Keep it simple: the inchworm

Are you searching or hoping for profound insight to make your sport or exercise better; to help you produce results?  If that’s the approach you’re trying to take, you are looking at things the wrong way.  Take another look at what you’re already doing and ask yourself if it is in fact even ‘basic’.  Basic choices answer important questions (what are my work-ons or deficits?) or deliver critical outcomes (what motor abilities relate to my goal)?  Much of what stands for common practice in exercise (and sport) is muddled and confused.  Not basic, in that it addresses something fundamental, and not strategic and advancing, either. 

There are only three pieces to the physical and athletic development equation:

1. Structural health and capacity – postural control and healthy, happy muscles and joints
2. Basic motor/ movement skill development – simple movements that provide the foundation for complex skills
3. Contextualized or specialised skills and capacities, e.g. sports or specialised environments

An exercise can meet more than one need, but your program should contain tasks in at least two of the three categories (i.e. 1 and 2).  At Sport Performance, we complete comprehensive warm-ups before the ‘meat’ of the session begins and one of our favourite warm-up exercises is the ‘inchworm’:

Figure 1. The inchworm

The inchworm is comprehensively challenging: shoulder and core strength, stretching of the hamstrings and calves/ Achilles and, critically, full body organisation – it’s a demanding skill, and that makes it an ideal warm-up choice.  The inchworm is also scalable.  We use single leg, medicine ball, and reverse action variations.

Few exercises are as simple and comprehensive, and that’s the point.  The targets are obvious and meaningful.  Ensure you can say the same thing about your conditioning program.

Medical mismanagement of chronic back pain

This is another topic we discussed recently.  The thrust of the piece below is that many back injuries are not advanced by inactivity but rather by exercise.  I can personally attest to the truth of this.  I sprained facet joints in my lower back a few weeks back and it was initially very painful and restricting.  I gritted my teeth and got on with things, including keeping my training up for a major event in two weeks on Sunday.  Fair to say I didn't have a fun time of it for the first two weeks, but the diagnosis allowed me to understand what would help and what wouldn't.   A 7-day course of diclofenac was very effective in reducing inflammation but no other medical interventions were needed.
I am not suggesting that this is the prescription in all cases.  Indeed, I have a client with a chronic disc complaint and exercise is not proving helpful.  For many common back issues, however, an understanding of the nature of the problem with activity to promote function is all that is needed, along side patience.

medical-mismanagement-of-chronic-back-pain-audio

Surprising health benefits of good posture

This terrific article comes to us from our friend and colleague, Freya, at Posture Profile.  

Good posture looks nice but does it really matter? It absolutely does! In addition to making you look taller, slimmer, and more confident, proper posture eliminates unnecessary strain on muscles, joints, bones, and organs. As great as these benefits are, they are not the only ones.

Whether you are sitting or standing, try to be aware of your posture. Strive to keep your back straight with your shoulders pulled back and your core tight. Keep reading to gain a better understanding of the health benefits of good posture and to see a list of posture mistakes to avoid. 

Benefits of Good Posture vs Bad posture

Some of the benefits of good posture are easy to guess. Good posture can minimize pain and it can prevent injury. But posture affects the body as a whole and there are some health benefits you might be surprised to learn.

Help You Lose Weight

Some studies suggest that poor posture can play a contributing role in obesity. A study published in Science, posts that proper posture could lead to an the burning of an additional 350 calories each day. Although the study was largely analyzing the difference in energy expenditure for standing postures versus sitting postures, it also looked at the quality of the posture in both standing and sitting positions. 

Another reason good posture can lead to weight loss is that a neutral spine position helps you carry out the daily activities of life in a more efficient way. It can help loosen muscles and relax stiffness which can make exercise easier and more enjoyable.

Enhances Your Mental Health

Research shows that good posture can improve your overall self-esteem and mood. It can even help you better cope with stress. A study by The University of Auckland found that participants sitting upright reported better self-esteem and "feeling more enthusiastic, excited, and strong" compared to those sitting in a slumped posture who "reported feeling more fearful, hostile, nervous, quiet, still, passive, dull, sleepy, and sluggish."

A study from the University of Hildesheim and the Ruhr University Bochum found that straight posture increased positive memory bias and decreased negative memory bias. Ultimately, researchers concluded that good posture could be part of an effective treatment protocol for people with depression.

Improve Your Breathing

A 2006 study from the American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation found that posture has a remarkable effect on breathing. Specifically, it found that the effects of bad posture on breathing were lower lung capacity and expiratory flow while good posture saw significant improvements to these measures. When your breathing is better, you have more oxygen intake. Oxygen is vital for energy and productivity so when your breathing is better, everything is better.

Help With Digestion

Digestive issues like bloating and gas aren't any fun but good posture can help. A study published in the journal Gut found that good posture mitigates these digestive issues because a straight spine leads to faster intestinal gas propulsion.

Posture also plays a role in how well you absorb nutrients, according to a study published in The Journal of Physiological Anthropology and Applied Human Science. Researchers found that poor posture leads to carbohydrates remaining undigested in your gut. This not only interferes with healthy gut movements but it can mean micronutrient malabsorption. Good posture solves this digestive problem.

Common Posture Mistakes

Now that you understand just how impactful posture can be on your overall health, it's time to recognize some common posture mistakes to watch for. When thinking about good posture vs bad posture, it's easy to remember sitting up straight and standing tall but there are some less obvious things to look out for. 

Working Hunched Over A Computer

When you are focused on your work, it's easy to hunch your body forward over your computer. In fact, it's almost impossible to not hunch your shoulders and jut your neck forward unless you have an ergonomically designed chair and desk setup.

Always Looking Down At Your Smartphone

Today in our always-connected world, it's very difficult to ignore the draw of our phones. But always looking down at your phone can put unnecessary strain on the body. A prominent spine surgeon says that it's equivalent to having a 60-pound weight on your neck!

Wearing High Heels

You might love how they look, but wearing high heels tends to cause excessive arching in the lower back and a forward shift to your posture.

Wearing A Heavy Backpack or Purse On One Side of Body

Lugging around a heavy backpack or purse is made even worse when you only carry it on one side of the body. This can lead to muscle imbalance which can result in pain, tightness, and weakness.


When you consider good posture vs bad posture, the benefits of good posture are overwhelming. You'll look better, feel better, and your body will thank you for it!

*Freya Guerra is the Chief Editor at Posture Profile and a proud mother who’s passionate about posture and giving actionable posture advice. It’s never too late to improve your posture!

surprising health benefits of good posture - PDF

Why do kids get so stressed about sport and how can parents help?

This can be a hard concept to grasp as an adult because the answer concerns the nature of being a child.  Though we were all children, we move on and put it behind us.  Relating to children is not easy to do without letting go of adult concerns.  To understand what worries a child we need to think like one.

What is a child’s favourite thing?  PlayStation, cricket bat, McDonalds?  Nope it’s not a thing, it’s a hug.  Why is a hug the most important and rewarding thing for a child?  Because it satisfies the greatest and most important need: safety or security.  A hug makes everyone feel good regardless of age, but it is essential to a child.  The closeness of a parent allows a child to feel safe enough to step out and give things a go.  There is an adult version of this – our partner.  The connection is a little less obvious, but the effect is still profound. 

Sport is threatening.  The ancient part of our brains that is responsible for fight or flight lights up like a Christmas tree when we compete.  How we cope depends in part on learned skills and behaviours but mostly on whether we feel safe.  Team sports create that effect to a limited extent; good teammates are warm and welcoming, and we can also ‘hide’ in the team.  Individual sports have no such safety net.  You’re out there on your own.

There is a line of thinking among adults and parents that we need to let our children stand on their own feet to teach them resilience.  Research shows us that the opposite is true (an excellent book that details this research can be found in the link below).  Resilience is multifaceted but fundamentally the willingness to engage in potentially stressful situations happens when we feel safe enough to do so.  That feeling of safety, for children, comes from the bond they have with their parents and loved ones.  Children who feel ‘safe’ are far more likely to take the very risks we hope isolation will teach them to take.

There are some simple ideas that parents can apply with their children to help them cope with the inherent stress of sport:

·       Hug them before and after.  Tell them how impressed you are that they’re competing and that the result simply isn’t important to you.  It will be important to them, and your feelings one way or the other provides no material benefit to their chances.  They will win, lose, or draw irrespective of how you feel about it.  What they ‘need’ to know is that you feel the same about them regardless

·       Let them raise any topic they want to and discuss it as they see fit.  Don’t try to control their thoughts for them.  Share your points of view as it seems appropriate but keep your emotions under control and let them lead the discussion.  They need to talk for their own purposes

·       You can’t be coach and parent, regardless of how well you understand sport, and your job as parent is infinitely more important

·       Children are clever, intuitive and want to move forward.  They are the most efficient learning machine we have ever discovered provided conditions facilitate it.  Trust this and be patient

·       Let them make their own decisions.  Provide them with critical information and useful perspectives but they must own their decisions if they are to become independent people who make good choices

Attached, by Amir Levine & Rachel Heller

Guiding principles of long-term athletic development

• Our strongest athletic years are in our 20's
• Activity behaviours (and the lack thereof) reflect a circular relationship between physical and psychological competency; one reinforces or degrades the other and, in turn, itself
• Complex movement skills (e.g. sporting skills) are made from (more) simple skills & capacities.  Solutions are found beneath the outcome
• Curiosity is the basic driver of activity in childhood 
• A high-quality experience is the greatest possible outcome (because we’re more likely to want more)
• Simple biological growth and immaturity of skills are the greatest drivers of athletic and sporting development before adolescence
• Higher body weight and the relative maturity of physical skills means new rules apply with the onset of adolescence: self-directed/ independent learning and considerable persistence

The quickness formula at a glance

The biomechanics (skills) of quick movement:

·       Spring – the no1 factor.  Fast bodies get very high off the ground (slow bodies don’t).  Vertical motion permits a long, powerful stride and the longer we are in the air, the less time we’re on the ground – the definition of speed.  Learn to run on your toes.  Conditioning for quickness/ speed involves primarily conditioning the toe action

·       Chain stiffness – imagine the poor soul out jogging who crashes into the ground each time the foot strikes.  That body has no stiffness.  There must be minimal knee and hip drop when sprinting

·       Very short ground contact time – gravity is stored when the calf muscles are stretched.  To recycle the energy and produce spring the feet must bounce quickly back off the surface 

·       Rhythm & linkage – movement must have rhythm before we can ‘pour’ energy in to produce high power/ explosiveness.  Rhythm is achieved by linking arm drive to knee motion on the opposite side of the body.  Knee drive, in turn, drives the body off the toes on the same side as the driving arm.  Arm drive is critical for quickness; powerful arm drive equals powerful leg drive

·       Sport-specific quickness:

o   Weight/ deep angles – acceleration is more important than top speed in most sports.  Acceleration mechanics are a little different.  The bodies centre of mass (behind the belly button) must be forward of the support base (area between the feet).  The brain does not trust an unstable body, and it resists the deep angles needed to accelerate quickly – they must be practiced a lot!

o   The athletic position – the AP is the readiness position in most sports.  It involves a wide, low base with weight forward - feet far apart with hips set behind the body/ shoulders forward.  The AP is demanding and, because brain also resists high demand, lots of conditioning and practice is needed to override the tendency to stand up

Physical strength:

·       Big muscles and stabilisers – the body must be strong in very specific places: ankles, hips, torso, and shoulders

·       Body weight – high power requires high physical strength, but more muscle equals more weight and a heavier body won’t be faster (one thing defeats the other) – strength without additional weight

Energy:

·       High work capacity – all athletic functions depend on aerobic capacity so build a big engine and a large capacity for work.  Work capacity is a measure of all the demand factors so conditioning needs to be comprehensive

·       Biomechanical efficiency – having a big engine is one thing but not wasting energy is even more important.  An efficient body is strong in critical muscles and joint actions but also in the basic motor skills that underpin sport-specific patterns of demand: build a strong ‘toolbox’ of basic resources – ATHLETE above all else!

the quickness formula at a glance - downloadable PDF

Learning to compete – competing to learn. Three simple rules for the competitive child

Rule#1 

You’re not an adult so don’t let anyone tell you to behave like one.  Adults like to make things complicated and deep.  That’s not interesting or fun!

Rule#2 

If the goal of competition is learning how to best use what you’ve got, then the place to start is to simply empty the tank.  Don’t plan, just spend it all!

Rule#3 

Your best day and your worst day are not that far apart so keep your emotions under control.  If winning’s you’re only measure of achievement, then find something else to do – sport's not for you!

Note for coaches and parents: only intuitive, simple acts can ever be truly powerful, and kids must discover what they can do before learning to control it – there is altogether too much planning and analysis in child sport.  
Expectation in sport leads to fear, and fear is the enemy of curiosity and discovery.  Curiosity and discovery, the willingness to walk around a blind corner or to step into the unknown, are the most powerful and the only true drivers in child sport

The purpose of a warm-up

1. Structural readiness:

·         Mobilise critical joints: spinal column, ankles, hips, shoulder girdles

·         Lengthen critical muscles: hip flexors, hamstrings, Achilles

·         Raise blood flow and metabolic activity

2. Neuromuscular arousal and rhythm:

·         Movement cannot achieve high power before the brain has properly cued the basic functions and developed biomechanical rhythm.  Slow & easy before hard & fast

3. Sharpness/ explosiveness:

·         Raise critical movement patterns to competition intensity

As the name warm-‘up’ implies: postural or structural readiness is essential for complex movements to be efficient and strong, and time is needed for the brain to fully engage.  The amount of time needed at each stage is not fixed or certain; the brain and body are subject to massive variation day to day.  Have the sense and discipline to prepare each level a little longer if it’s needed.

To be ready for anything, you must prepare everything!