The Body: An Engineering Marvel

While my sons were home from college this summer, the TV was often tuned to the History channel especially to watch Modern Marvels and Engineering Disasters. They are equally fascinated with how buildings, bridges, planes, and cars are built and the flaws that destroy them.

Structure determines how well an object can fulfill its function. For example, a building must have certain design features to survive an earthquake. The same is true for our bodies, but our bodies go one step further. The way we move either strengthens or deteriorates our structure, making function and form more related.

Let’s look at some of the anatomical marvels we take for granted and how aligned use enhances, maintains and strengthens structure.

Marvel — The Feet, Legs and Pelvis
The 26 bones of each foot are arranged in three arches, an elegant design that makes it possible for an area less than one square foot to hold up and move hundreds of pounds.

The foot doesn’t just bear weight, it’s movement (or lack thereof) determines functionality throughout the body. A foot that rolls along the ground with each step translates freedom to the hip and massages the sacro-iliac (SI) joints

Good range of motion in the ankle takes pressure off the knees and facilitates hip flexion and extension. Feet and ankles that rest on the ground in alignment transfer a ground reaction force (think of it like an anti-gravity reflex) through the arch of the pelvis to lift the spine and take pressure off the neck and shoulders.

It’s clear that the body is designed to MOVE and move freely. Many of the disasters that damage us come from inhibiting our full movement, such as the following examples.

Shoes — Heels and stiff soles thwart the foot’s ability to roll and limit foot and ankle range of motion so the next joint up, the knee, is overworked. Flip flops and shoes without backs require tension in the plantar fascia to hold them on and create a flat footed walk, which compresses the hip joint.

Flat ground —The foot’s many joints are designed to walk on rocks, sticks, and bumps. Instead, we almost always walk on flat, paved ground. Many of us have even lost the strength to walk barefoot on sand for any length of time.

Take off your shoes and admire the engineering marvel of your structure. Walk in the grass or on a beach to feel the connection between your toes, feet, ankles, knees, hips, and spine.

Exercise of the Month: Strengthen Your Neck Core Muscles

Head Turns
Stand at a wall with your knees bent. Feel your buttocks, upper back, shoulders, and back of your head on the wall. There should be a small space between the wall and your low back and also the back of your neck.

1. Lengthen the back of your neck and slightly tuck your chin so your face is not turned up nor down. This position alone may tax your neck core. If you feel the muscles in your neck working, stay in this position and breathe deeply for several breaths.
2. Once you feel comfortable in the position, add head turns. Turn only as far as you can without any twinges or pain in your neck.
3. Swivel your face to the right as the back of your head turns to the left. You will hear your hair sliding on the wall if the center of the movement comes from the center of your neck, which is what you want.
4. Turn both directions up to three times.
   

You can print this exercise and tape a copy to your bathroom mirror as a reminder. Notice how much better your neck feels and how your range of motion improves with just one minute of daily exercise. (It's pretty good for your thighs, too.)

This next exercise strengthens the neck core even more.

Neck Flexion
Lie on the floor with your knees bent and feet on the floor.

1. Put a finger at the base of your skull and lift your skull, but not the rest of your neck, off the floor about an eighth of an inch and rest back down gently. This movement is too tiny to show up on a photograph.
2. Remember that core movements are slow and small.
   
3. Feel down your neck for a bony bump, which is the back of a vertebra. Now lift this bump and the base of your skull, but not the rest of your neck, up just a tiny bit. Lift and release gently, slowly, just a fraction of an inch using each vertebra in your neck as the pivot point.
4. Don’t Do Any Movement That Hurts! You want to feel the muscles in the front of your neck doing the lifting, not the muscles in your chest or abdomen.

Core Muscles of the Neck

This is the third and final article in the series of core strength. As previously noted, the core isn’t limited to the abdomen, but each section of the body depends on active function of core muscles to work optimally. The neck’s unwieldy task of balancing a 10 pound head makes deep muscles vitally important in this fragile part of the body.

Most people feel tension in the superficial muscles of the neck. The trapezius and sternocleidomastoid muscles are common headache culprits. While the usual complaint is pain in the back of the neck, many of the core muscles are located in the front, such as the longus colli, longus capitus, and scalenes. When these muscles aren’t used, they become stiff and inflexible and the neck loses its ability to manage the weight of the head. (Imagine trying to balance a full one-gallon milk jug on a wooden dowel.)

Core muscles are small, so it is best to use small movements to strengthen them. In addition, their slow twitch muscle fibers contract and relax more slowly than other muscles. Keep this in mind when doing core exercises and be patient as these muscles develop.

Exercising the core muscles in your neck, shoulder, hips, spine, and torso will make all other movement easier and reduce your risk of injury. The core muscle exercises described in this series are easily done and won’t even cause a sweat. Devote time every week to keeping your core—and therefore your entire body—strong.

Core Muscles of the Shoulders

Previous articles in this series have described the core muscles of the torso and hips. We’ll continue with the shoulders and in the next cover the neck core.

What’s all the fuss over core muscles anyway? Your grandmother didn’t need a personal trainer to teach her about the core. Is this all some scheme to get us to sign up for exercise classes?

Your grandma knew how to use her core, because she built strength in her body with daily activities. Nowhere is this more evident than in her shoulders and arms. Imagine washing your laundry by hand and hanging it on the line to dry. Or scrubbing the floor on your hands and knees. Chances are your grandma walked farther and carried more than men do today. Those simple activities develop strength in the core. Today’s pastimes, watching TV, loading the dishwasher and working on the computer, bypass the core.

Take the current sedentary lifestyle, add our fascination with speed and pretty muscles, and the result is a modern epidemic of core weakness. So let’s put things in reverse and find the core muscles of your shoulders.

Raise one arm in front of you and continue to lift it up -— as long as it doesn’t hurt anywhere -— until your arm comes alongside your ear. Do it again -— but this time take more than ten seconds to lift your arm and another ten seconds to lower it. As before, don’t do any movement that causes you pain.

Moving slowly requires the use of the core, so if it felt substantially different the second, slower time, then using the core of your shoulder isn’t a habit. By the way, you can slow down any movement to improve your use of the core. Try walking by taking one step every second to feel more of your torso and hip core.

The core of the shoulder includes two sets of muscles, those that keep the shoulder blade in proper position (most importantly the serratus anterior, trapezius and rhomboids) and those that stabilize the arm bone in the shoulder socket (the rotator cuff: supraspinitus, infraspinitus, teres minor, and subscapularis).

Here are some exercises that will help you strengthen both sets of the shoulder core.

Core Muscles of the Hips

Core muscles are the new focus in the fitness industry. They protect the low back. Pilates strengthens the core. Advertisements promise a strong, sexy core if we buy their products. The problem is that the core can be illusive for the average person to find. That’s because the body has more than one core.

The Hellerwork Client Handbook compares the core to the inside of an apple. Core muscles are deep inside the body, right next to the bones. These muscles have more leverage and, when working properly, also stabilize the skeleton. When the core does not stabilize, joints are more prone to injury, the body is weaker, and other muscles get confused about what to do.

All muscle groups have superficial muscles and core muscles. Let’s delve into the core of the torso and core of the hips. Follow up articles will explain the core of the shoulders and the core of the neck.

The core of the torso is like a cylinder around your midsection, comprised of four muscle groups: the pelvic floor, transverse abdominus, multifidi, and diaphragm. The pelvic floor (actually a group of six muscles) creates the bottom of the cylinder. The transverse abdominus encompasses most of circumference as a girdle around the belly. The multifidi fibers, one to four inches long, fan out deep within the superstructure of the spine. The diaphragm caps the core; each breath turns this cylinder to an ever-changing, dynamic powerhouse.

When all parts of your torso core are strong and work together, you can lift more, bend over more, and do all kinds of movement with less risk of injury. The torso core is also an important base of support for your legs, arms, and neck.

The hip flexors lift your legs. If you rely on the rectus femoris, tensor fascia lata, and sartorius, you will be weaker and in less balance than if you use the core hip flexors, the psoas and iliacus, sometimes called the iliopsoas. These core muscles attach to the front and sides of the lumbar spine and deep inside the pelvic bowl. They have more leverage and bulk than the superficial muscles, but they also depend on stabilization from the torso core to work.

How do you know when you are accessing the deep hip flexors? One clue is that your pelvis does not rotate. Sitting in a chair, lift one leg. Does your low back shift or your hip lift up? If so, your iliacus and psoas are cheating and your low back is taking the brunt of the movement.

If you can hold your pelvis perfectly still and lift a leg, your torso and hip core are both getting stronger. It’s what makes a karate front kick so powerful. Even more challenging and strengthening is lifting both thighs with a stable pelvis, the action in the Pilates Teaser and yoga’s full boat pose (Navasana).

I gave readers an Easy Core Exercise in my previous post, Balance Between Abdominals and Back Muscles. Another way to wake up the core is with the Relax and Flow undulation. In both cases, the exercises use small, slow movements since the core is comprised of slow twitch muscle fibers. If you can do these exercises with complete pelvic stabilization, then you will be ready to take on more intermediate core exercises.