Matt - Author at Upward Spiral

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What To Do When You Can’t Take A Full Breath

Last updated: 25th March 2019

If you’ve ever been in the position where you can’t take a full breath, there’s a good chance your posture has become compromised. One common consequence of a compromised posture is that your body isn’t utilizing the correct muscles for breathing.

What to do when you can't take a full breath

Even if you’ve never had the experience where you can’t take a full breath, there’s still a good chance the above is true for you anyway.

With regard to general health and well being, the majority of people in the west nowadays have two fundamental things in common, which are:

Is There A Best Stretch For Hamstrings?

What’s the best stretch for hamstrings?

Well, quite simply, there isn’t one. You’re probably wondering how that can be, but before we get to that, let’s take a look at the question itself.

If you’re familiar with the work of Dr John Demartini, you’ll know that as well as being a real inspiration and pleasure to listen to and learn from, he’s a big advocate of asking quality questions.

In fact, one of the phrases he uses quite often when he’s teaching and giving talks is:

3 Essential Tips To Get The Most From Pain Free by Pete Egoscue

If you’re like most people who have read Pain Free by Pete Egoscue, you probably had a lightbulb go on when you did so. You also quite likely feel like you’ve found the answer to your pain problems.

And hopefully you have.

Something I’ve noticed with people who’ve read Pain Free is they can sometimes be so taken in by the language and the ‘simplicity’ of what Pete talks about, that they subjugate themselves to his words.

I've heard various comments on so many occasions from people that have read Pain Free that it's become quite clear there are times when their experience is telling them something different to what they've read, yet they continue to 'push on and hope it gets better', such are the power of words.

So here are my three top tips for getting the most from Pain Free by Pete Egoscue (and from any exercise program in general):

Rotator Cuff Strengthening: The Wrong Solution To The Wrong Question

Looking for rotator cuff strengthening exercises is the wrong solution to the wrong question, for two primary reasons:

The rotator cuff group of muscles are stabilising muscles.As stabilisers, their role is exactly that: to stabilise the shoulder. As the prime movers move the shoulder, the rotator cuff stabilise the movement.Therefore, their role is about endurance and stabilisation, not strength
Isolating individual muscles in this way completely overlooks the way your body works and, specifically, the way your shoulder works.

Your body functions as a unit, so singling out the tiny rotator cuff group and giving them a strengthening program completely overlooks the reason why they feel like they need strengthening.

If you have shoulder pain, and I’m sure you do as you probably wouldn’t be looking for rotator cuff strengthening exercises if you didn’t, then you need to correct the position of your shoulder, rather than strengthening those poor little rotator cuff guys.

Microtrauma That Accumulates Is Your Body’s Worst Enemy

Most of the injuries that most people suffer with aren’t because of some high impact sporting event, but are more often than not due to everyday accumulated microtrauma.

You can think of accumulated microtrauma as being like “the straw that broke the camel’s back”.

If you have asymmetries present in your body, ‘basic’ movements that you perform on a day-to-day basis – every single day of your life – will be creating microtrauma in your body.

And it’s these accumulated microtrauma that are the number one cause of virtually all bodily aches and pains – from the all-too-familiar back pain to the less familiar plantar fasciitis – and a whole host of other symptoms and ailments in between.

An asymmetry is very simply a difference from one side to the other (i.e. not symmetrical).

Most of the time, we think of this as being a difference from left to right, but an asymmetry can also exist from front to back.

When there are imbalances from left to right, one common type of asymmetry that will often present itself is rotation. Rotation can be present as pelvic rotation or thoracic (upper body) rotation, or both.

That means one side of the body is further forward than the other, which also means when you bend down to pick something up, or to fasten your footwear, or anything else that requires you to bend forward, you’re doing it with torque in your body…