This Christmas we are all going to get a bit stressed.
Perhaps you will not be able to do your usual workout and your routine is disrupted.
You can however do this breathing exercise to relax you before you verbalise your stress in an unhelpful way!
The 4–7–8 Breathing Technique
This breathing
technique developed by Dr. Andrew Weil is a great way to elicit the relaxation response
that gets more effective over time.
It is a direct
influencer on the Autonomic nervous system, shifting energy from the
sympathetic to the parasympathetic system, with many physiological benefits,
including lowered blood pressure and heart rate, increased circulation to the
extremities and skin, and improved digestion.
It can also help you let go of
emotional upset and cravings.
How to do the 4-7-8
Breathing Exercise
1. Place the tip of
your tongue against the ridge behind and above your front teeth and keep it there
through the whole exercise.
2. Exhale completely
through your mouth, making a whoosh sound.
3. Close your mouth and
inhale deeply and quietly through the nose to a (silent) count of 4.
4. Hold your breath for
a count of 7.
5. Exhale audibly
through your mouth to a count of 8.
6. Repeat steps 3, 4,
and 5 for a total of four breaths.
This breathing practice
can be done in any position; if seated, keep your back straight.
Note that you
always inhale quietly through your nose and exhale audibly through your mouth.
The tip of your tongue stays in position the whole time. Exhalation takes twice
as long as inhalation.
The absolute time you
spend on each phase is not important; the ratio of 4:7:8 is important.
If you have
trouble holding your breath, speed the exercise up but keep to the ratio of
4:7:8 for the three phases.
Practice the exercise
at least twice a day and, in addition, whenever you feel stressed, anxious, or
off centre.
Do not do more than
four breaths at one time for the first month of practice but repeat the exercise
as often as you wish.
After a month, if you
are comfortable with it, increase to eight breaths each time.
Dr Andy Weil, the Bulletproofbodies team salute you.
Over the Christmas
Period you will be sitting for long periods either in front of the TV, driving
to somewhere or doing a “Sam Briggs” style Marathon Row on Christmas Day.
All of which are sitting!
So take 2 minutes out of your busy schedule to mobilise your body with the following 4 exercises:
1.Passive to Active Hang
2.Jefferson curl down
3.Deep Squat and Reach
4.Easy Bridge
1. Passive to active hang
The passive part of the hang stretches the muscles of the Pectorals and Lat Dorsi.
The active part of the hang isometrically strengthens the depressors of the scapula.
2. The Jefferson Curl or controlled roll down
This is a controlled global spinal flexion exercise that starts in the standing position.
You then put your chin on your chest and spinally flex from cervical, through Thoracic then finally into Lumbar.
3.Deep Squat and Reach
Squat down as deep as you can.
For balance you might need to hold onto something for balance.
Reach up with one arm and rotate your Torso towards that arm.
4.Easy Bridge
This is a tough exercise if you are tight on your anterior structures (Pecs, Abs, Hip Flexors and Quads).
Sit on the floor with your hands behind you and fingers facing away.
Bend your knees at 90 degrees.
In one movement, lift up your pelvis as high as you can and at the same time push down through straight arms and extend your shoulders.
Whatever you are doing, try these 4 mobility drills for 30 seconds each.
The Hip Hinge movement
is used in many movements including Deadlifts, Good Mornings and Kettle Bell
Swings.
Many of these movements
will be performed many times with the stresses of speed, load, intensity and
the resulting fatigue.
So how do we keep hip
hinge function optimal for multi-rep movements.
What is a Hip Hinge?
The hinge involves a
flexion/extension movement that originates in the hips and involves a posterior
weight shift. When done correctly, it
can be one of the more powerful movement patterns you can perform.
Often considered one of
the primal movement patterns (one that we are all physiologically designed to
execute with ease), the hip hinge offers many benefits:
It opens up hamstring
flexibility and offers mobility through the hip joint
Builds symmetry and
reduces injury
Shortens the learning
curve when introducing more complex movements/exercises
Serves as a great
assessment to diagnose flexibility/mobility issues as well as a weak or
unstable core area
Is great for un-doing
some of the damage that prolonged sitting can do to the body
Unfortunately, many people
have no concept on how to hinge properly or disregard the movement as
unnecessary because of it looks too “simple.”
But, as legendary
strength coach and author Dan John said,
“The truth is, the hinge, in its own
right, is more powerful than the squat.”
How To Hip Hinge:
The first thing to
understand is the difference between a hinge and a squat:
Usain Bolt is "the
world's fastest man" because he has the record for the 100 metre sprint at
9.58 seconds.
But could runners go
faster?
That’s a surprisingly
difficult question to answer, and ploughing through the record books is of
little help. “People have played with the statistical data so much and made so
many predictions. I don’t think people who work on mechanics take them very
seriously,” says John Hutchinson, who studies how animals move at the Royal
Veterinary College in London, UK.
The problem is that the
progression of sprinting records is characterised by tortoise-like lulls and
hare-like… well… sprints. People are getting faster, but in an unpredictable
way. From 1991 to 2007, eight athletes chipped 0.16 seconds off the record.
Bolt did the same in just over one year. Before 2008, mathematician Reza
Noubary calculated that “the ultimate time for [the] 100 meter dash is 9.44
seconds.” Following Bolt’s Beijing performance, he told Wired that the
prediction “would probably go down a little bit”.
John Barrow from the
University of Cambridge – another mathematician – has identified three ways in
which Bolt could improve his speed: being quicker off the mark; running with a
stronger tailwind; and running at higher altitudes where thinner air would
exert less drag upon him. These tricks may work, but they’re also somewhat
unsatisfying. We really want to know whether flexing muscles and bending joints
could send a sprinter over the finish line in 9 seconds, without relying on
environmental providence.
To answer that, we have
to look at the physics of a sprinting leg. And that means running headfirst
into a wall of ignorance. “It’s tougher to get a handle on sprinting mechanics
than on feats of strength or endurance,” says Peter Weyand from Southern
Methodist University, who has been studying the science of running for decades.
By comparison, Weyand says that we can tweak a cyclist’s weight, position and
aerodynamic shape, and predict how that will affect their performance in the
Tour de France. “We know down to 1%, or maybe even smaller, what sort of
performance bumps you’ll get,” he says. “In sprinting, it’s a black hole. You
don’t have those sorts of predictive relationships.”
Our ignorance is
understandable. By their nature, sprints are very short, so scientists can only
make measurements in a limited window of time. On top of that, the factors that
govern running speed are anything but intuitive.
Sole power
Weyand divides each
cycle of a runner’s leg into what happens when their foot is in the air, and
what happens when it’s on the ground. The former is surprisingly irrelevant.
Back in 2000, Weyand showed that, at top speed, every runner takes around a
third of a second to pick their foot up and put it down again. “It’s the same
from Usain Bolt to Grandma,” he says. “She can’t run as fast as him but at her
top speed, she’s repositioning her foot at the same speed.”
That third of a second
in the air – the swing time – is probably close to a biological limit. Weyand
thinks that there is very little that people can do to improve on it, with a
notable exception. Oscar Pistorius, the South African double-amputee, runs on
artificial carbon-fibre legs that each weigh less than half of what a normal
fleshy limb would do. With this lighter load, he can swing his legs around 20%
faster than a runner with intact limbs, moving at the same speed.
For most runners
though, speed is largely determined by how much force they can apply when their
foot is on the ground. They have two simple options for running faster: hit the
ground harder, or exert the same force over a longer period.
The second option
partly explains why greyhounds and cheetahs are so fast. They maximise their
time on the ground using their bendy backbones. As their front feet land, their
spines bend and collapse, so their back halves spend more time in the air
before they have to come down. Then, their spines decompress, giving their
front halves more time in the air and their back legs more time on the ground.
Such tricks aren’t
available to us two-legged humans, but technology provides alternatives. In the
1990s, speed skaters started using a new breed of “clap skates” where the blade
is hinged to the front of the boot, rather than firmly fixed. As the skaters
pushed back, the new design kept their blades in longer contact with the ice,
allowing them to exert the same force over more time. Speed records suddenly
fell.
People have tried to
duplicate the same effect with running shoes, but with little success. That’s
because a running leg behaves a bit like a pogo stick. As it hits the ground,
it compresses. As it steps off, it gets a bit of elastic rebound. Technologies
that try to alter a runner’s gait tend to interfere with this rebound, and
diminish the leg’s overall performance. “It’s hard to intervene in a similar
manner to the clap-skates without buggering up the other mechanics of the
limb,” says Weyand. (Again, Pistorius bucks the trend because his artificial
legs are springier than natural ones, and give him around 10% longer on the
ground than other runners.)
Ground force
For those with intact
limbs, one option remains: exert more force on the ground. Put simply, fast
people hit the ground more forcefully than slow people, relative to their body
weight. But we know very little about what contributes to that force, and we
are terrible at predicting it based on a runner’s physique or movements.
We know that champion
male sprinters can hit the ground with a force that’s around 2.5 times their
body weight (most people manage around two times). When Usain Bolt’s foot
lands, it applies around 900 pounds (400kg) of force for a few milliseconds,
and continues pushing for around 90 more.
Weyand likes to imagine
a weightlifter trying to apply the same force in a one-legged squat – they
would come nowhere close. “What we know about force under static conditions
under-predicts how hard sprinters hit by a factor of two,” he says. “We just
don’t have the ability to go from the movements of the body to the force on the
ground.” Even if a sprinter’s muscles were eventually boosted by gene doping
techniques, we have no way of calculating how much faster their owners would
run.
Studies are underway to
fill in those gaps, and Weyand is hoping that we’ll be able to make better
predictions in five or 10 years. Just a few months ago, Marcus Pandy and Tim
Dorn used computer simulations of sprinters to show that the calf muscles, more
than any others, determine the amount of force that runners apply to the
ground. At top speeds, the hip muscles become increasingly important too.
“Maybe if you train a sprinter, you could potentially train them to have really
strong calves,” says Hutchinson.
For the moment,
however, any predictions about the ceilings of human speed are still
ill-informed ones. The only way to work out if Bolt or some other sprinter will
smash the existing record is to watch them.
WIRED's Robbie Gonzalez
explores the science of extreme sprinting speed.
Electro-stimulation
works and is a method recognized by the medical world.
It
is now an integral part of physiotherapy and pain management protocols. It has
been a technique used by physical therapists for many years.
Electrostimulation
is not a miraculous technique, it respects how your body works.
The
principle of electrostimulation is very simple and precisely reproduces the
processes that occur when our brain orders muscles to contract.
When we decide
to contract a muscle, our brain sends a signal in the form of an electric
current that travels at high speed along the nerve fibers up to the muscle
which reacts by contracting.
In
the case of electrostimulation, excitation occurs directly on the motor nerve
using electrical pulses perfectly controlled to guarantee effectiveness, safety
and comfort in use.
In fact, muscles cannot tell the difference between a
voluntary contraction (triggered by the brain) and an electrically induced
contraction: the work done is exactly the same. It's natural!
