Help Avoid Injury!
EXERCISE THOSE BUTTOCK CHEEKS TOO!
With age, men generally lose some rump fat but problems can arise when they lose muscle there too.
Even those who go to the gym regularly can lose buttock muscles. This happens because they concentrate on exercising their upper body and neglect their lower trunk.
While they work their arms and abdominals and consciously build central core strength, they forget about their lower core. They have a kind of “gluteal amnesia” and don’t maintain or much use the once-powerful buttock muscles.
The gluteal group, made up of three gluteal muscles in each cheek, forms a powerful muscular girdle that keeps the pelvis stable and moves the body forward.
These muscles are not specifically targeted by walking or running and exercises like planks and crunches don’t help them either.
Rather, they are better engaged with sequences such as squats, lunges, hip extensions and bridging. Walking sideways specifically helps, as does single leg exercises up against a wall.
§ Regularly pulling them up while driving or engaged in some other passive activity tones them too.
§ To maintain or rebuild the buttocks muscle, these exercises must be technically correct. The process takes time but it provides functional results.
§ Gluteal muscles are crucial in protecting the back and lower limb joints from injury. They hold the pelvis steady and keep it aligned with the legs and the torso.
§ They maintain erect posture for the upper torso and if they don’t do this job adequately, the lower back muscles have to overwork and can become painful.
§ They also extend the hips, thrusting the body forward as in running. Again, if they don’t do this well, the hamstrings have to overwork to compensate.
§ These same muscles also travel around the hip and attach to the thigh bones, keeping them steady and, in turn, keeping the knees steady and preventing them from becoming injured.
--------------------
Men suffering gluteal amnesia often compensate by over-depending on their quadriceps and abductors, the powerful thigh and groin muscles.
This can become a vicious cycle as thigh quads and tight hip flexors further inhibit the gluteal fibres from firing. The gluteals have become the forgotten muscles and most strength-training routines don’t isolate them.
When an exercise requires several muscles at once, the work will mostly be done by the strongest of those muscles which is usually not the gluteals.
The gluteals have two functions – As Stabilizers and Prime Movers.
· The deep layers of the buttock muscles – the gluteus minimus and gluteus medius – provide stability and it is quite possible for these to be weak while the proud prime mover that drives forward motion, the gluteus maximus, appears rounded and strong.
· Running has more hip extension and so engages the gluteals more.
· Sitting a lot deconditions the gluteals because they are sat on all day.
What to do?
Target your exercises: The gluteals are used in weight-bearing and when you stand on one leg, the gluteal on that side works to stabilize your pelvis.
If you stand on your right leg and your left hip drops, it means you have a weak right gluteal. If you walk and your pelvis stays relatively level, your gluteals are functioning well as stabilizers.
When you walk behind someone who has a shimmy in their step, observe closely and you’ll see their bottom keeps dropping on the non-weight bearing side. This is often a sign that their gluteals are weak. Can be tested on a treadmill and watched as they run.
Stand on one leg and watch if the other hip drops because that is a deeper stability problem – the deeper layer is weak.
Ask your Personal Trainer or Physiotherapist about exercising your gluteals. It could be a major factor in helping prevent that Fall :-)
Sodium Bicarbonate
According to Annelie Pompe, a prominent mountaineer and world-champion free diver, alkaline tissues can hold up to 20 times more oxygen than acidic ones.
When our body cells and tissue are acidic (below pH of 6.5-7.0), they lose their ability to exchange oxygen, and cancer cells just love that.
Those in the sports world understand the benefits of taking sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) orally before workouts or athletic events—doing so raises the oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood. One can actually feel the difference in performance—it is that noticeable. One of the limitations of using bicarbonate orally in this fashion is that it can provoke diarrhea during an event if taken in too high dosages. Another limitation is of short duration of the effect.
A report published in 2010 in “Food and Nutrition Sciences” states that athletes who participate in events taking one to seven minutes, such as 100- to 400-meter swimming and 400- to 1,500-meter running, benefit most from sodium bicarbonate.
In regard to resistance training, a study published in 2014 in the “Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research” demonstrated a marked improvement in performing squats and bench presses to exhaustion when participants took baking soda compared to a placebo.
Studies of elite rowers doing a 2k for time, for example, tend to note no benefit or an insignificant one.
Swimming is the opposite; studies using a repeated sprint protocol (either 10 sprints of 50m or 5 sprints of 100-200m) have shown that the decline in performance normally seen with repeated sprints is abolished with sodium bicarbonate.
EXERCISE THOSE BUTTOCK CHEEKS TOO!
With age, men generally lose some rump fat but problems can arise when they lose muscle there too.
Even those who go to the gym regularly can lose buttock muscles. This happens because they concentrate on exercising their upper body and neglect their lower trunk.
While they work their arms and abdominals and consciously build central core strength, they forget about their lower core. They have a kind of “gluteal amnesia” and don’t maintain or much use the once-powerful buttock muscles.
The gluteal group, made up of three gluteal muscles in each cheek, forms a powerful muscular girdle that keeps the pelvis stable and moves the body forward.
These muscles are not specifically targeted by walking or running and exercises like planks and crunches don’t help them either.
Rather, they are better engaged with sequences such as squats, lunges, hip extensions and bridging. Walking sideways specifically helps, as does single leg exercises up against a wall.
§ Regularly pulling them up while driving or engaged in some other passive activity tones them too.
§ To maintain or rebuild the buttocks muscle, these exercises must be technically correct. The process takes time but it provides functional results.
§ Gluteal muscles are crucial in protecting the back and lower limb joints from injury. They hold the pelvis steady and keep it aligned with the legs and the torso.
§ They maintain erect posture for the upper torso and if they don’t do this job adequately, the lower back muscles have to overwork and can become painful.
§ They also extend the hips, thrusting the body forward as in running. Again, if they don’t do this well, the hamstrings have to overwork to compensate.
§ These same muscles also travel around the hip and attach to the thigh bones, keeping them steady and, in turn, keeping the knees steady and preventing them from becoming injured.
--------------------
Men suffering gluteal amnesia often compensate by over-depending on their quadriceps and abductors, the powerful thigh and groin muscles.
This can become a vicious cycle as thigh quads and tight hip flexors further inhibit the gluteal fibres from firing. The gluteals have become the forgotten muscles and most strength-training routines don’t isolate them.
When an exercise requires several muscles at once, the work will mostly be done by the strongest of those muscles which is usually not the gluteals.
The gluteals have two functions – As Stabilizers and Prime Movers.
· The deep layers of the buttock muscles – the gluteus minimus and gluteus medius – provide stability and it is quite possible for these to be weak while the proud prime mover that drives forward motion, the gluteus maximus, appears rounded and strong.
· Running has more hip extension and so engages the gluteals more.
· Sitting a lot deconditions the gluteals because they are sat on all day.
What to do?
Target your exercises: The gluteals are used in weight-bearing and when you stand on one leg, the gluteal on that side works to stabilize your pelvis.
If you stand on your right leg and your left hip drops, it means you have a weak right gluteal. If you walk and your pelvis stays relatively level, your gluteals are functioning well as stabilizers.
When you walk behind someone who has a shimmy in their step, observe closely and you’ll see their bottom keeps dropping on the non-weight bearing side. This is often a sign that their gluteals are weak. Can be tested on a treadmill and watched as they run.
Stand on one leg and watch if the other hip drops because that is a deeper stability problem – the deeper layer is weak.
Ask your Personal Trainer or Physiotherapist about exercising your gluteals. It could be a major factor in helping prevent that Fall :-)
Sodium Bicarbonate
According to Annelie Pompe, a prominent mountaineer and world-champion free diver, alkaline tissues can hold up to 20 times more oxygen than acidic ones.
When our body cells and tissue are acidic (below pH of 6.5-7.0), they lose their ability to exchange oxygen, and cancer cells just love that.
Those in the sports world understand the benefits of taking sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) orally before workouts or athletic events—doing so raises the oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood. One can actually feel the difference in performance—it is that noticeable. One of the limitations of using bicarbonate orally in this fashion is that it can provoke diarrhea during an event if taken in too high dosages. Another limitation is of short duration of the effect.
A report published in 2010 in “Food and Nutrition Sciences” states that athletes who participate in events taking one to seven minutes, such as 100- to 400-meter swimming and 400- to 1,500-meter running, benefit most from sodium bicarbonate.
In regard to resistance training, a study published in 2014 in the “Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research” demonstrated a marked improvement in performing squats and bench presses to exhaustion when participants took baking soda compared to a placebo.
Studies of elite rowers doing a 2k for time, for example, tend to note no benefit or an insignificant one.
Swimming is the opposite; studies using a repeated sprint protocol (either 10 sprints of 50m or 5 sprints of 100-200m) have shown that the decline in performance normally seen with repeated sprints is abolished with sodium bicarbonate.