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

Weekly Updates: Week 3

There was something I was waiting to happen, and it did this week: I hurt myself. I pulled a muscle in my back.

It was after abs day, during but I don’t know if that was the cause or if it was because I also happened to have a really awful day and my posture was really bad, and I was being really reckless about it. Probably some combination of the two, plus a lot of stress in general.

I’ve had this problem with this one spot since I was playing football at like 13 or whatever. I pulled a muscle, my coach just told me to push through the pain, my dad told me I pulled a scapular muscle. I continued thinking it was a scapular thing since then, until last week, although I’m still not certain, but now I think it must be a thoracic muscle, the ones that stretch from the bottom to the top of the back along the spine, but its really hard to place or know what the real problem is. All I know it has happened at least once every year since then. It also always happens when I try to stand up straight, I’m surprised its taken so long this time.

Paired with this, my lower back was really fucking sore. I’m gonna go ahead and say this now, do excessive work on your obliques, they generally connected to your back, and thats not something you wanna work out.

I want to use this moment to make a really important point: When you are starting, don’t go crazy.

What I mean is, if you get all pumped up and high on the idea you’re gonna get better, get stronger, be hotter, and all that, and go do a bunch of exercise, you wont feel it that night. You’ll be like, damn, I’m sore but it was totally worth it. And then for the next week you will be in so much pain you don’t want to get out of your bed. Don’t do that. If you do that, you’re going to destroy your chances before you even begin. Thats why its so important to take it slow, easy, making determined steps.

This is a slow process; I’m expecting its going to take about a year of work. There is no quick solution, no magic cure. Accept that, make a commitment to yourself to see it through till the end, and take it one small step at a time.

It also make me rethink some of the things I’ve been doing also. I want good posture, but I also want to be sexy. Really, I want to have good posture because I want to be sexy. And I’ve been trying to do a lot of things, because I want to be sexy. I’ve had to make some hard choices, and give up some of the things I want to do, like curls and other arm exercises, because I have to focus on building my core strength. I want to eventually come back to that stuff, but right now, I have to focus on what is important. First things first.

So, back to obliques, the bottom of my back was so sore. So sore. It was really dangerous because it basically immobilized me for like 3 days, I mean I could walk, but I had to stop exercising because it was just too painful; the second half of the week I basically only did planks. (This is partially because I’ve been rethinking my exercises and such). But, it was really damaging, it was a big step backwards because I had to give up time, and it was demoralizing. But, now I’m back on the horse, and trying to being my focus a little tighter.

My current general idea is this: avoid heavy weights and anything high impact, and focus exclusively on core, glutes, and back. I’ve also become increasingly worried about my neck as I notice how far forward it is most of the time, especially at the computer.

So, this weeks take aways:

Baby steps
Focus on a few important things
Don’t kill yourself before you start

One week closer to beating kyphosis.
Alex

Week 2 Thoughts

Week 2 updates:

This week I’ve learned a lot after delving into learning more deeply about muscles and exercises, and it has also opened my eyes as to how much more information there is out there that I need to learn. As far as my own life, I’ve been nailing down a work out schedule. At this point it seems it goes like this:

Sun/Wed: Sprint alternatives & yoga,
Mon/Thu: legs & glutes, squats, stretches
Tue/Fri: Arms, shoulders, abs, back, stretches.
Sat: rest, minimal posture exercises.

Everyday except sat: planks/sideplanks, frog crunches, reverse crunches, ab vacuums & posture holding, shoulder pushups, all shoulder exercises, glute exercises, weightless squats, stretches, all at a minimal level.

My general idea on this is that a holistic approach will be the best, with a specific focus on my core and glutes. I believe if i build my core to be as strong as a column, it’ll be much easier to get my spine straightened. I want it like a tree trunk, that if hollow could hold up my insides correctly, and push my pelvic into the correct position. Even if it doesn’t quite work like that, it’s going to be a lot easier to hold my posture with strong core muscles. I’m still doing work on my upper back and shoulders as well, but I will focus on this more further down the line. Since most of the exercises I do are low intensity exercises based on muscle activation and structure building, I am not concerned about giving my body a long period of recovery time; for the things that are at a higher intensity I have broken them up to give 2 days breaks. The first step is just to get abs that are better than the hip flexors, get the lower back a little less tense. I’m not quite sold on glute bridges yet, as I feel like I haven’t gotten strong enough glutes to do them properly, so I’m trying to work just on activation before I do this. It’s hard to tell if i’m doing planks correctly either, but I feel like the more I do them it will start to be better, as long as my abs/core is tensed.

Things not to do: actual sprints (impact), crunches/sit ups/ anything that works the hip flexors, push-ups or chest exercises, too much arms, heavy squats.

I also set alarms to go off 4 times a day at which point i do the ab vacuums and hold a straight posture. Whatever else I’m doing, I do that. I also re-adjust my sitting posture every 15 minutes, and do some spinal de-loading which I’ll get to. On ab heavy days, I do the vacuum 10 times a day, always paired with correct standing posture during breaks and for a 2-5 minute period before and after.

In addition I go on walks where I hold my posture once a day. This is actually very difficult, but it has gotten easier to sense what is the correct standing posture, partially because I’ve been practicing a lot and focusing on it, and partially because my abs are sore from the exercises which makes it easier to sense when they’re pushing my spine back. It also seems like its gotten a bit easier to hold the correct posture for a longer period of time.

One thing I will start focusing more on now is holding posture while doing something else, like talking for instance. Anything really, Its just to get myself accustomed to doing it while I do something else that takes my concentration. Make it second nature kind of thing.

I’ll continue doing this, and write about how well its functioning next week!

Cheers to better posture,
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