[POD] 194. Why you should pay close attention to your posture (w: guest Amanda Harris) FINAL AUDIO
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[00:00:00] I can't wait to introduce you to today's guest, Amanda Harris. She is our posture expert Today. We're talking all about posture, why it's important as we age, what we need to look for, what we can do about it. There were so many golden nuggets in this conversation. I cannot wait for you to dive into it, but, but before you do, I want to let you know that Amanda was so generous and inside our women's wellness hub.
She gave us a full posture exercise masterclass. This includes the whole video to follow along with, which I did and I love it. And a full, um, handout that goes along with it as well. So if you're looking to improve your posture, this is a really amazing masterclass. It might be one of my favorites that we have in there right now.
So all you have to do is join the Women's Wellness Hub and you get in. And access to that class, along with other women's health expert masterclasses. And this is the best part, if you're [00:01:00] listening to this live right now, within this week, um, we have a very special offer happening inside our women's wellness hub.
We're dropping the enrollment fee and you can get started for just $20. It's a $20 a month membership where you get access to not only these master classes, but full exercise programs, full, um, meal plans and recipes. Um, all the master classes. Like I said, we've got training to help you create habits that stick.
It's so good and I hope to have you join us in there, and I'm so grateful for Amanda for sharing her expertise with us here on the podcast, as well as in her masterclass in our women's wellness hub. So we'd love to have you join us. You can get the link in the show notes. You can also learn more about about Amanda in the show notes, and let's get into the episode.
Welcome to the Woman of Wellness Podcast, a show dedicated to empowering you to make peace with food, embrace your body, and enjoy the journey to lasting health and wellness. I'm your host, Elizabeth Dahl, a [00:02:00] certified exercise. Physiologist and women's nutrition and behavior coach passionate about helping you build sustainable habits, achieve your goals, and create a lifetime of health without dieting or restriction.
And because women's health is such a multifaceted journey alongside sharing my expertise, I'm bringing you conversation. Stations with leading women's health experts to explore the many dimensions of wellness from nutrition and weight loss to mental health hormones and self-care. We'll uncover the tools and strategies you need to create a life of health and balance.
To the woman who's tired of the dieting rollercoaster, who feels disconnected from her body or overwhelmed by food and fitness rules, this is your invitation to make a change to the woman who's ready to achieve. Food freedom, lose weight in a way that feels good and discover the true meaning of health.
You are in the right place. It's time to ditch the guilt and shame of diet, culture, and embrace a new path to wellness. My [00:03:00] friend, you are already a woman of wellness. Your worth is not defined by a number on the scale. You deserve to show up in love for your body today and every day. Join me each week for inspiring conversations, expert insights and practical strategies to help you discover what your body truly needs.
It's time to reject the lie that help and weight loss have to be hard, painful, or miserable. I'm ready to link arms with you and experience the joy of wellness together. Okay, welcome back to the podcast. This is an episode I've actually been looking forward to for a while as I sit in my chair and have a little bit of back soreness myself, I've got Amanda Harris here and we're gonna be talking about back health today.
So before we jump all into that, will you please introduce us? Introduce yourself to us, and tell us what you're an expert in and why. Okay. Well thank you for having me on the show today, Elizabeth. Uh, my name's Amanda Harris and [00:04:00] I'm an exercise physiologist. I have a medical exercise practice in Richmond, Virginia, and my expertise lies in the area of.
Resolving back pain. So helping people get to the other side of back pain so they can get back to doing the activities and the things they love to do, the things that really move 'em right. So, um, I often see people coming out of physical therapy, but I also see folks that come in and just are concerned that maybe postural habits are taking them in the wrong direction and they are worried about.
Um, you know, getting into a place where they have chronic back pain, they've seen a parent go through that or they've seen a parent go through a lot of disability with back pain later in life and they wanna avoid it. So I see that whole spectrum of folks and really help them develop the control and the mobility and all that they need so that they can continue to flourish and live really active lives.
I love that. And I think it's something we don't often think about as a [00:05:00] component of our health until it hurts, right? Yeah. Or until it's something that holds us back. And so I think the, the question we really need to start with is, why should women pay attention to this? Maybe they're not experiencing chronic back pain yet, or maybe they are either way.
Why should we pay attention to, um, this i area of our health? Yeah, it's a great question because I think you're right. I think usually it's more of a reactive thing. You know, we're not thinking about our back until it starts to bother us. The problem is that in this wonderful time we live in, where we've got all sorts of technologies that allow us to do things and be more productive than we ever were before, it also.
Has very much limited a lot of the movements that we were doing back when we had to do more ourselves. And so we find that we've engineered a lot of motion out of our lives. Um, and so here's some examples, like we have backup cameras in our cars. [00:06:00] Um, my, my. Friends and colleagues in the physical therapy realm.
We always joke about how often we talk about backup cameras. Um, and a couple of people will always say, I don't have a backup camera, but for those of us who do you know, you no longer have to turn all the way around to back down a driveway. So, so little things like that that used to enable us to rotate right and left.
Are no longer there to stimulate that rotation. And so we find that we don't do it as much. I mean, think about when was the last time you had to turn all the way around? I mean, maybe if somebody called your name, but chances are you actually turned your feet too. So, so often we have kind of forgotten how to do certain movements.
Um, overhead reaching is another one. You know, we've, we've got engineered kitchens now to where you don't really have to reach overhead or you have a handy step stool so that you can step up and reach in front of you instead of reaching overhead. Um, when was the last time you climbed something? A ladder, let alone like a, you know, like a tree.
You know, your kids might climb trees, but you [00:07:00] probably haven't thought about actually pulling your body weight up on something unless you like rock climbing or something like that. So there, there are. Movement patterns that we just no longer do. And I think because of that, there are some that we overdo.
So for instance, if you work in front of a computer, you know, like you and I are right now, then that means that you likely work a lot with your hands out in front of you. Well, that's the same position you use when you drive, when you eat, when you walk, or not when you walk, but when you like. You sit and write, write something, you know, so there's so many things we do.
Washing dishes, making a bed, you know, folding laundry. You're doing these things with your hands out in front of you versus how many things are you doing where you're pulling yourself forward in space, or as I mentioned, climbing and reaching your arms overhead. So that reduced input into the system really changes the balance of the muscles.
Around the body, and we have to look at the [00:08:00] body as a whole system. So if you're only really working on the front side of the body and not the back side of the body, you create what we think of as an imbalance. Meaning that there are muscles that are doing the lion's share of the work, and then there are muscles that are sort of.
Asleep or forgotten or not being utilized much. And that's what typically drives postural habits and postural pain that start to disrupt our lives. So it's never too early to start paying attention to posture because I. If you wait until you start breaking down, then it's all reactive. But if I've got your attention and you're thinking, okay, maybe, maybe she's right.
Maybe I need to start paying attention to posture. It is a great time to do that and start to balance out the movements in your daily life so that you're not cultivating these four postural habits that lead to disability and pain. Yeah. Um, in my practice as well, one of the things that I would do a lot working with women, um, [00:09:00] with exercise is thinking about let's do movements that you want to perform every day.
And this comes from a little background of working with seniors. Yeah. And what's most important to seniors is that they can function in their day to day life. Right. That they can lift. Yes. Something heavy and put it in the cupboard. They can close a door, they can carry groceries. Mm-hmm. They can walk like balance is a really big deal, especially as we age, balance.
Right. And so I always, I love to just like. Say, call it that functional movement where we're like, okay, I wanna be able to function, so what do I need to do, um, to function? So let's start with this question then. How do we know if we need this? Or is this just a general, everyone should be doing posture exercises?
Or how do, how do we, how do we, um, recognize the need for, um. Kind of what you're talking about. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, you know, the obvious answer is if you're hurting when you do certain things, if you're hurting, when you sit too long. When you [00:10:00] stand too long, you know, the complaint I hear a lot about is standing a long time at church or at a cocktail party.
I know those are really different, but you know, if you stand so long that your back starts to hurt, then you probably have a postural concern if you're sitting a long time in your back. Starts to hurt, then you probably have some postural concerns. And, and I don't mean that it's all about the posture, it may be about certain muscles not pulling their weight.
You know, certain muscles are not able to support you the way they should be, and that's what's driving the pain. But pain is a, is a really big indicator now. If you are not having pain, you might suspect you have postural problems. And I hear this a lot, so I do get people, you know, of all age groups, everything from, you know, 30, 35 on up into their late sixties where I hear things like, I was walking by a window and I didn't like what I saw.
Or, you know, I looked at a picture of me with my kids and I didn't like the way I was holding my body. And so I find that a lot of us are. At [00:11:00] least superficially aware that there's a postural concern if we're not, you know, more physically aware of it. Um, but, you know, I will be doing, when we do the, the masterclass, I actually have a little postural assessment now.
It's very broad brush strokes. It's very basic, but it's a way for you to check in with your body and determine whether maybe I need to pay more attention in some areas of my body. So, um, so, but my guess is if you have some postural concerns, you're already thinking about it, right? Yes. I feel this on a deep level.
Yes, yes. And you know, and, and I love doing shows like this because everybody's sitting up really straight right now. Hopefully, like if you're driving in your car and you're listening, I hope you're sitting up a little straighter. That's great. That's so funny. 'cause I was going to say, I am feeling like I'm not, I'm not sure how to sit.
Yeah, that's okay too. Yeah, exactly. And I actually do, [00:12:00] I mean, I. One. It's one of those things sometimes that, you know, like I was, my dad was a general contractor and our house was always under construction, never done. Right. It's the same thing sometimes as an exercise specialist. I'm like, I'll get to that later.
You kind of know, but, um, so I actually wanna go back a little bit. Can you explain to us what posture is like? What does that mean? Yes. Okay. This is one of my favorite things to talk about because I think it gets really mischaracterized. Um, and I don't know where that starts, but, but let me tell you what, what I, how I explain posture.
Posture is basically the habit you have cultivated. I. To hold yourself up. That's really all it is. It's a, it's a habit or a culmination of a bunch of habits. Now, the other way I like to characterize posture is as a strategy, because ultimately it comes down to how your body has [00:13:00] figured out the easiest, most efficient way to support and carry your bones, whether it's sitting or standing.
And usually those are slightly different, um, postural habits. How you sit and how you stand are a little different, and we can get into that a little bit more. And a lot of it has to do with what should be holding you up when you're standing versus what must hold you up when you're sitting. Um, so sitting and standing are, are two different sort of.
Uh, problems or challenges, we can call them. I don't really believe they're problems. And, and really when people point to poor posture or bad posture, or somebody comes in and they say, I have really bad posture. I try to really reframe it as, no, you've just got a bad strategy. And, and so really when we, when we think about posture, what I want you to start to think about is it's the way that your body has.
Has learned to hold you up in the most efficient, like low cost, meaning low calorie [00:14:00] cost, low energy cost, way that it possibly can in the most pain-free way that it possibly can. And if you don't like the way it looks or the way it feels, we just need to change something. So we need to change that strategy.
We need to give you a better habit that fills the bill. And, and that's really what the postural work is all about. It's not about trying to get you perfect, however, the better, well, let me sit, let me reframe that. The, the more, the closer to ideal alignment we can get you. So if, if you come to me and you've got, you know, you're, you're worried about the whole head forward, the hump thing.
I have a lot of women that come to me and they're like, worried about this hump back here, right? Yeah. This thing at the base of the neck. So the closer I can get your alignment away from the posture that you don't like and toward the posture that you want, even if it isn't perfect, the better you will feel and the better you will operate because we're actually bringing the joints into a better position for the [00:15:00] muscles to do their jobs.
And that's really what comes down to the importance of improving our posture, is we want a better alignment so the muscles can do their jobs. When we are so far out of alignment that we're starting to have pain, or even before that, we're out of alignment some, and we don't like the way it looks in pictures, you know, that whole thing.
Even when we're out of alignment, some, there are certain muscles that are being overstretched and they become kind of deactivated by your brain. You know, your brain's this big supercomputer. It's constantly working like a switchboard operator plugging in and unplugging various muscles to do various jobs.
And so if something is overstretch and out of a good position to work properly, it gets unplugged and something else gets told to operate in its place. You may have heard that as being called compensation. So if you've ever heard a phy physical therapist talk about compensation, that's what compensation is.
It's your body trying to call on other muscles that really weren't designed to [00:16:00] do the job. It's about to be asked to do, and it's being told to operate and do something that it really wasn't designed to do. And that's a lot of times where postural pain comes from. So, so what we want to do when we start to think about posture is instead of characterizing.
Body parts as being bad or, you know, in some way nefarious. Like I, I often, you know, have folks that have come to me from another practitioner that has characterized their hip flexors as being nasty hip flexors or, you know, like sinister hip flex. You know, those wicked hip flexors of yours, those muscles in the front of the hips that can be so tight on some of us.
And, and I'll say, no, no, no, no, no. That's not what's going on here. You know, they, they aren't wicked muscles. Muscles are only following the orders of your brain, but they're, they're doing it for a reason. They're trying to hold you up. So let's not characterize 'em as being wicked. Let's give the body a different strategy.
I. Let's, let's give the body something else to hold you up with so those hip flexors don't have to be [00:17:00] so tight and grippy and painful, you know? So, so I want you to start thinking of posture as just a group of habits that's arisen out of a strategy to hold you up in the easiest way it possibly can. I.
Ah, I love that. That really is a great definition. And here's what I love that you brought in, was just this like body compassion. Yes. Because I think a lot of people could probably relate that they have something like that, that they, that they speak about their body. I have a bad back, I have bad posture, I have bad knees, I have like all these things and I love.
I love the verbiage that you brought in is like, it's just that your muscles have been trained a particular way to Yep. You know, support your body in that way. And so my question was going to be, you know, can we reverse this? Yes. And I think the answer is yes, right? Yes. But, um. On a, on a deeper level there.
You know, I think people [00:18:00] go, okay, well if I've ever really tried to change those things, it's like painful. Like if I'm slouchy and then I try to sip, it's really painful, right? Yes. And will I, will I ever get away from it? Will it ever be normal or is there like a timeframe? Like I think people have a little bit of a disconnect that.
I've always had this, so I'm always gonna struggle with it. Come in and say, yeah, I think it's permanent. Absolutely not. We can, we can change this. Give us some hope here. Okay. I would love to. 'cause I love, you know, that's one of my little taglines on my website is hope and Possibility. So, so a couple of things.
Um, number one, there was this family circus cartoon I have to tell you about that somebody gave me probably 15 years ago, and I wish I knew where it was now, but it got. Somehow shuffled away in a move somewhere. But it had the little boy asking the mom, mommy, what does normal mean? And she says, oh honey, that's just a setting on the dryer.
So I love that for [00:19:00] conversations like this. And I think you can relate to that too with the work that you're doing, because I think normal is sort of overused and, and not a very fair word. So what I would rather say is. If we are talking about ideal alignment where there is perfect muscle balance between, you know, each and every joint, right?
So that, so that the muscles on the front side of the body are, you know, of equal ability as the muscles on the backside of the body and everything is working. We'll say relatively optimally because no human body is perfect. Um, if we're talking about getting back to ideal alignment, chances are we can't get back to the alignment you had when you were 14, 24, whatever your ideal alignment time was when you remember how everything looked just right.
Chances are we can't get you back to that perfect place that you think of as perfect, which probably wasn't exactly perfect if we're all honest about it, right? But we can make things better, and that's what we really try to [00:20:00] focus on. And what's really cool about the human body is that it, it is so adaptable.
If it wasn't so adaptable, humans would not have been walking on this. Earth for as many years as we have been. So part of what got you to the posture you don't like is the body's ability to adapt. And that's exactly what we use to bring you back toward a more ideal or optimal alignment. And so the thing to keep in mind is that progress is more important than perfection, and even 10% better in the human body.
Please don't ask me where I got that, but I know I saw it in the research somewhere, and I swear to you all it is absolutely the truth. 10% better in the human body goes like miles towards improving function, meaning your ability to operate in a pain-free way, even in a strong way. So think of it as 10% better in alignment.
Could lead to a 50% improvement in your ability to operate, your [00:21:00] ability to do, you know, high intensity yard work, or to actually make it through an entire, you know, body pump class without any back pain or whatever it is that you're trying to get back to. So all we have to do is get you to be better than you are now.
Like, improve your alignment. Some and get you toward better alignment and your function's incredible. I wish, um, I wish I had a picture of a lady that I started working with probably back in December. Um, her daughter is a really dear friend of mine and her daughter's a dentist and has been trying to get her mom in see me forever.
And her mom, um, has a very, uh, a very pronounced curve in her upper back and has the extreme head forward position. She has been through multiple spinal fusions and she just had debilitating back pain that was starting to get into her neck. And um, the daughter, the dentist sent the mom to me. She was on her last hope for this.
And she kept [00:22:00] saying, you know, all my life I've been an exerciser. Am I done? Like, are you gonna tell me I am done? And she even had a spinal stimulator in, and if you don't know what that is, it's a little device that gets implanted in the spine, tries to sort of, um. Tease the brain into thinking it's not in pain, you know, like this is the length this lady was having to go to, to manage her pain.
And we worked together for probably two and a half, three months. She was incredibly compliant about her exercises. And now, um, from all reports, she's back in the gym. She's taking cycling classes. She's weight training and y'all, the, the exaggerated curve and the upper back is not gone. It's better and she's got strength around those muscles.
Now she can actually use some of the muscles on the backside of her body, whereas when I met her, she couldn't even find them. She couldn't even get them. To twitch, like we couldn't even get a signal back there. Now she can actually use those muscles and so her alignment is not perfect, but it's [00:23:00] good enough to get her to use all those muscles and now she can be strong and she can be fit and not painful.
And that's, that's where the hope lies, right, is you don't have to have perfect alignment to be pain-free and very strong. Hmm, yeah. Does she incorporate those exercises into her? General program. I was kind of thinking, you know, someone might ask Yeah. Like are these separate exercises? Are these like, could this be part, because sometimes it could feel like another to-do like, yes.
And usually if you're in pain, you're all about the to-do like, I'm in pain, I wanna fix this. Yeah. But let's, you know, talk kind of preventative supportive side of things here. How do we incorporate this into a general fitness program? So that's a great question and I think it can be done very simply. So depending on where your posture is and how badly you wanna make a change, you might do fewer or more exercises.
[00:24:00] So what we'll do today in the masterclass is kind of a starter kit. Yeah. Um, but, but what I did with her, for instance, is we did very intensive work for several months. On, um, postural control muscles. Now, it wasn't always all about posture. A lot of it was about, um, creating more control around her lower back because she had so much issue around there.
But, but all of them were going toward better posture. I mean, it wouldn't have worked not to. You know, so, so what we talked about was when she started going to the gym again, which was probably about two and a half months in when she started going to the gym again, I told her, I said, okay, I, I, I picked them myself, I handpicked them, and I'm gonna give you some of 'em today.
But here are five exercises. That I do not want you to skip a day on now. I mean, you know, you might get sick or you have a family emergency or you know it, something happens and you fall off the training wheel for like one day or maybe a day and a half or something. But you get right back on is the point, right?
You're [00:25:00] not, you're not gonna just stop it. Um, and so the whole idea was here are five exercises I want you to do every day. And when you're going to the gym, they are your warmup. So we call them activity preparation, you know, but it's your warmup. It, I mean, you know, we, we all know that we're supposed to kind of warm up before activity, so we use these exercises to warm up.
Some of them are stretching and mobility type exercises. Others are more stability and control exercises for her back. But all of them prime her body to operate in a really high functioning way so that then when she goes and does weight machines or a class or cycling, those muscles are available and ready to work and they're not being sort of, um.
Brushed off by the nervous system is, oh, we can't use that. That's too hard. The alignment isn't good enough for that. No, these muscles are being activated in her warmup plan so that she can then access them in her workout. And that's, that's what I really believe [00:26:00] is a necess as a necessity for anybody who does any kind of this, this kind of work on posture or on alignment or on, you know, back stability and control is, we have to keep an element of that always in there.
Or else you lose it. It's a use it or lose it type thing, you know? Yeah. And for everyone listening, this is a call to action to remember that exercise and fitness is not just about weight loss and calories, and there is a message in society that exercise is about a physique or about a calorie burn, and.
I love the conversation that you're bringing in here is exercise and some of these extra exercises that you might not do or may not be as fun or whatever, right? Mm-hmm. They are supporting your body to show up in a better way, and they are important and they are very nourishing for your body. And I just know it because I also find myself getting into that.
Like, I gotta [00:27:00] get in the gym, get outta the gym quickly, you know, and, and that mindset. Sometimes we get in where we. Have to shift. I wanna create a shift today to say, the mindset is I'm going to support my body and these are the things that I'm going to do to support them. And one of those things is, um, you know, postural exercises or mobility exercises or you know, someone that maybe is working on heart health, like getting that, you know, cardiovascular movement and, and, and muscle health.
And, and if we can switch the thinking from. Get in, get out, calorie burn, weight loss to how can I support and nourish my body with movement? Game changer, right? Yes. Because then you're gonna start to, your body's gonna start to work with you. And I think so many body image struggles too would change when you start to feel that that goodness in your body, that you're doing something for it and not just looking for that.
That calorie [00:28:00] number, the burn on the, on the treadmill, you know? Yes. And I think you bring up a good point because this is a little bit of a moving target as we age too, right? Like what you have to do to manage and maintain a healthy body and healthy postural habits. When you're 35 is different than what you have to do when you're 65.
In fact, if, if I'm honest, we're gonna, I'm just gonna go ahead and say that you have to do a little bit more as you get older to manage your joints and make them healthy and feel good, and make sure that there's good muscle balance so that you can continue to do the level of activity you enjoy. So, funny story, um, I like to run.
I don't run. Terribly far. But, um, I run probably three days a week and there was a Saturday morning that I was upstairs and I told my daughter, I said, Hey, I'm gonna go for a run and I'll be back probably in about 30 or 40 minutes. I just wanna let you know where I'm at, where I am in case you're looking for me.
And so about 10 minutes later she came into my room and I was. [00:29:00] Finishing up my stretches because I go through a whole series of mobility work that takes me about 10 minutes before I run. Now, I didn't do that when I was in my twenties. I didn't need to do it when I was in my twenties, but if I don't do it now, my knees hurt.
You know, one hit might get really tight. I, I have to do that to manage my body. And so she came in and she stood in the doorway, my 12-year-old daughter, and very accusative said. I thought you were going for a run that was 10 minutes ago. What are you doing? I said, well, I'm stretching. You know, this is what I have to do to prepare my body to run.
And she said, mom, you spend more time stretching than you do running. And I, I kind of laughed, but you know, my point is I think we have to be willing and able to spend a little bit of time to do the things that help our bodies work best optimally before we do the stuff that is fun. Or maybe you think is necessary to burn all those calories, you know, before you check the box of, okay, I've done my 30 minutes of cardio today, or whatever it is.
I think we gotta manage [00:30:00] to our, our modern lifestyles. I mean, especially since those modern lifestyles don't have as much variety of movement as they did say prior to the industrial age. Like you talk to your grandparents or great grandparents if they're still around, and they'll tell you how much movement they were doing, you know.
My dad was in construction my whole life. So he would always come home pretty tired. Yes. Yes. And, and guaranteed he was moving in a variety of ways. Right? Like all day long. All day long. So, oh, I have so many of like writing down these questions as you're talking, but I think this is an important point. Um, why, why is it different now as we age?
I, I mean, I think, like you said, there's the twenties, me and all of a sudden the thirties, forties, fifties, me. Yeah. What's going on here? Yeah. And, and I'm glad you asked that question because a lot of people assume that I'm gonna say arthritis. Yeah. I mean, I bet. I wonder how many of your listeners were like, she's gonna talk about arthritis, but guess what, I'm not [00:31:00] gonna talk about arthritis.
Okay. I might, I might mention it, but I'm not gonna really. Talk about arthritis, because I don't think that's what this is about. Yeah. But there are very real changes that happen inside our bodies as we get older. I don't like to think about them either. So if this is making you cringe, it's okay. Um, but, but the reality is we know that elastin, which is one of the components of our connective tissue, starts to decrease in the body after the age of about 35, which means that we're not quite as.
Flexible, read that as resilient as we were when we were younger. You know, you may have even thought of, if you have kids, you may watch your kids play and think, wow, they're like Gumby, you know, they can do this crazy activity swinging on the bars and flipping upside down and you're thinking that would break me in half.
But they can do it. So there are some very real changes in um, our joint. Composition and our muscle composition as we get a little bit older. But here's the cool part. If you continue to stimulate the [00:32:00] joints and the muscles in ways that help them move through full ranges of motion, I. With control, pain-free, full ranges of motion, and you're using muscle length, so you're stretching, but you're also strengthening.
So you're actually using the whole muscle, not in every single muscle in your body. But you know, think about what I mentioned earlier about a variety of movements. So engineering back into your day movements that compliment the stuff that you do all day. So if you spend a lot of time with your hands out in front of you and you start now doing.
Rowing type movements or pulling type movements or overhead pushing type movements, you know, all pain-free please. But you start doing those sorts of things and you start breathing new life back into those tissues and they start to become more pliable and more compliant, more flexible again. So that's what's wonderful because we are highly adaptive, but if you leave it b.
If you do nothing, and you probably know people that have, right? [00:33:00] Everybody's got these folks in their lives. It could be a parent or a grandparent. It could be a neighbor that just quit moving and you watch their ability go downhill fast. Yeah. So it really truly is a user to lose it, and the older we get, the more important that regular maintenance becomes.
But, and it has to do with the change in the composition of these tissues. It's not so much that the tissues are degrading, they're changing. Right. So we have to change how we manage to them. That's all. I love that. And I mean, arthritis is arthritis and, you know, I, I, let me just say about arthritis is that, um, I think a lot of times arthritis sets in early when people don't move.
Well, I. And they may have been active when they were younger and then they had a spell where they weren't. And then they try to do the same activities they did when they were younger. Yeah. So, you know, I'll pick on my father-in-law, he used to be an extremely active man, and then I. He went through a period in his [00:34:00] sixties where he would do like nothing for a while, and then he would try to split wood in the fall, and it was like, whew.
You know? And that would, that would hurt him. It would break him. And so we do things like that to ourselves and we get injuries. And then that can bring about arthritis too. It isn't always genetics. It can be misuse of the body that creates an injury and then leads into an arthritic process. So again, you know, managing your movement now and keeping your body moving well throughout your adulthood as you're aging is going to help prevent some of those things that you're seeing among neighbors and family members and things like that.
Awesome. So let's kind of go with that one. I, I thought if someone's listening, so we are gonna go deeper on the masterclass, but if someone's listening and they're like, okay, where do I start? The one thing that you mentioned is like, find those complimentary movements or like the opposite movement, right?
Like, yes, if you're doing a lot of hunching and arching over, then open up, right? If you could see me on the [00:35:00] camera. Um, and so I like that one. Give us maybe a couple more. Yes. Okay. So my three favorite places to point people toward when you're looking to move better Yeah. Are ankles, hips, and upper back.
And Elizabeth, you just went through the whole upper back thing. You have the big stretch on, on the camera. But if you're listening in your car, what she's doing is spreading her arms wide and sort of opening up her chest. And that is a great one. Um, going hand in hand with that, you might also think about rotation.
You know, I mentioned earlier that, uh, you don't need a backup camera. Any, or excuse me, you use a backup camera. So you don't need to rotate anymore when you're in your car. But can you find a reason to literally just rotate? Um, I like rotating and standing because if you rotate in standing, you can move through your hips too.
I love a good twofer because if you can do an exercise that hits more than one area, it's. Very time efficient. Yep. So standing and rotating so that you're moving through your upper back and your hips is really good for your upper back because that upper back gets [00:36:00] really stiff. Um, especially when you're having to hunch over a computer in addition to all the other stuff you do with your hands out in front of you in a day.
But let's talk about ankles. So ankles, unless you're a hiker or a runner, don't get a whole lot of action other than walking on. Pretty flat, monotonous ground, right? So I've worked with nurses that tell me they're doing 20,000 steps a day, but guess what? They have stiff ankles. Why? Because they're walking on flat, monotonous ground.
The ankle is only getting the range of motion required to walk on that flat surface. So walking on trails like over roots and rocks and all kinds of weird stuff where your foot and ankle have to adapt is one way to create ankle mobility. But you know, another way is to simply do some calf stretching.
And I'm gonna bring that up in the masterclass because believe it or not, a. Stiff ankle will not only affect how you walk, but it will affect how you hold yourself up because it, it really will, um, change the way you weight your [00:37:00] foot. Interesting. Right. And since most of us wear shoes with a little bit of a heel on them, most of, and, and think about this, even your athletic shoes, unless you're into the natural footwear craze, even athletic shoes have a little bit of a heel on them.
And so it's almost like you're standing on a little hill all day long. Hmm. And, and I know you probably walk around your house barefoot. I hear that a lot too. It's like, no, no, Amanda, I walk around my house barefoot all the time, so I get plenty of, of ankle action, but. If you ever notice what happens when you take your shoes off, where does your weight go?
It probably goes toward the ball of your foot. That's a habit. So even if your shoe is off now, if you're standing on the balls of your feet, then that's a habit that's coming back from walking with a shoe that has a little bit of a heel rise. There's your stiff ankle. Crazy, right? Like a lot of us don't think about that.
It's like, oh, I can walk around barefoot, but yeah, but you're loading that forefoot too much and that's because your ankle's a little tight. So [00:38:00] let's get the ankles moving. Another place is the hips. So a lot of folks feel like their hip flexors are too tight. You know, I mentioned that folks wanna characterize the hip flexors as being sort of villainous somehow.
Hip flexors are amazing, by the way. They are incredible muscles. I mean, they are just, it fascinates me what we can learn from working with hip flexors, because even if yours are tight, if they've been so, I hate the word tight, but I'm using it because I think most of us understand it. But, but if we say tight and I'm doing air quotes.
What What I really mean by that is they feel grippy. So if you've ever had that situation where you stand up after you've been sitting for a long time and you feel like you're having to wrench your hip open to stand up straight, then you know what I mean by grippy. But the grippiness is a strategy, right?
Like you've learned how to use those hip flexors in a way that's kind of holding you up. Hmm, but they're, but they're not allowing the hip to open fully, which changes the way you stand in your wa and you walk and it changes the way you use the rest of the [00:39:00] muscles around the pelvis. So if that's going on, chances are your hips are kind of stiff.
And when you walk with a tighter, shortened hip flexor, it means that as your leg goes under you and behind you. So if you think about how you walk, you know, you step down on your foot and while your other leg is swinging through, that standing leg is going underneath and behind you. So if you've got tight hips, in order for that leg to go underneath and behind you, you have to arch your back just a little bit.
Just a little bit. But if you're doing that for 10,000 steps a day, or 12,000 steps a day, or even 5,000 steps a day, that's going to add up over time. It's gonna get into your back eventually. So I love to work on opening up hips. The other thing that I like to do with hips is to teach you how to get different angles in your hips.
Because if the hip only knows 90 degrees sitting in the chair or 180 or close to it standing up, then that's not a whole lot of range of motion of the hip. [00:40:00] What about sitting on the floor with your legs crossed? So if the hips get to rotate outward. You know, what about sitting on your heels? If that's a, if that's something that you can do.
So your hips are a little bit more closed that way, so you can start to play with the different angles you can get out of your hips. And that can be really healthy for your hips too. Just to move in different ranges of motion than 90 degrees or close to 180 can be really useful. So really trying to get those stiff places moving like.
Ankles, hips, upper back, best places in the world to start. Hmm. I love this. It's just giving me lots of ideas. I have to ask, are you standing right now? I am.
I think that's an interesting, like, yeah, like that's really cool because I, you know, I think we have, like you said, our lifestyle is so much like not conducive to movement, but even just standing brings some of that movement. [00:41:00] Yes, and, and honestly, I would normally sit during a podcast and what I, what I usually do when I'm on a podcast is I sit in my desk chair with my legs crossed.
Okay. Which is weird, right? Like, almost like sitting in the floor. But that's where I'm most comfortable is I'll sit with my legs crossed, but I'm standing for you now because I figured it was easier to move things around for the masterclass and, you know, standing, um, instead of sitting comes with its own challenges because I'm not comfortable just staying static here.
So you're seeing me move around a little bit and I've got this like. Aerobic step, step thing, um, right in front of me that I keep putting my foot on, up on, and then taking it down again, which is actually a strategy I tell my folks who use standing desks to do, you know, to have like a little step stool or something that they can put their foot up on and then put it down again and put it up on and put it down again.
And it's literally just shifting your weight and moving your body around a little bit so that you're not just standing statically over your feet and making everything go numb. 'cause it will at some point. Um. But yes, I mean, wriggling around is really good and [00:42:00] I'm seeing you move in your chair too, and I think a lot of us can get.
In the zone when we're at work, you know, we're working on a report or a project, we get in the zone and we don't move for like hours and you know, and then things start to hurt. But if you, and, and this is a productivity hack, by the way. My husband does productivity coaching and, and so he always said, set a timer for 45 minutes.
And then get up and move. There's, there's something out there in the literature that says somewhere between 45 and 55 minutes is your most productive amount of time before your attention starts to wane. And you need a little bit of a brain break to come back and, and really give it your best shot. Like give it your best attention.
And so he used to tell people that all the time, and I said, well, that's perfect because that's about as long as a body can take it. You know, like you, you really start to get the wiggles, the chair starts to get uncomfortable. And so when you feel that, get up and move, and if you can't trust yourself because you're so in the zone, which is a great feeling by the way, but, um, then set a timer.
Yeah. And, and get yourself up and, and move. But I think the [00:43:00] key is to keep your body moving just a little bit more than you would if you were, you know, in that zone for the next two and a half, three hours. Right. Yeah. I feel that. Um, okay. Oh my goodness. We've had such a lovely conversation. Like I've, I'm longer than we normally go for podcasts, but I think this has been really valuable information.
But I wanna ask one more question for you. Yes. I'm gonna put you on the spot. Okay. Maybe if you could answer it in like a minute or two. Okay. What makes you cringe that you say don't do this? Or, or something that we could avoid that maybe we don't know? Or even just like, what makes you cringe in this space?
Okay, so if we're talking specifically about posture, what makes me cringe is people telling you to pull your shoulders back. I was just thinking about that. Yes. Will they make those, um, back things, braces, it's hard things. Yeah. Yeah. And I, and I'll have people ask me from time to time, can I get one of those?
Like, would it solve it if I got one of those? And, and my [00:44:00] answer is always no, it won't solve it because you're gonna lean on it. You know you're gonna, yeah, you're gonna lean into the harness thing. And that, that sort of defeats the whole purpose. Like we want you to. You know, to hold yourself up naturally, but pulling the shoulders back is like a, um, it's like a quick fix.
It's like a quick cue. And, and whoever, you know, whatever well-meaning soul is saying that to you, whether it's a mother or a friend or a spouse or whatever is, um, is, is trying to help you with the most obvious thing they can see. The problem is if you are rounding your shoulders and letting your head drift forward, it's not because.
You need to pull your shoulders back. There's something down low, which we're gonna get into in the masterclass in just a minute, but there's something down low that you're not holding yourself up with that leads to that upper back position. And so, yeah, I get very cringey over that. Yeah. Oh, that's awesome.
'cause I actually was writing. I wrote that thing down, those, those back things. 'cause you know, they kind of claim certain [00:45:00] things and so I, I'm glad we kind of debunked that. Yeah. Um, well thank you. Thank you so much for joining us. Will you tell everyone where we can find you to get more support in this area?
These, absolutely. Um, so my website is reconnect.com. That's RE dash K-I-N-E-C t.com. I assure you have that in the show notes. And then I also have a YouTube channel, which is, I believe, reconnect. I think it's just reconnect. So I think it's at reconnect. Um, and so, you know, please feel free to look me up on there.
Um, I've got lots and lots of uh, you know, exercise videos on there, exercise hacks for all sorts of things. And then, um, my new thing for 2025 is shorts. I'm working on shorts, getting better at doing shorts because I like to talk too much. Me too. It's hard. Awesome. Okay, we'll link all those things in the show notes.
Thank you so much for joining me. Yeah. Thank you, Elizabeth. It's been a pleasure. Okay, my friend, if you love the [00:46:00] Woman of Wellness podcast, did you know that one of the biggest ways you can say thank you is by hitting that subscribe button and leaving a review? This helps the women that need this message have more of a chance of seeing it.
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