I wanted to mention one thing related to Rene's story and experience with his neck injury/pain and the posture therapy.....
Rene said that the injury he experience this past week was the worst he had ever injured his neck in his entire life. Besides the tremendous pain he had, he had absolutely no mobility in any direction. In the past, when he had injured his neck (but less severe) it had put him out of commission for 2 weeks when it comes functioning normally in life.
The reason why I was able to decrease his pain and increase his mobility very quickly is because I worked on him minutes after the injury occurred. We never gave the injury, and the "negative input" from the injury, the ability to settle into the brain and body. Later he did his program 3 - 4 times day. Within 4 days, he did what was equivalent to 2 weeks worth of exercises and we were able to wipe out the problem quickly.
There are people with lower levels of pain than what Rene experienced, however, those problems have been ingrained for 5, 10, or 15 years. That is much more difficult to get out and takes a lot more time and work.
When you have someone who is very inactive, doing any sort of activity is great. And when you have someone who is very dysfunctional, that person can get benefit from any sort of functional corrective exercises.
When I was taking that shitty ass Egoscue course in San Diego, one lady who was taking the course was a pilates instructor. She said that she was able to help people get out of pain and be more functional up to a certain point. She was interested in posture therapy because there was a point in which she hit the limit of what she would do with pilates and felt that the posture therapy would help her get past that limit.
"Old school" pilates focused a lot of tilting the pelvis posterior and decreasing the curve in the lumbar area because people back then, due to a more active lifestyle, tended to have and anterior tilt and excessive lumbar curvature. However, as our lifestyle became more sedentary, pilates started to cause people to have posterior tilted hips and a flat low back. Now modern pilates practitioners are focusing, in theory, on maintaining "neutral pelvis" and maintaining a curve in the lumbar.
"Pilates could worsen a situation if you don't know your posture condition to begin with, as with any movement program, sport or activity."
Nowaydo is correct. I have a couple clients that are avid yoga practitioners. I have told them that there are certain poses that they need to avoid because that will make their condition worse.
I am a big fan of yoga, however, as mentioned above, if you are unfamilar with your posture issues, you can definitely worsen your situation. Just because someone is very flexible does not mean they do not have problems. By the way, another person that took that Egoscue course, when I was there, was a yoga instructor and she has numerous posture problems and pains even though her flexibility was way beyond everyone else in the course.
In theory, yoga is on track in its ideas on alignment in the poses. However, in yoga classes, people are always taught poses they are incapable of doing with technical perfection. Though people are not able to do it perfectly, they try their best to do it. This very often is creating imbalance, misalignment, and worsens their situation.
Interesting that you mentioned Viniyoga. The instructor at the course taught that style and that was the first time I had ever heard of it.
Personally, I prefer a style and instructor that first focuses on technical perfection before I worry about getting a hard workout. I see so many people wanting the hard work out, yet they are doing things wrong.
I was doing it 3-4 times a day at Mike's place; now that I'm back in the real world (I'm a graphic designer chained to a computer), I've done it 2 times a day (morning and evening). I'm definately hooked.
My Nike Frees got torn up in a few months...big disappointment as I liked the shoe a lot! (my kid has robeez as well...but she's 3 months so she's never worn them...a gift from a friend)
Vibram five fingers (never seen them in real life) and Sambo shoes (have worn them while doing judo with a hurt toe) are also pretty "shoeless" (well the later is, the former I've only seen a pic of and a description off the net)...
The Vibram's don't look as cool as the Nikes though, and they don't have laces either...
sambo shoes also aren't exactly stylish and probably wouldn't last long if worn outside I'm guessing...
anyone know of something like Nike Frees that last a little longer? Bolo mentioned that the "newer" version is tougher at the back, but mine were bought in Jan. (but were on sale...), and I think that they were the newer version...
The Nike Free Runner 5.0 V2 came out May 26th, 2006. You got the original version of the runners and though they are great shoes, the heel mesh rips too easily. They are putting the older one's on sale now because they are trying to get rid of them since the V2 has come out. Before the Runner 5.0 V2 came out, I got the Nike Free Trails and really like them. I have had no problems with them. The Runner 5.0 V2 has a different mesh lining at the heel and it is also double layered.
I was interested in checking out the Nike Free Runner 4.0, but I saw the mesh at the heel was like the original 5.0's so I passed on those shoes.
This sounds interesting. I didn´t find a posture alignment therapist in Sweden where I live. Maybe there is one if I look around some more. But I saw that on www.egoscue.com you could send in photos or videos of yourself and get a menu. Is this something you would recomend? Can you diagnose someone from a video or photo?
Like I mentioned before, after going through the Egoscue course and knowing how their therapists are trained, I don't recommend that you go with their therapy programs, especially the online one. One of my students did the Egoscue online program and I had to completely re-do the menu for him because there were so many things he shouldn't have been doing.
I actually just put together a program for someone that e-mailed me their pics and video. E-mail me and I can see if I can help you out.
When you have someone who is very dysfunctional (which tends to be a heck of a lot of people), almost any type of functional corrective exercise will help. That is why people get relief from the exercises presented in Pete's book's, online programs, and the Egoscue therapists have been able to help a lot people.
Like I said, the training that the Egoscue therapists go through sucks. They have no system. Essentially, they teach you a bunch of useless bullshit and you ultimately learn simply from following more experienced therapists. The problem is that if the more experienced therapists are doing something wrong, then you learn those mistakes.
The Egoscue Method did help fix many of my problems. I give it credit for that. But during that time, they also "screwed up" and caused certain problems which they later had to try to fix. I should also mentioned that my menus were written by one of their best and most experienced therapists. Now that I am trained in MBF, I know exactly what exercises the Egoscue therapist gave that screw me up and why. I have also had to tell several of my students who got menus from Egoscue therapists to stop doing certain exercises because it is making their condition worse in the long run.
You won't find common concepts between Egoscue and MBF. I look at some of their menus and it makes no sense to me or I see many exercises that shouldn't be done.
Per Bolo's recommendation, I was able to find a practitioner here in San Diego. I just had my first session yesterday and thought I'd share my experience.
First a little background why I decided to try it out...I've had chronic pain and tightness in my neck and shoulder for as long as I can remember, I've got flat feet that point outward, scoliosis (curvature of the spine), and I recently got caught in a clock choke which left me with a painful shooting/throbbing pain in my right neck/shoulder area. I've had this happen to be before and was told it was a pinched nerve, and it went away immediately after being adjusted by some great chiros. Being pretty new to SD, I went to a couple chiros here and left in as much pain as I went in with. It was starting to get unbearable and was keeping me from BJJ, weights, etc. I basically just wanted to sit on the couch or go to sleep because of the constant pain.
The session started with the practitioner evaluating me and checking out what was going on. She said my left side was looking pretty good, but my right side was completely different and messed up. We went through 13 excercises (my menu) and she gave me cards and wrote notes on them for me for each excercise. At the end of the session she checked my scoliosis again and was pretty surprised by how much straighter my spine was than before. The pain in my neck/shoulder was gone (I'll note that it would go away anytime I would do anything active like run/elliptical/etc) but I decided to wait to see if it would come back before making any sort of judgement. I did notice on the drive home that my neck and shoulders felt much looser than before. The pain came back about an hour later, but it was about 70% of what it had been.
I did my menu before I went to bed last night, and again this morning. My neck/shoulder pain is now about 50%, neck and shoulder area is much more relaxed, and my knees and hips feel a lot looser as well. I've been getting up to walk around the office every once in a while to see if the effect has worn off any and so far so good. Hopefully by next week I'll be back to BJJ and other more strenuous activity. I'll keep everyone posted!
My neck injury at Mike's last week was on the left side. After grappling for 1.5 hours on Tues, and sitting on meetings/con-calls for 8 hours all Wedn., I found I had a bad pain in the right side of my neck (compensation?)
Anyway, I did my program last night and it felt better right away. When I woke up, it was bothering me again, so I did my program again (I do it twice a day anyway), and again it felt better.
What is messing you up is 8 hours of sitting hunched over like a monkey! I've been sitting for unusually long period of time doing work on my computer for the past few days and I neck is bothering me on my right side. I do my exercises and then I'm fine, but that computer kills me more than BJJ!
scyman,
The feel of the exercises will eventually hold longer and longer. You body has been a certain way for a long time. Your exercises will align you, however, you body will want to go back to its "messed" up way because that is what it thinks is normal. The more you do your exercises, the more your body will understand that the "new" position is what should be normal.
nowaday,
I'm glad I could help out. If really want to learn this stuff, Geoff is the man to go to. He doesn't hold out anything.
By the way guys, I'll write more in regards to orthodics when I have some more time. Sorry that it's taking so long. I've just been really busy between this posture therapy and my BJJ.
Vic,
I got your pics. Man, you've got some serious issues going on! :)
''I took the Stott Pilates instructor's course. They make sure you take a posture course, but it's so minor compared to Egoscue.''
stott pilates has a specific rehab program co developed by a physio. i believe it's pretty new.
bolo, mbf sounds a lot like feldenkrais; which practitioners call movement education. i'm curious have you look at this method and is there any overlap?
sothy, new shoes doesn't mean better technology. to avoid any sort of accusation of slander, there is a reason why most experienced runners avoid nikes. gait mechanics is an extremely comprehensive subject.
I am not familiar with Feldenkrais, however, I have heard of the name before. I doubt it is similar. To the untrained eye, The Egoscue Method looks exactly the same as MBF, however, it is very different.
By the way, as far as gait analysis, that's something that we don't study. When people have certain posture problems, it automatically shows up in their gait. Basically, changes in a person's functional design will lead to a changes in the way they walk and the way they run. There are very few people who can hide their posture problems. When you correct their posture problems, you automatically correct their gait problems.
Swift,
Here's the best advice you will get- don't sit in front of the computer so long. Being sedentary for long periods of time is the worst on your body.
Especially, if you have a lap top, change positions frequently. Try working on your computer from kneeling, sitting, and standing.