Butt Muscles

Posts Tagged ‘butt muscles’

Back Hurts When You Sit?

Thursday, September 16th, 2010 by Karena

As far as I can tell that is the best kind of back pain to have. Lucky you!

In very broad terms, I see two

All our happy hours at our computers can be the worst thing for back pain

Many happy hours sitting at the computer can make for a very sad spine.

types of back pain clients: The first has increased pain when they are still, especially sitting, and the second group has increased pain when they are moving. In both scenarios great improvement can be made to pain levels but, generally, the first responds most quickly to therapeutic exercise or pilates exercise.

If you feel pain when you are sitting but feel relief when you get up and walk around the fix is pretty obvious: Move more. As a rule, even painful joints have pain-free ranges of motion. Maybe your back hurts when you do ‘X’ but you can still do ‘Y’ and ‘Z’. That’s very common, so be sure to continue to do ‘Y’ and ‘Z’. The importance of moving, moving, moving is in this short little note. Take a peek if you haven’t seen it already.

I had a frustrated client today. He said: ‘Exercise isn’t going to change the fact that I have a bone spur or how the bone spur pushes on the nerve and hurts like heck.’ I agree on Part I: Your bone spur will not be affected by exercise except that it may not get larger if your alignment is corrected. I don’t agree with Part II: That exercise won’t change the pain you feel from the bone spur pressing on a nerve. When did your pain get bad? Six months or 2 years ago? And when did you develop that bone spur? Probably long before that. If we age inactively then the muscles supporting the area around the injury (the bone spur, in this example) become weak and offer less support in a position of great compression (sitting).

Get exercising. Get stronger. Lose the pain. If you can walk without limping, take short walks that don’t flare up your back muscles and then find a few toning exercises to take care of your weak spine muscles and butt muscles.

Use the navigating tabs to the left to go to find free exercises for back pain: Look up Back Pain Series 1-8. Also, our DVD for exactly the issue of weak spines can be found under the store tab on this site. Please let me know if you have any questions!

Tags: back pain, back pain relief, butt muscles, Core strengthening for back pain, Exercise for Back Pain, exercise for pain relief, karena thek lineback, Pain Relief, pilates, Pilates Exercise
Posted in For Professionals, Heal Your Back Pain | 2 Comments »

Stand Up Straight! It’s Better than the Gym

Tuesday, September 14th, 2010 by Karena

I had two new clients today. I spent almost the entire hour with each of them working on standing up

Typical Sway Back Posture

straight. Both of them are post-rehabilitative clients that are coming to me for pain relief so there is no way of moving them forward without getting their alignment pretty close to perfect.

It is impossible to retrain any muscle if it is already too long or too short because of poor posture. For example, using the picture of a typical sway back posture to the right, the pectorals (chest muscles), the gluteals (tushie muscles) and the upper trapezius (back of the neck) are all going to be tight. And even though they are tight, they won’t be strong.

Also, using the picture can you determine which muscles are going to be over-stretched? The hip flexors (fronts of the hips), the abdominals, the lower trapezius and rhomboids (mid-back muscles) and the scalenes or the muscles at the front of the neck will all be over-stretched and saggy and weak.

So what is working to keep this woman vertical? This posture, along with other poor postures, pretty much allows one body structure to rest on top of the next without much muscular support. What happens to the muscles if you pull the alignment back where it should be? The short, tight muscles are lengthened and stretched. The over-stretched, weak muscles strengthen. In fact, the two women I worked with today had this sway back posture that we are talking about and after working on the improved alignment for just 5 minutes they both complained of muscles fatigue in their spinal muscles. Very normal. Those muscles will strengthen quickly and they won’t feel that muscle fatigue for long.

A quick word about the abs before I have to exit to wrangle a couple of dogs… In all poor postures, the abdominals are generally saggy and weak. While we have a nice bony structure towards the back of our torsos, the abdominal muscles are entirely responsible for keeping the fronts of our torsos intact (read: holding your guts in). Your tummy will be flatter with better posture because you actually made room for your organs by standing up straight. If you aren’t standing up straight, there is nothing holding your guts in.

The moral of the story? Stand up straight. When facing side to the mirror your ear should be in line with your shoulder, which is in line with the hip, which is in line with the ankle. No crazy curves with hips and spine and chin breaking that nice straight alignment. And then…. Suck in your guts. Literally.

Tags: ab exercise, back pain, back pain relief, butt muscles, core strength, Core strengthening for back pain, karena thek lineback, pilates, Pilates Exercise, posture, sway back, swayback
Posted in For Fitness Fanatics, Heal Your Back Pain | No Comments »

New Favorite Exercise for Stabilization

Monday, May 10th, 2010 by Karena

Hey, Everyone! Just a quickie today and I don’t even have a pic so we’ll all have to tune into the same Pilates Psychic channel so you can ’see’ what I’m talking about here. I have been using this exercise for the last three weeks for:

Hip Extensor Strength
Quadricep eccentric contraction
Glut med, min, endurance
Soleus and tibialis anterior endurance
Spine stability
Pelvic stability

Here’s how it goes:

Stand on the side of the reformer facing the footbar with the right leg next to the reformer. The heel of the right foot is about 4″ forward of the shoulder rest (4″ towards the footbar but on the floor).
The left foot goes on the shoulder rest with the toes in extension and the ball and heel of the foot on the actual shoulder pad.
With, of course, perfect alignment, press the left hip into extension.
I give my client a six foot dowel to hold for balance. Watch for hyper-extension of the right knee and accommodations in the low back

Notes: Upon extension, if your client has little hip extension or tight hip flexors the left knee may meet the line of the right knee but may not extend beyond that point. As the left hip extends be sure that your client is not ‘dumping’ into the low back.

I’ve been giving this exercise to my low back pain clients for increasing pelvic and spine stability. I’ve also used it for a client with a hip replacement to really zero in on the hip extension process without a whole lot of extraneous ’stuff’ going on. And most recently I’ve used the exercise with a knee pathology.

If you have a variation on this that you love, let me know! I’m always looking for new things. K

Tags: back pain, back pain relief, butt muscles, core strength, Core strengthening for back pain, glut med, gluteals, hip extensor strength, hip pain exercise, hip replacement exercise, knee pain exercise, lower back pain, min endurance, pelvic stability, pilates, Pilates Exercise, pilates exercise for back pain, Pilates exercises, Pilates for Back Pain, quadricep eccentric contraction, soleus and tibialis anterior endurance, spine stability
Posted in Case Studies, For Professionals, Heal Your Back Pain | 1 Comment »

Pilates Exercise for Back Pain – Part 4 of 8

Saturday, June 6th, 2009 by Karena

When we have back pain, it isn’t just our back muscles that stop cooperating. Our gluteals (read: butt muscles) almost always stop playing well with others and in fact they tend to not play at all.

Check your gluteal strength with this week’s exercise:

When we have a back or hip injury or period of pain, the gluteal muscles just stop firing.

The kinesiologists who study this kind of stuff don’t really know why. In fact, they don’t know what happens first: Do the gluteals stop working first or Does the back start hurting first. Interesting question.

I’d be really interested in hearing if you can ‘feel’ this exercise. If you have back pain you have to really, really focus on making those gluteals squeeze. Don’t let those butt muscles get away with just being a saggy mass on the back of your tuckus.

If you have back pain, this exercise is a keeper. Keep it in your archive of exercises you must do to increase the health of your spine.

So now join me. Scroll up and Push play! Karena

P.S. Let me know if you have any questions about this series of Pilates exercises for pain relief.

Tags: butt muscles, exercise for pain relief, gluteal strength, gluteals, karena thek lineback, Pilates Exercise, pilates exercise for back pain
Posted in For Fitness Fanatics, Heal Your Back Pain | No Comments »

Pilates Exercise for Back Pain – Part 3 of 8

Tuesday, May 19th, 2009 by Karena

Do you do the famous ‘I Have Back Pain’ Walk? The one where you sway side-to-side when you walk? The one where you would make anyone seasick if they were to watch you walk across the room? Or do you make people queasy when you stand in line as you constantly shift your weight back and forth from one leg to the other?

We back pain people think we are hiding our pain so well. HA!

When you start the ‘Sway’, it is a signal that your gluteal medius muscle has decided to check out. It’s the muscle on the side of your hip. If you put your hands on your hips and go down and inch or three, that’s where your glut med lives.

Good luck and let me know how you do with this series of Pilates exercise for pain relief! Karena

Tags: back pain, back pain and gluteal muscles, butt muscles, butt muscles and back pain, Exercise for Back Pain, exercise for pain relief, gluteal medius, gluteals, karena thek lineback, pilates exercise for back pain
Posted in For Fitness Fanatics, Heal Your Back Pain | No Comments »

Tags:

Links