Isometric Poses for Rehab, Gym Phone Zombies and a Cancer Study

Necessity being the mother of invention, I devised a set of isometric poses to help me recover from the weakness brought on by a shoulder dislocation.

In the first two months after my fall on the ice accident I was unable to raise my right arm overhead.

This was a stunning turn of events for someone (me) who had been routinely putting serious weights overhead since I was 15.

Rehab was slow because it involved getting the nerves to work again. After 18 months most of my right arm strength has returned.but not quite all of it.

I find that in certain positions a few inches below lockout my muscles dont want to kick in. Thus, did I contrive my own treatment that seems to be working well.

Using what I know about muscle mobilization during isometric poses I put my arm overhead in a position where it is super-weak.

Then I contract all the muscles in my shoulders, arms and back.as tight as I can manage for 5-6 seconds.

The next variation is to put my arm in a pressing position, tighten the muscles and then push my hand up and down while maintaining maximum tension.

What these two exercises have done is get the nerves responding again through the full range of motion for an overhead press.

This took about two weeks of daily practice.

I can say without hesitation that giving this procedure a try is a worth a try for rehab. The alternatives are physical therapy or (gasp) some invasive procedure by am orthopedic surgeon.

 

Gym Phone Zombies

I have noted that a large number of people doing workouts in the gym seem to be unable to do more than two sets of something before consulting their phone.

Often this is to look at videos of an exercise to try to approximate proper technique.

IMHO this is self-defeating for any serious lifter.

To achieve any sort of long term mastery of a lift I believe that it is essential to practice proper technique before you go to the gym.

The proper mechanics and the internal feel of a good lift (or perfect lift) should be in your mind before you start loading plates on the bar.

For heavy lifts the most important actions a lifter performs take place under the skin and out of sight.

These are getting full muscle mobilization and maximum tension.

This is not something you can see on a YouTube vid.

The other critical factor is that a serious lifter should be totally focused on what they are doing (or trying to do) rather than some distraction on the phone.

IMHO the only value of a phone in the gym is to take videos of your own lifts. That way you can do an informed critique of your lifting.

 

Interesting and Encouraging

Recently a team of university medical school researchers in Australia did a controlled study of the impact of different types of exercise on keeping certain cancers in remission.

One finding was that a modest amount of aerobic exercise (3 x week) reduced recurrence of breast cancer by almost 40%.

The mechanism appears to be an activation of certain parts of the immune system.

Regular exercise has been linked to many other positive health and longevity effects. It is encouraging that controlled studies have begun to show an even wider set of positive impacts.

 

Good Read

For those of you who want some extra mental edge in your training or sport, I find the blog from Condor Performance to be top notch. Go to www.CondorPerformance.com and subscribe (free) to their Mental Toughness Digest.

 

Lift Big!

Richard