense connective tissue. It’s effect, though, is to impede the muscles gliding on its adjacent muscle synergists or antagonists.
In order to get free and supported movement (and by supported I mean the tensional support from adjacent muscles, as well as the leveraging of support from more distant muscles and joints, these globules need to soften. Like a lot of Rolfing SI work, the method for breaking up these impeding globules involves active client movement: I ask them to supply a light resistance as I treat the area with one hand using the other hand to put it into stretch. This “resisted stretch” – putting load on the targeted muscles and tendons while they are elongating – is an eccentric contraction!
I believe that the level of success I had, for myself, was persistent effort. The success I have had with clients has had to do with combining the soft-tissue manipulation and active eccentric contraction movements in session with homework exercises with clients combined with their persistent effort! (This is not something, in my opinion, that just ‘gets better on its own’.) It takes a while for an area to re-grow muscle. This will be longer or shorter depending on your background. Basically, first you get a neurological stimulation, then later actual tissue re-growth that is required for healing the tears in the tendon.
Here’s a little tour of self-care exercises for tennis elbow. Working through the pain doesn’t work: concentric contractions (curling the weight up) hurt, felt weaker afterwards and made no improvement in my tennis elbow pain or post-exercise functionality (it still hurt to lift and pour the gallon of milk). Eccentric-oriented exercises (doing a negative curl only or rolling down the weight) relieved pain in the elbow and gradually gave me fuller use of the elbow, to the point where now I consider it 95% healed.
I use this idea in treating tendinosis anywhere in the body, making up movements for table work, and self-care exercises to suit. Right now, I have used this to good effect on Achilles tendon problems and bicep tendon issues, and am working on solutions for issues in the hip joint. Being a Rolfer means figuring out new solutions for every client every session in a sort of structured improvisation. We use a basic strategy then modify it based on its success with that particular client with that particular issue (and often, on that particular day).
Rolling down the weight: One of my favorites from Sam Ianetta: unrolling the weight down to the ground. For this you need a short thick piece of wooden dowel rod and about 6-8 feet of rope (depending on how tall you are). Fasten the rope to dowel and a weight. Start very light and go for high number of repetitions. The trick to this one: only roll the weight down to the floor. Roll the rope up on the dowel with the weights on the floor; lift it up with the unaffected side; unroll the weight down to the floor with only the affected side. Do not curl it back up until the tennis elbow is mostly healed. This has a lovely lengthening effect on the forearm extensors, supinators as well as somewhat in the anconeus/triceps at the elbow. It also helps re-coordinate the synergist and antagonist muscles in the area, as in flexors and pronators of the forearm, brachialis, biceps and brachioradialis.
I teach clients how to give themselves a resistance stretch in flexion and extension of the whole arm. This is really easy. Use the affected arm to resist in one direction while the other arm pulls it the other way. As in: try to bring wrist to shoulder and push the arm down, straight. This is an eccentric contraction for the flexors at the elbow: brachialis, biceps, and brachioradialis if you alter the angle of the thumb so that it faces straight in front of you instead of to the side.
Once you start to really improve, you need to work to get the whole chain working in sensitive concert, from finger tip to sliding action of scapula on the ribs, connecting to the spine, connecting to the pelvis, connecting to the sitzbones (if seated) or feet (if standing). I will leave that for a later post!
My own tennis elbow condition got so bad in 2012 that I could not pour milk from a gallon container without a lot of pain. I had learned some new Rolfing® techniques and in my eagerness I lost good coordination, self-awareness and self-care. I also learned that, like for me, it is common for such an injury to move from not feeling especially painful to total debilitation in a day.
Any injury like this is a complex affair of missed opportunities for coordinative action – in this case, lack of support in the back, ribs and shoulder girdle through the rhomboids, middle trapezius, serratus anterior (the magic muscle), and good sensing in all the affected joints: fingers, hand, wrist, elbow, glenohumeral and all of the physiological mechanisms that allow supported gliding of the scapula on the ribs. AND…when it’s messed up, it’s messed up and needs to be treated. Otherwise, ain’t no way just helping the coordinative pattern is really going to work. Now that my elbow is over %95 better, I am really enjoying re-patterning my use of the arm while I work, dance and drink milk (actually not drinking dairy right now. Hmmmm…hoist the large laundry detergent bottle, then.)
From what I understand, a tendinosis condition means that there are actual tiny tears in the tendon that will not heal without concentrated work. A lot of pain ensues when people try to strengthen this area when there is a tendinosis. An injured muscle or tendon needs good blood flow and actual loading (work) to heal. Unfortunately the body resists doing any work through that tendon, to protect the tears in the tissue, and will divert movement around it in any concentric contraction (curling the weight up). It was Sam Ianetta of Functional Fitness in Boulder CO who taught me that a tendon put into eccentric contraction (lowering the weight) must fire, even if there are tendinosis tears. It cannot help it. Because of this, it re-activates tissue growth and repair in the tendon! He taught me a few eccentric contraction-type exercises. Once I had figured it out, I made up my own, and figured out how that could work inside of a manual therapy treatment or home self-care session.
The area of tendinosis feels like it collects little globular areas on and around it. They feel to me like the tiny balls of tapioca in that tea drink so favored by the smart tea drinking set around Boulder CO. This is probably the body’s attempt to buttress the injured tension with dense connective tissue. It’s effect, though, is to impede the muscles gliding on its adjacent muscle synergists or antagonists.
In order to get free and supported movement (and by supported I mean the tensional support from adjacent muscles, as well as the leveraging of support from more distant muscles and joints, these globules need to soften. Like a lot of Rolfing SI work, the method for breaking up these impeding globules involves active client movement: I ask them to supply a light resistance as I treat the area with one hand using the other hand to put it into stretch. This “resisted stretch” – putting load on the targeted muscles and tendons while they are elongating – is an eccentric contraction!
I believe that the level of success I had, for myself, was persistent effort. The success I have had with clients has had to do with combining the soft-tissue manipulation and active eccentric contraction movements in session with homework exercises with clients combined with their persistent effort! (This is not something, in my opinion, that just ‘gets better on its own’.) It takes a while for an area to re-grow muscle. This will be longer or shorter depending on your background. Basically, first you get a neurological stimulation, then later actual tissue re-growth that is required for healing the tears in the tendon.
Here’s a little tour of self-care exercises for tennis elbow. Working through the pain doesn’t work: concentric contractions (curling the weight up) hurt, felt weaker afterwards and made no improvement in my tennis elbow pain or post-exercise functionality (it still hurt to lift and pour the gallon of milk). Eccentric-oriented exercises (doing a negative curl only or rolling down the weight) relieved pain in the elbow and gradually gave me fuller use of the elbow, to the point where now I consider it 95% healed.
I use this idea in treating tendinosis anywhere in the body, making up movements for table work, and self-care exercises to suit. Right now, I have used this to good effect on Achilles tendon problems and bicep tendon issues, and am working on solutions for issues in the hip joint. Being a Rolfer means figuring out new solutions for every client every session in a sort of structured improvisation. We use a basic strategy then modify it based on its success with that particular client with that particular issue (and often, on that particular day).
Rolling down the weight: One of my favorites from Sam Ianetta: unrolling the weight down to the ground. For this you need a short thick piece of wooden dowel rod and about 6-8 feet of rope (depending on how tall you are). Fasten the rope to dowel and a weight. Start very light and go for high number of repetitions. The trick to this one: only roll the weight down to the floor. Roll the rope up on the dowel with the weights on the floor; lift it up with the unaffected side; unroll the weight down to the floor with only the affected side. Do not curl it back up until the tennis elbow is mostly healed. This has a lovely lengthening effect on the forearm extensors, supinators as well as somewhat in the anconeus/triceps at the elbow. It also helps re-coordinate the synergist and antagonist muscles in the area, as in flexors and pronators of the forearm, brachialis, biceps and brachioradialis.
I teach clients how to give themselves a resistance stretch in flexion and extension of the whole arm. This is really easy. Use the affected arm to resist in one direction while the other arm pulls it the other way. As in: try to bring wrist to shoulder and push the arm down, straight. This is an eccentric contraction for the flexors at the elbow: brachialis, biceps, and brachioradialis if you alter the angle of the thumb so that it faces straight in front of you instead of to the side.
Once you start to really improve, you need to work to get the whole chain working in sensitive concert, from finger tip to sliding action of scapula on the ribs, connecting to the spine, connecting to the pelvis, connecting to the sitzbones (if seated) or feet (if standing). I will leave that for a later post!
My own tennis elbow condition got so bad in 2012 that I could not pour milk from a gallon container without a lot of pain. I had learned some new Rolfing® techniques and in my eagerness I lost good coordination, self-awareness and self-care. I also learned that, like for me, it is common for such an injury to move from not feeling especially painful to total debilitation in a day.
Any injury like this is a complex affair of missed opportunities for coordinative action – in this case, lack of support in the back, ribs and shoulder girdle through the rhomboids, middle trapezius, serratus anterior (the magic muscle), and good sensing in all the affected joints: fingers, hand, wrist, elbow, glenohumeral and all of the physiological mechanisms that allow supported gliding of the scapula on the ribs. AND…when it’s messed up, it’s messed up and needs to be treated. Otherwise, ain’t no way just helping the coordinative pattern is really going to work. Now that my elbow is over %95 better, I am really enjoying re-patterning my use of the arm while I work, dance and drink milk (actually not drinking dairy right now. Hmmmm…hoist the large laundry detergent bottle, then.)
From what I understand, a tendinosis condition means that there are actual tiny tears in the tendon that will not heal without concentrated work. A lot of pain ensues when people try to strengthen this area when there is a tendinosis. An injured muscle or tendon needs good blood flow and actual loading (work) to heal. Unfortunately the body resists doing any work through that tendon, to protect the tears in the tissue, and will divert movement around it in any concentric contraction (curling the weight up). It was Sam Ianetta of Functional Fitness in Boulder CO who taught me that a tendon put into eccentric contraction (lowering the weight) must fire, even if there are tendinosis tears. It cannot help it. Because of this, it re-activates tissue growth and repair in the tendon! He taught me a few eccentric contraction-type exercises. Once I had figured it out, I made up my own, and figured out how that could work inside of a manual therapy treatment or home self-care session.
The area of tendinosis feels like it collects little globular areas on and around it. They feel to me like the tiny balls of tapioca in that tea drink so favored by the smart tea drinking set around Boulder CO. This is probably the body’s attempt to buttress the injured tension with dense connective tissue. It’s effect, though, is to impede the muscles gliding on its adjacent muscle synergists or antagonists.
In order to get free and supported movement (and by supported I mean the tensional support from adjacent muscles, as well as the leveraging of support from more distant muscles and joints, these globules need to soften. Like a lot of Rolfing SI work, the method for breaking up these impeding globules involves active client movement: I ask them to supply a light resistance as I treat the area with one hand using the other hand to put it into stretch. This “resisted stretch” – putting load on the targeted muscles and tendons while they are elongating – is an eccentric contraction!
I believe that the level of success I had, for myself, was persistent effort. The success I have had with clients has had to do with combining the soft-tissue manipulation and active eccentric contraction movements in session with homework exercises with clients combined with their persistent effort! (This is not something, in my opinion, that just ‘gets better on its own’.) It takes a while for an area to re-grow muscle. This will be longer or shorter depending on your background. Basically, first you get a neurological stimulation, then later actual tissue re-growth that is required for healing the tears in the tendon.
Here’s a little tour of self-care exercises for tennis elbow. Working through the pain doesn’t work: concentric contractions (curling the weight up) hurt, felt weaker afterwards and made no improvement in my tennis elbow pain or post-exercise functionality (it still hurt to lift and pour the gallon of milk). Eccentric-oriented exercises (doing a negative curl only or rolling down the weight) relieved pain in the elbow and gradually gave me fuller use of the elbow, to the point where now I consider it 95% healed.
I use this idea in treating tendinosis anywhere in the body, making up movements for table work, and self-care exercises to suit. Right now, I have used this to good effect on Achilles tendon problems and bicep tendon issues, and am working on solutions for issues in the hip joint. Being a Rolfer means figuring out new solutions for every client every session in a sort of structured improvisation. We use a basic strategy then modify it based on its success with that particular client with that particular issue (and often, on that particular day).
Rolling down the weight: One of my favorites from Sam Ianetta: unrolling the weight down to the ground. For this you need a short thick piece of wooden dowel rod and about 6-8 feet of rope (depending on how tall you are). Fasten the rope to dowel and a weight. Start very light and go for high number of repetitions. The trick to this one: only roll the weight down to the floor. Roll the rope up on the dowel with the weights on the floor; lift it up with the unaffected side; unroll the weight down to the floor with only the affected side. Do not curl it back up until the tennis elbow is mostly healed. This has a lovely lengthening effect on the forearm extensors, supinators as well as somewhat in the anconeus/triceps at the elbow. It also helps re-coordinate the synergist and antagonist muscles in the area, as in flexors and pronators of the forearm, brachialis, biceps and brachioradialis.
I teach clients how to give themselves a resistance stretch in flexion and extension of the whole arm. This is really easy. Use the affected arm to resist in one direction while the other arm pulls it the other way. As in: try to bring wrist to shoulder and push the arm down, straight. This is an eccentric contraction for the flexors at the elbow: brachialis, biceps, and brachioradialis if you alter the angle of the thumb so that it faces straight in front of you instead of to the side.
Once you start to really improve, you need to work to get the whole chain working in sensitive concert, from finger tip to sliding action of scapula on the ribs, connecting to the spine, connecting to the pelvis, connecting to the sitzbones (if seated) or feet (if standing). I will leave that for a later post!
My own tennis elbow condition got so bad in 2012 that I could not pour milk from a gallon container without a lot of pain. I had learned some new Rolfing® techniques and in my eagerness I lost good coordination, self-awareness and self-care. I also learned that, like for me, it is common for such an injury to move from not feeling especially painful to total debilitation in a day.
Any injury like this is a complex affair of missed opportunities for coordinative action – in this case, lack of support in the back, ribs and shoulder girdle through the rhomboids, middle trapezius, serratus anterior (the magic muscle), and good sensing in all the affected joints: fingers, hand, wrist, elbow, glenohumeral and all of the physiological mechanisms that allow supported gliding of the scapula on the ribs. AND…when it’s messed up, it’s messed up and needs to be treated. Otherwise, ain’t no way just helping the coordinative pattern is really going to work. Now that my elbow is over %95 better, I am really enjoying re-patterning my use of the arm while I work, dance and drink milk (actually not drinking dairy right now. Hmmmm…hoist the large laundry detergent bottle, then.)
From what I understand, a tendinosis condition means that there are actual tiny tears in the tendon that will not heal without concentrated work. A lot of pain ensues when people try to strengthen this area when there is a tendinosis. An injured muscle or tendon needs good blood flow and actual loading (work) to heal. Unfortunately the body resists doing any work through that tendon, to protect the tears in the tissue, and will divert movement around it in any concentric contraction (curling the weight up). It was Sam Ianetta of Functional Fitness in Boulder CO who taught me that a tendon put into eccentric contraction (lowering the weight) must fire, even if there are tendinosis tears. It cannot help it. Because of this, it re-activates tissue growth and repair in the tendon! He taught me a few eccentric contraction-type exercises. Once I had figured it out, I made up my own, and figured out how that could work inside of a manual therapy treatment or home self-care session.
The area of tendinosis feels like it collects little globular areas on and around it. They feel to me like the tiny balls of tapioca in that tea drink so favored by the smart tea drinking set around Boulder CO. This is probably the body’s attempt to buttress the injured tension with dense connective tissue. It’s effect, though, is to impede the muscles gliding on its adjacent muscle synergists or antagonists.
In order to get free and supported movement (and by supported I mean the tensional support from adjacent muscles, as well as the leveraging of support from more distant muscles and joints, these globules need to soften. Like a lot of Rolfing SI work, the method for breaking up these impeding globules involves active client movement: I ask them to supply a light resistance as I treat the area with one hand using the other hand to put it into stretch. This “resisted stretch” – putting load on the targeted muscles and tendons while they are elongating – is an eccentric contraction!
I believe that the level of success I had, for myself, was persistent effort. The success I have had with clients has had to do with combining the soft-tissue manipulation and active eccentric contraction movements in session with homework exercises with clients combined with their persistent effort! (This is not something, in my opinion, that just ‘gets better on its own’.) It takes a while for an area to re-grow muscle. This will be longer or shorter depending on your background. Basically, first you get a neurological stimulation, then later actual tissue re-growth that is required for healing the tears in the tendon.
Here’s a little tour of self-care exercises for tennis elbow. Working through the pain doesn’t work: concentric contractions (curling the weight up) hurt, felt weaker afterwards and made no improvement in my tennis elbow pain or post-exercise functionality (it still hurt to lift and pour the gallon of milk). Eccentric-oriented exercises (doing a negative curl only or rolling down the weight) relieved pain in the elbow and gradually gave me fuller use of the elbow, to the point where now I consider it 95% healed.
I use this idea in treating tendinosis anywhere in the body, making up movements for table work, and self-care exercises to suit. Right now, I have used this to good effect on Achilles tendon problems and bicep tendon issues, and am working on solutions for issues in the hip joint. Being a Rolfer means figuring out new solutions for every client every session in a sort of structured improvisation. We use a basic strategy then modify it based on its success with that particular client with that particular issue (and often, on that particular day).
Rolling down the weight: One of my favorites from Sam Ianetta: unrolling the weight down to the ground. For this you need a short thick piece of wooden dowel rod and about 6-8 feet of rope (depending on how tall you are). Fasten the rope to dowel and a weight. Start very light and go for high number of repetitions. The trick to this one: only roll the weight down to the floor. Roll the rope up on the dowel with the weights on the floor; lift it up with the unaffected side; unroll the weight down to the floor with only the affected side. Do not curl it back up until the tennis elbow is mostly healed. This has a lovely lengthening effect on the forearm extensors, supinators as well as somewhat in the anconeus/triceps at the elbow. It also helps re-coordinate the synergist and antagonist muscles in the area, as in flexors and pronators of the forearm, brachialis, biceps and brachioradialis.
I teach clients how to give themselves a resistance stretch in flexion and extension of the whole arm. This is really easy. Use the affected arm to resist in one direction while the other arm pulls it the other way. As in: try to bring wrist to shoulder and push the arm down, straight. This is an eccentric contraction for the flexors at the elbow: brachialis, biceps, and brachioradialis if you alter the angle of the thumb so that it faces straight in front of you instead of to the side.
Once you start to really improve, you need to work to get the whole chain working in sensitive concert, from finger tip to sliding action of scapula on the ribs, connecting to the spine, connecting to the pelvis, connecting to the sitzbones (if seated) or feet (if standing). I will leave that for a later post!
My own tennis elbow condition got so bad in 2012 that I could not pour milk from a gallon container without a lot of pain. I had learned some new Rolfing® techniques and in my eagerness I lost good coordination, self-awareness and self-care. I also learned that, like for me, it is common for such an injury to move from not feeling especially painful to total debilitation in a day.
Any injury like this is a complex affair of missed opportunities for coordinative action – in this case, lack of support in the back, ribs and shoulder girdle through the rhomboids, middle trapezius, serratus anterior (the magic muscle), and good sensing in all the affected joints: fingers, hand, wrist, elbow, glenohumeral and all of the physiological mechanisms that allow supported gliding of the scapula on the ribs. AND…when it’s messed up, it’s messed up and needs to be treated. Otherwise, ain’t no way just helping the coordinative pattern is really going to work. Now that my elbow is over %95 better, I am really enjoying re-patterning my use of the arm while I work, dance and drink milk (actually not drinking dairy right now. Hmmmm…hoist the large laundry detergent bottle, then.)
From what I understand, a tendinosis condition means that there are actual tiny tears in the tendon that will not heal without concentrated work. A lot of pain ensues when people try to strengthen this area when there is a tendinosis. An injured muscle or tendon needs good blood flow and actual loading (work) to heal. Unfortunately the body resists doing any work through that tendon, to protect the tears in the tissue, and will divert movement around it in any concentric contraction (curling the weight up). It was Sam Ianetta of Functional Fitness in Boulder CO who taught me that a tendon put into eccentric contraction (lowering the weight) must fire, even if there are tendinosis tears. It cannot help it. Because of this, it re-activates tissue growth and repair in the tendon! He taught me a few eccentric contraction-type exercises. Once I had figured it out, I made up my own, and figured out how that could work inside of a manual therapy treatment or home self-care session.
The area of tendinosis feels like it collects little globular areas on and around it. They feel to me like the tiny balls of tapioca in that tea drink so favored by the smart tea drinking set around Boulder CO. This is probably the body’s attempt to buttress the injured tension with dense connective tissue. It’s effect, though, is to impede the muscles gliding on its adjacent muscle synergists or antagonists.
In order to get free and supported movement (and by supported I mean the tensional support from adjacent muscles, as well as the leveraging of support from more distant muscles and joints, these globules need to soften. Like a lot of Rolfing SI work, the method for breaking up these impeding globules involves active client movement: I ask them to supply a light resistance as I treat the area with one hand using the other hand to put it into stretch. This “resisted stretch” – putting load on the targeted muscles and tendons while they are elongating – is an eccentric contraction!
I believe that the level of success I had, for myself, was persistent effort. The success I have had with clients has had to do with combining the soft-tissue manipulation and active eccentric contraction movements in session with homework exercises with clients combined with their persistent effort! (This is not something, in my opinion, that just ‘gets better on its own’.) It takes a while for an area to re-grow muscle. This will be longer or shorter depending on your background. Basically, first you get a neurological stimulation, then later actual tissue re-growth that is required for healing the tears in the tendon.
Here’s a little tour of self-care exercises for tennis elbow. Working through the pain doesn’t work: concentric contractions (curling the weight up) hurt, felt weaker afterwards and made no improvement in my tennis elbow pain or post-exercise functionality (it still hurt to lift and pour the gallon of milk). Eccentric-oriented exercises (doing a negative curl only or rolling down the weight) relieved pain in the elbow and gradually gave me fuller use of the elbow, to the point where now I consider it 95% healed.
I use this idea in treating tendinosis anywhere in the body, making up movements for table work, and self-care exercises to suit. Right now, I have used this to good effect on Achilles tendon problems and bicep tendon issues, and am working on solutions for issues in the hip joint. Being a Rolfer means figuring out new solutions for every client every session in a sort of structured improvisation. We use a basic strategy then modify it based on its success with that particular client with that particular issue (and often, on that particular day).
Rolling down the weight: One of my favorites from Sam Ianetta: unrolling the weight down to the ground. For this you need a short thick piece of wooden dowel rod and about 6-8 feet of rope (depending on how tall you are). Fasten the rope to dowel and a weight. Start very light and go for high number of repetitions. The trick to this one: only roll the weight down to the floor. Roll the rope up on the dowel with the weights on the floor; lift it up with the unaffected side; unroll the weight down to the floor with only the affected side. Do not curl it back up until the tennis elbow is mostly healed. This has a lovely lengthening effect on the forearm extensors, supinators as well as somewhat in the anconeus/triceps at the elbow. It also helps re-coordinate the synergist and antagonist muscles in the area, as in flexors and pronators of the forearm, brachialis, biceps and brachioradialis.
I teach clients how to give themselves a resistance stretch in flexion and extension of the whole arm. This is really easy. Use the affected arm to resist in one direction while the other arm pulls it the other way. As in: try to bring wrist to shoulder and push the arm down, straight. This is an eccentric contraction for the flexors at the elbow: brachialis, biceps, and brachioradialis if you alter the angle of the thumb so that it faces straight in front of you instead of to the side.
Once you start to really improve, you need to work to get the whole chain working in sensitive concert, from finger tip to sliding action of scapula on the ribs, connecting to the spine, connecting to the pelvis, connecting to the sitzbones (if seated) or feet (if standing). I will leave that for a later post!
The subject of this brief article could be summed up as: for the hip joint to work well in all directions, as in flexion, extension, rotation, circumduction, anteversion and more, it has to be positioned well (as in Rolfing® Structural Integration goals), and it also needs balanced tone. Otherwise, your body will not feel able to release into full range of motion if an area is too weak, not just badly positioned. You will feel tight and want to stretch, but it won’t work.
I am speaking from experience here. In 2010 I had surgery on my left foot. A side effect of this was that specific muscles in my left hip got really weak*. My experience, however, was that my hips were just super tight. I could hardly stretch forward with my legs spread apart on the floor at all. You have to understand, I used to practically live in the splits. I could flop down into a deep stretch without warming up or even without having worked out or danced for months. This time, it was an absolute no-go.
Hidden in there though were the results of an old injury: when I was 22, I actually dislocated the hip joint onstage (City Center Theater, NYC). Being 22, I was back performing two days later. I just compensated for having no ability to lift my leg to the side turned out by changing how I did it. It looked ok, but was just throwing me more off kilter. My ligaments there never healed back well, and my hip joint tends to slip out of position.
So, it occurred to me to test the tone balances in my hips, and sure enough, it was really weak there, on the left. My body simply refused to let me stretch into an under-toned area. I did and received Rolfing work on the hip to help improve position **, and gave myself targeted exercises with ankle weights to strengthen the hip muscles. After a few weeks, I started to regain flexibility. Phew! I thought I had lost that forever. Because of that inherent weakness, though, and the fact that my injured big toe joint doesn’t work normally, I will probably always need to get work realigning (Rolfing) and strengthening my left hip. Which is ok. When I do the work, I feel progress – increased stability, confidence in standing, walking, climbing and especially strength in lifting – in the exercise room, but also in my work, and in Contact Improvisation (I feel confident to sling tallish 240 pound persons around, albeit slowly, on my shoulders).
In my opinion, it is hard to beat the work of a good Rolfer™ for helping to realign and reposition the hip and other joints in the body. It feels like it is pretty hard to bring things back into place with exercises alone (unless they are not too far out of alignment to begin with, and if the muscle use patterns are already really excellent. I watch personal trainers work to do this almost every day at my gym. Maybe this is because a badly position joint also re-positions all the muscles, tendons and ligaments attached to it, so the pulls from these won’t be able to work normally to stabilize the area. It essentially keeps pulling itself out of line, causing pain. We just feel like something is confused, not right, or unclear about the area. (I have read that another term for pain in the body is confusion – it’s as if the body doesn’t really have clear enough sensory feedback for the area, so it sends a pain message to alert us to that dysfunction.)
This is why I always encourage my clients to do specific toning and stability-oriented exercises as needed. In order for this to really be effective, I always use a Rolf Movement® body awareness approach with this. In a nutshell, one really good repetition of an exercise really is worth four bad ones. I mean, it’s never perfect. It’s always a process of growth and deeper embodiment.
*The adductor group, which pull the thighbone across the mid-line of the body, and also help flex the thigh at the socket (and/or pull the hips over the thighbone).
**Releasing Obturator Externus and Iliopsoas was key here, for those of you that are interested.
This was the headline for a recent LA Times article. It shows how we make choices in our lives based on the “end of history illusion” that makes us sure that the Megadeath tattoo we got when we were a teen would still make us happy ten or fifteen years later. One of the hardest things in life to embrace is the notion of change, such as changing tastes or values, but also related to aging, and the cumulative effects of life on our system. Why not invest in a positive change, for yourself? One that actually helps you be more resilient in response to injury and the stiffening, slowing and compound effects of stress in body/mind? Rolfing® Structural Integration is a structured process for positive, transformational change. Embrace life! Adapt! Be more fluid, graceful and present, even as you stand your ground! Food for thought folks…
