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lifting_heavy_things2010-11-07 11:16 am
minxy) wrote in lifting_heavy_things2010-11-07 11:16 am
Lifting for the stressed
It is a horrible myth that the only way to work out is to be hours about it, and the reason this is horrible is because many of us don't have hours available (except on weekends, perhaps, and the weekend warrior technique is not such a good one.) A weights workout by itself can be far more varied, allow you to fit a workout in during your lunch break without sitting with sweaty hair and skin for the rest of your day, and can be an incredibly useful tool for maintaining health and sanity.
My chiropractor and cranio-sacral massage therapist (who treat me for migraines and stress) will corroborate that last point.
So, in the interests of presenting a workout designed to combat hunched shoulders, uneven use of the mouse arm, tension in the neck and over-strain between the shoulderblades, I give you:
Lifting to maintain healthy range of motion in muscles associated with stress and tension.
Full disclosure: I often walk to and from the gym up and down stairs and call that the warm-up/cardio portion of the lifting workout. I get to the gym more consistently if I let myself separate the workouts and just lift or just get out on my bike. It's not a perfect stressed out world; you have to forgive yourself for imperfections in your workouts.
Warm-up.
For me, this often involves a 15 minute walk. When I get to the gym, though, I will frequently warm-up with body-weight squats (as in, holding no extra weight) or lunges up and down the room. Upper body warm up is usually one set of lat-pulls with 80% of my usual weight.
Work-out.
Lat pulls: (link goes to Stumptuous for descriptions of form) I lift weights that I can manage for 6-10 repetitions (medium to heavy), but I often start, as mentioned, with less weight to compensate for knots in my muscles. One of the most annoying knots I get is right under my shoulderblades, or between them. This comes from hunching your shoulders (computer pose) and over-tightened pectoral muscles, and activating the lats using this exercise is one of the most magical releases I can get. The key is to take a moment, when the bar is at your chest, and pull your shoulderblades together and *down* against the weight. This is probably where they should normally be when you aren't stressed, but I tell you what, no amount of stretching can touch knots in that area for me unless I give my body something to work with, then I can feel the most stubborn knots actively melt away with this magnificent warm feeling.
True-story: two weeks ago I got release of a particularly stubborn knot under my right shoulderblade with the third pulldown. It was such a tender knot that I'd been lifting at maybe 75% of my usual weight, but the relief was such that I actually had to pause in the set (three reps in!) just to appreciate the sensation.
I generally mix up sets of the same lift with one other exercise. Lat pulls I often pair with bench presses (on an upright machine, since I don't have a spotter) to engage and relax my pecs at the same time as my lats. I'm fond of this as a front/back of shoulders lift pairing: gets the whole unit, and then you don't have tight pecs undoing all that lovely relaxation in your shoulderblade area.
Rear deltoid flies: Once again, a posture and shoulder balancing exercise. You might also see a machine with adjustable handles, which will let you sit facing out, or you can lift free weights too. The key to this exercise is moving the weights perpendicular to your body (so, if you're standing, parallel to the ground) and not, as with the lat pulls, parallel to your body/spine. This isolates the posterior deltoids over the lateral deltoids (which we've already worked.)
This exercise alternates very well with back extensions (scroll down), which are an alternative to Good Mornings.
I wrap up the lifting with core exercises, which vary between crunches/sit-ups/obliques/flutter kicks (this might be a swimmer's thing: you lift your legs and shoulders about 8 inches off the ground, stabilizing your hips with your hands under your lower back, and do the backstroke kick for a set amount of time) and planks/push-ups/Turkish Get-ups and whatever else strikes my fancy. Variety here is good and more related to whole-body balance than stress.
Cool down/stretches.
These are key to a stress minimizing workout, and if I can't release knots and kinks in my spine with the active lifts, I can do it streching post-workout in a way I never can with cold stretching. A lot of these look like yoga poses, so I'll link to those, but name them with the muscle groups I feel them lengthening:
Child's Pose, or "after the push-ups" Lengthens the spine. I also stretch my arms over my head, but keeping the shoulders square (I'm a swimmer, so that's hard for me. I was taught to make myself a bullet in the water by squeezing my shoulders over my ears. In yoga and pilates, this is bad: shoulders down.)
Cat and camel, and twisting to stretch across the back from bum to shoulder. I tend to skip the downward facing dog bit, but the others are stretches I do generally get to. I sometimes repeat the twist with the lower leg extended, or lie flat on my back and rotate one leg over to the other to the side of the mat, keeping my shoulders planted.
Supported dips as a stretch The link goes to the dips used as a lift, but it can also be a beautiful shoulder stretch and pectoral stretch if you lie back, with hands behind you on the mat, putting only gentle pressure to comfort on your shoulders. Support and control your pressure on your shoulders by engaging your abdominals and rotate your elbows toward each other to open up your pecs.
Left lateral flexion, or, drop your dominant arm's shoulder back to where it should be. I can sometimes tell that my dominant arm's shoulder (also my mousing arm at the computer) is riding a little higher than my non-dominant arm; this is compounded by the rounded shoulder looking down at the computer thing. The first image in this link targets exactly the muscles most involved in this imbalance. Note that she is grasping the chair seat with her hand to add a little more drop to the stretch (is optional.)
One I learned here: Shoulder releases Also called dislocations, but they take you through the whole range of motion in your rotator cuff, and can easily be done with those 5 pound bars found in most stretching rooms. Bonus on the link there is the foam roller, which I *love* for actual spinal releases that are cathartic for me after I've relaxed all these muscles that were holding my spine in the wrong kinds of ways. I roll over the foam thing slowly, from hip to neck, and I try very hard to visualize every vertebrae on the way, supporting the pose with my feet planted and head resting on the mat when applicable. Up at the shoulders, it becomes less effective to have the roller perpendicular to the spine, so sometimes I turn it to parallel, lie back and drop my shoulders back around it to the mat.
I can generally manage this workout in 20-30 minutes, absent the brisk walks to and from the gym building. It's adaptable enough that if I'm feeling very low-energy or fragile, I can lighten the weights and focus on the stretching, but it's also capable of burning off excess energy if I'm nervous about something or feeling energetic. It also presents much less of a block in a busy day if you're only trying to find half an hour (which one might otherwise spend surfing the internet if one hasn't left the office for lunch) and you don't feel obligated to commit a huge amount of your energy or resources.
I can report that I consistently feel magnificent (I've also described it as: exuberantly jello-like) after a bit of weight-bearing work and stretches, without the kind of discomfort during the workout that I use to associate with competitive 3-4 hour long practices. So it's the high without discomfort or huge amounts of time, and that's a big reason I continually return to it and maintain 1-2 workouts a week even in my craziest times. It doesn't hurt that I so significantly improve alignment and circulation doing this that I get migraines in far more managable doses than I used to do, either.
Cheers! And thank you in advance for any variations on these themes that you can offer: I'm on the lookout for ways to keep my routine interesting.
My chiropractor and cranio-sacral massage therapist (who treat me for migraines and stress) will corroborate that last point.
So, in the interests of presenting a workout designed to combat hunched shoulders, uneven use of the mouse arm, tension in the neck and over-strain between the shoulderblades, I give you:
Lifting to maintain healthy range of motion in muscles associated with stress and tension.
Full disclosure: I often walk to and from the gym up and down stairs and call that the warm-up/cardio portion of the lifting workout. I get to the gym more consistently if I let myself separate the workouts and just lift or just get out on my bike. It's not a perfect stressed out world; you have to forgive yourself for imperfections in your workouts.
Warm-up.
For me, this often involves a 15 minute walk. When I get to the gym, though, I will frequently warm-up with body-weight squats (as in, holding no extra weight) or lunges up and down the room. Upper body warm up is usually one set of lat-pulls with 80% of my usual weight.
Work-out.
Lat pulls: (link goes to Stumptuous for descriptions of form) I lift weights that I can manage for 6-10 repetitions (medium to heavy), but I often start, as mentioned, with less weight to compensate for knots in my muscles. One of the most annoying knots I get is right under my shoulderblades, or between them. This comes from hunching your shoulders (computer pose) and over-tightened pectoral muscles, and activating the lats using this exercise is one of the most magical releases I can get. The key is to take a moment, when the bar is at your chest, and pull your shoulderblades together and *down* against the weight. This is probably where they should normally be when you aren't stressed, but I tell you what, no amount of stretching can touch knots in that area for me unless I give my body something to work with, then I can feel the most stubborn knots actively melt away with this magnificent warm feeling.
True-story: two weeks ago I got release of a particularly stubborn knot under my right shoulderblade with the third pulldown. It was such a tender knot that I'd been lifting at maybe 75% of my usual weight, but the relief was such that I actually had to pause in the set (three reps in!) just to appreciate the sensation.
I generally mix up sets of the same lift with one other exercise. Lat pulls I often pair with bench presses (on an upright machine, since I don't have a spotter) to engage and relax my pecs at the same time as my lats. I'm fond of this as a front/back of shoulders lift pairing: gets the whole unit, and then you don't have tight pecs undoing all that lovely relaxation in your shoulderblade area.
Rear deltoid flies: Once again, a posture and shoulder balancing exercise. You might also see a machine with adjustable handles, which will let you sit facing out, or you can lift free weights too. The key to this exercise is moving the weights perpendicular to your body (so, if you're standing, parallel to the ground) and not, as with the lat pulls, parallel to your body/spine. This isolates the posterior deltoids over the lateral deltoids (which we've already worked.)
This exercise alternates very well with back extensions (scroll down), which are an alternative to Good Mornings.
I wrap up the lifting with core exercises, which vary between crunches/sit-ups/obliques/flutter kicks (this might be a swimmer's thing: you lift your legs and shoulders about 8 inches off the ground, stabilizing your hips with your hands under your lower back, and do the backstroke kick for a set amount of time) and planks/push-ups/Turkish Get-ups and whatever else strikes my fancy. Variety here is good and more related to whole-body balance than stress.
Cool down/stretches.
These are key to a stress minimizing workout, and if I can't release knots and kinks in my spine with the active lifts, I can do it streching post-workout in a way I never can with cold stretching. A lot of these look like yoga poses, so I'll link to those, but name them with the muscle groups I feel them lengthening:
Child's Pose, or "after the push-ups" Lengthens the spine. I also stretch my arms over my head, but keeping the shoulders square (I'm a swimmer, so that's hard for me. I was taught to make myself a bullet in the water by squeezing my shoulders over my ears. In yoga and pilates, this is bad: shoulders down.)
Cat and camel, and twisting to stretch across the back from bum to shoulder. I tend to skip the downward facing dog bit, but the others are stretches I do generally get to. I sometimes repeat the twist with the lower leg extended, or lie flat on my back and rotate one leg over to the other to the side of the mat, keeping my shoulders planted.
Supported dips as a stretch The link goes to the dips used as a lift, but it can also be a beautiful shoulder stretch and pectoral stretch if you lie back, with hands behind you on the mat, putting only gentle pressure to comfort on your shoulders. Support and control your pressure on your shoulders by engaging your abdominals and rotate your elbows toward each other to open up your pecs.
Left lateral flexion, or, drop your dominant arm's shoulder back to where it should be. I can sometimes tell that my dominant arm's shoulder (also my mousing arm at the computer) is riding a little higher than my non-dominant arm; this is compounded by the rounded shoulder looking down at the computer thing. The first image in this link targets exactly the muscles most involved in this imbalance. Note that she is grasping the chair seat with her hand to add a little more drop to the stretch (is optional.)
One I learned here: Shoulder releases Also called dislocations, but they take you through the whole range of motion in your rotator cuff, and can easily be done with those 5 pound bars found in most stretching rooms. Bonus on the link there is the foam roller, which I *love* for actual spinal releases that are cathartic for me after I've relaxed all these muscles that were holding my spine in the wrong kinds of ways. I roll over the foam thing slowly, from hip to neck, and I try very hard to visualize every vertebrae on the way, supporting the pose with my feet planted and head resting on the mat when applicable. Up at the shoulders, it becomes less effective to have the roller perpendicular to the spine, so sometimes I turn it to parallel, lie back and drop my shoulders back around it to the mat.
I can generally manage this workout in 20-30 minutes, absent the brisk walks to and from the gym building. It's adaptable enough that if I'm feeling very low-energy or fragile, I can lighten the weights and focus on the stretching, but it's also capable of burning off excess energy if I'm nervous about something or feeling energetic. It also presents much less of a block in a busy day if you're only trying to find half an hour (which one might otherwise spend surfing the internet if one hasn't left the office for lunch) and you don't feel obligated to commit a huge amount of your energy or resources.
I can report that I consistently feel magnificent (I've also described it as: exuberantly jello-like) after a bit of weight-bearing work and stretches, without the kind of discomfort during the workout that I use to associate with competitive 3-4 hour long practices. So it's the high without discomfort or huge amounts of time, and that's a big reason I continually return to it and maintain 1-2 workouts a week even in my craziest times. It doesn't hurt that I so significantly improve alignment and circulation doing this that I get migraines in far more managable doses than I used to do, either.
Cheers! And thank you in advance for any variations on these themes that you can offer: I'm on the lookout for ways to keep my routine interesting.