One of the most important things to remember when embarking on a Muscle Building Program, is to perform every exercise the correct way. You may believe you are completing the weight bearing routines correctly and are exhausted and strained after your session, but if you are not lifting the weights with the correct stance, you could be causing yourself more harm than good.
A good way to avoid this is by choosing a gym partner to work with you, who can advise you on the correct posture and ensure that your lifting and pressure work is performed in the right way and similarly you can check that he is carrying out his routine correctly. Comparing a different person doing their weights, squats, bench-presses and dead-lifts can only be beneficial.
If you are not able to find someone to help you out like this, use a mirror. You may be rather embarrassed to start and feel others will think you are posing, but, to be honest, this method is used by the majority of body builders for exactly the purpose I described above.
Your Muscle Building Program will give you detailed information on how to build up the muscle tone and what foods to eat, but having a good work-out partner can help you stick to the routines and you will be able to encourage each other to continue.
The most perfect way to make a success of your challenge is to view the Muscle Building Program reviews together and jointly make a decision on the best one for you both. This way you will have the same aims and be at an equal level to help each other out. Of course, if this is not possible, it is still a really good idea to get another person to help on any level. You are far less likely to fail if you are being monitored by another person and the general feed back will keep you going.
Choose a Program that is most suited to your lifestyle, view all the options and discuss them fully before making a decision.
To view the more popular Programs available, Click Here and find out what is available from the impartial Muscle Building Program reviews.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Bud_Truman
Friday 3 December 2010
Thursday 2 December 2010
Active Sitting - More Than Good Desk Posture
For most of us working at our desks long hours, the comfortable, slouched desk posture is our "home-base": it's the one we always return to. However, while slumping in your chair may feel good at the time, poor office posture actually can lead to more back pain problems in the long run.
Sitting isn't at all great for your overall posture and core posture muscles to begin with; studies have shown that prolonged sitting--particularly our slouched desk posture--may contribute to low back pain and chronic back problems.
Whether at a desk working, in a chair eating, or on the couch watching TV, the majority of our waking hours are spent sitting. Sure, we may go to the gym every day, but even that is only for one or two hours. The majority of our body conditioning time is spent -- you guessed it -- in a slouch.
Even from an evolutionary stand point, our body isn't really built for sitting. Humans have been around for almost 200,000 years, but chairs have only been used routinely for the past 500. Our bodies, at the current state of evolution, are simply not built to sit long hours at a time.
To make matters worse, most chairs actually promote poor desk posture, encouraging slouching, rounded upper and lower back, as well as forward head posture. Without the knowledge of basic posture support principles and general good seating habits, long hours of poor desk posture will only lead to lower back pain and chronic back problems down the road.
So what can you do to develop good desk posture and maintain a healthy back? The answer: Active sitting. Active sitting is sitting in a way that engages your body's core musculature. There are various Active Sitting aides available in the market, from exercise ball chairs to discs and pads that can be placed on regular chairs. However, even sitting up straight on the edge of your regular office chair can be a form of active sitting. Basic active sitting devices are useful because their shape allows the hip and pelvis to move on a multi-axial plane, requiring active work from the muscles surrounding them. While it's not as automatic to achieve this on a regular desk chair (perhaps, in part, due the tempting presence of a back rest), it can be done.
The most important element of active sitting is the engagement of the deepest abdominal muscles, the transverse abdominus, which is one of the key posture support muscles. Unlike the rectus abdominis (the most famous abdominal muscle, responsible for that coveted six-pack look), the transverse abdominus cannot be seen or touched. It is deep within the abdomen, wrapped around the torso like a supportive girdle. The major role of the transverse abdominus is to keep the relationship of the torso and limbs stable. Whenever you challenge this relationship, you automatically engage the transverse abdominus.
This is the principle behind most chairs that encourage active sitting. Most of these chairs have a slightly unstable base, encouraging your torso to constantly move and shift ever so slightly. This not only strengthens your core posture support muscles, it also encourages better circulation in the spine, removing waste products and distributing vital nutrients.
Conditioning your body to maintain good sitting posture can not only strengthen your core muscles and give you better posture, but actually alleviate/prevent all sorts of desk posture back pain problems. Most of our back pain problems are caused by poor desk posture, which compresses the spine and robs it of nutrients, leading to brittle, injury-prone vertebral discs. By practicing active sitting you can prevent this downward spiral from beginning (or reverse it, if it has already begun.)
As mentioned in the beginning of the article, simply training yourself to sit straight upright in your chair without back rest is a great way to start. Sit at the edge of your chair with your thighs parallel to the floor and your feet flat on the floor. If your legs don't naturally align like this, you may to sit on a pillow (if your legs are too long) or put a stool or yoga block under your feet (f your legs are too small and don't reach the floor). In this position, tip your pelvis slightly forward to encourage a gentle curve in your lumbar spine, and lengthen through the spine.
Pretend that you have a book on your head, and reach the crown of your head towards the ceiling. This will also bring other important core muscles into action. As you do this, you will feel your spine lengthen and decompress. Every now and then, sway every so slightly, to keep movement and flow in the spine and prevent the stagnation and compression that otherwise comes from sitting.
It will take you a while to build strong desk posture muscles to sit like this throughout the day. Start out doing it four to five times a day for as long as is comfortable, and then build up until you can sit comfortably with a straight back and without back support for most of the day. Remember that practicing proper desk posture is even more important for your core muscles and back than making a trip to the gym each day.
After all, one hour of body conditioning at the gym is easily outweighed by eight hours of body conditioning slouched in front of the computer. If you do practice active sitting at work, you are not only doing your back a huge favor, but you're actually getting paid to "get fit while you sit!"
Eva Norlyk-Herriott Ph.D., LMT, RYT-500 is Kripalu Yoga and at the 500-hr. level in Integrative Yoga Therapy. Eva has a background in health, psychology and as a health writer; she is the author of two books and works as a yoga therapist and bodyworker specializing in back-related issues.
http://www.posturesupportnet.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Eva_Norlyk-Herriott
Sitting isn't at all great for your overall posture and core posture muscles to begin with; studies have shown that prolonged sitting--particularly our slouched desk posture--may contribute to low back pain and chronic back problems.
Whether at a desk working, in a chair eating, or on the couch watching TV, the majority of our waking hours are spent sitting. Sure, we may go to the gym every day, but even that is only for one or two hours. The majority of our body conditioning time is spent -- you guessed it -- in a slouch.
Even from an evolutionary stand point, our body isn't really built for sitting. Humans have been around for almost 200,000 years, but chairs have only been used routinely for the past 500. Our bodies, at the current state of evolution, are simply not built to sit long hours at a time.
To make matters worse, most chairs actually promote poor desk posture, encouraging slouching, rounded upper and lower back, as well as forward head posture. Without the knowledge of basic posture support principles and general good seating habits, long hours of poor desk posture will only lead to lower back pain and chronic back problems down the road.
So what can you do to develop good desk posture and maintain a healthy back? The answer: Active sitting. Active sitting is sitting in a way that engages your body's core musculature. There are various Active Sitting aides available in the market, from exercise ball chairs to discs and pads that can be placed on regular chairs. However, even sitting up straight on the edge of your regular office chair can be a form of active sitting. Basic active sitting devices are useful because their shape allows the hip and pelvis to move on a multi-axial plane, requiring active work from the muscles surrounding them. While it's not as automatic to achieve this on a regular desk chair (perhaps, in part, due the tempting presence of a back rest), it can be done.
The most important element of active sitting is the engagement of the deepest abdominal muscles, the transverse abdominus, which is one of the key posture support muscles. Unlike the rectus abdominis (the most famous abdominal muscle, responsible for that coveted six-pack look), the transverse abdominus cannot be seen or touched. It is deep within the abdomen, wrapped around the torso like a supportive girdle. The major role of the transverse abdominus is to keep the relationship of the torso and limbs stable. Whenever you challenge this relationship, you automatically engage the transverse abdominus.
This is the principle behind most chairs that encourage active sitting. Most of these chairs have a slightly unstable base, encouraging your torso to constantly move and shift ever so slightly. This not only strengthens your core posture support muscles, it also encourages better circulation in the spine, removing waste products and distributing vital nutrients.
Conditioning your body to maintain good sitting posture can not only strengthen your core muscles and give you better posture, but actually alleviate/prevent all sorts of desk posture back pain problems. Most of our back pain problems are caused by poor desk posture, which compresses the spine and robs it of nutrients, leading to brittle, injury-prone vertebral discs. By practicing active sitting you can prevent this downward spiral from beginning (or reverse it, if it has already begun.)
As mentioned in the beginning of the article, simply training yourself to sit straight upright in your chair without back rest is a great way to start. Sit at the edge of your chair with your thighs parallel to the floor and your feet flat on the floor. If your legs don't naturally align like this, you may to sit on a pillow (if your legs are too long) or put a stool or yoga block under your feet (f your legs are too small and don't reach the floor). In this position, tip your pelvis slightly forward to encourage a gentle curve in your lumbar spine, and lengthen through the spine.
Pretend that you have a book on your head, and reach the crown of your head towards the ceiling. This will also bring other important core muscles into action. As you do this, you will feel your spine lengthen and decompress. Every now and then, sway every so slightly, to keep movement and flow in the spine and prevent the stagnation and compression that otherwise comes from sitting.
It will take you a while to build strong desk posture muscles to sit like this throughout the day. Start out doing it four to five times a day for as long as is comfortable, and then build up until you can sit comfortably with a straight back and without back support for most of the day. Remember that practicing proper desk posture is even more important for your core muscles and back than making a trip to the gym each day.
After all, one hour of body conditioning at the gym is easily outweighed by eight hours of body conditioning slouched in front of the computer. If you do practice active sitting at work, you are not only doing your back a huge favor, but you're actually getting paid to "get fit while you sit!"
Eva Norlyk-Herriott Ph.D., LMT, RYT-500 is Kripalu Yoga and at the 500-hr. level in Integrative Yoga Therapy. Eva has a background in health, psychology and as a health writer; she is the author of two books and works as a yoga therapist and bodyworker specializing in back-related issues.
http://www.posturesupportnet.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Eva_Norlyk-Herriott
Wednesday 1 December 2010
Have Back Pain? Why Bad Posture is Usually the Culprit
Traditional medicine tends to focus on issues like herniated discs, degeneration, or arthritis as the leading causes of pain, but the root cause of all of these end-stage problems is posture.
Posture is a static position such as either standing or sitting that can give us key information about the balance of the muscles and joints in your body. Every muscle in your body has an antagonist that performs the opposite motion. When you have muscles on one side of a joint that are stronger or tighter than the opposing muscle, this is called a muscle imbalance.
These muscle imbalances cause distortions in your posture while wearing out your joints prematurely. The spine itself, is only meant to bear a certain amount of the pressure from gravity, and your muscles pick up the rest. In the case of poor posture and muscle imbalances, however, often times the load is shifted dramatically into the area of the joints.
Long term pressure on your joints from these postural imbalances cause agitation and degeneration to the joints, and lead to conditions such as disc bulges, arthritis, and degeneration of the spine.
So, you can see, fixing the end-result will not correct the root cause, which is the postural imbalances which created the issue in the first place. This often leads to treatments that only cause short term relief.
Correcting your posture is essential for back pain relief, and the way to go about this is through correcting your unique muscle imbalances through corrective stretching and corrective exercises designed in a precise way.
Sam Visnic is a Neuromuscular Pain Relief Therapist and Metabolic Typing Advisor who specializes in providing safe and effective corrective exercise solutions for back pain sufferers. Sam is the developer of the "End Your Back Pain Now!" system. For FREE videos on how to end your back pain now visit http://www.SosBackPainRelief.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Sam_Visnic
Posture is a static position such as either standing or sitting that can give us key information about the balance of the muscles and joints in your body. Every muscle in your body has an antagonist that performs the opposite motion. When you have muscles on one side of a joint that are stronger or tighter than the opposing muscle, this is called a muscle imbalance.
These muscle imbalances cause distortions in your posture while wearing out your joints prematurely. The spine itself, is only meant to bear a certain amount of the pressure from gravity, and your muscles pick up the rest. In the case of poor posture and muscle imbalances, however, often times the load is shifted dramatically into the area of the joints.
Long term pressure on your joints from these postural imbalances cause agitation and degeneration to the joints, and lead to conditions such as disc bulges, arthritis, and degeneration of the spine.
So, you can see, fixing the end-result will not correct the root cause, which is the postural imbalances which created the issue in the first place. This often leads to treatments that only cause short term relief.
Correcting your posture is essential for back pain relief, and the way to go about this is through correcting your unique muscle imbalances through corrective stretching and corrective exercises designed in a precise way.
Sam Visnic is a Neuromuscular Pain Relief Therapist and Metabolic Typing Advisor who specializes in providing safe and effective corrective exercise solutions for back pain sufferers. Sam is the developer of the "End Your Back Pain Now!" system. For FREE videos on how to end your back pain now visit http://www.SosBackPainRelief.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Sam_Visnic
Tuesday 30 November 2010
Posture Muscle Strength Activities
If you're planning on engaging in postural muscle strength activities in an effort to improve your posture, you should probably understand what you're trying to achieve. If all it took to improve your posture was exercise, why do so many people at the gym have bad posture?
I know, I know, not everyone at the gym is in good shape. Still, check out the people that are of average height and weight with average muscle tone. Shouldn't they have decent posture? It certainly makes sense that someone who sits at a computer all day and never exercises might develop bad posture, but how is it possible to work out and still not change your posture?
Typically, the exercises that people choose are not postural muscle strength activities, they are just activities. If rolling your shoulders forward and slouching are causing your problem, why would you hop on an exercise bike and slump over the handles? You are still maintaining the bad posture even while you exercise!
What about running? Running doesn't necessarily cause you to have bad posture, but there isn't a lot of back strengthening going on during this activity.
If you're going to set out to improve your back and your posture, choose postural muscle strength activities that actually work your postural muscles. Swimming certainly can increase back strength. Have you seen the big latismus dorsi muscles on Olympic swimmers?
When heading to the gym, realize that working the front of your body really means that you are not working the back. Work on your back muscles twice as much (at least) as you work your front. Many people (mostly men) like to be able to look in the mirror and see their big chest muscles and big bicep muscles. There's certainly nothing wrong with that as long as you're not sacrificing your back muscles for the sake of your front.
This really just means that if you want the big chest and arms, you're going to have to put in more work on your back muscles. The goal is to have good posture and thus be free of pain and look your best! In order to do this, you're going to have to give your postural muscles a fighting chance by strengthening them as often as possible.
Dr. Natalie Cordova, a chiropractor and posture expert, wants to help you change your posture for good. Learn to improve posture at http://www.ImproveMyPosture.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Natalie_Cordova_D.C.
I know, I know, not everyone at the gym is in good shape. Still, check out the people that are of average height and weight with average muscle tone. Shouldn't they have decent posture? It certainly makes sense that someone who sits at a computer all day and never exercises might develop bad posture, but how is it possible to work out and still not change your posture?
Typically, the exercises that people choose are not postural muscle strength activities, they are just activities. If rolling your shoulders forward and slouching are causing your problem, why would you hop on an exercise bike and slump over the handles? You are still maintaining the bad posture even while you exercise!
What about running? Running doesn't necessarily cause you to have bad posture, but there isn't a lot of back strengthening going on during this activity.
If you're going to set out to improve your back and your posture, choose postural muscle strength activities that actually work your postural muscles. Swimming certainly can increase back strength. Have you seen the big latismus dorsi muscles on Olympic swimmers?
When heading to the gym, realize that working the front of your body really means that you are not working the back. Work on your back muscles twice as much (at least) as you work your front. Many people (mostly men) like to be able to look in the mirror and see their big chest muscles and big bicep muscles. There's certainly nothing wrong with that as long as you're not sacrificing your back muscles for the sake of your front.
This really just means that if you want the big chest and arms, you're going to have to put in more work on your back muscles. The goal is to have good posture and thus be free of pain and look your best! In order to do this, you're going to have to give your postural muscles a fighting chance by strengthening them as often as possible.
Dr. Natalie Cordova, a chiropractor and posture expert, wants to help you change your posture for good. Learn to improve posture at http://www.ImproveMyPosture.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Natalie_Cordova_D.C.
Upper Back Pain Due To Postural Muscles
While there are many reasons for someone to improve their posture, it is often when the person begins to experience postural muscle upper back pain that they finally decide the problem has gotten bad enough to address.
While improving appearance, standing up taller, and avoiding the dowager hump are worthy goals, it is often usually when pain has occurred and simply will not go away that someone understands how their poor posture has been affecting them.
How can you determine if your upper back pain is related to your posture? How can you tell if you are truly experiencing postural muscle upper back pain? Most people describe the pain a burning, one that will not go away without stopping their work activities for the day or just being able to go home and rest.
If your pain is related to your posture, you typically feel better when you have a chance to lay down for a time. This removes gravity from the equation and requires no work from your muscles. If you are still sitting up and watching t.v., your pain may continue because gravity is still actively pulling on these aggravated muscles.
This is where people get the idea that what they really need is a posture support, not posture exercise to alleviate their problem. After all, they're using their postural muscles all day right? Why work them out more?
However, using that argument is like saying that you don't need to go to the gym to build bigger arms because you use your arms all day. You know that going to the gym and lifting weights will make your arms stronger and make simple daily tasks a breeze. After lifting fifty pound dumbbells, holding up your cup of coffee is nearly effortless.
This is the same philosophy behind doing specific posture exercise to help alleviate postural muscle upper back pain. Gravity is pulling on your muscles, more specifically your head, all day long. Building strength in your muscles will make their job easier. It will reduce the strain that is needed to perform simple daily tasks, making them a breeze.
Dr. Natalie Cordova, a chiropractor and posture expert, wants to help you change your posture for good. Learn to improve posture at http://www.ImproveMyPosture.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Natalie_Cordova_D.C.
While improving appearance, standing up taller, and avoiding the dowager hump are worthy goals, it is often usually when pain has occurred and simply will not go away that someone understands how their poor posture has been affecting them.
How can you determine if your upper back pain is related to your posture? How can you tell if you are truly experiencing postural muscle upper back pain? Most people describe the pain a burning, one that will not go away without stopping their work activities for the day or just being able to go home and rest.
If your pain is related to your posture, you typically feel better when you have a chance to lay down for a time. This removes gravity from the equation and requires no work from your muscles. If you are still sitting up and watching t.v., your pain may continue because gravity is still actively pulling on these aggravated muscles.
This is where people get the idea that what they really need is a posture support, not posture exercise to alleviate their problem. After all, they're using their postural muscles all day right? Why work them out more?
However, using that argument is like saying that you don't need to go to the gym to build bigger arms because you use your arms all day. You know that going to the gym and lifting weights will make your arms stronger and make simple daily tasks a breeze. After lifting fifty pound dumbbells, holding up your cup of coffee is nearly effortless.
This is the same philosophy behind doing specific posture exercise to help alleviate postural muscle upper back pain. Gravity is pulling on your muscles, more specifically your head, all day long. Building strength in your muscles will make their job easier. It will reduce the strain that is needed to perform simple daily tasks, making them a breeze.
Dr. Natalie Cordova, a chiropractor and posture expert, wants to help you change your posture for good. Learn to improve posture at http://www.ImproveMyPosture.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Natalie_Cordova_D.C.
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