Movements Afoot’s Blog
A BodyMind Think Tank – Taking fitness to the next levelArchive for standing
Pilates Springs & Standing
by Lesley Powell
Isn’t this video amazing? Standing work brings into all your connections, core, arms and legs.
Watch how Joe does front rowing. You can see the anterior serratus kick in when he reaches the arms forward. Doing full body work like this and the plank are amazing full body exercises.
Overuse of the Back
by Lesley Powell
Many overuse their backs due to weakness/stability in other areas of the torso. Another issue is overuse of the superior muscles of the back and weakness of the deeper muscles, the multifidus. Learning correct stabilization is key.
Laban’s concept of mobility/stability is about differentiation. To mobilize a body part, one has to stabilize somewhere else. If the attended mobilized body part is rigid, the body will hypermobilize above or below.
In the last post, we talked about the psoas. This post addresses when the thighbone is not moving well in the hip socket and other compensations in the body. Sometimes the back and sacrum compensates when there is a lack of mobility in the hip socket.
When the thighbone moves inside of the hip socket, it needs to roll, glide and slide. If the thighbone is not moving well, the hips will unleveled or tucked to lift the leg up. There is some posterior tilting of the pelvis, but it is in degrees.
In standing, the back can compensate with a weak standing leg. Many clients (dancers as well) have weak gluteal medias on the standing leg. They compensate to make the hips level using the quadratus and/or shortening the psoas.
As in a prior post about the abductors:
I took a wonderful workshop at the Laban Conference in Novemeber in NYC with Diane Woodruff, CMA, PHD on hip abduction. Diane had us observe different initiations of side leg lifts. Many people were lifting from the back, the quadratus, the tensor facia latae, etc.. She had us do some very simple things to wake up the hip abductors and make sure the initiation stays correct.Alignment is key. Do you have a good head-tail-conncection? Diane had us tap the side of our hips, the gluteal medius & minimus. Then we lifted our leg up cueing to where we had tapped. After each lift, we had to rest.
The rest helped me to get a new length of my abductors and assure the initiation was happening in the correct muscular use. It was amazing how by working correctly how standing changed. So many people are lifting their legs without being conscious of their form. Form is key. Doing a 100 legs lifts wrong can do more to train your back to shorten than toning your legs.
I think of side kicks (abductors lifts) as a sideways differentiation of the thighbone moving in the hip socket and stability of the pelvis. When people cannot feel how to move the thighbone freely in the hip socket, the muscles around the pelvis have to work harder. Harder does not mean functionally well. If the qradratus is working instead of the gluteal medias, this takes away from training the tone of the leg muscles.
In footwork on the reformer, a lot of clients are pushing from their backs and muscles around the femoral fold. I have clients start doing small pushes out half way without unleveling and/or tucking the pelvis. As they learn to feel more stability, they have to work their legs better. Than I increase the range of motion of footwork without the pelvis changing. If the pelvis changes as the legs extends, the workload ususally travels away from the leg muscles and Core.
Neutral Pelvis-A place to travel to & fro
by Lesley Powell
Anthony Carey wrote an excellent post The Myth of the Neutral Pelvis. In movement of a healthy body, all of our bones have some kind of movement. When a bone becomes rigid, there will be consequences in the body.
Historically, neutral pelvis came important after years of tucking the pelvis in exercise and dance. But neutral pelvis is really only apparent in static movement such as standing, sitting and lying supine. Once you move, there is movement of the bones of the pelvis even in simple plies (bending and straightening the legs).
When is it important to know neutral pelvis in your client’s body? When you observe your client in their starting static positions of standing in parallel, sitting and lying, supine and prone. Such as in standing, observing my client’s posture gives me information how they organize their bodies. If their pelvis is rotated and/or unleveled, this organization will probably show up throughout their workout, walking and other movements.
Why is the pelvis not in neutral in static positions? You need to look up and down the body to understand their pattern. It could be their legs, habitual use of one side, injury, poor use of the hip sockets, etc. Every week I take a Hanna class with Laura Gates at Movements Afoot. In the beginning of the class, I observe my habit of uneven rotation of my pelvis and ribcage. No matter what the theme of the class, Laura takes us through a series of exercises that mobilizes the spine in many planes. At the end of class, my walk has balanced rotation of the spine.
Warming your client up in many planes is a great way to bring balance to the spine. Pelvic clock, originally a Feldenkrais exercise, is a wonderful way to articulate the pelvis in many planes gently. I also look how people do thigh lifts. Many people are not using the hipsocket well which will reflect into the pelvis with either tucking and/or hip hiking.
True fitness should give our clients and ourselves a freedom of walking and ease of motion.
Why wait and shift? Weight shift – The Art of Moving
by Doris Pasteleur and Lesley Powell
Edited by Dr. Martha Eddy
Movement is the shifting of the body’s weight on different surfaces. Different parts of the body may shift on the ground or surface. However the weight shift is the propulsion of the center of the body, the pelvis through space to cause locomotion or a change of levels and locomotion.
Building blocks: A good weight shift is the coordination of the body to (1) ground into the floor (surface) and (2) to move the body in a specific direction in space. Before we can move up, we must have the foundation of down, grounding. Grounding is a basic foundation. Without a foundation, there can be no building. Weight shift involves the coordination of dynamic alignment seen in the sequential leverage of our bones from toe to head, organized by the muscles, and accompanied by the fluids and organs moving in synchrony.
Propulsion: When a person releases his or her own natural body weight into the floor, it helps the brain estimate the amount work needed to coordinate the necessary push off to shift the body into space. Even when pulling a heavy load successfully involves having a person push her or his feet into the ground first. An improper weight shift puts undue pressure on the spine and superficial muscles of the limbs.
Pelvic Shifts: Irmgard Bartenieff divided the concept of weight shift into two building blocks of movement, pelvic shift forward and pelvic shift lateral. Of course this fundamental action includes multiple aspects, for instance the pelvic shift forward includes a pelvic shift back. A healthy gait has elements of both the forward and lateral pelvic shifts.
Weight shifts enable level changes from lying down to sitting to standing. They are the building block for locomotion – traveling across space. There is a constant changing relationship of weight shifts from one body part to another, a dynamic dance.
PilatesDancing – Connecting to Standing
by Lesley Powell
I have been teaching a class, PilatesDancing, for the past year. It has been amazing how many changes are happening in my students. I combined Pilates, Laban/Bartenieff and the Franklin Method to create this class.
The structure of the class consists:
- Foot training includes releasing tension, strengthening the foot and the mechanics of the foot in movement. We bring the new foot connections back to standing. As the foot become better connected and grounded, alignment and core tone changes.
- Pilates mat and floor barre includes strengthening the core three dimensionally in a dynamic movement routines on the floor. This includes challenges of balance and level changes which demand more core than doing exercises on your back.
- A standing warm up, we use a block to challenge balance and understand the importance of the standing/working leg. I also bring into principles from my training from the Franklin method and Amy Matthews, a BodyMind Centering practioner, about rhythms of bones in the leg to enhance standing and function.
- We end with an adagio. The purpose of the adagio is to practice the themes of the class that day.
Franklin Balls for release, new alignment and tone
by Lesley Powell, Director of Movements Afoot
This is a series that I learned when I was doing the Franklin Method training. Eric Franklin’s Books
Rolling on the balls is like giving yourself a massage. Tight muscles are poorly functioning muscles. Tight muscles hold the bones in positions that are not always the design of how the body works. Getting bones to move in their normal range is another way to release tight muscles.
IMPROVE YOUR WALKING- IMPROVE YOUR FITNESS
Lesley Powell, direcor of Movements Afoot
I AM WALKING YESSIREE…ABOUT YOU AND ME.
Your walk is a reflection of how well or poorly your fitness is. A great gait has gentle movement of your entire body in a balance and coordinated fashion. If one body part is tight/rigid, it will affect the entire body. Tightness is many times a reflection of weakness.
Dr. Eric Cobb, Director of Zhealth, www.zhealth.net, spoke that the transfer of weight on the step forward equals 500 lbs on a healthy walk. When the body is not moving correctly, the forces increase and exacerbate with speed.
A healthy gait is a reflection of trunk (core) control, coordination of your spine with your extremities especially your knee and ankle and good expenditure of energy so that you are not fatigued after just a half-mile walk. Faulty movement patterns in walking can lead to fatigue and injury. Improve your gait will enhance your balance, strength and injury prevention.
As a teacher, I observe my client’s gait to get an idea of how they move their bodies. Especially with injuries, my client’s walking can tell me a lot how they use their bodies. When a client has a knee injury, there are faculty patterns of movement in their walk. Their walking pattern can be making the knee injury worse. By teaching better movement patterns, the client can find better function, strength and mobility.
In June, I will be teaching a course on Gait for teachers 6/22-23. Laura Gates will be teaching Hanna workshops for all with the themes of improving your gait. Go to www.movementsafoot.com for more information.
Lesley Powell
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