Core & More – Living a pain free life through a healthier core.
Review it often for there is 35 years of health & personal training experience throughout the podcast.
I present this topic from the perspective of how to maximizing functionality and mobility while eliminating or managing back, and hip pain well past 90 years old.
Try my CORE & MORE – 30 day challenge.
For 30 days, alternate between my Core Flexibility routine & Core Strength routine. Links are below.
Mark on your calendar your challenge start date and your challenge end date.
And let me know for support, guidance or accountability.
Share your experiences here through out the challenge.
DISCLAIMER – Information in this podcast is NOT medical advice. Move within your comfort. Stop if there is pain. Consult your doctor if pain worsens.
Production disclaimer – There is a learning curve in various aspects of production value. I will get better at over time. Try to focus on the value of the information and what new insights or inspirations you leave with.
Staying positive and happy is my moral duty to myself, my loved ones, and my community, especially during uncertain and tumultuous times.
Negative thoughts, feelings, and actions trigger the human sympathetic nervous system activating our hard-wired, fight or flee reactions which restrict our breathing, tighten our muscles, and increase our blood pressure. Our body becomes flooded with health-damaging stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, which clouds our reasoning and judgment.
With this rush of survival, chemicals coursing through our bodies comes a feeling of power, focus, and sometimes invisibility. Magnify this powerful experience if you are among a crowd sharing the same heightened alert mode. In this heightened alert chemical state, we are more prone to impulsive words or actions that can have lasting, unintended, damaging consequences that directly impact us or others. We have all experienced this biological reality throughout our lives.
It can show up with fighting, arguing, fits of rage, and rioting. It can also show up by us shutting down, disconnecting, or feeling numb.
The majority of us are addicted, even enslaved by our internal biological reality and the habits we have created in response to our sympathetic nervous system firing off.
Over millions of years, evolution has brilliantly wired this predictable, biological, and chemical response into our brains as a survival mechanism.
Our media and tech-driven society have trained our brain and sympathetic nervous system to always be on high ALERT, ready and waiting to be triggered by anything we perceive to be a threat or what they want us to perceive as a threat. A word, a look, our projected thoughts about others’ thoughts about ourselves can trigger us into a “locked and loaded” reality.
I won’t get into the instant gratifications we derive from tech and media.
Practice does not make perfect. Practice makes permanent.
Humans are very capable of retraining our ancient brains. The sympathetic nervous system responds by activating our parasympathetic nervous system with intentional deep breathing heightened awareness of our pre-programmed reactions to our environment and our thoughts with deliberate, conscious, positive thoughts, words, and actions. Lasting change requires behavior modification work like setting goals, implementing strategies, and getting support, so the behaviors we desire can become our new reality.
All battles are either won or lost within ourselves.
Each human can either be ruled by their ancient biological wiring and internal chemical reactions or learn how to reprogram their brain and body. We can master our actions by implementing positive thoughts and words and creating habits that can rewire our brain and our biology resulting in more joy, contentment, and peace in our lives regardless of internal or external influences.
As long as you have breath, suffering is inescapable, but how we handle suffering is a breath to breathe choice with a lifetime of opportunities.
Each day, each week, each year are our opportunities to reshape ourselves within the body we were born into and the very same body we will take our last breath in.
This is each human’s ongoing life work, and I know we can reshape ourselves to experience a better life and be better beings.
Buddha’s Brain by Rick Hanson is an enlightening book that may deepen your insight or stimulate your curiosity.
It has always been easier for me to stay fit or improve my fitness status when I was feeling good. A considerable challenge came when I sustained a significant knee injury that required surgery and a 12-month recovery diagnosis. May of 2018, my right patella tendon sheered off (see story below in a previous blog post), but I did not let that stop me from trying to stay strong and healthy thanks to a fitness device I designed two years earlier called the Stress Away Strap. I have used TRX suspension straps at the gym with my personal training clients for their stability and functional strength routines, but when I saw the price tag of $179.99 – $234, I experienced sticker shock. Not only was it expensive but it was bulky and required a lot more space in an average house than was typical. I set out to design a product that was easier to set up, portable, and could be used in any home, hotel, office, gym or at the park at a fraction of the cost. I created the Stress Away Strap.
I saw vital value in a portable device that allowed individuals of all fitness and wellness levels to stay fit by using your body weight to increase functional stability, strength, and flexibility safely and effectively.
During my post-rehab and recovery from knee surgery, I shot the attached video of the possible uses of the Stress Away Strap, even though I was hobbling on one leg. I genuinely feel that everyone needs a Stress Away Strap in their house. Check out the video.
>>Special<< If you purchase a Stress Away Strap, I will give you a FREE 30 minute virtual tutorial of the product.
Your health is an investment, not an expense, all though it will become an expense if you don’t take time to invest in it. BE Well!
Laughter reduces pain, increases job performance, connects people emotionally, and improves the flow of oxygen to the heart and brain.
In these challenging and stressful times it is important to create some time and space for laughter. Attached is a link to a Psychology Today article listing the many benefits of laughter.
On Saturday, May 5th 2018, I ruptured my patellar tendon, shearing it clean off of my tibai (shinbone) while navigating a Ninja Warrior course at an indoor trampoline park in Orland Park Il. My wife, daughter and I were there celebrating my son’s 10th birthday along with seven of his friends. While pushing off side to side on the 45 degree angled slant boards I heard a loud pop that vibrated through my whole body followed by instant shooting pain in my right knee then my right leg gave out. My body bounced off one of the 45 degree angled platforms, and I fell eight feet down into an inflatable pit. I won’t bore you with the following 45-minute ordeal which required six huge firefighters to stabilize my body so they could lift me out of that pit and get me into the ambulance.
WTF:
As I lay on my back clutching my right knee to keep it stable, and to minimize the excruciating pain, I scrambled to pull my wits together. I immediately started deep and controlled breathing to manage the pain while trying to get my wife’s attention without causing any concern to my kids or their friends. Finally, my wife noticed me at the bottom of the pit and in a calm voice I informed her that had I seriously hurt my knee and she needed to get the staff to call an ambulance and get me an ice pack. I encouraged my son, daughter and their friends to continue playing but Will and Lily wanted to sit next to me in the pit until the paramedics showed up. They stayed with me until I was lifted out of the pit, put on a stretcher and taken to the ambulance. My kids and their friends were all concerned and thoughtful. It reinforced that as parents Peg and I are raising them up right so far. For 120 minutes I clutched my bent right leg to support it, and the extreme pain never subsided. Finally, the doctor on duty at Palos Community Hospital wanted to straighten my leg out to assess the damage but I wouldn’t let go of it. The pain I knew was better than the pain I didn’t know, so the doctor gave me a shot of morphine and my body turned into jelly. The doctor did straighten out my leg then got me to the x-ray lab. The x-rays confirmed I had a ruptured patellar tendon and that I needed surgery. The doctor said he could schedule the surgery for that night. I was still high on morphine, so before I made any decisions, I need to reach out to my wife and also two friends who are well-regarded professionals in the Physical Therapy field. I needed to get educated fast about this type of injury and what was the recommended path for recovery.
The Next Day
The day before surgery. That divot in the middle of my leg is where my knee cap should be.
I’ve had over 28 years as personal trainer and wellness consultant, I’ve had my share of injuries which I have had fully recovered from, and I’ve helped a lot of my clients to recover from their various injuries, but I was in uncharted waters with this injury. So my friends Molly Scanlan Malloy and Phil Malloy informed me that even though it was crucial that I get the surgery within 5 days it wasn’t essential that I have the operation that night. So the doctor put my leg into a brace, gave me crutches, wrote me a script for Oxycodone and home I went. When I got home around, 11 pm, my son, daughter and friends had been waiting for me to get back from the hospital before they would cut my son’s birthday cake. If there was a silver lining for the day, this was it. All my pain subsided when my daughter and son along with Will’s friends came out of the house to greet me home.
My next step, I had to quickly learn about this type of injury, what was a realistic path and timeline for recovery considering my age, oh, and what was this all going to cost but that would have to wait for the next day.
To be continued……
How I went from……
To…..
The blue arrow in the above picture is where my patella (knee cap) should be, and the red arrow is where is my quad muscle retracted the knee cap up into my thigh after the patellar tendon rupture. The yellow line is the 45 degree angle platforms that got the best of me. From healthline.com“The patellar ligament not only helps keep the kneecap in its proper position but also assists in the bending of the leg at the knee. Damage to this ligament can include a complete rupture (tearing). This leads to the patella losing all support from the tibia. As a result, the leg will not extend properly. People suffering from a ruptured patellar ligament will not be able to stand, as the knee will buckle under the weight of their body.”
The bamboo that bends is stronger than the oak that resists. -Japanese proverb
In my 30 years as a personal trainer the one fact I am sure of is that flexibility equals longevity and quality of life. When you invest a little time everyday to stretch your muscles you are contributing to better posture, preventing muscle atrophy, reducing and in some cases eliminating pain, maintaining weight, improving strength, overall energy and wellbeing. Stretching can be uncomfortable so it’s important to know your limitation and slowly increase you range over time. If you want to look and feel 10 years younger then incorporate a simple, easy and fun routine. I’ve attached a video link to a 3:00 minute routine I designed in 2010. It is easy, fun and invigorating. All ages can do it. Enjoy getting younger.
I’ve noticed that every time my Wheaton Terrier, Buddy on the left, gets up from lying down he goes through two stretches. The first stretch he leans his body weight onto his front legs to stretches his back legs and toes then he shift his weight towards his back legs and stretches his lower back, chest and front legs and toes. It’s so cute when he stretches out his little toes. I marvel at their instinctive need to loosen up before throwing their bodies into activity. As humans we like to think we are smarter then dogs but when it comes to working the kinks out after being sedentary for longer then 30 minutes humans act pretty dumb.
I know that when I’ve been sitting at my computer for longer then 30 minutes or just sitting in general, and I go to stand up from my chair my muscles feel stiff, tight or even ache. Sometime I feel like I’ve just instantly ages 15-20 years in that moment. So why don’t humans take one or two minutes to loosen up. Is it because think we will look silly or stupid? Is it because if we acknowledge we feel stiff that people will think were are old or even worse, we will think of ourselves as old?
I saw a quote that read” 100% of people who exercise die.” That pretty much sums it up. The question is how do you want to feel while your living? I say take a page out of the dogs operating manual and do a couple minutes of stretching after you have been sedentary for longer than 30 minutes. You may think you look a little silly at the bus stop, next to your office cubical, in the grocery store or in the park but so what. Put your ego aside for two minutes and work the kinks out. You’ll have more bounce in your step, you’ll be energized and feel younger. Give it a try. Here is 2 minute routine I put together a couple of months ago.