Lower legs
Most people don't know they are in big trouble. Do you have the following postural faults?
Sitting is the new smoking - have you heard this yet?
It has become a trend in the health and fitness industry to focus on good posture and body alignment and it is really important. I mentioned earlier that nutrition might be the easiest way to start your new healthier lifestyle. If you have started to eliminate the potential bad stuff from your diet but you still don't feel the spark to start exercising what should you do next? Find ways to move more or simply to stand more. But be careful not to cause more trouble with horrible posture. Fix your sitting and standing posture. HOW? I will give you some easy and understandable tips so keep reading. There is a lot of information to take in so give yourself some time to absorb it.
Ankles
Remove your shoes and socks. Makes sure your toes are pointing forwards. Stand relaxed on a flat surface and look at your feet. Do you have pronated ankles? This means flat feet and collapsed arch of your foot. Well lets fix it. At least start fixing it. It might save your ankles, knees and hips, lower back, upper back, shoulders and neck from a disaster later in life. This is very common and it has a lot to do with our horrible footwear and our sedentary lifestyle. I think our ankles are extremely hard to control and I personally struggle with ankles the most. That is why we are starting with this part of the body. And because once you start fixing your ankle position you are fixing a lot of stuff without realising.
Next I want you to lift your toes but try to keep your weight equally on your heels and ball of your foot. Make sure you are pressing the base of your big toe against the floor as well as your pinky toe's. Imagine these three points creating are triangular shape and each point with equal amount of body weight on them. Can you see that the muscles of your foot activate and your missing arch is suddenly back? WHOA. Your ankle position is correct or at least much closer to what it should be. It is very difficult to collapse your ankle and lift your toes.
Relax and see the difference. Lift your toes up again. Start focusing on this arch and foot activation and try to learn to stand with your arch activated - without lifting your toes eventually. This is just a trick to get your ankles straight and it works most of the time. I want you to understand what is a straight ankle and uncollapsed arch. Once you begin to get the standing then start walking. Barefoot as much as possible.
Knees
People image created by Kjpargeter - Freepik.com
There are other types of issues as well but I am focusing to the most common problem. Especially if you have a collapsed arch you might have knees that are "crossed eyed". How to detect that? You might need a friend for this. And a marker. And a camera.
Expose (sounds worse than it is) your knees and ask your friend to draw lines to these dimples at the back of your knees like in this picture. The lines should be facing straight towards the back and not to the outside like you can see on the left. If this is the case it means that your thigh bone is internally rotated and it will strain your knee tremendously. It is not an easy fix by any means but you can enhance the misalignment by squeezing your but muscles and turn your knees out. Keep your feet straight and toes pointing straight and screw the feet to the floor.
Can you see the difference in this picture? My husband had a visitor while I was writing the text and he had no idea of the issue. Casually I asked him to take of his socks and expose his knees with a marker in my hand. Never visit my house if you don't want to know.
Learning to stand again is just the beginning. Learning to walk again is seriously difficult but also fun. Using soft tissue techniques to release stiff tissue around your body parts that you have been abusing without knowing will help but movement is the most effective way to start recovery.
Make sure to follow me if you want to learn easy ways to improve your posture. 2/3 is about your hips and ribs. Stay tuned.
If you happen to have other types of issues in your tissues than the ones I covered here (whoa I am funny like that) you can comment and ask questions.
Keen to see what you cover in future posts. I'm a physical therapist and one of the things my colleagues and I spend a lot of time on is gait and posture. Our sessions are short and our clients are more likely to do something if it gives them faster, more noticeable results. I'll look into posture more and see what else I can contribute.
I am obsessed witht posture and body alignment. I agree 100% that short and efficient exercises are the best and I also know most people won’t do lengthy work outs at home.
Do you practise anything?
I am a Personal trainer and a massage therapist and I play and coach roller derby if that was the question :D A lot of my inspiration comes from Katie Bowman, Kelly Starrett and Jill Miller but also from yoga, FUSTRA ( this is a method in Finland that might be unknown to you) and fascia related literature and research (Gil Hedley and David Lesondak to mention a few names). Functional medicine is also close to my heart. Human body is so fascinating and how simple it can be to help people with years of chronic pain. I love it.
Awesome glad I'm following your blog. You're right I haven't heard of it but I'd be keen to read up about FUSTRA. Ditto on the human body. I think I fell in love with chronic pain when I helped a lady with pain that she recalls started in the same year I was born.