Episode 007 – How To Get Abs
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Episode 007This episode focuses on abs! But not abs in the way you might think. We break down the barriers, stop repeating and rehashing the same old tips and tricks and truly, as I always aim to do, give you a thought provoking and inspiring conversation. We discuss the deep and superficial muscle system, discover for yourself which is better, strong, flat or efficient abs, as well as demystify the word ‘core’ once and for all. Of course there will be your favorite part some home play to enjoy in your own body and the bodies of the people you work with.

What You Will Learn In This Episode

Abdominal Muscles are located between the ribs and the pelvis on the front of the body. They allow movement, support the trunk and hold the organs in place through the regulation of intra abdominal pressure.

‘Core Muscles’ I would like to argue that we have ‘core muscles’ all over our body, this is called the deep system and its there to balance out the forces that act across our joints! This means that although you do have deep system muscles in your abdominal region, you also have them elsewhere in your spine, neck, hips, knees, shoulders …. You get my point! Anywhere there is a joint, there is a group of muscles which function to provide stability to ensure a different group of muscles can provide movement, strength, speed and power! You can think of them like team A and team B. Neither one is more important but without both teams working together the game of movement is no fun for anyone!

I think of these two systems as needing to work together like opposite sides of a seesaw. On one side of the seesaw you have your superficial system which is responsible for lifting loads, propelling your body through space and maintaining the endurance necessary for a variety of long hold positions. on the other side of the sea saw you have the deep system which is responsible for aligning and balancing the forces around a particular joint, enabling its movement to be both efficient and effective. Neither system in my eyes is more important than the other, your superficial system doesn’t work well without an equally effective deep system, but similarly having a well orchestrated deep system is not much use if your superficial system is not strong enough to do the tasks required of it .

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Superficial System Ab Exercise = Crunches (Watch how to here)

Deep System Ab Exercise = Pilates Bridging (Watch how to here)

Thank you for listening to episode 007 of the Move Beautiful Podcast, I loved bringing all these insights and valuable pieces of information to you and I hope you have found them as valuable as I have and are now breathing easy!

If you liked this episode please share it with your friends, family, colleagues, or better yet leave us an honest review on iTunes these rating and reviews are incredibly helpful and help me to help more beautiful movers like you reach their movement potential!

Finally, don’t forget to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes so you will be sure to never miss an episode.

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Episode 004 – Stretching part 1

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Episode 004I am super excited to bring you this double episode jam packed with a bunch of stretch related research, insights and home play! This topic actually goes over two podcasts because once I got my head into it I realized to properly do it justice and to truly give you all an accurate, thought provoking and practical discussion I needed more that my normal 20mins! So in part 1 we will discuss mostly why our current framework for understanding stretching is flawed, so that in part 2 we can come back with a new frame work and get into the nuts and bolts of what and why are we stretching as well as some homeplay for you all to practice and play around with in your own body or in the bodies of your patients!

In This Episode You Will Learn: 

Types of bodies. Now I know I just said every body is different and there is no such thing as prescriptions but to a certain extent we can use loose groupings of people who show similar features to better lead our clinical reasoning as we assess the body that’s in front of us. Bodies fall into one of three categories;

  1. Generally Stiff: these bodies have very little range of motion at any joint in the body. They globally feel tight and no matter how much they hold a stretch often they experience very little prolonged benefit.

  2. Generally Floppy: these bodies have a large ROM at almost every joint in the body. They often feels as if they don’t need to stretch and in fact if they do stretch often find they don’t feel much tension or stretch despite seemingly moving into quiet deep range.

  3. Mix: so as I said not everyone fits into these two perfect boxes, some people have particular areas which have limited range of motion and other areas with seemingly excessive ranges of motion. Meaning they have a mix of stiff and floppy segments throughout their body.

Resources

Dr Steven Levin

Tom Meyrs

Home Play

You will have to wait for part 2 for this!

Thank you for listening to episode 002 of the Move Beautiful Podcast, I loved bringing all these insights and valuable pieces of information to you and I hope you have found them as valuable as I have and are now breathing easy!

If you liked this episode please share it with your friends, family, colleagues, or better yet leave us an honest review on iTunes these rating and reviews are incredibly helpful and help me to help more beautiful movers like you reach their movement potential!

Finally, don’t forget to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes so you will be sure to never miss an episode.

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Episode 004 – Stretching part 2

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Episode 004So here we go, part 2 of the 2 part Stretching podcast. Todays podcast is the second part of a two part podcast dedicated to stretching! If you haven’t already listened to Episode 004 part 1, then I suggest you go back and start there. In part 1 we discussed why our current framework for understanding stretching is flawed, how our bodies do not adhere to the laws of Newtonian physics as we might think, and how this flawed belief has affected our understanding of stretching. We began to introduce a new framework which provides us with a more accurate paradigm to discuss what we are stretching, why we are stretching and how we are stretching and when we should stretch. This new paradigm considers our bodies like silly putty, which changes properties depending on speed, temperature, surface areas etc rather than like sky scrapers which when you think about it, don’t make very good representations of the human body!

In This Episode You Will Learn

The break down of a muscle, putting on our ‘Zoom In Glasses’

Muscle > Fascicle > Fasiculi > Myofibril > Sarcomere

Other Structures involved, putting on our ‘Zoom Out Glasses’

Connective Tissue

Neuromuscular Junction

CNS (or Nervous System for short)

Resources

Jules Mitchell – The Science of Stretching

Thank you for listening to episode 004 of the Move Beautiful Podcast, I loved bringing all these insights and valuable pieces of information to you and I hope you have found them as valuable as I have and are now breathing easy!

If you liked this episode please share it with your friends, family, colleagues, or better yet leave us an honest review on iTunes these rating and reviews are incredibly helpful and help me to help more beautiful movers like you reach their movement potential!

Finally, don’t forget to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes so you will be sure to never miss an episode.

Read More >>