The Bodywise Blog

We’ve all heard the same advice… 8 glasses a day of water, or 64 ounces…. MINIMUM! Is this even true? A lot of accepted wisdom ends up being bogus. As it turns out, so is this… sort of.

This old recommendation is technically true. We should get about 64 ounces of water per day, on average. Here’s the rub… that includes the water we derive from our food. Seeing as our food is already about 70-80% water, depending on the food, this ends up being a pretty trumped-up water recommendation. In most cases, we can do well with considerably less. However, for active people, this number changes yet again.

For avid exercisers, additional water should be consumed depending on duration and intensity of exercise. As a general rule, one should take in roughly an additional 8 ounces of water for every 15 minutes of moderate exercise. To make sure you’re taking in enough, an easy method is to weigh yourself before and after activity. If you weight the same after as you do before, you’ve taken in enough water during your workout. If you weigh less after exercise, take in about 64 ounces of additional water for every pound lost.

Ensuring adequate intake can be vital to performance. On average, a 1% drop in hydration equals a drop in performance of about 5%. Taking into account that we don’t generally feel thirsty until we’re about 3% dehydrated, this can mean a 15% drop by the time you even feel thirst. The key is to drink periodically throughout the day, staying ahead of your thirst. But how much do you need?

Determining a quantifiable recommendation is elusive. It is dependent on many factors: weight, body composition, age, activity level, diet, health status, medications, etc. The easiest way to ensure a decent intake is to drink periodically throughout the day just as a matter of course. This is usually easiest if you keep water with you. If it’s not in reach, you’ll tend to wait until you’re thirsty. To monitor how well you’re doing, the color of your pee is a good indicator. Contrary to conventional wisdom, clear pee doesn’t mean you’re properly hydrated. Odds are it means you’re OVER-hydrated. Your urine should be the color of lemonade… a pale yellow. That’s enough to aid your kidneys and to facilitate all your metabolic functions, as well as the myriad other functions water serves in the body, but not so much as to adversely affect electrolyte balance in the body.

The moral of the story is that we don’t need a gallon of water per day to keep from dehydrating. This is just another example (of many) of a researcher making a valid point, that point being taken completely out of context, then popular media running with the story and perpetuating false information.

Squats… there are dozens of variations and most of them are terrific exercises. They work many major muscle groups across several joints and are a very functional exercise for building muscle, strengthening bones, and getting a firmer, shapelier rear end. However, they’re also one of the more difficult exercises to actually do well.

First, lets get a grasp on what a properly performed squat looks like. The back should remain straight, eyes straight ahead, shoulders back, butt back, knees somewhere over your shoe-laces, feet flat, belly in, weight pressing through your ankles (not heels), and your pelvis centered between your feet. Seems simple enough, right? But what does one usually see when they watch someone attempt squats? The heels lift off the ground, one or both knees buckle, the hips sway to one side or the other, the feet turn out and the low back rounds over. Why does all this happen, you ask?

Performing a proper squat requires, in addition to strength, a decent amount of flexibility. Flexibility in the low back, the hamstrings, and especially the calves and ankles. Inflexibility in any of these and other muscle groups, as well as various weaknesses will cause tell-tale compensations during a squat leading to a less effective, more imbalanced and possibly injurious exercise. Compensations during squats are such good predictors of imbalances in the musculoskeletal system that there is an entire assessment built around them called the Overhead Squat Assessment. The subject performs multiple squats with their arms overhead while a trainer or therapist observes from multiple angles, looking for specific compensations which then indicate particular muscle imbalances with a high degree of reliability.

What can you do about these breakdowns in technique? First, familiarize yourself with the proper squat technique detailed above. Then, make sure you’re doing your squats before a mirror and watch your form carefully. If these or other imbalances are present, you have a few options. First, consult a trainer for suggestions on a comprehensive flexibility regiment. Second, get some work done by a structural bodyworker such as myself to correct those imbalances in a more direct and lasting way. Lastly, if you don’t feel like spending money or you don’t think you require professional assistance, just stretch the living daylights out of your calves. It’s been my experience that restrictions in the calves and ankles are responsible for the lion’s share of compensations during squats and correcting them will often eliminate or at least lessen the compensations over time.

The motor program for walking is one of our oldest, most basic, and easily one of the most important. Learning to walk requires incremental gains in stability, coordination and balance. Failure to follow the step-by-step (no pun intended) process can lead to poor coordination, muscle imbalances and cognitive problems such as learning disabilities. However, proper functioning of this particular motor program is just as important for adults as it is for children.

Proper walking requires a number of things to work correctly, both on the musculo-skeletal level and at the neurological level. Done correctly, it facilities coordiation, flexibility and balance. Done incorrectly, it impairs the same. A normal stride should include a number of things: a rolling from the center of the heel through to the tip of the big toe, oppositional movement of the arms and legs, and proper spine and pelvic movement. Feedback from muscles and ligaments throughout the body, especially in the feet, facilitate the neuromuscular patterns that make it all happen. In many, one or more of these pieces is missing.

Specific patterns of facilitation and inhibition of muscles must happen at specific phases of the gait cycle (walking) for everything to run smoothly. Impairment of these patterns can lead to poor coordination, poor balance, muscle tension, reduced range of motion and even injury. If you think about how many repetitions of these movements one makes over the course of a day, it’s easy to see how deeply engrained these imbalances can become. Lack of flexibility, especially around the big toe can cause major alterations in these patterns, leading to symptoms in remote areas such as knees, hips, back, shoulders and even the neck. (Hint) Look to see if you tend to wear out the outside of your shoes more than the inside. This is a sign that you may have this particular restriction, often referred to as functional hallux limitus.

All of these patters are correctable if they’re altered, but keeping them working correctly isn’t just a matter of practice; shoes make a difference. As I mentioned earlier, receptors in the feet play a vital role in proper gait patterns. Heavily cushioned and artificially supportive shoes rob your nervous system of much of this vital feedback, leading to an altered pattern. Additionally, shoes that provide a great deal of support don’t require your body to provide that same support and one ends up destabilizing their feet and ankles. In an ironic twist, at least one sports medicine study shoes that injury rates actually increase the more expensive and “hi-tech” shoes become. The answer is to get back to basics.

Minimalism is the name of the game when it comes to shoes. In reality, barefoot is best for us. It’s how we’re built. However, in today’s concrete jungles, that’s just not realistic. A little protection is necessary. Athletic shoes featuring very little support structures and minimal cushioning are becoming all the rage these days for just this reason, especially for running. Shoes such as Nike Frees and Vibram 5-Fingers are increasing in popularity. Many experts suggest getting at least 15 minutes per day of barefoot walking in, mainly for it’s therapeutic effect, less so for it’s fitness benefits. For some, barefoot just isn’t doable, either because of the terrain or because it hurts due to their deconditioned feet and ankles. The shoes mentioned above are excellent in these cases. Many choose to wear shoes like this all day… also and excellent idea. However, it’s something one must work into. To transition overnight to such an unsupported gait will inevitably lead to soreness or injury. Take it slow. Start with smaller bouts of wear and slowly increase over time until you can tolerate wearing these shoes all day. The Nike’s have a bit more padding than shoes such as the Vibrams and as such, offer a more gradual transition. Most don’t suffer any ill effects from the transition.

Pay attention to your stride, get the right shoes and walk your way to a healthy body.

One of the most frequently omitted components of a complete workout is the warm-up. A proper warm-up is tremendously beneficial, but not for the reasons you may think.

Contrary to popular belief, warming-up has never been shown definitively to decrease injury rates, though some isolated studies do suggest it. Rather, the benefits of warming-up lie in your performance. The primary benefits of a warm-up are decreased intra-cellular acidosis, increased circulation to the working muscles, reduced resistance to movement, and increased psychological readiness. Let’s explore these.

Decreased intra-cellular acidosis is a fancy way of saying your cells won’t accumulate lactic acid as quickly from strenuous exercising. Lactic acid accumulation plays a key role in muscles fatiguing during a workout, and the soreness experience during and immediately after workouts (as opposed to the soreness one typically experiences 24-48 hours later). Warming-up has been shown to decrease the accumulation of that lactic acid, allowing for longer, more intense workouts before fatigue sets in and reduces lactic acid related soreness.

When one works out without having warmed-up, the muscles don’t yet have the blood supply required to deliver the oxygen needed for energy production and to eliminate carbon dioxide and other wastes. This is why those who workout cold will frequently notice that their performance in their first set of an exercise isn’t as good as the second. Blood has to get re-routed from other areas of the body, including the digestive tract, to get to the working muscles to give them what they need to perform. Warming-up gets the oxygenated blood to your muscles in advance so your performance is at its best from the very first set.

Due to a quality of your connective tissue known as thixotropy, increased temperatures results in a softening and increased fluidity of your tissue. Also, the increased temperature stimulates the secretion of a nourishing, lubricating fluid into the joints known as synovial fluid. This means that having warmed-up, literally, your muscles, joints, tendons, and ligaments will all move easier, smoother, and more comfortably, decreasing the likelihood of developing compensation patterns.

For reasons that aren’t quite clear, warming-up has been shown to increase one’s sense of motivation and drive to take on the subsequent workout. As a result, workouts are frequently more intense and longer, as exercisers who start out motivated are likely to stay motivated longer into the workout.

To get the maximum benefit, a warm-up must include three things: your tissue temperature should increase (literally get warmed-up), your heart-rate should elevate, and your breathing rate should increase. Warm-ups should consist of 5-10 minutes (or longer) of light to moderate aerobic exercise and be done immediately before the exercise bout in question. For example: warming up, then stretching for 10 minutes, then working out will lose you the benefits of the warm-up.

One of the more common issues I see in my practice is poor breathing mechanics. It’s a pervasive problem which some say effects over 70% of the population. The most common form of faulty breath mechanics is mild overbreathing.

In mild overbreathing, individuals tend to breath from the chest too much and from the abdomen too little. To understand why that’s bad, it helps to understtand a little about how we breathe.

The lungs do not contract or relax to take in air. Inhalation is performed largely by the diaphragm which drops to create negative pressure which is equalized by air being pulled into the lungs. If the diaphragm isn’t allowed to make a full excursion, other muscles must attempt to compensate, such as the neck, shoulder and rib muscles.

In addition to mechanical issues leading to overbreathing, there are hormonal factors as well. When we become stressed or anxious, our stress hormone levels increase, which in turn causes us to breath higher up in the torso; less in the belly, more in the chest. This type of breathing then, fittingly, further elevates stress hormone levels. It’s a vicious cycle. Symptoms of overbreathing include:

• Increased sympathetic tone (elevated stress hormone levels)
• High blood pressure
• Insomia
• Digestive problems (constipation/diarrhea)
• Migraines
• Decreased immune function
• Depression
• Fatigue
• Anxiety
• Muscle cramps
• Decreased pain tolerance

That list doesn’t even include issues that can arise from the structural imbalances associated with overbreathing such as gastroesophageal reflux (acid reflux), chest/ribcage pain (front or back) and numbness/tingling/weakness/swelling of the arms or hands. I’ve even seen a stubborn case of IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome) clear with breath work. A normal breath should begin in the belly and finish in the chest with no elevation of the shoulders. The rib cage should expand easily laterally as well during inhalation. Correction of faulty breath mechanics includes not only breathing exercises to develop good mechanics, but also additional stress management techniques and, of course, structural work to ensure the body is capable of perfect breathing.

Overbreathing is one of the most common and least obvious (to those suffering from it) problems around. If any of the above sounds familiar, call or email me. I’m here to help.