What’s up? Patrick Lerouge here from Evolve Restorative Therapy. You can find me at livepainfreeprocess.com. I’m pretty gifted at getting people out of pain because I understand the concept that the body has a protective cycle and a healing cycle. I just need to get you to flip from that protective aspect to the healing aspect. I do that in very innovative and very creative ways of teaching you how to look inward so you can actually shift that aspect of yourself into a more healing state. Today I want to talk to you about why our extremities are more vulnerable to injury. The reason I briefly spoke about in an earlier post I made in the past, where it’s called stability versus mobility, is a humongous principle inside the whole body. Your body is always craving stability. It’s always going to try to make everything very stable, very similar to the Jenga game that we used to play back in the day. If you still play, you know exactly what I’m talking about. In Jenga, as long as there’s something sturdy underneath, the top half starts to waive. You have to make everything as sturdy as possible as you pull out blocks. The body is going to do the same thing, but it’s losing its stability in certain places, so it’s going to make the next thing in line stable.
What does that mean? I’m always talking about foundations. Your feet, your hips, and your shoulder glide are three major foundations in the body. If your feet are not in line, it’s going to make the next thing sturdy, which is going to be your ankles; your ankles are supposed to be a movable joint. Then, if that’s not working properly, it’s going to stabilize your ankle and make your knees stable, which is already supposed to be stable, so it’s extra stability. It then begins to lock your knees. When we talk about losing flexibility and not moving a joint properly, it’s based off a concept of stability versus mobility. You have to get the thing underneath it to become a nice stable object so you can get the object above it to become more movable.
How that translates to our extremities being more vulnerable is because your extremities have the weak link of the hinge joint, like your knees and our elbows. The more pressure that we put on those areas, the more your body going to say “All right, this is not stable. It’s not supposed to do this type of movement.” It’s going to begin to stabilize it. Our job now is to open that up and start practicing in a fluid motion and using our muscle tissues properly. What I want you to realize is that if I were to pick up a weight, like a kettle bell, and I lift it out in front of me, I’m going to use a ton of muscle fibers in my arm. If my body’s not strong enough to lift it up, it’s going to cheat by locking up my neck.
But instead, another thing that you can do to fight this is actually bring all the weight as close as possible and lift with your entire body. By lifting with my body, this 15 pound weight became really easy because I have everything working together, rather than just my shoulder. That’s going to be the key to you understanding why your extremities are more vulnerable because there are more things that you do way out in front of you, especially with your knees. If you’re reaching out to walk, and your heel is striking, your knees and everything are not going to be able to hold the weight load, so your body is going to stabilize the area, which is not going to allow the movement that needs to move. You’re going to be cramming things together.
I want you to really pay attention to how you’re lifting things. Even if you’re bending your knees and protecting your back, if you don’t use your body as a unit, your bicep is going to work extremely hard. Forcing that bicep tendon, which is the tendon that’s right in front of your shoulder that runs through a thin little groove, makes it start to swell because of all the extra effort you’re doing. Now, we’re just talking about maybe lifting up your kids consistently. Maybe lifting up a small little dumbbell. A cup of coffee. All these little things you can be using your arms way too much, which is just going to add in more and more stress to the extremity that you’re using whether it be your knees, your legs, or your arms. Your extremities are more vulnerable because you are out there reaching out all the time and using more muscle fibers. More muscle fibers gain strength, and it starts to build stronger tendons. That tendon will no longer fit inside the groove that it needs to fit into or the tendons around the hip socket itself will start to adhere and lock the hip joint together. Then, you’ll lose hip range of motion, and then you’ll lose shoulder range of motion, which then stalls out the whole.
Your extremities are very vulnerable. You have to start realizing that you have to use your extremities with the rest of his body. That’s a whole another topic all on its own, but you have to realize that your extremities are more vulnerable. The way you start to counter that is by bringing the world closer to you until you’re able to hold things out in front of you because you actually have the strength to do so without cheating. Anybody can hold a kettle bell out in front of them, but what will happen is they’ll lift up and they’ll jack up their shoulder. That is a problem. That’s where a majority of the world messes up. I see a lot of shoulder cases because they don’t recognize that when they lift up a cup of coffee, they’re doing this to lift up the coffee. When they lift up their arms, they’re doing this. They don’t even need to mangle the weight load because their body’s so used to using so much strength.
Back in the day, I called this killing an ant with a sledgehammer with all your might; you’re just lifting up a cup of coffee. You don’t have to use all of your muscle strength to lift up something little. You can do things with ease and grace. Shoulders down and everything moving the way it’s supposed to. If you have any questions on why your arms or your extremities are more vulnerable, please hit me up. This is actually a good one to end the season, and it’s almost the end of the year. I can’t believe it. If you guys have any questions, please keep on coming in. I love talking with you. Until next time, bye.
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