Muscles You Didn’t Know Had And Gym Blunders

The transverse abdominis or TrA is one of your prime low back stabilizing muscles; it almost acts as the body’s natural corset. Due to the excessive amount of sitting that most of us inflict upon ourselves, this muscle struggles to work properly. With less use, more stress is placed on the lower back. Most exercises need the back to be stable otherwise compensation occurs, the TrA allows for more stability.

You lose a portion of your breathe capacity and cause extra work to other muscle groups if you are not using your diaphragm to breath properly.

We take breathing for granted; I have done so myself. While a colleague was working on a previous injury of mine, they noted that I was not sufficiently using my diaphragm to breath, which translated to not using it for other activities such as running. Upon actually using the diaphragm for activities such as running, there was much less strain to catch a breath as well as feeling more natural and relaxed while going for a run. It seems like a simple exercise to be able to breath properly, but I have had patients who have struggled with it.

The glutes are more than just a convenient cushion to sit on. They are used to help produce motion, but their biggest contribution is helping to maintain proper pelvic stability. Without the gluteus maximus being engaged, the pelvis tends to drift more forward placing a potential strain on the low back. The hamstrings commonly try to assist with pelvic stability, but they do not have the appropriate leverage to do so over a long period of time. The gluteus medius also assists in controlling pelvic stability by reducing the lateral drop the of the pelvis. Poor pelvic stability can cause cascading effect of trouble for the low back or hip related issues.

Most of us have awful posture. Poor posture comes at a price on the shoulders, neck and upper back. By learning how to gently squeeze your shoulder blades back, pressure can be reduced in the aforementioned areas decreasing the risk for injury in the future or relieving current pain. This pressure release also comes with an bonus effect of allowing the rib cage to lift easier and making breathing easier. Things that prevent the shoulder blades from operating properly are sitting too much, sitting poorly, and tightness in the chest. During the COVID pandemic many people have been forced to work from home which alters their native workstations, forcing compromises to be made. I have seen an influx of patients with neck, upper back, and/or shoulder issues as a result. Simple correction of ergonomics and retraining of the upper back has assisted

many of them. Further correction to their and your posture could allow for more gains down the road. Three of the above four muscles have an impact on overall posture, while using the diaphragm properly will also reduce the stress load on the upper body and allow for oxygen to circulate the body more easily (due to less stress in general). As a bonus I will give one more bit of information to help with overall posture. Stretching or releasing tightness in the pecs or hip flexor muscle groups will make obtaining a better posture easier to achieve. Being able to master the above muscles not only helps with posture, but it helps in laying the foundation to being able to perform higher level exercise. If you do not have a stable base of support, you will end up like a wobbly pile of blocks ready to fall over at the slightest touch.

How many times have you lied on your back, keeping both legs straight up to the air slowly—or quickly—lowered them to the ground and then brought them back up towards the ceiling. If you have not done it, I am sure that you have seen someone else doing it. If you pay close attention to the low back you can see the problem The problem with the double leg lift and most other core based exercise is back arching. The most common correction that I see people do is putting hands behind under the buttocks to try and lock the pelvis in place. I consider this to be a cheat; you are cheating the core from appropriately doing the exercise while over working the hip flexors—and they are already too tight from too much sitting. If you cannot do the exercise properly you need to modify what you are doing. It is not to say that the back should never move during exercise, rather any motion should be conscious/controlled rather than compensated. There are methods to progress your way up to a double leg lift. You need to put your ego away for a little while and perform a lower and more manageable level core exercise. The great thing about core exercises, just like any exercise, is that there are so many ways to modify the exercise for a variety of skill/strength levels.

If you are not sure what I am talking about for this exercise, picture someone holding either a straight bar or dumbbells in front of them then raising the bar(s) almost to the neck while keeping the elbows above the hands. The problem here is shoulder pinching (impingement). You should never lift higher than the bottom of the chest if you are doing an upright row, it just is not functional.

Squats are great, knee pain is not. There can be several things wrong with squats, but the most common is when the knees drop in. Keep the knees in line with the toes.

Lunges are a great functional based exercise. The problem here is another usually easy fix and it has to do with the alignment of the knee and being careful about going too low or having the legs spread to wide. Keep the knees in line with the toes.

There are many ways to do dips and the biggest problem with doing them is going too low. Dips by themselves can be a great exercise but going too low puts undue stress on the front of the shoulder. The easy fix is just do not go so low.

A machine that I wish gyms would throw away. The knee extension machine places a great deal of stress and pressure on the kneecap and the underlying bone. Instead, light weights can be effective and appropriate, but the machines encourage people to use excessive weight and most do not actually line themselves up with the proper hinge points of the machine which places even more stress on the knee.

This one is pretty basic. The shoulder only has a certain amount of range of motion. Placing a lat pull bar behind the head/neck placing the arm into a position that will cause pinching or impingement in the shoulder. This is especially true considering that most people’s shoulder blades are situated too far forward due to poor posture. Pinched shoulders are not happy shoulders, so keep the bar in front of the body and pull it to the chest.

Lifting heavy is not a problem by itself, the problem comes into play when your ego is larger than your muscles. If your body is not truly strong enough to lift that heavy weight you will start to have compensations occurring. The body is very complaint to the wishes of the brain and is more than happy to try and find a solution to what you ask of it. Often you can see someone swaying their body back ward if the weight is too heavy or as you start to fatigue. Unintentional body sway does not make for quality repetitions.

Here again we have the lack of an exercise causing a problem. Poor form and compensation lead to injuries. Having excessive tightness prevents the body from using good form and leads to compensations and injury. Also there is a difference between active and passive stretching.

The opposite of not stretching is stretching too much. Muscles only have so much length to them. If you try to make them even longer before they have a chance to adapt, you risk causing tears within the muscle. Sometimes, if you are feeling too tight, simply massaging the muscle with a tennis ball or foam roller can help to relieve the tension. Just make sure that you are using your massage implement correctly.

Yoga is not about stretching… There I said it, most people think it, but they are wrong. I’m not sure where the misconception has come from, but yoga is about mindfulness of the body while having control in each of the poses. Balance is key here and if you have read my other book you will know that balance and true stretching do not mix well.

On a side note, I rarely get patients caused by proper yoga with the exception being from Bikram yoga. Due to the heat (and from what some clients have informed me as militant instructors), people tend push poses to more extreme positions due to the body being very warm.

So the issue here is not actually an exercise, rather, the lack of appropriate exercise. The body needs to be warmed up to function properly during physical activity. At rest, a larger percentage of the body’s blood is situated in the trunk to aide in digestion. As you start to warm up, blood is redirected out to the limbs that are being used in order to bring sufficient oxygen and nutrients while helping to take away waste products. Besides overall efficiency of movement, not warming up can also increase the risk for damage to muscles or joints.