home exercise

This is our second blog post in the series where we put popular exercises under scrutiny to examine how they stack up—or not—against the principles of healthy posture. Here we are looking at crunches, a common abdominal exercise.

Crunches are often seen as a better targeted and safer 
abdominal exercise than sit-ups—but there is still a downside.

Crunches are done lying down on the floor, face up, knees bent with feet on the floor, and with the hands placed behind or to the side of the head. They involve using the muscles of the rectus abdominis and the obliques to repeatedly raise and lower the upper body. 

Crunches are well named—they crunch your discs and crunch your nerves. Lifting the weight of the head—which at around 11 lb. or 5 kg is the weight of an average bowling ball—can put considerable strain on your neck and threaten its delicate structures. It also encourages rounding of the back and shoulders, as you can see in the above photo. We recommend against this exercise.

Doing poorly designed exercises and overtraining the “six-pack” muscles will encourage a tucked pelvis
and a rounded upper spine. Freepik

Why are crunches so popular?

People in our culture are conditioned to feel more attractive when they have a flat stomach and an impressive six-pack, and so may turn to all manner of treatments, diet regimens, and abdominal exercises to target this area. People who have experienced an episode of debilitating back pain also want, quite understandably, to strengthen their abs and core in order to protect their back. 

Do most people need to strengthen their abs?

   
Parking the pelvis forward is a common postural habit that pushes into the groins and compresses the lower back. It indicates that the deep abdominal muscles are not engaged and prevents them from fulfilling their postural role. Freepik

Most people in our culture sit, stand, bend, and walk in ways that actually discourage their abdominal muscles from working in their day-to-day lives. Those who either arch or round their backs are holding themselves upright with their back muscles or stressing their joints. With these poor posture habits the “inner corset” (deep muscles of the abdomen and lower back) is not recruited to perform its natural role and becomes progressively weaker. 

This woman in Burkina Faso and man in Brazil use their inner corset in their everyday tasks.

Learning healthy posture as taught in our online Elements course and in-person Gokhale [Go-clay]Method Foundations Course holistically addresses this problem. In the courses we teach specific, well-chosen exercises designed to jump-start weak muscles and awaken your inner corset. Some of these are illustrated in Appendix 1 of my book 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back. 

Are crunches a safer exercise than sit-ups?

Crunches are often regarded as a safer and better choice of abdominal exercise than sit-ups. And they are. The Canadian Armed Forces discontinued the use of sit-ups in training and physical-fitness tests due to the large numbers of injuries caused to their personnel. The U.S. military also has a plan to phase them out by 2021. Stuart McGill, Professor of Spine Biomechanics at the University of Waterloo in Canada and a leading researcher on the subject, points to numerous studies that show that repeated sit-ups, which load the discs in a particularly dangerous direction, cause bulging, sequestrated, and herniated discs as well as spinal nerve damage. 

Neither of these people doing crunches have healthy form. Their necks are doing too much, and the man is also tucking his pelvis. Crello

Gym instructors often prefer crunches over sit-ups because they are safer and result in less tension in the psoas (hip flexors). But are they safe enough? 

In our view, classic rounded crunches are still a risky, disc-compressing exercise which encourage tension in the groin, while also training the body in poor postural form (tucking the pelvis and rounding the upper back and neck).

Doing a crunch twisting the head towards the knee encourages the neck to do too much and the pelvis to tuck. Crello

Rounded crunches are sometimes done with a twist at the waist to work the abs more obliquely. This is often done by bringing up the entire upper body and reaching one elbow towards the knee of the opposite leg. 

Effective ab exercises that are healthy for your posture

There are healthy alternatives to crunches that give your abdominal muscles a good workout! 

Our healthy and posture-positive version of this exercise keeps the head supported in the hands. The arm on the side to which you are turning continues to be supported on the ground. You can watch Gokhale Method Fitness teacher Eric Fernandez performing the exercise in this video. You will see that he maintains his spinal alignment throughout the exercise, rather than tucking and rounding his torso. 

When doing this exercise:

• Support your head in your hands and relax your neck 
• Rest your upper arm on the floor as you turn towards it, lifting the opposite arm and shoulder from the floor
• Do not pull your head forward
• Do not tuck your pelvis
• Aim for small, smooth, accurate movements

If your abdominal muscles are weak or you are currently or intermittently experiencing back pain, then we recommend that you start with a less challenging exercise. To correctly identify and safely bring your abdominal obliques and other upper abdominal muscles to a healthy baseline tone, we recommend first watching this Gokhale Method rib anchor exercise video, and then learning to use your inner corset. The inner corset is explained in detail in 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back. 

Free Chapter of 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back

As a special gift to newsletter subscribers who have confirmed their subscription, we would like to send you the Inner Corset chapter from Esther's book, 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back.

Please enter your email address in the field below and you will be sent an email with your Inner Corset chapter. You may receive a confirmation email to sign up to the Positive Stance newsletter first.

If you are looking for a way to exercise regularly that is healthy for your back and improves your posture, sign up for our Gokhale Exercise Free Trial:

1-2-3 Move happens daily with Esther at 9:45 a.m. (Pacific Time)
Gokhale Fitness with Eric runs Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays from 7–7:25 a.m.
(Pacific Time), and Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays from 3–3:25 p.m. (Pacific Time)

Read our Home Exercises Part 1 blog post on Cobra here.

Feeling that Thanksgiving exercise motivation? Learn how to work out smarter, not just harder, today and every day! Image courtesy Andrea Piacquadio on Unsplash.

Ah, Thanksgiving. For many of us, it’s a time for gratitude and connection. It’s also a time when many people’s minds turn to exercise to offset the rich and abundant food on the menu. How can we make that extra push, enjoy it, and not injure ourselves in the process? Due to the pandemic, more and more of us are working out at home, without our usual exercise partners or in-person access to recreational facilities. Now’s the perfect time to learn to work out smarter, rather than harder.

Exercising harder and longer on top of poor structural alignment is like continuing to drive a car with a mechanical problem. Better to address the root of the problem so nothing slows you down long-term. Image courtesy Pixabay on Pexels.

#1: Fix your posture
Fixing your posture helps you work relevant muscles more efficiently. It also prevents unnecessary wear and tear. When people want to get more exercise, they often simply increase the time spent or the intensity of their exercise. Sometimes they drive themselves to exercise more because of an injury. But if they don’t address systematic posture problems while exercising, they may in fact exacerbate their injury. The analogy that comes to mind is driving a car with a crooked axle. If the car begins to have problems, the solution is not to drive extra or drive faster; you need to fix the axle. Fixing your posture can do wonders for getting more out of your exercise time.

If our daily activities are done with good posture, they can dovetail with exercise. Image courtesy Mark Timberlake on Unsplash.

#2: Use your daily-life activities as the main dish in your regimen
We’re all busier than ever, so it makes sense that it’s challenging to shoehorn separate exercise time into our schedules. A way around this is to use the activities you do every day, around the home and/or office, as the central piece of your exercise regime. Much like this recent Medium piece in which a Japanese writer shares the central role walking plays in keeping Japanese people fit without dedicated gym time, using our bodies wisely as we go about our day means that exercise is built into everything we do. Think of it as clever, efficient multitasking for the body.

To really encourage healthy habits to stick, it helps to do them in community — whether that’s friends, family, or fellow participants, or a combination. Image courtesy Andrea Piacquadio on Unsplash.

#3: Include friends and family if you're going to dedicate time for a workout
Working out smarter can also happen by incorporating the community aspect of exercise. It’s simply smarter to double up your exercise time with social time by exercising with friends, family, or online classmates. Working out with others is wonderful for both habit retention and our mental well-being. On this very strange Thanksgiving, where we can’t be together in the usual ways, having a ready-made vehicle for time spent together safely is another purpose that exercise can serve. Everyone within a family has their individual exercise needs that are valid and more important than ever to satisfy, so be sure to pick something with variety that is accessible to everyone.

We aren’t machines, but humans born of rich traditions, who need things like art, music, dance, and culture to thrive. Exercise that incorporates such enrichments satisfies multiple needs simultaneously. Image courtesy Omotayo Tajudeen on Unsplash.

#4: Include art, music, dance, and culture
You only have but so many hours in the day, and art, music, dance, and culture are universal human needs that must be met somehow. Especially in COVID times, when we cannot attend live, in-person performances, go out dancing in groups, or easily visit museums, incorporating art, music, dance, and culture into our exercise helps fill our primal human need for creative input and enlivens our spirits. And our spirits can use every boost they can get these days!

Every journey begins with a single step. Why not start yours today? Image courtesy Bruno Nascimiento on Unsplash.

Get going on the good foot, starting today
With the live, daily Gokhale Exercise program, we have arrived at just this combination of ingredients. Starting out with figuring out how to meet my own needs, I realized the audience has roughly the same needs for a textured, multi-layered, upbeat offering. In the spirit of Thanksgiving, we’re offering 3 free days of access to our vibrant and ever-growing Gokhale Exercise program, beginning today. Feel free to invite your friends and family to join you in a safe way this Thanksgiving weekend.

I’m a longtime cyclist, former elite-level mountain bike racer, and Gokhale Method teacher. Learning and applying Gokhale Method techniques helped me reduce lumbar strain caused by unhelpful posture habits I used to employ while riding. I continue riding to this day, along with my whole family — now free of lower back pain.

Riding a bike can be a fantastically fun way to get away from devices, boost energy, and practice healthy posture, all in one...and of course we always want to wear a helmet, and ideally have our shoulders more posterior than this rider does! Image courtesy Ümit Yıldırım on Unsplash.

In my humble opinion, bikes are the most perfect exercise equipment of all time. This is especially true for the COVID era! What else serves as a human-powered vehicle that allows you exercise as it transports you to various destinations, all the while engaging your senses and doing no damage to the planet? Furthermore, it is something you can do by yourself or with your family or friends, while still maintaining social distance and is, perhaps most importantly, done outdoors. The wheel base between two bicycles is around 6 feet, so riding with others can be done safely. Add Gokhale Method techniques to the mix, and you’ve got a recipe for full-body health.

This rider is wearing a helmet, always recommended! Also, her shoulders stay posterior, with a nice give/relaxation in her arms, and her head rotates on its axis. Her behind is not tucked; her tail appears to be behind her. Image courtesy Victor Xok on Unsplash.

Freshen up your routine
While many of us are sheltering at home, and/or working from home, fresh air and movement are vital to our health and well-being, perhaps even more so now than ever! And when more of our time than usual is spent indoors due to lockdown restrictions, experiencing the outdoors more intimately, through our senses observing the horizon and peripheries and making judgements about traffic and road conditions, as well as minute adjustments that occur as a result, can be really invigorating and refreshing and provide a wonderful reset to the stresses of daily life.

The roads are quieter these days, with less traffic than before the pandemic. This makes it an ideal time to dust off your bicycle, put some air in your tires, and if it’s been a while, visit your local bike shop for a tune-up. Or perhaps think about increasing the riding you do! You definitely want to make sure your bike fits you well; a good fit will help with comfort and safety.

My daughter Wilhelmina Brown, age 5. She hasn't been formally taught how to sit (this photo was taken before I knew better myself), but since she is not yet spending hours in school, she still sits well, with her lovely J-spine intact. Image courtesy Ken Richardson.

Adjusting seat height to support healthy posture
If you are unsure about the right fit, or if you feel too stretched out or too cramped in your torso when on your bike, consult a bike shop. People who work in bike shops love bicycles and want more people to enjoy them too! Your seat wants to be high enough so your leg has only a slight bend at the 6 o'clock position, with the knees not coming up too high either. You want to feel safe and balanced when you are stopped and standing over your bike, with at least a couple of inches of clearance or standover height. Bike shops will be able to guide you about specific bike components — the seatpost and stem, for example, can be adapted to better fit and support the rider. You can also read our founder Esther Gokhale’s blog post on choosing a bike style to support your posture while riding if you’re thinking of picking up a new 2-wheeler.

The changing season brings with it more comfortable riding weather than even a few weeks ago, whether you’re in the Northern Hemisphere or the Southern. And air quality is thankfully improving in the West. There’s never been a better time to saddle up and hit the road!

Cycling is a great way to experience community while maintaining social distance and practicing healthy posture. Win-win-win! Image courtesy Ahshea1 Media on Pexels.

This is the first post in a 3-part series on cycling and posture: stay tuned for more to come! For more information on Tiffany’s teaching in the Boston area, contact her here.

Gokhale Method instructor Eric Fernandez, based in Pennsylvania, hosts our new Online University program, Gokhale Fitness with Eric.

Our new Online University program for alumni, Gokhale Fitness with Eric, has been delighting participants three times a week since it began last month. When starting a new exercise class or fitness activity, it can be encouraging to learn more about the instructor’s background. To this end, I recently sat down with Eric to ask him a few questions about what he brings to the table for Gokhale Fitness with Eric.

AH: In addition to being a qualified Gokhale Method teacher, you have a background in martial arts. How does this influence your approach to fitness?

Eric Fernandez (EF): The martial art I practice and teach focuses on relaxation and breathing, and I try to apply this to everything I do. Even when I am doing something physically demanding, I am trying to have as little tension as possible. A relaxed body has improved circulation, lower blood pressure, heals faster, is less prone to injure, quickens your response time, improves flexibility, and just plain feels good.

AH: What other influences inform your understanding of the human body? 

EF: The Gokhale Method has been the biggest influence on my understanding of our physical nature since I discovered it. It has forever changed the way I approach any movement or exercise. Every injury I've ever had while training, I now know the reason they happened. Like I said when I was being interviewed to become a Gokhale Method teacher, "There is no going back for me."

AH: What kinds of topics do you focus on in Gokhale Fitness with Eric?

EF: Strengthening, endurance-building, breathing, mobility. And everything we do emphasizes our spinal health. We are just a few weeks into the program right now,  so I am excited to delve into topics such as massage, stretching, running, and even vision exercises.

Eric demonstrates impressive hamstring flexibility, as well as a nice J-spine.

AH: Is Gokhale Fitness with Eric accessible to everyone, or do you need to already be a fitness buff to join in?

EF: This program is for anyone who wants to participate, even if you've never done a workout in your entire life. There are alumni in all sorts of conditions and fitness levels. Every exercise can be modified to be made easier or more challenging, or replaced with something similar. Accessibility was a must when Esther and our team conceptualized Gokhale Fitness. Every class is self-contained, so you do not need to have come to the last or any other prior ones. You can start benefiting right now!

AH: So far, what has been your favorite part of leading Gokhale Fitness with Eric?

EF: The interaction with the participants. We have such an incredible community with our alumni. They are intelligent, passionate, caring, and focused. I love answering their questions and hearing about their improvements. I'm quite shocked at how they have received me and what I teach. It is an honor to be a part of this program.

AH: Finally, what do you hope to provide to the participants of Gokhale Fitness with Eric?

EF: A fitter body, a deeper sense of self-awareness, and a bit of fun.

Gokhale Fitness with Eric takes place Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays at 3pm Pacific / 6pm Eastern through Online University. Clocking in at 25 minutes per session, it’s long enough to get you going but doesn’t take up too much space in your day.

If you’d like to join in the fun, sign up for our Online University for alumni of our courses (Gokhale Method Foundations Courses, Pop-up Courses, or Gokhale Elements). If you’re not yet an alum but would like to become one, you’ll automatically become one after completing our one-on-one online course, Gokhale Elements. Your body and mind will thank you for the investment in your musculoskeletal health for years to come!

When doing yoga with a Gokhale Method filter, we use specific adjustments to maintain healthy posture and avoid unnecessary injury. Note the distinct lack of curvature in my lumbar spine.

A general tenet of the Gokhale Method approach is that micro-level adjustments can lead to macro-level results. Like the world we live in, the human body is a complex, interconnected system. So it is not surprising that attainable tweaks in how we use our bodies can have beneficial effects on our function and well-being.

Yoga is no different. If you have an established yoga practice, you’ve probably discovered for yourself that small adjustments are not so small in the aggregate!
 

Even when practicing yoga, we would do well to refrain from swaying our lower backs. Image courtesy Elly Fairytale on Pexels.

Warrior I and healthy posture
Take Warrior I Pose (Virabhadrasana I), for example. This pose is one in which yoga models (a group that used to count me among its numbers, decades ago in India) often demonstrate a vertical upper body above their hips.
 

By keeping her upper body vertical above her hips, this yogini is predisposing herself to lumbar curvature. Image courtesy Sigurdas on Wikimedia Commons under CC BY-SA 3.0.

If you look carefully at her silhouette, you’ll see that this yogini’s lumbar sway is quite visible, putting undue pressure on her delicate spinal discs and nerves. Image courtesy Mor Shani on Unsplash.

However, when I practice Warrior I today, I make sure to keep the upper body leaned forward rather than vertical. Why is this?

The story connects with L5-S1 mobility. This special “saddle joint” is a cylindrical disk in quadrupeds. In bipeds (that would be us, humans!), it’s wedge-shaped. In spite of this baseline shape, the joint is actually capable of quite a lot of healthy variation in shape.

The L5 vertebra, one of the two elements of the L5-S1 (lumbosacral) joint, as depicted in Gray’s Anatomy. Public domain image.

B.K.S. Iyengar famously demonstrated extreme L5-S1 mobility, surely the result of his practicing yoga intensively for 8-ish hours a day over decades of his life. His remarkable L5-S1 mobility facilitated extreme (and still healthy) backbends as well as verticality in poses like Warrior I.

Of course, we’re not all built like B.K.S. Iyengar! Most of us have limited L5-S1 mobility. One can cultivate additional mobility in this saddle joint, but it takes time, dedication, and expertise to do it safely.

A forward-projecting upper body in Warrior I protects the lumbar spine from swaying.

In one of our upcoming Gokhale Premium workshops this month, I’ll apply the Gokhale Method filter to all the poses of the original Sun Salutation sequence. You are invited to join me! I’ll also be offering new Free Online Workshops on topics including:

• Sturdy, Upright and Tall: Posture for Aging
• Your Pain-Free Home Office
• Take Your Glutes from Flat to Fabulous!

What are some tiny posture adjustments you’ve made that have made a big difference in your life?

This is the second post in our series on home exercise during shelter-in. For Part 1 on Chair Pose, click here!

The gluteus medius is an oft-overlooked muscle which supports healthy posture and attractive appearance. Thankfully, we can learn to tone and strengthen it through targeted exercise.

Exercise is wonderful not only for keeping us strong and healthy, but also for relieving stress and anxiety. Now that gyms are shut down again here in California, home exercise is even more important than ever before. In the first part of this series on home exercise for shelter-in, we focused on how to approach Chair Pose as a means to build strength and maintain healthy posture, no equipment necessary.

In today’s installment, we’ll focus on an exercise I’ve devised over the years designed to isolate and strengthen the oft-overlooked gluteus medius. This muscle is almost always underdeveloped in people who’ve been raised in industrialized cultures. But it is an important player in gait, running, and athletics. It also helps with balance and fall-prevention as we move through the world, no matter our age. And it’s “behind” all the peachy, perky behinds out there in the world!

Equipment needed: a chair.

Directions for each side:

1. Start with a bean-shaped foot and externally rotated legs so all the right muscles are getting strengthened and stretched. 
2. While maintaining external rotation in both legs, leave one leg on the floor, lean forward, and extend the other leg out behind you.
3. If you need help, by all means support yourself by holding on to the back of a chair. At this point, your gluteus medius will be strongly contracted.
4. If you don’t lean on a surface, you will be challenging gluteus medius on both sides. Glut med works to sustain the raised leg of the same side; the other is working to preserve a horizontal pelvis. If you don’t activate the gluteus medius on the standing leg, you’ll be sinking into the posture. It takes the glut med to keep the pelvis horizontal on the weight-bearing leg side.

Posture tips: 

• Make sure the lifted leg has the knee turned out (externally rotated). That isolates the glut med. 
• Don’t let your back sway. Use the internal oblique abdominals to prevent any sway in your lower back.
• Lean forward, but only as much as you need. 
• Remember that the back of your neck is part of your spine, so be sure to let it feel long, like a continuation of the spine.
• Don’t forget to do this exercise on both sides so both gluteus medii are strengthened and toned.

If you’re feeling especially zesty, and don’t need to stabilize with a chair back, you can give yourself another layer of challenge by slowly and carefully hopping in a backward circle on the standing leg. You can even add arms, which helps with balance while in motion and adds a dancelike element to the exercise. I love this variation.

For a deep dive into strengthening exercises you can do at home, plus a one-on-one live follow-up session with a Gokhale Method teacher, don’t miss tomorrow’s special Premium Workshop, Strengthening Exercises - The Gokhale Way! I look forward to showing you how to approach home exercise with healthy posture, improving your form and preventing injury.

What have you been doing to keep yourself strong during quarantine?

This is the first post in our series on home exercise during shelter-in. For Part 2 on Toning the Gluteus Medius, click here!

Making the most of shelter-in by practicing chair pose Gokhale-style in my backyard garden.

Whether you are on the road, in a campground, or just stuck at home during quarantine, you can always exercise. In the daily lead-up to our ongoing Posture 1-2-3 Challenge for alumni subscribers, I often turn to dance as a way to process whatever baggage might have set foot in my psyche that particular morning, and also to get the group moving and warmed up for the main program. I’ve been dancing since I was a young child, so I have a very strong bias for dance as a way of exercising, but I also like to change it up with other types of exercise. It turns out that we have a lot of options, even when we can’t access the gym.

First up is Chair Pose, from yoga. Chair Pose (Utkatasana in Sanskrit) is a great example of an at-home, equipment-free exercise which can strengthen a variety of muscles in very little time. You don’t have to spend forever and a day in Chair Pose to reap its benefits. This makes it a perfect fit for our busy lives.

In the image above, Cecily's behind is well behind, and her J-spine visible — both good details from a Gokhale Method perspective. The overlaid graphic conveys her Gokhale SpineTracker™ readings. Note on foot placement: in the Gokhale Method, we teach placing the feet about hip width apart and facing slightly outwards as a way of optimally supporting primal leg architecture.

Chair pose with a Gokhale Method filter:

1. Prepare your lower body. Start with kidney bean-shaped feet, and do a little squat, to let gravity assist in settling your pelvis between your legs. Then come back up, but not to a parked position (that is, avoid locking your hips forward and knees backward). A parked position allows the muscles to “check out” (that’s why we find ourselves drifting to this position repeatedly!), but is damaging to the joints. Rather than parking in your joints, get your body into a “ready position:” that is, a position with a little spring in it that is easy on the joints and also enables you to move on a dime.
2. Prepare your upper body. Use the rib anchor technique, with your shoulders rolled and the back of the neck tall. Now we’re ready to begin with Chair Pose.
3. Bending the knees slowly, go down-down-down, keeping the knees from crossing over the toes. Yes, this detail makes it harder, and you may have to grip on the floor with your feet.  This is good for your feet! The main reason for this is to minimize stress to the knees and maximize challenge to various leg muscles.
4. Add in the inner corset. If you are able, raise your arms ahead of you or, even better, up above your head. In this case, be super-attentive to ramping up your rib anchor to not allow your back to sway. Now, you just stay there. It’s challenging, and that’s the point. Visit your boundaries, but stay on the healthy side of them.

Let’s review: Chair Pose actively recruits your inner corset. The action of raising the arms above the head can be used to recruit the inner corset especially strongly. If you were to look at your belly (in a mirror) while in Chair Pose, you may come out looking a bit like a greyhound with a slenderized, sleeker abdomen below your full ribcage. To finish, return to a ready position with a little spring in it (again, not parked).

This practitioner demonstrates the “greyhound look” of an activated inner corset. Note on foot placement: In the Gokhale Method, we teach placing the feet about hip width apart and facing slightly outwards as a way of optimally supporting primal leg architecture. Image courtesy Elly Fairytale on Pexels.

I’ll be describing other favorite exercises in future blog posts — in the meantime, try “sitting” it out in Chair Pose during work breaks and as part of your exercise regimen. Consider setting your timer to go off every 20 minutes to remind you to do Chair Pose (or some other future pose) for about a minute. In this way you will make rapid progress in tone, form, and your experience of life! I look forward to teaching you Gokhale Yoga 101 and Strengthening Exercises - The Gokhale Way. Let’s make the most of our ongoing situation!