Health, Performance and Spiritual Coaching

Let's say you do have a bench and you are able to adjust it for the incline option. Different angles target the chest and shoulders differently If you have a shoulder issue, still warcyh becasue there are options. www.vitalityforlifebychristi.com www.lovelandyogacorefitness.com

This is such a great big bang exercise BUT you have to do it right for that to have the positive impact you want on the body. www.vitalityforlifebychristi.com www.lovelandyogacorefitness.com

The Ball is a great alternative when you don't have a specific piece of equipment at home or you are looking for something different. The ball is one of my favorite pieces of equipment. www.vitalityforlifebychristi.com www.lovelandyogacorefitness.com

If you're working out at home and do not have a bench or a bench that is adjustable; a Swiss or fit ball is a great alternative. www.vitalityforlifebychristi.com www.lovelandyogacorefitness.com

Such a great move for the glutes, central and perpheral core. Got to waatch video for the key points for how the weight is placed in the foot. Need help? Head to website to contact me for an appt. www.vitalityforlifebychristi.com or www.lovelandyogacorefitness.com

A quick video going over some technique for the goblet squat and the orthopedic profile that's needed to do it safely. You need ankle mobility. Need help and want to book a session? Head to www.vitalityforlifebychristi.com or www.lovelandyogacorefitness.com It gets you to the same place. Can I assess online over zoom? Yes. We can do a lot! www.vitalityforlifebychristi.com www.lovelandyogacorefitness.com

Part 10 of 10...Structural anomalies or an orthopedic profile that has maybe changed because of life experiences. These will dictate the posture looming different. Once agin the posture conforms to the person. The ones that are most significant for down dog will be really long legs, short torso. These people will need blocks under their hands to helps them out if they want help. The next one will be scoliosis. Depending on the severity of the curvature will depend on what you see and most of the time just make sure their hands/feet are wide and knees bent. They will be able to help you help them. There are other structural differences that will have bigger impacts in different poses. I will post on those and maybe one of my students will let me take some pics of him in his down dog. More info on structural anomalies of the hip and back and set up head over to my website to read more ...http://www.lovelandyogacorefitness.com/blog

Just like any pose, lift or technique the pose must adjust to the body. We can only make so many adjustments before the pose, lift or technique just might be thrown out because the risks out way the benefits. Believe it or not it’s your “simpler” poses like child’s pose or happy baby that get thrown out. Hands in down dog are not always best flat. There may be too many issues going on in the wrist for this to work out in the long run. I will have clients cup their hands, make a fist, use a blanket or cone down to forearms or rest in child’s pose and wait until the next posture. For more on this head to my blog at http://www.lovelandyogacorefitness.com/blog

Part 7 of the Down Dog series is about the hamstrings, calves and this shitty little muscle right behind the knee. Several reasons why people want their legs straight in down dog: -they feel a stretch and it may feel good -they think their legs are suppose to be straight b:c everyone else has their legs straight and so does the instructor. - they don’t remember how the instructor set them up b/c this takes practice I encourage my classes to move around in down dog to get some of these superficial tightnesses out of the way. When it come time to be “still” in the pose I’m a bit more adamant about length through the spine, which does mean for a lot of people that the knees are bent. It doesn’t mean the pose is wrong if they are bent. The spine, neck, shoulder, wrists are far more important than a stretch in the hamstrings. While it feels like a nice release you’re not doing anything productive. If the legs are straight but the back is rounded the load transfer through spine is not ideal and most of the load (stress) that the legs are suppose to be taking will be taken up by the wrists and shoulders and neck. Students either want to put the effort in for how the pose should look for them or they don’t. The instructor either knows or they don’t. Down dog and chaturangas don’t damage the body it’s the person not knowing how to perform strength movements and the instructor doesn’t know either. Now some ppl are coming in with pre-existing issues in the wrist and shoulders. They need to tell us. I can usually sort that out teaching proper strength position or in addition doing some Pdtr. Sometimes the pose is out!

I hear many things in classes on how to hold your head in flexion based movements. The most common and the most over used exercise is the crunch. I hear ppl say “make sure there is a fist distance between the chin and chest; keep your eyes on the ceiling” You actually can’t do that. The moment your eyes stay fixated on the ceiling your body must follow where the eyes are looking. You widen the gap between the chin and chest; over activate the suboccipitals and start doing this chicken head/neck movement. This btw is what hurts the neck. When the back of your neck start to do the work of the neck flexors in addition to what they are suppose to be doing you will create pain and dysfunction. It hurts b/c it’s a mechanical disadvantage for the extensors to do the work of the neck flexors. You will also give yourself headaches, more neck tension along with encouraging a forward head posture which the shoulders and the thoracic spine will also have to become more dysfunctional. My classes can probably recite for you now how I cue head and neck position 1. Mouth closed; tongue on the roof of the mouth. This is the physiological rest position of the tongue. 2. The mouth is closed to provide an anchor for these muscles so they can stabilize the cervical spine against the weight of your head. If your mouth is open the intrinsic core neck muscles have no anchor. 3. Eye position is not right above you on the ceiling. It is more forward where the ceiling and the wall meet. Your eyes do not stay glued there. They move down the wall was you crunch up. This allows you maintain the fist distance between the chin and chest. The eyes go back up the wall to that crease as you go lower back down. Why am I cuing a crunch on the down dog post for head and neck position? There are more ppl finding themselves in a flexion based or crunch movement than in down dog. You must learn what this position is for all sorts of position. Most ppl really do not have well developed kinesthetic awareness. They need help and sometimes it’s the instructors that needs help as well learning that as well. We all need help! Pulling your head back; Placing your ears over your shoulders will help you to develop strength for the intrinsic core neck musculature. It’s a lot of work being in down dog

Bridging Strength & Yoga- Lumbo-pelvic Postion If you think stretching your hamstrings is helpful for your down dog THINK again! Watch the video to find out what you are missing. It’s not always short and tight hamstrings. Maybe they are long and taut getting tight like a guitar string. If one side of the joint is long and taut, the other side just might be short and tight. In video number six, I talked about how the hip flexor group could be one of the tight players that cause the back to round in down dog. If you have a short and tight hip flexor group and you’re trying to straighten out your legs; and the latissimus dorsi is tight (attachments at bicepital groove of humerus and down to pelvis) the body has no choice but to round the spine to accommodate straightening out the legs; which will also shove your weight forward into your hands and make you feel like you’re in plank and trash the upper quarter in the process. When I teach I do not stretch the hip flexor group right off the bat. I do around 3 Sun Salutes and then come down to table top and move into this version ardha dandrasana (look that up) I move back into down dog and have them notice if it feel better to be in down dog. Then I move into Sun B and squat pattern movements like Utkatasana should feel a bit better but only if the arms are out of the equation b:c I have not addressed the lats yet at this point. This post however, is about the pelvis. For the hip there are three elementary movements: 1. Flexion and approx. 90 degrees 2. Small measure of abduction 3. Small measure of later rotation We have an array of muscles sitting here and when the client has anterior hip tightness, it’s hard to stretch the anterior hip or there’s quite a bit of discomfort trying to stretch the anterior suspect that it’s the ligaments sitting here that are part of the problem or they are the problem. Of course, if stretching doesn’t resolve this completely I will do Pdtr to clear the dysfunction from the ligaments so the muscles are functional again One of the biggest clues about the dysfunction sitting on the iliofemoral ligaments is that they hinge forward while walking and they will trying to hinge forward in the kneeling hip flexor stretch or anytime we are trying to move the hips in extension to stretch them. There is a lot more to this description and can be found on my blog at http://www.lovelandyogacorefitness.com/blog

Here in this video I'm going to make the on-the-spot corrections to help provide more space, comfort and a stronger down dog for Vanessa. This is challenging to do in a classroom setting with lots of people. It is achievable. Head over to the website for more info www.lovelandyogacorefitness.com

There’s more to downdog than meets the eye! It’s great to start with what the pose looks like for someone who holds the orthopedic profile for it. What do you do for the person that doesn’t have it? You can’t force them? Stretching won’t necessarily get it done. The pose conforms to the person but you have to know how to conform the pose or simply scrap it altogether. It’s important to take a wider stance with your hands in #downdog to be in the scapular plane for the #shoulder. In general, there is more room to move and we can emphasize the bigger postural muscles to help take the weight. The neck and wrists really don’t like to take that load on and then you’re hanging off passive structures in the shoulders which will tear them up over time What causes the scapula to not rotate upward? Many things could cause the scapula not to rotate properly It’s not always just a weakness in the anterior serratus. It could be from any of the scapular muscles. Could be coming from an unstable clavicle. It could even be coming from the foot! That one is out side the scope of this post but eventually will post about. For now it could be coming from any of the scapular muscles or the clavicle. In class how do you problem solve for this weakness? It’s best to know where it’s coming from and a group setting doesn’t always allow for that. What would be your best guess? How would you adjust the posture to fit the person? Or does down dog get scraped? B/c this pose can do some damage to the neck, shoulders, elbows, wrists and hands. It’s not the pose! It’s the person coming into the pose. There’s also not one solution that fits everyone. You have to think outside of what you were taught b/c those were different people. While I’m relating to yoga. You can do this for any lift, technique or pose.

If the person is shifted forwards in their down dog and the gleno-humoral joint (shoulder) is positioned closer to the hands or over the hands, there is a line of force that is going to pass down through and into the floor via the arms and hands. If I was wanting them to do a charuranga this is close to the position that i want but not for down dog As we start to moving into positions that is asking us to lifting heavier and heavier the weakness will come through and you will see people trying to flex and muscle their way through the pose to stay in the pose. This is at the experience of the neck, shoulder, elbow, and wrists. A strength control weakness will manifest itself as poor control through the upper quarter (peripheral core) lack of ability to keep scapula strong; lack of ability to find length in the spine; poor control at gleno-humeral joint (GHJ)where we see anterior humeral translation We don’t want to use the word form as there are so many components. -Is it a lack of humeral control? -Is it a lack of scapular set strength? -Is it a lack of platform strength? -Or is it a lack of mobility at the thoracic spine? As they lose scapula set; They will begin to expose the GHJ to more torque loading; b/c as they lose that scapular set and it starts to protract, it takes the glenoid away from that “sweet spot” position for down dog. Which means now the relationships between the elbow and the shoulder is going to increase in terms of lever loading. So that loss of scapular set that is going to increase the torque loading at the glenohumeral joint, they are going to start beating their shoulders up overtime Ahh the shoulder! Such a great area to cause lots of problems. Injuries, accidents, posture can change the biomechanics and the efficiency of this complex joint. The shoulder complex is formed by the ✅ Sternum ✅ Clavicle ✅ Scapula ✅ Humerus The are five joints of the shoulder joint: 1. Sternoclavicular Joint (SC joint) 2. Coracoclavicular Joint 3. Acromianclavicular Joint (AC joint) 4. Glen-humeral Joint 5. Scapulo-Thorax—Not a true joint Important Ligaments: while there are many ligaments I’m only highlighting one today because of the associated arm movements with down dog. This is a multilayered issue and only working here is not going to help very much. I would assess all the ligaments and joints for a complete corrective one-on-one session. These arm movements, muscles, ligaments all work together functionally and not in an isolated manner. Corrections done only in an isolated way are not very effective long term. So be careful and look at more than one possibility and understanding the muscular sequence of arm movements and how ligaments can inhibit the muscles altering the sequence is important to learn. A couple of ligaments that plague students with full on pain or discomfort. head to website for full write up http://www.lovelandyogacorefitness.com/blog Two tennis balls taped together with duct tape is a great thoracic spine mobility tool. Head to blog for description http://www.lovelandyogacorefitness.com/blog

Down Dog and Shoulder Pain Part 2 Thoracic Extension In part one of this series I went over briefly the three things I look for in the upper quarter of the body for not only down dog, but this holds true for any time the arms are going over your head. This will be especially important when the upper body is loaded such as table tops, planks but more so for down dog and certain arm and forearm balance postures. In a group setting I am not able to do one-on-one assessments. So, I had to do a lot of one-on-one assessments to learn what the most common physical presentations are, so when you walk in, I can help you find the best place in the posture for you. Remember the pose conforms to you, not the other way around. Forcing your arms up over your head does not stretch the muscles like you might think. It will create compensations in other parts of your body. Namely, your neck and shoulders will take the biggest impact, as well as your low back and knees. The 10-15 degrees of thoracic extension is crucial for shoulder stability. This is the individual vertebrae need to move out of flexion and into the direction of extension to straight. This means that when you add up all the little tiny degrees that the vertebrae are moving it should add up to 10-15 degrees. Most people’s thoracic vertebrae are stuck in flexion b/c the most common workplace is at a desk, in front of a computer. Their workout programming is not balanced and there are even more flexion-based movements, and yoga is no different when it come to this in the sequencing. The posture migrates into a forward head posture, rounded shoulders, rounded upper back, low back pain, a set of flat and dysfunctional glutes, hip pain and tightness, knee pain and unstable ankles, It’s quite the train wreck. Then you go workout or go to a group class and no one is correcting that posture in your movements so it’s making it worse. Or they just don’t give enough strengthening movements in the opposing direction and even then, they are not correcting postural aspects of those poses. For every degree that your thoracic spine goes into flexion the stress of the load (your torso weight and head weight is a load) MUST be taken up by the neck and shoulders. So, when you place your hands closer than the inside of the outer edges of your mat you are already encouraging rounded shoulders, and forward head posture and shifting way more weight into the upper body than is necessary. This is making this an incredible harder pose than it needs to be, b/c most people do not have that mobility or flexibility in the upper. Start with taking your hands farther apart; taking the pinkies to the outer edges of the mat. This places your arm and shoulder in what’s called the scapular plane where there is a lot more available movement for the head of the humerus to move in the shoulder socket. This will allow you to find more length through the spine, so you can come out of roundedness and find more thoracic extension that is available to you and work the bigger muscles of the back that help with improving posture. If you are not able to shift more weight into your legs that is b/c of two things. You don’t know how, a lack of mobility at the ankle and tightness of the hamstrings. For you to make down dog feel as though it’s not a plank movement you HAVE to bend your knees to take the added tension out. Some ppl want the legs straight b/c it feels like the calves are stretching. It might feel that way but if you are shrugging your shoulders, rounding your back and shifting your weight forward this is simply a delusion and you are not stretching anything. If you bend the knees, shift backwards there be a bigger stretch on the upper hamstring attachment at the pelvis and soleus (mid-calf down to the Achilles) stretch. In this position, you will be minimizing the trauma to the passive structures of the wrist, shoulder, neck and strengthening the musculature and improving posture and getting out of pain. This is just one aspect of shoulder stability. We can see how this one aspect can throw off the entire body. Part 3 will be getting into what’s happening at the scapulae or shoulder blade. The shoulder, scapulae and the thoracic spine are all very intimate with each other. One aspect becomes off. The whole thing becomes off. The process of being mindful starts with you and your body. If you don’t pay attention here, you can’t be paying attention anywhere else.

Down dog is one of yoga's signature poses. It is also a deceptive pose as it is one of the hardest poses to master. We have people who find it very easy to get into and it feels like a rest pose to them. While others struggle and it's hard and it hurts. They get frustrated and want to quit. You also have instructors that leave their class in down dog for an unusually long time. Whether you find it hard or easy to be in, down dog is NOT a rest pose. Down dog requires a bit of strength which can be developed over time. The technique behind down dog not only requires strength which can be built but certain mobility and flexibility requirements to minimize injury. This is what is called Orthopedic Profile. The ideal mobility for foundation joints (ankle, hip and thoracic spine) and stability from control joints (knee, low back and shoulder). In this next series of blogs/vlogs I will be going over what the requirements are and how to adjust in the classroom. One-on-one work may be required to help enhance the mobility aspect of the foundation joints and specific exercises may have to be given to create stability around the control joints