Are you slouching your way to an early death?
Your posture says a lot about your health. Your neck pain, headaches, back twinges and persistent tiredness could all be pointing to one thing: Poor posture.
What is good posture? Basically, it is just keeping your spine happy, keeping it in balance no matter what you are doing and putting as little stress on it as possible to during your daily activities.
We have a number of curves built into our spines (it looks like an S-shape when viewed from the side). This helps us stand upright with our weight balanced over our feet. But a look around you shows how little we think of our backs. Heads drooped forward, rounded shoulders, bent knee walk – signs of the strain caused by long hours of sitting. The heavy handbags and the high heels are just spine abuse!
Yet many of us keep making the same postural mistakes over and over. We let our backs go out of alignment by sitting in one position too long. We don’t notice how our heads are sagging forward as we stare at computer screens for hours on end. We lean onto one leg if we need to stand for long. We walk as little as we can and generally put continuous stress on our spines, hips and knees. We slouch, pressing together the small bones in our backs. We get potbellied when our spines finally give in to the stress and sway forward. We let our shoulders get rounded, limiting our chest expansion and so breathing in less oxygen.
The hunched spines also mean all kinds of muscles have to be pressed into action to keep us balanced. Needless to say, we get tired and achy by the time we get home. We flop into a big squashy chair, exposing our tailbones to even greater pressure. In bed, we pile up the pillows, kinking our neck muscles. Naturally, we wake up with stiff necks and shoulders; not to mention the twisted backs from sleeping on soft mattresses on our sides or stomachs. Little wonder we are such an unenergetic lot!
Do you relate to any of this? Then you need to start being kind to yourself. Call us, your local physiotherapists. We are committed to helping you. We’ll show you how to achieve a strain-free posture at home and at work, as well as in your car! We can tell yo if and how you are stressing your body by poor alignment. We can help you to get back into efficiency mode. We can even soothe away cramps and knots.
And the best part is, your body will thank you by working far more easily. You’ll start looking great, what with your confident stance and your aura of vigor and strength. Your aches and pains will fade away as the basic bone and muscle abnormalities are corrected. You will start enjoying life again without nagging pains and persistent tiredness.
So go ahead. Call us today on +(353)-87-295-9662 for an appointment and give yourself a break!
Isometric, eccentric and concentric muscle contractions: What’s the difference?
Muscle contraction is simply muscles doing work. So what’s with all these complicated terms?
Isometric contraction is what happens when you lift and hold a heavy weight steady. Your muscles bulge, but nothing’s moving.
Concentric contractions are movements where you exert muscle force, such as pushing a weight away from you.
Eccentric contractions are the opposite; it is when you lower / return a weight to neutral position, such as letting a weight come back down.
Think of the bench-press exercise, lying on your back: You start at the top and lower the bar; this is an eccentric contraction. Simply holding the bar steady without movement half-way down is an isometric contraction. Lifting the bar back to the top is a concentric contraction.
Now try to recognize these in your very next workout.
Quick tip
You don’t have to do a full 30-minute work out in one go. Individual short bursts of 5 to 10 minutes a day, can be just as beneficial.
Inspiration
The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but instead will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, in diet, and in the cause and prevention of disease.
~ Thomas Edison