Refine and Repeat

If you can get up out of a chair without using your arms to push yourself up, great! Never stop.

If you can’t, and you’re able-bodied, start now. Push yourself to the front of the chair and get up.  Use less arms, more legs, day by day. Maybe lean forward a bit, but with a straight back. If you really have problems, talk to your doctor or health care practitioner who might be able to help. If you’re swallowed up in a big couch, try pushing yourself to the front as I mentioned.

Ideally, you’d like to use your whole body (not just your thighs) and imagining that you’re  rising up from the crown of your head can help create that whole-body feeling. There are other tricks for that, I suppose — use what works for you.

At any rate, you want to be able to walk unassisted as long as you can, and doing this will help.

My brother-in-law owns a Wii system with one of those balance boards. I’m not a videogame player, but I thought I’d try it out. Though the calories burned during a session don’t add up to much in my opinion (25 calories! Woo-hoo!), the thing was kind of fun in a Mario Brothers kind of way. Sure, there are some yoga-like programs and pushup/plank exercises available, but it’s really not that strenuous. I’d rather do some serious exercise to lose weight, and I wouldn’t say that this is serious exercise.

However, the balance board is pretty sensitive. I played a Wii game that required me to be perfectly balanced on the board so my little avatar could balance on a big ball and juggle. The problem was … whenever I thought I was perfectly balanced, I actually had more weight on my left foot, so the poor little avatar kept rolling off the stage. Huh. I knew that I habitually stood with more weight on my left side, but thought I had fixed it. Guess not. This might explain why I still have minor aches and pains in my left hip and knee.

I like the way the balance board required me to focus inwardly, to make tiny corrections to my posture. This is necessary training for the internal fixes of tai chi and zhan zhuang, and maybe digital feedback can help us understand just how small the necessary corrections are, at least until we can do it on our own.

(I don’t think a traditional balance board would highlight the imbalance, because I might have my whole body off to one side of the fulcrum to compensate, and I’d be too busy trying not to fall off the thing to make tiny adjustments to my balance.)

I was eventually able to balance on the Wii board by relaxing down and sort of vibrating the pressure between left and right foot, but it might have been a little too … active. Hm. I might just buy the silly thing, just for the balance games … and for the game where you flap your arms like a chicken.

Alexander Technique , to me at least, seems to be based on the idea that we often do unhealthy stuff without knowing it. We may think we’re standing, walking or running efficiently, but when we stop to analyze it, we find we’re out of balance, working inefficiently or causing ourselves pain.

Here’s Caprice’s experience with Alexander and running:

“I have been running for a relatively short time, four years this February. Every year is a little different. I have a feeling this year will be significantly different.

When I started my pilates teacher training in 2003, I was fortunate enough to be working with a teacher who is also an Alexander Technique teacher. She incorporated Alexander Technique into our pilates teacher training so that we would be able to work with ourselves and not injure ourselves while we are teaching. This was the beginning of a very important change.

Alexander Technique was developed by F.M. Alexander, an Australian actor, who identified that he (and we) have a “debauched” kinesthetic awareness. We think we’re doing all the right things with our bodies, and that we know where our bodies are at any given moment as we move through space, accomplishing any task. Really, we’re not. We started moving around as soon as we entered this world, and we developed movement patterns and habits that are what we consider “normal” for us. This version of “normal” could really mean that we have tense jaw muscles, shoulders that are up around our ears, a poor breathing pattern, an aching lower back, tight hips, sore knees, toes that grip the inside of our shoes… the list could go on and on. Alexander Technique helps us become aware of these things that we do and gives us the opportunity to divest ourselves of these habits, even if only for a few seconds. Long enough for our neurological system to realize that things could be different. Long enough for our bodies to be sent into a slight state of flux while it processes the new inputs our brain is receiving.

During my almost four years of running, I have had a number of injuries surface that I have had to address with Alexander Technique, massage therapy, pilates and rest. My last period of rest lasted about three months, and concluded when I started running regularly again at the end of August.

In September, I started taking an Alexander Teacher Training course. Most of the course is very experiential, though there is a lot of discussion of the theory behind the work. My running has already changed. For example, I noticed some time ago that when I run, my left foot and my right foot do not land the same way. My left hip and my right hip do not feel the same. My upper body does not feel like it is rotating equally to the left and right with every step. This past Sunday, I was out for a 12k run. I had some aching in my left knee for the last two or three kilometres, but it didn’t feel signficantly different from the occasional aching I get when I’m running on a day when I’m feeling a little “off.” By Sunday night, I was limping, taking Advil, and icing my left knee. I rested Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. I was fortunate enough to have scheduled an Alexander Technique session with my teacher on Wednesday, and during that session, I experienced a significant change that made me feel two things: my midline felt like it moved way over to the right, and my left footfall changed such that I supinated less when I walked.

Optimistic, I headed out for a run this morning.

I have to say, this morning was a near-perfect running experience. Not only was it completely pain-free, but I experienced changes in my gait while I was running. I kept reminding myself to let go of muscular tension that was unnecessary, to keep my hips free, think though my whole foot, allow my ankles to free so that my feet could roll underneath my tibiae. It was really great. AND I had a negative split without even trying.

My Alexander Teacher has explained to me that while I’m going through my Alexander Teacher Training, my body will be in a state of flux. This means, while my neurological system is adjusting to all the new inputs it is receiving, it is quite possible that more aches and pains will show up that will have to be addressed. My hope is that when my training is finished, in July of 2012, that my kinesthetic sense will be significantly less “debauched.””

Okay, so the post title’s a stretch. – SR

On the weekend, my eighty-years-young mother Betty pointed me to last Friday’s Toronto Star , which featured a nice article on seniors growing in age to 100 and beyond.

Here’s an excerpt:
Jaring Timmerman credits GEDS: genes, exercise, diet and spirit. He’s 100 and has four world records for swimming, along with 170 medals and awards in a sport he just took up at age 80. He still exercises and swims three times a week and is always looking ahead to the next competition – in this case, the 2010 Canadian Masters Swim Championships in Nanaimo, B.C. next May. Then there are the world championships and new medal platforms to climb.

“There haven’t been any records set yet for 105- to 110-year-olds,” the Winnipeg resident says with a smirk. “Dad, if you just float, you will win,” quips his son, Donald, who lives in Oakville.

… and here’s the article.

Exercise, diet and spirit, eh?

As I was bashing a little black squash ball about a big white room (not padded) I made a discovery.

As you all know, one gets more pleasure from an activity when one does it well. Although some activities can be pleasurable even when flailing about aimlessly. But enough nostalgia. Coach Barb had once told me that one of the ways to hit the ball well in squash is to feel the ball on the racquet — not to just get rid of it as soon as possible. Give it time to feel the percussion, feel the spring, make it last. When you feel it, you stroke it, you don’t whack it. And she was right (of course), on the odd occasion when I was able to make that happen.

But … that cue (to feel it) didn’t stick with me well enough to ensure consistent success. My fault. So, after many weeks of accidental whacking (don’t go there) I found the cue:

The Sound.

And there it was. Just as a musical instrument has a “center”, a place where you get the best sound out of it by blowing or plucking just right, so does a racquet. They call this the sweet spot, and though tennis pundits seem to spend more time on it than squash pundits, it exists nonetheless.

So, I made the Sound, and made the stroke as a result. Though not yet A-player-worthy (maybe E), a lot of other components of a decent stroke fell into place. Or at least they started to fall into place, since making the sound resonated (sorry) with me, allowing me to practice the other components of the stroke with less stress. If I faltered, I could always come back to the Sound. It was reminiscent of the Jedi mind trick which helped me play trumpet a little better.

What’s the point of this?

Well, there’s more than one way to teach something. Everyone has affinities (e.g. music, golf) which influence the ease with which certain cues resonate with them. For example: I was showing Caprice the Push posture in Tai Chi, which looks like you’re doing a calf stretch, or pushing down a wall. Pretty much. So she could feel the whole-body push, not just a triceps push, I asked her to “inflate her sacrum”. Immediately she got it — whole-body feeling with ease. Now she’s used to being body-conscious and knows what a sacrum is, but that was just the right cue for her. Other teachers might say “drop your tailbone”, “sink your ch’i”, “relax”, “expand”, but in this case, “inflate your sacrum” worked.

So if you’re working on something and having trouble internalizing it, try to find another cue — one that works for you. It could be focusing on a less-used body part (often the sacrum), imitating a marionette, imagining yourself in a fluid, or whatever applies to what you’re doing. Sure, try the existing imagery suggested by your teacher, but feel free to find another. We’re all different, and as adults, it behooves us to take an active interest in our education. Though we may have the best teachers and coaches, they can only go so far.

It seems that 30% of Chinese are now overweight or obese. (In 2004, 58.8% of Canadians were overweight or obese) This, to me at least, shows that simply being Chinese or living in China has nothing to do with health, or at least healthy body weight. I do take issue with the article’s statement that Chinese people are thin because of the poverty due to Mao’s policies, implying that the Chinese people are malnourished and would be fat if they weren’t poor. I don’t associate their obesity with prosperity — I believe it’s the result of the availability of North American-style foods and the younger Chinese people’s associating prosperity with an American lifestyle.

To be sure, I recall that the Chinese culture has associated fat with prosperity in the past, since only rich people could afford to be fat, and that this idea may still be held by many. I suppose that the only way to determine the North American influence on this weight of Chinese people would be to determine whether the population is growing fat on American food or Chinese food.

But of course, the other side of the coin is probably an increasingly sedentary lifestyle. To combat childhood obesity, they were instituting mandatory dancing over there in 2007.

By the way, a new word has been invented: “globesity“.

(Full disclosure: I need to lose seven-to-ten pounds and drastically reduce sugars and cholesterol from my (mostly North American) diet. Eat better exercise more. Yessirree.)

As most of us know, imagining that you’re doing an activity (imaging) can help you improve your performance at that activity. Athletes have done this for years, but how about this: what if imaging a strength-training exercise can increase your strength almost as much as actually doing the exercise?

A study has shown that if you do the imaging under circumstances similar to those under which the real exercise would be performed (smelly gym and all), you’d get similar results to those you’d get if you actually performed the exercise.

“The percentage increase in weight lifted was 23.29% in the PETTLEP imagery group, 28.03% in the combination group, and 26.56% in the physical practice group. The traditional imagery group and control group increased by 13.75% and 5.12%, respectively.”

In other words, pumping iron increased strength by 26%, but imaging with this technique increased it by 24%. The PETTLEP imagers first pumped iron while being viedotaped, then did the imaging while sitting at the bicep curl machine and watching the tape, recalling as many bicep-curling sensations as they could. It seems that recalling the physical sensations was very important.

Here’s the study. “PETTLEP” is the name of the imaging technique.

This has terrific potential for rehabilitation, although someone who could not do the exercise (and thus could not be videotaped) would not perform as well.

By the way, this actually ties in somewhat with Yiquan’s imaging techniques as written in J.P. Lau’s Yiquan Beginner’s Guide. Interesting.

To get healthy, or at least in shape, a lot of us run and lift weights. This seems to make sense, based on a few paradigms: 1) you use it or lose it, 2) an active life is more natural than a sedentary life, and 3) the body adapts when stressed physically, making itself stronger.

I can definitely buy into this in terms of bringing one’s physical activity up to a healthy level. For example, a computer programmer might have to do some weights to bring himself up to the level of a construction worker or farmhand or Tom Hanks after some time on a desert island. I just don’t assume that marathon running and extreme bodybuilding, by themselves, lead to high degree of health. That sort of stuff seems to be unbalanced to me, especially the bodybuilding. Why curl 100 pounds? So you can … curl 100 pounds? Sure, do some resistance training to increase circulation, burn fat, gain energy, and so on … but once it starts to only serve itself, I think it’s time to take a more balanced approach. To my mind, such an approach would include more flexibility training along with compound movements like lunges and push-ups. I like those because they seem to simulate real-life activities and use more muscles naturally.

But it seems the Chinese (to make a vast generalization) take it a step farther. According to sources including Wong Kiew Kit’s Complete Book of Tai Chi Chuan, they believe that running and lifting weights to get healthy is a backwards approach. They see those activities as the results of good health, not the causes. They believe that you should get healthy first, through breathing, eating, qigong and meditation. Those activities would then allow you to run and lift weights when the situation called for it…. which, if we think about it, makes sense. If we adopted this approach, we could increase our level of fitness so we could rise to the occasion when we need to run somewhere, help with lifting, or just approach the energy needs of the day with pleasure, not dread.

I wonder what they think of exercising to lose weight? To burn off fat that wasn’t a good idea to ingest in the first place?

What do you think?

Lately, I’ve been uncomfortable walking in my big honking old-white-guy mall-walking shoes that apparently mark me as an American tourist in Europe. But they’re walking shoes! And they’re by New Balance! Hm. What to do. So I tried walking about in my little Tai Chi slippers, which kind of look like those water slip-ons. They were surprisingly comfortable, more so than the big walking shoes, despite their sole (ouch) padding coming from the odor-eater insole. 

So, it’s time to change my shoes. You’re welcome.

I’ve decided to forego the Vibram toesy boots for now, mostly because my feet don’t look like those in the photo in the previous post. I now believe that with my longer toes, the Vibram shoes would be uncomfortable, especially for running, which I’d like to try again, to get a regular cardio pattern going.

So yes, I caved to the conventional lock-step foot-mitten oppressive shoe regime. Well, not quite. The path I’ve trod has led me, as you’ve probably read, to believe that we weren’t meant to strike the ground with the heel while running. This means that a mid-foot or forefoot strike is most biomechanically efficient. And that’s all that counts to me, health-wise. If it’s efficient and balanced, letting flexible body parts take impact loads, hey, I’m all for it.

… which brings us to the Adizero Pro.

First, this thing is light. It doesn’t feel like a shoe, but more like a paper mockup of a shoe. But how does it feel? Well, it’s definitely got a forefoot bias, so much that I felt myself lifting off my heels and onto my forefoot in the store. It made me want to run right there. I assumed that was a good thing, so I bought the shoes knowing that I could return them if they showed no wear. Which was fine: no street wear, but the treadmill would be okay.

On the treadmill, I found that my gait had changed. Whether it was the shoes, Tai Chi, Zhan Zhuang or just going barefoot around the house, I found myself landing on the forefoot, that is, the part you stand on when you raise your heels off the ground. I only ran for about 10 minutes (at 6 mph), so it’s not a serious test, but it felt fine. And there was no compulsion to stretch out and strike with the heel. Time for more testing.

Now here’s the kicker: this shoe is marketed to elite runners. Now here’s what Caprice said about that: 

“Elite runners run properly.”

Wow. That makes perfect sense. That’s what makes them elite. It’s not that they’re Lance Armstrong the mutant, but that they run properly. So you too can be an “elite runner”!

I’ll keep you posted. 

By the way, I wore shoes just like these (at left) when running the 1500m and 3000m in high school. Loved ’em. Still have ’em. Let’s see how the Adizeros work on longer distances.

Caprice posted an article from the Toronto Star on Facebook recently. In it, the author takes a look at barefoot running, which seems to be enjoying a resurgence, if you can call it that. The original “surgence” may have been in prehistoric times, for all I know.

Personally, in theory at least, I believe in the virtues of barefoot running. I believe that our bodies evolved to resist forces through the spring-like nature of tendons and ligaments, not through the direct application of force to bone from, say, striking the ground with the heel first. The extra cushioning in the heels of running shoes was designed to protect runners who strike heel first, yet (many? most?) running coaches don’t seem to address the problem with heel striking in the first place. After all, if the shoes are all heel-padded, then heel-striking must be normal, right?

(Don’t get me started on how marketers creates situations that consumers believe are normal or healthy.)

But then again, it would be silly to rush into a barefoot marathon without working up to it. All sorts of problems could crop up. Just so we’re clear.

Anyway, in high school, I took up running, encouraged by the fact that I had a pretty efficient style back then, and I loved running. I was doing a training program with long runs of almost an hour. Then I quit, because I was falling asleep at work, thinking it was because I was running too much. It never occurred to me that the job was boring. Fast forward to a few years ago, when I was in training for a marathon, after having tried to return to running over the intervening decades years. Halfway through a 9K run, I started feeling pain in my left foot, which eventually moved up my leg to my hip. Within a kilometre or two, I was reduced to limping back to my car. It was pretty painful. The prognosis was the beginnings of plantar fasciitis, but it could be staved off with orthotics. Which I had to wear in all my shoes, or transfer between my shoes. I was also told not to go around the house barefoot. And I quit running.

Fast forward to now. I go barefoot around the house all the time, and haven’t worn orthotics since I started going heavy on the Tai Chi about a year after the injury. My Tai Chi shoes are like slippers or almost-no-sole driving shoes. Nothing to them. And I don’t feel pain in the ol’ plantar fascia any more.

But. Earlier, I said I believe in barefoot running “in theory”. Will I actually run barefoot? Not in the city — too many pointy things on the ground. How about in those nothing Tai Chi shoes? Or in those fancy Nike Frees? Or maybe in the oh-so-cute Vibram Five Fingers, seen at the top of this post? Maybe armed with Danny Dreyer’s Chi Running techniques? Stay tuned.