Posted by alexandra_k on May 10, 2021, at 21:49:05
In reply to Re: gym progress, posted by alexandra_k on May 10, 2021, at 21:15:27
I really enjoy the group fitness classes because the instructors are pretty knowledgeable, with their own, idiosyncratic strengths. I always find that I learn something new in trying things I wouldn't otherwise. Particularly with respect to persisting in trying to get the exercise to work to exercise... Something... When you have to do however many repetitions and they encourage you to keep moving whereas my natural inclination is to slow down... And stop. When I can't feel it. But sometimes persisting with trying sort of helps the discovery.
Anyway...
One of the things I learned was that I have a tendancy to over-focus on my feet. Thinking that feet are the foundation of everything. Thinking that becuase my feet are messed up and my ankle mobility is limited my movements will always be irrevokably f*ck*d up because of that.
But then in some of the classes we do a bunch of stuff on our backs. So then my feet is no excuse at all. That is to say it isn't my lack of anke dorsiflexion that is the problem.
Then experimenting with different stance widths.
I was going wide stance on squats and deadlifts -- because I have long legs and I thought I needed to push the knees out to get them out of the way / I thought I couldn't descend to any reasonable depth because of lack of anke dorsiflexion.
At one point I got an athletic girl with comparable level lengths to me to do a bunch of squats... And she had a lot of dorsiflexion going on. I asked her to try facing the wall squats up close to see how she would solve not being able to dorsiflex -- and she couldn't. So I got it into my head that me trying to squat with a narrow stance was like her trying to squat with a narrow stance up agains the wall with the restriction to dorsiflexion... So I widened my stance. So instead of using my hamstrings I'm using my adductors. Using the medial part of my leg rather than posterior. Using knee extension rather than hip extension...
Using medial glutes to sort of screw the femur into the pelvis. Mistaking that for leg extension.
But there's a distict feeling (that I remember now -- so I did have it at some point) of locking your glutes (maximus) into a hard and fixed position at maximum extention. That's part of finishing the pull on olympic lifting. It sort of locks your leg extension hard so that... If you think of your body as being like a whip and you throw the weight up starting with force through yoru heels... The bit that everything snaps back from... Needs to be your glutes. Not one of the segments of your lumbar spine.
And there's something else that goes on (that i'm still working on) where your xyphoid process is most anterior and lifted high and your t spine sort of hinges back from there... To really finish the pull.
Anyway...
I think my glutes are weak now because I actually needed to start by de-coupling them from my spinal erectors. Glute medius was working with spinal erectors. So it was difficult to get my abs working. Then to get my glutes working with my abs.
Anyway... Can certain see a difference. Looks like I've gained at least 1 inch in height between my ribs and my pelvis.
Spinal compression. Yeah.
But you need to pull everything up from within. Hanging from a pull up bar doesn't do it. Because when you relax one bit you have to do that in conjunction with contracting and strengthening the opposing.
poster:alexandra_k
thread:1114952
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20210419/msgs/1114954.html