Month: March 2013

An FMS Discussion Part II

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The corrective strategy

Test. Apply a corrective exercise. Re-test.  This concept is HUGE.  The test/re-test process is just massively important in any situation (technology, medicine, cooking, and yes, human movement) if you want to know if a particular intervention works.  Dr. Eric Cobb of Z-Health first introduced the importance of the test & re-test to me.  The concept is equally important in the FMS.  What does it mean and what does it look like?

We can test all sorts of things.  We can test a movement pattern for pain or tightness.  As it pertains to the FMS, we want to at some point test and re-test the seven different movement patterns.  Beyond that, I could use stepping up and down stairs to test for knee pain.  We could bend forward or backward to test for back pain.  I could go into a hip flexor stretch on each leg to compare tightness in each thigh.  I could stand on one leg to test balance.  If you’ve got some sort of difficulty with a particular exercise then that’s a test.  So we test something. Then we apply some sort of corrective.  Then we re-test.

We might foam roll and/or stretch to increase mobility of a joint.  Then we could re-test.  Did anything change?  We might then employ a stabilization exercise.  Then we re-test.  Did things improve or not?  We could move from static stabilization to dynamic stabilization, that is, we can look at stabilizing a joint while moving other joints.  If we see improvement and it holds, then we should practice our new and improved movement.  A phrase I heard at the FMS is “Move well then move often.”  We want to ingrain these new, good movement patterns.  We want to make them habitual.  If we load the movement pattern with weights then we look to get stronger in these new movement patterns.  We can continue to re-test over the course of time to ensure we haven’t regressed back to poor movement.

My strategy: addressing the ankle, knee and hip

Some of my years-long issues regarding my low back, my right knee and left heel/Achilles are still lingering.  These issues aren’t terrible and they hardly limit me but I still would like to clean them up a bit.  My right hip tends to be tight.  I have intermittent moderate right lateral knee pain.  My left calf tends to be tight.  I’ve got some impingement in my right ankle.  Fortunately, my FMS score is a solid 18 out of a possible 21 which means that it’s safe to exercise and work out vigorously.

Mobility restoration

I’ve employed several tools to restore lost mobility and overcome some movement restrictions.  I mentioned in a previous post that I’ve had some dry needling done to my right thigh and hip flexor area.  (I’ve since had some done on my right shoulder as well.)  This has done a very nice job of relaxing some muscles that were in spasm, thus enabling a greater range of hip extension.  I’ve also been using a foam roller, lacrosse ball, and a barbell to get into the gunked up areas of my quads, calves and low-back/quadratus lumborum area.  As I mentioned, my right hip and low back are troubled areas, so I’ve spent more time working there than on my left side.  (Kelly Starrett of MobilityWOD has some great ideas on addressing restricted tissue.  Check out pages 34-37 of his new book Becoming a Supple Leopard for a variety of ways to smash the quad and un-glue matted-down tissues.  I’ve been doing a lot of this stuff to great effect.)

A lacrosse ball has been especially useful in getting into my glute minimus and tensor fasciae latae (TFL).  I’ve also been using the Stick on my calves and posterior tibialis.  You can really experiment with a variety of objects, angles and positions when going after these tight, sore areas.  With regard to the test/re-test scheme, it’s  a good idea to mash out one side of your body–your right glute for instance– then mash out the other side.  How do they compare?  Is one side more beat-up than the other?  If so, spend more time working there.  See if over time you can even them out.

Once I’ve spent a few minutes going after soft-tissue restrictions, I go into some joint mobility drills.  Here are some examples:

3D ankle mobility

Hip flexor stretch, pigeon stretch, hip slide

Stability restoration

half-kneeling with rotation

chop & lift

half-loaded lunge

 

Reactive neuromuscular training:

The only way to do it right is to do it at all.  There is often a bit of frustration or struggle with this process–but that’s good!  Here, we actually help facilitate bad form–we “feed the mistake” in other words.  In this way the unconscious movement fault is made conscious.  Now we have a chance to correct the thing.  What does this look like? (squat w/band around knees, split squat w/tube)

 

 

 

 

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Supple Leopard Preview & Bulletproof Coffee

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The Supple Leopard Project

I love human movement and performance.  One of the best resources for this type of thing is Kelly Starrett’s MobilityWOD.com.  Kelly is a Doctor of Physical Therapy and he runs San Francisco Crossfit.  MobilityWOD has won various awards, and Kelly’s been featured in Competitor Magazine, Inside Triathlon and others.  MobilityWOD is chock full of valuable, do-it-yourself movement maintenance and movement enhancement techniques.  If you’re an athlete and/or you don’t move as well as you should then get a look at MobilityWOD and start playing with some of the drills.

The big news is Kelly’s got a book coming out April 23 called Becoming a Supple Leopard and I’m quite excited about it.  (What does “supple leopard” mean?  It’s something he often references.  The leopard is powerful, graceful, sleek.  Wouldn’t you like to be one too?)  For your viewing pleasure, here’s a 50-page preview of the book.  Click the image to pre-order.  I need to order my copy.  I think it’ll be great.

Bulletproof Coffee

If you’re interested in nutritional experimentation, then you may will fall in love with Bulletproof Coffee.  A friend sent me a link to a rundown of the whole gig.  Go there to get all the information.  For expediency’s sake, here’s the recipe:

  • Start with 4-500 ml (2 mugs) of black coffee brewed with my mold-free Upgraded Coffee beans.   (Why this is important)
  • Add 2 Tbs (or more, up to 80 grams, about 2/3 of a standard stick of butter) of Kerry Gold or other UNSALTED grass-fed butter
  • Add 30 grams of MCT oil for max energy, weight loss and brain function (this is 6 times stronger than coconut oil, your next best choice)
  • Blend with a pre-heated hand blender, Magic Bullet, or (best) counter top blender until there is a creamy head of foam. (It doesn’t work well if you mix it with a spoon)

I’ll not lie, I didn’t use the Upgraded Coffee for this recipe nor did I use MCT oil, but rather I used some sort of decent coffee and coconut oil.  (I’m fairly interested in trying the Upgraded Coffee but it’s a bit pricey as is the MCT oil.)  I’ve been drinking this stuff recently and–WOW!–it’s pretty interesting.  I normally eat a fairly decent sized breakfast (bacon, eggs, fruit; oatmeal, nuts, fruit, butter; big smoothie) but this Bulletproof concoction has kept me amazingly full for several hours.  I’ve been drinking this before workouts, runs, and bike rides.  I’ve been feeling full (but not stuffed or bloated) and very energized.  I’m a big fan of the high fat content and I’m glad I’ve discovered this Kerry Gold grass-fed butter.  That’s a new staple for me. Oh, yes, it does sound a little weird this new drink.  If you’re scared, avoid it.  If you’re an adventurous sort, give it a shot.

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An FMS Discussion: Part I

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The Functional Movement Screen is a subject I’ve been studying (and writing about) recently. I recently had the pleasure of traveling to San Francisco to attend the Functional Movement Screen (FMS).  I got to meet some interesting, smart people and some great information found its way into my brain.  So what is the FMS?  From the FMS site:

Put simply, the FMS is a ranking and grading system that documents movement patterns that are key to normal function. By screening these patterns, the FMS readily identifies functional limitations and asymmetries. These are issues that can reduce the effects of functional training and physical conditioning and distort body awareness.

The FMS generates the Functional Movement Screen Score, which is used to target problems and track progress. This scoring system is directly linked to the most beneficial corrective exercises to restore mechanically sound movement patterns.

Movement patterns vs. Muscles

A key component of the Functional Movement Screen (FMS) paradigm is the idea of training movement patterns rather than individual muscles. For example, what muscles does the squat use?  Pushups? The deadlift?  For that matter, what muscles does basketball, gymnastics, swimming, or raking leaves use?  The answer is a lot of muscles, and these muscles must work together in sequence to create movement. (A better question might be “What muscles don’t these activities use?) This concept of addressing and thinking in terms of patterns rather than muscles is important in terms of how our brain works.  When we walk, our brain doesn’t say, “Fire the glute max, and medius, now the semimembranosus, now the semitendinosis, biceps femoris, now the gastroc, soleus…”  The brain says, “Extend the hip.”  The brain has a map of our movement patterns and it executes our movements based on that map.  An analogy might be a song.  When we hear a song we hear a song.  We typically don’t listen to the individual instruments absent the other instruments.  We hear a cohesive, coordinated song. While it may be appropriate and necessary to analyze individual muscles in some therapeutic processes, remember that our brain drives our movements via coordinated patterns.  Very typically our pain and dysfunctional movement is due to faulty movement patterns in our brain.  The FMS strategy helps restore those patterns.

Mobility first.  Stability second.

World-class mobility and stability

Gray Cook discusses developmental movement from infancy on up.  Babies start as helpless, wiggly blobs with no balance or coordination of any sort.  At some point in their lives they may become gold-medal gymnasts, top professional tennis players, surfers, piano players, chansaw jugglers, stilt walkers–who knows what?!  In other words they go from a highly mobile yet uncoordinated state to a much more stable and coordinated state.  This ability to blend mobility and stability into movement is called motor control. (Unfortunately due to the Western lifestyle which is chock full of sitting, these former masters of motor control often turn into weak, rigid, unbalanced, uncoordinated zombies racked with pain.  It’s not simply “age” that robs us of motor control.  We choose to avoid moving–and then we become unable to move well.)  The big point here is mobility precedes stability, and we certainly need both.

It’s important to understand that joint stiffness isn’t the same as stability.  A joint often stiffens due to injury or lack of movement.  If we are unable to effectively stabilize a joint, then that joint may stiffen as a sort of a plan B by the nervous system.  A stiff, poorly moving joint is not a healthy joint.  Why?  Primarily a stiff joint brings on poor proprioception.  In the grand scheme, a stiff joint is a poor transmitter of information to the brain, and a poor receiver of information from the brain.  It doesn’t pay attention well.  If you have trouble standing on one leg, it’s very likely that one or more of your joints are stiff.  For an illuminating discussion of the mobility/stability concept, please read the Joint by Joint Approach from Gray Cook.  The concept was born out of the observation that as we look at the skeleton from the ground up, we tend to see an alternating pattern from joint to joint in which one joint tends to be stiff and the next joint tends to be loose and sloppy. It might be a bit technical for some people but the big chunks of information will be digestible for most and it’s a very powerful concept when thinking about movement dysfunction.

Asymmetries

Might an asymmetry be hiding in this athlete?

A key part of the FMS is the recognition of and correction of asymmetries. Often when someone goes through the FMS we’re able to expose asymmetries in range of motion (ROM), balance, coordination, strength, etc. One side of the body is good at a movement while the other side isn’t.  (The half-kneeling exercise often exposes an asymmetry.) Typically the test subject has no idea the asymmetry exists. He or she has been moving through life unconscious that they’re lopsided and out of whack.  In other words, we’re helping create awareness.

 

But why do we care about asymmetries?  Think about this: If we go to perform a squat, a deadlift, a jump, a press–some sort of movement that requires strength, power and coordination–but we’ve got one side of the body that can’t handle the job, do you think at some point we might incur an injury?  If one side is mobile, stable, and strong while the other side isn’t, what do you think might happen?  Could we see a situation where lifting something off of the ground might cause some weird torquing forces through the hips or spine?  Hello herniated disk.

Next I’ll discuss the corrective process and use some of my own issues as examples.


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Diabolical Junk Food Science and Pharmaceutical Subterfuge

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Science and it’s use by industry are the topics of two recent articles.  One story looks at the food industry’s use of science to hook us on their products.  Another article shows us how the pharmaceutical industry does its best to hide science from us to… well… hook us on their products.

Junk Science

“With production costs trimmed and profits coming in, the next question was how to expand the franchise, which they did by turning to one of the cardinal rules in processed food: When in doubt, add sugar.”
– The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food, NY Times

If you haven’t read it yet then I highly recommend you check out a recent article from the New York Times Magazine titled The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food.  It’s a little long but well worth the read.  Lest anyone think

Thank you science.

that giving up junk food is all about willpower, this article might change your mind.

We get an in-depth look at the very determined scientific efforts by processed food companies (General Mills, Frito-Lay, Cadbury Schweppes for example) to create food that stimulates us to an unbelievable degree.  The motive of course is to get us to buy and consume what most of us know to be poison filth.  The writer has interviewed hundreds of current or former food scientists, marketers and CEOs to get an inside look at how all this works.

These companies’ efforts include laboratory research into such things as “mouth feel” or how a snack feels in our mouths.  Based on the replies of focus groups, food engineers may manipulate a snack in a myriad of ways.  Degree of crunch, softness, creaminess, thickness, puffiness, smoothness, gumminess–all sorts of sensations and combinations of sensations are carefully manipulated to help create the ultimate user experience.

Closely associated to mouth feel is the “bliss point.”  Just what is a bliss point?  It’s sort of a holy grail for junk food.  It’s a concept that arose from the observation that very strong flavors may be enjoyable but quickly help tell our brain to stop eating.  Meanwhile bland food may be unexciting but we can eat loads of it without feeling the need to stop.  The bliss point is the fine combination of the two that leads to a snack that tastes amazing but also manages to sidestep our brain’s wiring so that we’ll eat more and more.  From the article:

This contradiction is known as “sensory-specific satiety.” In lay terms, it is the tendency for big, distinct flavors to overwhelm the brain, which responds by depressing your desire to have more. Sensory-specific satiety also became a guiding principle for the processed-food industry. The biggest hits — be they Coca-Cola or Doritos — owe their success to complex formulas that pique the taste buds enough to be alluring but don’t have a distinct, overriding single flavor that tells the brain to stop eating.

Thirty-two years after he began experimenting with the bliss point, Moskowitz got the call from Cadbury Schweppes asking him to create a good line extension for Dr Pepper. I spent an afternoon in his White Plains offices as he and his vice president for research, Michele Reisner, walked me through the Dr Pepper campaign. Cadbury wanted its new flavor to have cherry and vanilla on top of the basic Dr Pepper taste. Thus, there were three main components to play with. A sweet cherry flavoring, a sweet vanilla flavoring and a sweet syrup known as “Dr Pepper flavoring.”

Finding the bliss point required the preparation of 61 subtly distinct formulas — 31 for the regular version and 30 for diet. The formulas were then subjected to 3,904 tastings organized in Los Angeles, Dallas, Chicago and Philadelphia. The Dr Pepper tasters began working through their samples, resting five minutes between each sip to restore their taste buds. After each sample, they gave numerically ranked answers to a set of questions: How much did they like it overall? How strong is the taste? How do they feel about the taste? How would they describe the quality of this product? How likely would they be to purchase this product?

All this  is outrageous in terms of the lengths to which food companies go to sell us garbage.   It shouldn’t be surprising though.  Food companies are in a high-stakes game.  They need to sell stuff. Fortunately, because of information like this, these companies and their products may come under the same scrutiny the tobacco industry experienced a few years ago.  What else can I say?  I think all this is highly fascinating.  Read up!

The medical wool over our eyes

So the junk-food industry loves science because it helps them create products that we love to death.  In sort of the opposite direction, the pharmaceutical industry isn’t quite so interested in paying attention to science. Truth About Your Medicine: Ben Goldacre on How to Reform the Pharmaceutical Industry comes form the Daily Beast.  In it, Ben Goldacre tells us how the drug companies choose to ignore, diminish or squash unflattering research into their products.  He writes:

“The systematic review evidence on missing results shows that, for the treatments we use today, our best estimate is that half of all trials haven’t been published; trials with flattering results are twice as likely to be shared. This is an issue with academic trials, as well as industry sponsored research.”

So what he’s saying is that much of the evidence and scientific analysis of drugs isn’t available for anyone to read.  It hasn’t been published.  He further states:

“This presents such huge problems for informed decision making, which are obvious to even the most casual observer, and the issue of missing trials could not possibly survive informed public scrutiny. This is why a battle has been waged to pretend that the problem doesn’t exist, helped along by a series of “fake fixes” that have delivered little more than false reassurance.”

The article also links to the transcript of a recent live chat with Goldacre on this topic.

Ben Goldacre is a fairly interesting guy.  I wrote about his previous book Bad Science.  He makes laudable efforts to both demystify science and call on the carpet questionable industries such as complimentary/alternative medicine to the drug companies.  His new book is Bad Pharma.  Sounds interesting.

 

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