Lets Talk About Abs (or, Muscle Activation)

When I was in the Army, I could do over 100 sit-ups in two minutes. I would almost always “max out” my score on sit-ups, and if I wanted to keep going I would usually end up around 120 or more. I was in relatively good shape, and I was young, but I wasn’t ever good enough to max out a run, or push ups. In fact, I really never liked working out, and even though I should have had “killer abs” the only semblance of a 6-pack you could see was barely visible inside my protruding rib cage, due to how skinny I was at that point. My comrade, a short and pudgy little fuck who hated me for my sit-ups, soon learned that I hated flutter kicks, and did them constantly in order to stick it to me. That shouldn’t have been a problem though since it is mainly an Ab exercises. What was the deal?

As I noted much later, it turns out the reason was I was not working my abs at all. I was working my hip flexors and lower back, complying with the “standards” of the exercise, but missing the point every time I would do sit-ups. Crunches were exactly the same, I though they were the easiest exercise in the world and I never understood why we did them. There are several different ways you can get you shoulders and head off the ground, and my bent up body was perfect for them.

it took a couple of months of Ab vacuums to develop strong enough abs to even do crunches, without letting my other muscles take over. This is called, muscle activation, when a muscle is so weak you don’t even know how to use it, and you have to practice with several low intensity exercises to get to the point that you can actually use them. I basically had to do this with my Glutes as well, and I’m becoming aware of more and more muscle groups as I use them and do more research. In reality, when I was in Buenos Aires I was trying to do frog crunches for a while, and I eventually just stopped because it didn’t feel like I was doing anything at all.

Fast forward to last week, when I was again getting into Ab exercises, after several weeks of doing planks (albeit, with bad form, but they still help), Ab vacuums, and exercise in general. I though, “hell, maybe that Vince Gironda guy knew something. I’ll give it another shot.” This time of course was much different than before. My abs were pretty sore, and I tried to use that soreness to see if I was activating them or not.

I pulled my head and shoulders forward.

Nothing.

I pulled my back of the ground.

nothing.

This isn’t right.

I remembered some Pilates stuff I had read about keeping the core tight, and tried to focus in on my abs and use only them, like the stomach vacuum, and just barely pulled myself off the ground.

Holy shit.

That was a whole different experience. For the first time in probably my whole life, I actually used my abs to do a crunch.

This just goes to show how serious, and important it is, to do both the correct exercises (sit-ups are terrible. Thanks, Army.), but also to make sure you are cognizant of which muscles you are supposed to be using, and doing everything correct to form. All those push ups and sit ups I did in high school and in the military were actually screwing me up. Along with many others whose stories I’ve come across lately, I did a bunch of bench press and curls, exercising my chest and arms while neglecting all the other muscle groups. I actively avoided back exercises, because since it was already messed up I was afraid of making it worse. Imagine my dismay 8 years later.

Learn from my example and understand what muscular imbalance is, and avoid it. Also, spend some time practicing on the muscles you need to be exercising, whether its your abs, or your Glutes, or some shoulder muscles that have been hijacked by the pectorals. It may take a lot of slow effort, but when you finally get to the point where you’re able to exercise them properly using the prescribed routines, you’ll be happy.

Alex

week 1 (again)

This has been a good week in terms of working out. As you could tell from my previous posts, I had been a bit run down the last few weeks. But i’ve stuck with it, and I am officially back on the horse! I’ve even made some break throughs.

I’ve gone on my walk and done my planks pretty consistently. I also added an extra “2 minute posture” exercise, which just consists of holding a correct or “perfect” posture for 2 minutes every day. Getting all 5 Ab vacuums in has been a battle, I’ve done them every day but inconsistently in how many times and such. I’m going to focus on it this week. In addition, I’ve put into better practice much of what I learned when I was away with the exercises and I’ve actually been improving on my list as well. I’ll add 4 new pages this week, “Core muscle exercises”, “back, shoulders, arms, and neck exercises”, “Glute/leg exercises”, and “stretches”, where I can keep a list of the exercises I use and change and modify things as I go. So far I’ve just been using a notebook and marking what works and what doesn’t work.

I noted 3 things of importance.

First, that the steps I had taken were really important, because it was essentially the activation and mobilization phase. i.e., when you let one muscle like your (hip flexors) take everything over and don’t use another muscle (like your abs), you literally can’t use those muscles because you can’t feel them, the overworked muscles take over immediately. So the months i’ve spent doing small exercises and not knowing if anything was happening did actually pay off. Activation is important. I’ll write another post about this.

Second, it became really hard to feel what posture was correct when i stopped working out. Thats because, I didn’t have my muscles that were sore to tell me when I was working them. For instance, my abs weren’t sore at all, so it was really hard to tell if I was keeping them tucked in an such when I was walking. After a few days of working out, it becomes much easier to remember because those muscles ache when you put the into action! This makes the walk and just putting your body in a correct posture much easier when you don’t have a mirror.

Finally, along the same lines the previous two, after focusing on one muscle group, it becomes much easier to see if an exercise is effective in working the muscle you want or another muscle. This has been important in my research on the core and Glute muscles, as some of the prescribed exercises can work the lower back or the quads instead of the muscles you want (or sometimes this happens when you do them incorrectly.)

The moral of the story is that consistency is very important, and although it burns, every time it does you’re reminded that you’re doing the right thing!

This week, I’ll be further exploring some Pilates and yoga stuff, as well as trying to figure out some better back/shoulder/neck exercises, and looking at breathing.

Have a good week, and get that back straight!
Alex

Beating Kyphosis: Week 1

To be fair about this, it isn’t exactly week one. Its more like 2 weeks of actually trying off and on with distractions, plus a month or so of random research.

Results so far: There don’t seem to be any real concrete results yet, it is still very painful, and I expect this to be the case for some time.

However, some things have gotten better: Its become easier to put myself in a good posture (without looking in a mirror and trying to adjust is it). This is actually really important; because my posture is such a mess, and more so because of the balance between kyphosis AND the pelvic tilt, it has taken a lot of hours of standing in front of a mirror to get more used to knowing what actual good posture feels like. I have also realized that good posture itself is like a stretch, since those muscles are not used to being so elongated, and its quite difficult to achieve perfect posture.

So, to re-enforce something I’ve already said, one thing I’ve learned is that I really don’t want to try and force myself to be in some sort of “perfect posture” all the time. This is just impossible, it’s incredibly painful and takes and incredible amount of concentration, making it impossible to do anything else. Further, just holding this posture for a few minutes literatlly makes my body start to tingle and alters my conciousness. So, I’ve been doing two important things:

1. Holding a “perfect” posture for 2-3 minutes, in front of a mirror and with a timer, every day.

2. Adjusting my posture when I remember to, and trying to make a better posture, but not worrying if it isn’t exactly perfect; not trying to force myself to hold it all the time, and definitely not beating myself up for not standing up straighter/ more often/ all the time– it’s just a recipe for failure and giving up when you don’t succeed. Better to focus on one thing at a time and work in small steps.

In regards to the second part, I’ve been more concerned with correcting with correcting the pelvic tilt than correcting the kyphosis portion of the problem. That isn’t to say I don’t try to fix it at all, I try to keep my back generally straight, but I know that trying to do both perfectly all at once is all but impossible. Therefore I’ve chosen to focus mainly on one problem at a time, trying to get my pelvic tilt very correct, and making a smaller adjustment to the kyphotic upper back, with the confidence that at some point, I will be able to leverage the correct pelvic tilt and stronger core muscles towards correcting the upper back as well.

Some thing’s I’ve noted:

Sitting is a serious problem. I don’t really know what to do about this one, It’s way more difficult and painful to maintain the correct posture while sitting. I can’t write and do it at the same time. This is going to require more research and practice and time. For now, I’ve just been trying to sit less, and trying to have a generally better posture while taking breaks to rest my muscles and do stretches, as well as just trying to sit down less often in general.

One of the keys here is consistency, which is seriously hard to maintain, even for someone who doesn’t have a job. However, at this point I believe one of the most important goals for me is excercising the glutes and abs (or core muscles in general) in order for them to be in a better condition to support the spine and change the pelvic tilt, and that means working them and stretching every day. So, I have to continue improving on this, even with all the obstacles life throws in.

Just general confidence that this will work! breaking out of comfort zones is always, always very painful. These couple of weeks haven’t been easy or perfect, but I do feel like I am moving in the right direction and things are getting a little better, definitely easier than the first couple of days. It’s hard to want to keep going through all the pain, but I know in the end it will be worth it.

I’ll write more when I can, as always.
Alex

Introduction

Well, this is my first post.

I’ve had postural kyphosis as long as I can remember. When I was 13 a friend’s father told me I needed to stand up straight before it was too late. I tried for a couple of weeks, but it was too hard. It took so much concentration all the time, it was constantly painful, and it just didn’t seem like it was worth it (that, and I was a pretty lazy kid). I have tried other times in my life, generally when I was trying to reinvent my person (similar to now, in some ways). I tried when I was getting out of the army: I went to a chiropractor who basically told me there was nothing that I could do and that “it wasn’t really a problem anyway”. Then he showed me a model spine and told me a bunch of things I already knew. I asked my medic, who mentioned it (in a way that implied he was going to help me), who then told me it was basically all on me. I went to another medical professional, who was helpful and very positive, but her solution was for me to try stand up straight all the time which was completely unnatural and excessively painful. I tried this for a few days, and after getting to the point where it was basically impossible to function, decided again that it really didn’t seem worth it.

I tried this method several times in several forms, I tried having someone constantly remind me, which lasted about a week before she got so annoyed that she stopped. I tried sleeping on my back, that seems impossible. I tried doing some stretches for my upper back and shoulders, which was a good step but in the end seemed ineffective. It wasn’t until now when I started research almost obsessively that I stumbled on the real problem. Not only do I have kyphosis, this is complicated by another postural problem: Anterior Pelvic Tilt. What does this mean? It means that my pelvis points forward more than it should.

Photo credit

So basically, this means that my spine is bent in the shape of an S, and not a C. My stomach sticks out, making me look like I have a beer belly, even though I’m quite thin. It also means that I can’t just put my shoulders back to fix the problem, I have to work on keeping the whole spine aligned, which is not exactly easy. Here are a few pictures, sorry that they arn’t better quality. (update)

You can see here how my stomach sort of sticks forward, creating that sort of “S” like shape. It isn’t eay to capture in photos, or even to notice necessarily, but it is definitely there. Another indicator is that when I lay down on my back, my lower spin isn’t touching the ground, there is still a curve up. This complicates the kyphosis problem.

I had to then figure out what correct posture actually is, which required some hours in front of a mirror moving my spine around, trying to make things work, and after a while I’ve more or less gotten it down. Even more then just straightening my upper back it feels incredibly unnatural, and it is very hard to maintain on a regular basis.

In light of this I’ve developed a 6 part plan:

1. Excercises to strengthen unused/understrengthened muscles.

2. Stretches to loosed over flexed muscles.

3. Regular posture practice in front of a mirror (about 3-5 minutes every morning)

4. Activites where I conciously force myself to do other things while trying to maintain good posture, such as walking

5. Not trying to just “stand up straight” all the time. Instead, doing it at designated times, and sometimes during the day whenever I just think about it, and increasing these times over several months in order for it to become more natural, and not become over burdened by pain.

6. Improving other areas of life, removing stressors, eating better, regular exercise, etc.

As I write this, I am not entirely starting from scratch, as I have been in the process of trying to figure this out for a while, trying to stand up straight more often in general. But this is the first time I’ve been doing consistent exercises and really trying to focus on this, and being aware of several things I had not previously known. So here it goes, I’m going to prove this can be done so you can do it too.

november 14 2014

Alexander Juno