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Warmly, Carla
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I first started working in the fitness industry during the time when it seemed like the entire nutrition industry believed that dietary fat was evil, and the cause of obesity as well as many diseases. Of course, many now look back on that and think how wrong we were and question how we could possibly have believed such a thing and how, thankfully, we now know the “right” way for humans to eat. Yet, interestingly, body fat is often used as the sign of the diet’s effectiveness on our health. The understanding that body fat was unhealthy was presented with the history of how in the mid 1900s we learned how to produce food at such a scale that it was cheap and developed tools that reduced our daily physical activity, creating a social status indicator that was the opposite of how it was previously. With the belief that before this time people who physically worked were thinner from laboring and not able to eat as much due to cost, while those who were higher on the socio-economic scale didn’t have to labor and could eat more. Thus, carrying more fat was desirable until it was easy to do and then carrying less was the ideal. While this explanation doesn’t at all address the health implications that body fat is supposed to have, it does give a solid story about how we as a society developed our issues with body fat. It cannot, however, be a true story because it doesn’t explain how the most popular books in the United States in the 1800s were diet books. In the book A Short History of the American Stomach, Frederick Kaufman writes about how many of the new diets of today are actually diets from the 19th century. The modern day versions certainly have new names and the options our food industry has been able to create are remarkable, but the essence is the same. Which I would think could make one question the trust that they have placed in the current dietary plan. There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of diet books and they may all work but they are too contradictory to think that they will work for everyone. But they don’t have to work for everyone, they just have to work for you. And that, I believe, should be the guiding focus for whatever dietary plan you have. How do you know if your diet is working for you? You pay attention and you track. Tracking means writing down when you eat, what you eat and how much you eat. Paying attention is not only writing down how you feel in your diet tracker, but also watching your body metrics (blood sugar, cholesterols, body weight, etc.) which over time can provide insights into how your body is responding to your diet. The tricky part is to not overvalue the measurements. It can be far too easy to have a number on the scale override your efforts and seem like a much more real indicator of how your diet is working for you than the fact that you aren’t as exhausted at the end of a day. If this sounds familiar, please consider not using the scale. There are so many great reasons to pay attention to what you are eating and while numbers can seem real and objective, placing too much importance on them can cause harm to the far more important goal of optimizing health. I know it can be tedious, but the simple fact is that the more you consistently track when, what and how much you eat, as well as how it makes you feel, the better you will understand your body and how to provide the best nutrition for it. As always, let me know how I can help. Adam Meh...Languishing has hit many Americans in the course of the COVID 19 pandemic--so now what?5/3/2021 There seems to be a lot of buzz on the word ‘languishing’ in communities around the United
States, filled with people weary from the COVID pandemic. The theme of this month’s newsletter met me with thoughts on the ‘nourishment’ of this state of the mind. Adam Grant’s article, “There’s a Name for the Blah You’re Feeling: It’s Called Languishing The neglected middle child of mental health can dull your motivation and focus — and it may be the dominant emotion of 2021” was published on April 19th 2021, and has created quite a dialogue in this country. I encourage you to review the article for yourself, the passage below details the state of languishing as: "Languishing is the neglected middle child of mental health. It’s the void between depression and flourishing — the absence of well-being. You don’t have symptoms of mental illness, but you’re not the picture of mental health either. You’re not functioning at full capacity. Languishing dulls your motivation, disrupts your ability to focus, and triples the odds that you’ll cut back on work. It appears to be more common than major depression — and in some ways it may be a bigger risk factor for mental illness." As a movement practitioner, I seek to want to move this right on out of the way. I understand why naming states of mental function help us as humans. As I read more, and listened to people react to this state of languishing, they felt relief that there is an official medically named space that outlines/depicts the struggle they feel with those feelings or behaviors that express them as a diminished-individual. Feeling diminished is a mighty powerful state even in the smallest dose. We see the effects of this embodied in the clients we serve--sometimes in protective posture that leads to tense head/neck/shoulder situations, sometimes in muscles that feel fatigue under little demand, no endurance, difficulty holding balance, or that real risky space when the person believes that pain in their body is just the way their body is going to operate--the new norm. I want people to thrive. You don’t have to work in our field to want that for a human, AND it is a value of the team that I work with, AND as such, we discuss the pitfalls around this state of languishing with some regularity. What we have seen over the years, is that people get return on any size of plan and process they consciously move towards. It’s dicey in this America, because our culture, both overtly and also obscurely, really makes the value in the effort only about the achievement it’s tied to. That's sludge on the human spirit. What happens when only goals with a conspicuous, remarkable profile are worthwhile? I think your builders get ignored or laid off and you stop growing because you have forgotten where growth actually comes from. At a base level, what makes people of value is that they are a force of life. I fear that without plans and process in place, we are at risk for embodying diminished being ‘posture’. Plan and process are tools to the human that mold what that precious life force gets to do. It would be silly to think that you could value certain atoms of your body over others in terms of what made your ‘bestness’ possible. I kind of think that all the many acts of plan and process we practice as humans serve to amplify our spirit/life force, forming an offering of what we provide our community and ourselves. Just like we always revere the power of movement, it’s true in mental work too. Multidirectional movement makes for longer-stronger-stunning expressions in a human. Any movement has value when you consciously decide to activate it. Get it! In robust growth! Tami twise@equivita.com https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/19/well/mind/covid-mental-health-languishing.html Take a small step. Achieve it and give yourself a gold star sticker. Then plan the next step and repeat. This is the way of success. The research is pretty clear that for most of us this progressive accomplishment is not only how we achieve great goals but it is also how we realize the joy of feeling good. Unfortunately, it does not fit with our typical approach to lifestyle changes like diet and exercise.
For those goals we tend to fall into the mythological thinking of making a significant shift that begins on the New Year, or maybe the start of a new week, and then it’s a planned overhaul of our entire life. Throw out all the food in our cupboards that don’t fit the new plan and set the alarm to wake us an hour earlier. Yet, we know that this model is the path of failure. In fact, this is so common that it doesn’t even need to be explained. There is wisdom in the saying that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. And I would say that you can get started without knowing the exact destination. Create a simple rule to follow for two weeks. A simple rule could be limits on the time of day that you eat, eating no white flour, only eating local animal products or not eating while involved in any other activity (driving, watching tv, reading, etc.). The simple rule goal is to disrupt the pattern and provide an opportunity to think about eating. Regardless of the rule you create, follow it and then reward yourself. Remember that while our goal is the big picture, that destination is only achieved through many little steps. And each of those steps is an opportunity for you to take a moment and appreciate you and celebrate how great you are doing. Adam Resistance training programs are typically designed on numbers: the amount of weight, the number of sets and the amount of repetitions. But have you considered why this is the accepted foundation for building strength?
Let’s start with the “weight” or type of resistance. To the body does it matter if you are lifting a dumbbell or kettlebell? Does it make a difference if you are using resistance bands or your body weight or a plate-loaded machine? The short answer is yes, and the longer answer is hell yes. Free-weights, kettlebells and machines that have only round pulleys all provide a constant amount of resistance. Resistance bands, tubing and machines that have oblong paths for the cable have a variable resistance. In function, the variable resistance provides the ability to make the resistance greater at the point where the muscles are stronger and less “weight” in the weaker ranges of the movement. Exercises with free weights and body weight can also require more stabilization than exercises which isolate a movement which can provide a greater functional benefit but at the cost of maximizing the targeted muscle contraction. Once you have determined the type of resistance, based on your goals and what you have available to use, the next step is to consider your goals related to what type of response you want from your body. Every skeletal muscle has a ratio of fiber types from those that can generate the most power but fatigue quickly to those that can just keep going but aren’t very forceful in their contractions. While in daily programming I don’t find it very useful, textbook strength training programs are based on the 1RM (One Rep Max) reference point for determining the number of sets and reps. To determine your 1RM you select an exercise, like a bench press, and progressively add weight until you get to a maximum amount of weight that you can perform a full repetition with good form but that you fatigue when trying the second rep. This maximum number then provides the foundation for designing your program based on the percentage or maximum for each set and then number of reps per set. With a goal of stimulating the muscle to grow in size and strength, you would design your program to have fewer reps (2- 12) and more sets (3-8) and your focus would be to push as much heavy resistance as you can as many times as you can because that will challenge the body to activate as much of the fast twitch fibers of the muscle for a longer period of time. The strongest parts of the skeletal muscle are also the parts that exhaust the quickest and your goal of stimulating your body’s response to create more of those parts is realized only when you have made those muscles contract for longer periods of time. It is easiest to focus on the number of repetitions as the metric by which to measure the amount of time that the muscle has been contracting, but it also brings some error into the program. If the goal is actually the amount of time, wouldn’t it make more sense to have your exercises based on lifting a weight continuously for 30 seconds, 5 seconds or 90 seconds? There are programs built on this and, of course, this also brings other challenges. Aside from the obvious time-keeping issue, most exercises have points in the range of motion where the muscles aren’t being as challenged. Taking a pause at this point in the exercise feels like a break because it is actually allowing the muscle to recover some and that is directly contradictory to the goal. If the muscle is allowed to recover, even fractions of a second, then the stimulation for maximal gains to the body will be lessened. Resting, even briefly, during a set allows the body to continue the exercise without having to devote energy into building more muscle. The same is true if your set includes reps of 10 or 50, because it is not about the number of repetitions but the length of time that the muscle is continually contracting. Rest times for the muscle should be reserved for between sets where the intention is to provide enough recovery for the muscle to prepare for the next series of repetitions. From a few seconds to multiple minutes, the length of the time between sets should also be dependent on the goals. In general, the more rest between sets the more the muscle can replenish and the more force that muscle can generate in the next set. Of course, too much rest and the muscle will decrease in blood flow and not be as prepared to perform more work. The steps to designing a strength training program should begin with a clear focus of your goals. And these will certainly change over time, but you need to have an understanding of the response you are asking of your body before you can decide on the type of resistance and especially before determining the number of sets and amount of reps per set. Your body’s goal is to do what you ask in the most efficient way. It will only devote energy toward building muscle when that is the best option. Your selection and performance of exercise is how you tell your body that is the best option. As always, let me know how I can help. Adam  In this newsletter, the staff of EQUIVITA focus on the Resistance Key of EQUIVITA’s Five Keys of Fitness, and this 3rd segment will demonstrate/examine the training of the foot using "short foot" exercises. The goals that influence this article arise from my personal interest in having a strong body for as long as I want one. Strong, smart feet feel important to that goal, AND I think our understanding of the importance of feet as it relates to powerful movement and/or movement longevity is poor, outdated, and littered in marketing myth. The protocols that are feet specific, whether it be stretching the toes, or agility/flexibility drills or Short Foot exercises are recommended by most practitioners I have studied, to be performed every DARN day. In my observation many of us do not give our feet much provision in either training or consideration, we merely wear "good shoes" which may be the creation of largely outdated understandings that are a cost to the sensory function of our feet. Likewise, shoes can be seen as a structure of constriction that do not allow the foot to move force with power but encourages it to wither in braced, over padded, over lifted construction. So let’s power up. Enter Short Foot Short foot exercises are noted as the creation of a Czech physiotherapist named Vladimir Janda. By training the foot with Short Foot work, we can improve the control of the foot muscles and in turn create a more stable base of support for the leg, hips and the rest of the body. The ability to make a “short foot” is little about strength of the foot muscles, rather it’s more to do with the ability to use and control the intrinsic foot muscles. In other words, the ability to have these muscles “turn on”. The words "turn on" nod to the way the intrinsic muscles of the foot--defined as group of little muscle that run mostly through the plantar arch--message upstream to the deep core to assist your body with the work of balance in motion. The deep core or inner core (goes by either) is made up of the pelvic floor, the diaphragm, the transverse abdominis and the multifidus. The deep core muscles, while only technically hosting one known Ab muscle, time off one another to assist you in staying balanced and up right during vertical movement of your body. I find it very intriguing to continually learn how our amazing bodies stabilize us as we move like swift jungle cats on only two legs...it’s so interesting AND very lengthy to explain, so I have tried to lace this stuff together in the drawings below to provide some visual assistance. I have layered the deep front line of fascia with the muscles of the deep core and the intrinsic muscles of the foot, found mostly in your arch. I hope this seeds an image of why footwork and artful active control of the foot influence your best movement. When you practice the short foot exercises in the video instruction that Dr. Spichal has created, it is possible to feel the tightening in your lower abdomen when you draw the big to into a short position. READY, SET...SHRINK To begin, you may be seated or standing. First roll a ball through the fascia of the foot. Dr. Emily Spichal recommends pressing the ball into the various places on the foot for a brief 5 count hold and moving around various places through the plantar arch, the heel and the toe box. I use a decent slow drag pressure roll, the point is to hydrate the fascia of the foot so it can better perform work and for that I think both likely get the job done. Next wake up your toes by simply spreading the toes as wide apart as you can, if at first you need to assist the spread of your toes by using your hands, please do, the goal is to create new range opportunity towards widespread toes, and sometimes this requires assistance. Now you are ready to isolate the big toe and the 4 toes separately. Press the big toe into the ground and lift the four toes and then press the four toes into the ground and lift the big toe. Alternate these foot positions 4-5 times--this exercise was also used last month in Top-quality Cardio Feet. NOW you are ready to better engage Short Foot training. For this work I am going to direct you to a video created by Dr. Emily Spichal. She is a veteran at this training, and I think this does a great job covering a deceptively sophisticated concept, in clear, easy to follow instructions. She makes it clear how the foot communicates to the core, and I think if you practice with her video, you have a strong shot at feeling/strengthening the connection of your foot to your core. HOWEVER, this video is shot so you can see her whole body, and I find it useful to see the foot close-up, to get the best results out of your short foot training. Please refer to the foot selfies below before linking to the video! As you view the foot images here, notice that you only slightly lift the pad below the big toe. Dr. Emily states that you only want to contract at about 20% of your power, that cue should help the user keep the toes tugging against the ground without curling under...toes crossed! Short Foot Exercise & Foot Activation with Dr Emily Splichal
Kick butt, with the strongest foot you got! If you have any questions about any of the content in this article, I am interested! Please feel free to email me at twise@equivita.com. In robust health! Tami Sources: https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/49/5/290 Images: https://www.theopclinic.com/op-explained/3-1-the-deep-front-line/ Myers, Tom. Anatomy Trains, Elsevier Ltd. New York, 2014 Special, Emily. Barefoot Strong: Unlock the Secrets to Movement Longevity, Dr. Emily Spichal, 2015
Warmly, Carla As we begin the reintegration process into whatever the new normal will be, two things in particular will play a pivotal role—compassion and resistance—both in relation to yourself and others. Some will be eager to engage in activities once it is deemed safe to do so, while others may continue, either voluntarily or subconsciously, lifestyles and actions from over the past year, whether out of habit, the feeling of safety, or from resistance. Either way, what’s important is that we act with compassion, especially where resistance is present.
Resistance as McFarland (2004) put it, is a change-oriented process. Resistance is natural in the face of change. How we deal with that change, especially disruptive change, reflects back on us. Did we stay within echo chambers, surrounding ourselves only with like-minded individuals, negatively reacting to those “different”? Or did we value diversity in humanity, acting with compassion towards our fellow humans, using empathetic listening? The presence of compassion and resistance in the past year can be a powerful reflection, as well as an important meditation for the future. Using compassion when developing responses is key in addressing resistance. For instance, if you’re reintegrating your body back into a full workout routine, have compassion for your body’s limits, especially if you’ve had to significantly decrease your physical activity the past year. How far you could push your body prior to lockdown might be different than now, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get back to that level. Listen to what your body is telling you, be compassionate to it, and you can do it! Likewise, use compassion when it comes to your emotional and mental limitations, because those too could have changed. The body and mind will push back, giving resistance when we might be reaching our limitation. On the other hand, the body and mind like to use paths of least effort, so being able to identify the inherent laziness in our body and mind (using the least amount of calories/energy) versus limitations (which pushing past could cause injury to the body or fatigue to the nervous system) can be extremely useful. And using compassion can help differentiate between the two, and allow us to begin compassionately pushing ourselves forward. Plus, if we can overcome this resistance, then the information that our body and brain receive can help signal readiness for reintegration. Compassion also helps promote optimism. And we could all use a little of that! When we view through the lens of compassion, we can help spread positivity, empathy, uplift others and ourselves, and strengthen community. Zaki (2020) suggests that how we extend compassion reveals a lot about our human social behavior. If we want a better, more compassionate life, we must first begin by overcoming resistance, and giving/receiving compassion ourselves. We can do this. But it’s on the individuals to begin taking the first steps. Best, Katherine References
What are you training for? Recently I was listening to a podcast and the guest talked about the fact that he had a bag prepared with the essentials that he would need for at least a few days. It included items like medicines, simple first aid and toiletries that he knew was ready for him to grab and go if needed. He didn’t talk about it like a disaster preparedness “go bag”, rather a system that prepared him to pack in a hurry. And I would bet that many people who travel often have a similar system that enables them to be more efficient, as well as have a level of assurance that they already have thought through what they might need. And this, naturally, had me thinking about the body. A strong base of fitness provides the foundation for so many options that are not limited to those typically thought of as fitness. A trip to Europe with lots of walking and stair-climbing, a backpacking trip along the Appalachian trail or, as Tami has pointed out in her writing, a night of dancing in high-heeled shoes are all examples of activities that could be prepared for with a program that is focused on a strong foundation of fitness. One of the main challenges with this type of program is that it can seem less focused than a goal of bench pressing your own bodyweight or walking 20 miles a day for three days in a row. And while these types of goals are important in providing specific focused intensity and interest, and can be part of an overall fitness lifestyle, they also can derail the health of an individual by placing a higher value on the performance than on the body. In her Masterclass, Misty Copeland talked specifically about this and attributed the worst injury that she had over her ballet career to her not paying attention to how she was using the right muscles of her body to dance. Clearly, if a ballerina can create the right appearance of movement without the body-focus that is important for longevity, then it is something we all can do. And, if a world-renowned dancer can learn to use the right muscles decades into her career, then I imagine we all have the ability to learn to retrain how we use our bodies. If we use the definition of fitness as it relates to an ability, then training to maintain your strong foundation of fitness provides you the baseline to take advantage of so many more opportunities. As always, let me know how I can help. Adam Top-Quality Cardio Feet: Upgrade for Your Whole Life!...or... Functional Feet Part 2; Toes and Ankles in motion…(wah, wah) Responsive, pain free feet in motion--what choice is there?! This month, as we navigate the Cardio key of EQUIVITA’S Five Keys of Fitness, our foot care focus is around training strong responsive feet. This article will focus on practices and agility drills that you could adopt as a warm up to your walking/jogging/running practice, with the hope that you develop Top-Quality Cardio Feet! Here again, for as impressive and complicated as the layers and mechanics of the foot truly are to allow for the endurance and adaptation demands, with such an ability to absorb a wide and impressive range of heavy-hitting support, the care of feet is kinda straight forward. In this article we review current insights or exercises for your feet, some designed to support the pliable/nimble foot abilities and others to engage the strength proficiency in motion. I focused on the offerings of physical therapists and athletic trainers to create this program of exercises to support your TOP-QUALITY CARDIO FEET! They're just a better way to live- What I enjoy about the combination of those worlds works like this: the physical therapists often provide work that helps me to understand ways to isolate muscle contractions and use more specific/specialized body movements, whereas the athletic trainers provide bigger exercises with a nod to strength and full-body movement (Side Comment: I have always loved the way the practice of yoga triumphs foot awareness and capacity, AND how the practice of yoga brings feet into the body purposely--I think yoga can be great for creating top-quality feet --End Side Comment). Too much isolation/specialization often can fail in the need to build strong feet in motion, and too much demand through the feet in motion can result in a host of overload issues. At EQUIVITA this "line" is one we navigate often-- how to intertwine the modalities and present understandings, best, with the clients we work with. THE TOES AND THE ANKLES IN MOTION The sequence below kicks off with stretching and activating the toes and then tapping the feet to the floor. It will then progress to seated isolated ankle movements and then to weight bearing or loaded ankle movements. Finally, running and walking focus the body movement mostly in the sagittal plane (the forward-backward plane of motion). I think it’s fair to say the body supports your life best when it is conditioned to respond to movement demands of side-to-side movement and rotational movements as well. If we continue to load stress to one plane of movement, as we do in the duration practices of running/walking/cycling for 30 + minutes, then we risk the dull existence of samey-samey movement dysfunctions (irritated knees, irritated hip, stressed plantar arch), when we could insert multiplanar movement drills and train our joints, connective tissues and muscles into Tissue Super Heros!!! Besides, life doesn't work your body in one plane...lame. (psst, we aim at Top-Quality) Cool, let’s just add a little multiplaner routine to your movement-intelligence. Some call it the step-around-the-clock drill, some call it the lunge matrix warm-up...I call it F U N!
The Clock. A multidirectional, and multiplanar way to have fun with your feet. You start at the center of your "clock" and step or lunge (depending on the day and your flexibility, joint tolerance that day) each foot through the hours of an analog clock. In this drill you get to load through your hips, knees, ankles and feet in all the directions--rotations/twists, side-to-side, and front to back. Over time you can increase your stability and control in these lateral and rotational movements, which should enhance your overall agility in cardio activity. And it's top-quality F U N! The exercises profiled in this article were chosen because I feel they have value and can be safely engaged by a broad body of humans with feet. Qualifier, foot care is most "straightforward" when you still sit in a place of prevention with the feet you have. If your feet experienced scar tissue, fracture or strain they most surely require steps for strength and mobility, but with slightly more specific considerations. When it comes to starting any new movement begin using a small range, at a slow speed, and as you teach your brain where your movements mobilize you can increase your range of motion, or reach, you can increase your speed or duration. Variables a plenty! If you have questions about any part of this content on toes and ankles in motion, please email me at twise@equivita.com. In good health! Tami Cardiorespiratory exercise has more research than every other type of exercise and this is not necessarily because it has the greatest impact on one’s health, but it is due to the fact that it is easier to determine and set the parameters of dosage. A dose of cardio exercise is determined within parameters of the amount of work that your body is performing. For cardio exercise, this workload is typically determined by the type of exercise, the resistance and the speed. For example, when on an exercise bike you set a resistance level and pedal at a certain revolutions per minute you can determine the amount of work that your body is performing. If you also record your heart rate in response to this work, then you can predict your body’s oxygen consumption as well as your maximal oxygen consumption ability (expressed as VO2max). Did you catch that or just flow along with the leap from work and heart rate to predicting maximal oxygen usage? Whether you use the Karvonen formula (220-age) or Tanaka (208 - 0.7 * age) to predict your maximum heart rate, the fact that these formulas are used so often for programming makes it easy to assume that there must be something more substantial that they are based upon. And, yet they both provide numbers and people tend to love numbers. Numbers seem objective and real and can provide easy comparisons. But if you focus too much on those numbers then you might be misled into believing that the numbers are the reason that you are moving your body in the first place. For instance, imagine that you are on a step machine with dependent steps (the kind where one foot pad rises when the other lowers) and your goal is to burn as many Calories as you can within 20 minutes. If you support your upper body on the hand rails and lean side to side you can probably get the machine to register that you are burning many Calories, but if you stopped supporting yourself and kept good form your heart rate would increase while the machine would register that you aren’t going as fast. So, which is actually burning more Calories? Good form, of course because the machine makes the assumptions about your form in its calculations but you were able to use actual feedback from your body. In this case your usage of heart rate is valid because you have controlled other variables. However, if you raise your arms up and your heart rate increases even more it is no longer a good predictor because using the arms can increase heart rate without the correlating change to oxygen consumption. And it continues to get even more confusing with heart rate programming which is the reason for development of the Rating of Perceived Exertion (RPE) scale, but the problem with such a subjective assessment is that it is fairly easy to convince ourselves that we are working substantially harder than we really are. But to determine whether that matters we must first figure out why you are exercising in the first place. Each of the 4 parameters of Cardio (Frequency, Intensity, Time, Type) have varying levels dependent on the reason for exercise and the design of your exercise program must start with the reason. Without a true focus it is too easy to work really hard to achieve something that you didn’t really want. As always, let me know how I can help. Adam You’re Starving for Carbon Dioxide, Not Oxygen: Nose Breathing During Cardio. If you don’t use it, you lose it. This statement is ever true in the case of breathing, specifically the way we take that breath. To put it bluntly, if you don’t use your nose, it atrophies, just like any other muscle or system. Most people only use about 10 percent of the full capacity of their respiratory system when breathing, and this breath typically comes from an inhalation through the mouth. Ever pay attention to how you’re breathing when you’re working out, specifically when doing cardio? I bet you start breathing heavy, start taking big gulps of air through the mouth at a rapid pace, all while feeling you’re not getting enough air. That’s because you’re starving your body of carbon dioxide, not oxygen, when breathing this way.
90% of people breathe incorrectly which can cause and aggravate many chronic diseases such as those related to the circulatory system, nervous system, immune system, musculoskeletal system, etc. This isn’t entirely our fault, some of it is the result of dysevolution—not all things passed down throughout generations are beneficial! This is partly why the bone structure of skulls from hundreds, even thousands, of years ago look much different than ours today. When we work to extend each breath from the average 3.3 seconds per inhale/exhale cycle to 50-70 percent, getting to around 6 seconds per inhale/exhale cycle (giving us 6 breaths per minute), we can drastically increase our carbon dioxide levels (which help our body process oxygen better) and reduce the stress on the body, allowing it to work more efficiently. This includes while doing cardio. So why is this important, and how does taking in less result in more? We have 100 times more carbon dioxide in our bodies than we do oxygen, and most of us don’t get enough of it. Big, heavy breaths deplete our bodies of carbon dioxide and can be harmful to us. I won’t go into the specific scientific explanation of the relationship between oxygen and carbon dioxide, but I will say that carbon dioxide attracts oxygen, and helps dilate blood vessels which helps the blood carry more oxygen. When we take rapid, big breaths we are actually doing a sort of purge of the carbon dioxide in our body, starving ourselves of carbon dioxide which can make you feel like you’re not getting enough air even though you’re taking a ton of breaths each minute. The “magic” of this is in the nose! The nasal system is the body’s “first line of defense”, and contains turbinates that look like mini seashells that help filter and clean the air that is inhaled—these same invaders if inhaled through the mouth can cause infection and irritation when they reach the lungs. These turbinates heat, slow and pressurize the air, making it easier for the lungs to absorb more oxygen. Mouth breathing decreases pressure causing soft tissues in the back of the mouth to become loose and flex inward, creating less space and making breathing more difficult. Nose breathing forces air against the soft tissues making the airways wider and breathing easier. Meaning your body can do a lot more with a lot less when inhaled through the nose. The sinuses also release a large amount of nitric oxide that helps increase circulation, effectively delivering more oxygen to cells. When we inhale through the nose in full breaths, and slowly exhale, we are keeping that ratio of carbon dioxide and oxygen in our bodies at a healthy level. Plus it can help boost lung size by up to 15 percent. A study done by James Nestor (you can visit his website here) where he mouth breathed for 10 days, then nose breathed for 10 days showed some astounding results. Below is a representation of the results. Note that the nose breathing ones are the changes in just 2 days. Athletes all around the world, including those in the Olympics, have practiced slow nose breathing techniques for tens of years, helping some even win gold multiple times. For the average person however, slow nose breathing can be a beneficial way of increasing performance and “gains” during workouts, not to mention al the other amazing results beyond exercise, just by giving your body the right ratio of carbon dioxide and oxygen by breathing correctly. Focusing on how you breathe when doing cardio exercises can be tricky. Personally, I’ve been working on it for about 6 months now and some days I’ve got it, and others it’s a major challenge. But as the months pass, I’ve noticed tremendous effects: increase in stamina during exercise, increase in distance during running, increase in recovery, decrease in the times I get “winded”, decrease in soreness, and an increase in control and clarity, just to name a few. The best way to practice is just as you would with anything else—in intervals. Rather than jumping right in and trying to take 6 breaths a minute during the entirety of your cardio workout, do it in stages. Begin practicing this breathing technique while at a comfortable walk with the treadmill between 2-3 speed approximately (speed number may change depending on the treadmill). This will give you a feel for this new rhythm of breath. Then practice a comfortable run for 30 seconds to 1 minute using this breathing technique before returning to walking, then running again. The nose and respiratory system are just like any other system in the body, it takes exercising them and building them up to reach their full capacity and capability. All the best, Katherine TO OUR COMMUNITY This month we focus on flexibility, and of all of the 5 Keys, this area is one that is often neglected as its value toward one’s overall health and fitness is somehow perceived as less great than the other Keys. Perhaps because it doesn’t have the same intensity feeling as running, or maybe it’s because there aren’t as cool comparatives like bench pressing your bodyweight, or it could just be that Rocky movie training montages have left out the stretching. Regardless of why, flexibility is an entire Key of Fitness for a reason--maintaining the suppleness of your muscles and connective tissues is necessary for your biomechanical health and longevity. Without even going into the amazing benefits that effective massage can have on the tissue to increase flexibility, massage is undoubtedly great in providing an objective assessment of the tissue of your body and can also provide an early detection of areas of ischemia and over-tightness before your joints become affected. And passive stretching is great because it also provides an objective assessment and feedback, as well as allows you to relax into a deeper stretch. Active stretching and focused movements can bring more of your awareness to your body and provide connection to how your body actually feels. This type of focused intention can be calming to the overstimulation that our brains are subjected to and it can also increase your awareness of your body. Which, if you start to view your body as the only tool you have to interact with the world, then you might believe that greater connectedness with it could be beneficial. And this type of stretching can be done anywhere (within modifications for dress and environment), it doesn’t have to be time intensive and the more frequently the better. The fact that it is so simple is probably a main reason that it gets neglected, but I encourage you to use the simple to your advantage. Adding just a little active stretching into your day can yield noticeable results in how you feel and how you move. And, as always, let me know how I can help. Adam  Functional Feet: Part 1, The Toes Like the conditions profiled in this infochart produced by a company looking to sell shoe inserts, I see the signs of weakened, tight, painful feet in the work that I do, often. It’s not that hard to come up with examples of how we abuse the highly accommodating and adaptive abilities of our feet. They allow us to shove them into extremely petite shoes (with an incredibly beautiful wedge toe and tiny point 3 inch heel), we may carry a 30 pound travel bag all over a major airport to make a connection, we may tote a 25 pound child on one hip for hours, we may walk on the beach barefoot for 3 hours when we have trained our feet to mostly walk in supportive shoes on cement, we may wear thong sandals all summer!!! Poor, poor little feet, not so much as a soak, or a rub! However, when feet fight back, it’s rough! Feet demonstrate their ability to "hammer in the toes" and create bunions, they can develop plantar fasciitis in the arch and heel, they can present a Morton’s neuroma and osteoarthritis, bursitis, claw toe, or they can fall flat or host a stress fracture. And when I hear these conditions of the feet labeled as "inherited" or a condition of aging!! Well, I simply want to lie down where once I stood and suffer the agony of "defeet!" If you are doomed to have poor feet from getting older, just end it soon, and if god-forbid you have a genetic string of bunions running rampant in your DNA, start hoarding your pain meds now, because those are getting harder to come by! Rather than wait for the other foot to drop, I want to pursue ideas and practices that help you create stable, responsive, pain free feet. Here again, for as impressive and complicated as the layers and mechanics of the foot truly are to allow for the endurance and adaptation demands, with such an ability to absorb a wide and impressive range of heavy-hitting support, the care of feet is kinda straight forward. Qualifier, foot care is most "straightforward" when you still sit in a place of prevention with the feet you have. If your feet experienced scar tissue, fracture or strain they most surely require steps for strength and mobility, but with slightly more specific considerations. Ultimately enhancing the ability of your feet is like any training, we look at what forces you have adapted your feet with, and we determine what can stay and what should shift. This article is intended to offer current insights of the toes of the foot. How your toes support your movement and how regular stretching of your toes can support your feet, and be part of the training to increase the strength and responsive features of those fabulous feet! THE TOES This month, as we navigate the Flexibility key of EQUIVITA’s Five Keys of Fitness, our foot care focus centers around stretching. Stretching the toes to be specific, as a way to create space in the tissues of your foot (the joints and tendons, the bones, the muscles and the fascia). A strong case is made around this belief: that the widest part of your foot should be between your big toe and your baby toe. When this alignment is present in the foot a variety of things can also be present: ● The space between the toes allows for an effective dispersement of force as you strike the foot into the ground. ● The muscles in the foot are able to develop in balance, and perform a strong push through the ground, helping to ensure everything "up-stream" (ankles, calves, knees, hips) has access to its full muscle potential. ● The plantar fascia has the space and support to perform its trampoline-like function ● You are able to move the toes freely and independently, allowing you to best perceive and navigate changing terrain, and accommodate for more deft balance demands to your movement. I have drawn an example of how the position of the toes, whether wide or more compressed, can influence the concentration of force of your foot system--in this drawing most specifically to the arch of the foot. Notice the shift from foot #2 where the wide toes support more central load to the arch of your foot, where the compressed toe pattern on foot #1 shift the load to the inside of the foot. This is where the content gets to be overwhelming, but shifts like that are what influence the body to create patterns of adaptation that over time manifest as painful conditions, like some of the foot conditions referenced in the above info chart.   THE STRETCHING So if you find that you look at your feet and they hold the shape of the shoes you wear, or you have struggled with painful or tight feet, perhaps you start with simply stretching your toes. In the images below I have a couple ways to initiate toe stretching: ● Lace the fingers between the toes and twist them forward backward, then side to side for roughly 2 minutes (I use a timer...longer than you think) ● Use a set of toe stretchers. The YogaToes gems in the one photo are a pretty big stretch, the thinner profile and softer material of the Mind Bodhi Toe Separators have stretch but less intense. When you begin to practice toe stretching, please take it easy. Start with a couple minutes a day for a couple weeks. While the stretching devices make it easy to be more passive in the application of the stretch, DON’T set it and forget it. You can increase any of those stretches by working the thickest part of your means of toe separation, fingers or tool, and use them closer to the base of the toes or closer to the tip of your toes for increased space demand (probably start at the base, feels nicer anyway). SHOES….wah, wahhh The danger is in the dose, right? While that statement is a tad dramatic, it underscores the belief that adaptation is the result of demand. If you only wear the amazing wedge heels a few hours a month, the ratio of demand is pretty low. If you never go barefoot, what happens then? Demand by another disguise. There are a lot of questions raised around how constant use of athletic sneakers, widely thought to be the best shoe for good foot care, are guilty of over lift to the heel(marketed as a good heel cushion). Not having a wide enough/round enough toe box in the shoe to allow for the toes to support the foot, rather the front footbed of your foot is responsible for most of the force you generate and cannot receive support from the toes. Having a shoe with a thick cushion sole (marketed as a stability shoe), which suspends much of our ability to push out through our toes. In some ways I think of feet as our body’s ears to the ground on which we walk, which means if we wear shoes over them all the time...well, it’s like wearing ear muffs to class, sure you can hear, kind of. Barefeet are the way the body listens to the surface of the world. It seems worthwhile to help our feet manage some time out of shoes. If that is a highly uncomfortable situation for you, maybe that is how you start to structure a toe stretch target for training. Stretch the toes a couple minutes and walk around your home barefoot for a short time. I’m not saying those sweet Lucky-Red sneakers are leaving my uniform for good, and while I am sad to think about introducing the use of ‘natural’ footwear into my world, because I LOVE FASHION!!! And it’s not obvious to me that those two worlds have met...I am taking the dumb plunge, because I love life-long strong feet the most. Natural shoes are defined as having a large round toe box so the toes can seat themselves apart and flex and extend without restriction. It is my preference to increase the use of my barefoot, introduce some wide toe shoes to my workout/running life, and occasionally into my workday. Dynamic balance considerations, we at EQUIVITA built a brand on it. Next month we will focus on the Cardio Key, and I will continue to move the conversation on training strong responsive feet. That article will focus on practices that support agility drills that you could adopt as a warm up to your walking/jogging/running practice. If you have questions about any part of this content on stretching your toes, please email me at twise@equivita.com. In good health! Tami Youthful physicality is associated with supple and fluid movements. Yet, the stiff movements that we tend to associate with aging are not a natural part of aging as much as they are a natural response of the body to usage. And, without question, the body gets better at responding with increased experience. For example, if you have repeatedly shown your body that it is not necessary to straighten your elbow fully then it will lose that range of movement. Initially, the loss won’t be noticeable and the elbow can be taken through the full extension with some effort. But over time the tissues of the body will adapt and then to achieve full extension would require some intense massage and stretching. This process is most easily seen in our society in the position of the spine. The flattened curve of the lower back, rounded forward upper back and extended neck are examples of this type of adaptation to how the body is being used and are the cause of much pain and degeneration of the spine. As mentioned, regaining lost flexibility can take quite an effort, but maintaining it is relatively easy. To maintain the range of movement, you just need to remind the body to keep the full range of motion by taking the body through the full range. And for maintenance, frequency seems to be the important component and becomes increasingly more important the more usage experiences that the body has (aka as we age). Once the range has been lost it can be regained, at least to some extent. On the one hand, it is living tissue and so it will adapt, but on the other, the time and effort to get full adaptation might be greater than one has to give. While the specific details may vary, the overall plan is the same: Incorporate massage to disrupt adhesions. Gentle ballistic stretch to activate elasticity. Static stretch, passive or active, to lengthen. And, as always, let me know how I can help. Adam Dilution of Efficiency and Productivity: the pitfalls of work-from-home R.I.P. Efficiency As we say goodbye to the rather complicated and life changing year of 2020, so goes our efficiency. If you’ve somehow managed to hold onto yours, I lift a glass to you in awe. For the rest of you, you’re not alone. I’m here with you—dedicated “work pajamas” and all! One majorly understated obligation of work-from-home that affects efficiency is your schedule. It’s a whole lot easier to know when to start being productive and when to put it to rest when you have an external space dedicated to work, plus set arrival and departure times from that workspace. Now, in the new era of work-from-home, all the benefits of having the office wherever you are comes with the companion challenges of the same quality—including all the home distractions! It’s no wonder that efficiency can be greatly effected when all of your home responsibilities now have the potential to exist at the same time as your work responsibilities, plus all the temptations that being at home provide. Because, let’s be honest, when it comes to choosing between YouTube wormholes, another Netflix episode that’s so conveniently autoplayed, that load of laundry or pile of dishes that could be done, and the endless inbox, that cumbersome report, and having to get out of your sweats and hoodie to record a workshop or client video, I certainly know which ones I’d rather be doing. So in the honor of efficiency, here are some tips on how to create personal and professional boundaries that help in tackling how to have a more efficient schedule:
Hunchback Dinosaur Back in 2010 a new “hunchback” dinosaur was found by archeologists in what is present day Spain. Scientists are puzzled by the camel-like creature, but they shouldn’t be. This was just an unfortunate species of dinosaurs that knew nothing about ergonomics and “tech neck” while doing their dinosaur jobs. I know you’re asking, “what does this have to do with anything?”… Well, this dinosaur has been extinct for a very long time now, so let’s avoid a reemergence of such an ancient trend. We’ve talked recently at length about how posture and mechanics can influence and affect your emotional and mental state through the fascia, which we’ve related to fitness and personal exercise routines, but the same goes for work-from-home ergonomics. Here are 12 ergonomic tips to help transform your home workspace in order to be more engaged, attentive and positive during your work day (from ehstoday.com May 2020):
All the best, Katherine 5 Tips for Flexibility!
Carla |
EQUIVITAThis blog is written and updated by the staff that support EQUIVITA. Individual blog posts are the thoughts of the staff member that submitted the post. The content of these posts often support the thoughts and ideas of our organization, but do not always(and we scarcely use definitives) reflect the same thoughts or ideas of the organization as a whole. Archives
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