hip joint

We’re here to help with your New Year’s fitness resolution. Join us for a FREE 10-day New Year 3 x 3 Fitness Challenge, which is offered as part of the Gokhale Exercise program. It will be fun, safe, and effective, enabling you to build your strength without strain and injury, because, all the while, you are also training for healthy posture! 

Your 10-day challenge consists of three sets of three (3 x 3) popular exercises. Our approach to these well-known exercises is unlikely to be found in any standard gym or fitness program where, unfortunately, poor postural habits go undetected or are even unknowingly promoted. Here the exercises will be taught with our “Gokhale filter” to respect what is natural and healthy for your body.

The New Year 3 x 3 Challenge Exercises:

Exercise #1: Push-ups

Push-ups are a highly functional exercise that will assist you with many daily tasks and a range of activities—getting up from the floor, yoga, weight training, gardening, pushing heavy doors or strollers, etc.

A lot of people, especially women, have difficulty supporting their weight with their arms; their upper body muscles are much weaker than lower body muscles. That was certainly my story.

To this day I haven’t yet done a full push-up though I am getting tantalizingly close thanks to our Gokhale Fitness and Yoga programs. I can now lower myself to the ground with full control, (an excellent eccentric exercise, which you can read more about here), and can push up from part way up. I am hopeful that the 10-day New Year 3 x 3 Challenge will take me all the way! 

This push-up is done at a bench rather than on the floor to be easier. However, common problematic habits can still creep in, as Gokhale Fitness teacher Eric Fernandez demonstrates.

This push-up shows healthy form.

Exercise #2: Squats

Growing up in India, I was surrounded by people sitting on the floor and squatting frequently throughout the day. These habits contribute to greater mobility in the formation of the hip joint, and flexibility in the tissues surrounding the hip joint. 

People in our culture rarely have this degree of mobility and flexibility in the hips and ankles, and so squat poorly in a way that does damage—rounding the back and pronating the feet. This is more of a collapse downward than a well-supported, well-aligned squatting movement. 

In the 3 x 3 Fitness Challenge, Eric will show you how to do squats in a safe way, to boost the strength of your knees, quads, glutes, thighs, and whole lower body. Done well, deep squats are not only safe—research shows that they can improve the health of knee menisci and cartilage, ligaments, and bones.

This squat demonstrates poor form, such as internal rotation of the legs. 

This squat demonstrates healthy form.

Exercise #3: Deadlifts

Often known as a Romanian deadlift due to its popularity among weightlifters in Eastern Europe, a deadlift strengthens almost everything on the back of your upper and lower body. It is also a good exercise to test and develop hip mobility, and to develop bone density. 

The deadlift utilizes our primal way of bending, which we call hip-hinging. Hip-hinging is instinctively used by our infants, and widely by adults in many parts of the world where traditional patterns of movement have been maintained. Hip-hinging is taught in our Gokhale Method® in-person Foundations and Pop-up courses, and our online Elements course.

This deadlift demonstrates common mistakes such as rounding the back.

This deadlift demonstrates healthy form.

Here’s your Challenge:

Day 1: You’ll test how many reps of each exercise you can do in a minute. You’ll take a minute’s rest between each of the three sets, and between each exercise. 

Days 2–4: You will do other exercises that compliment and build up your strength for the 3 x 3 Fitness Challenge.

Day 5: Check-in on your goals.

Days 6–9: Continue with strength training.

Day 10: You’ll go through the challenge again and see in what ways you have improved. Expect an improvement in your strength, in the number of reps you can do, and in your range of motion!

Is this fitness challenge suitable for everyone?

The 3 x 3 Fitness Challenge is designed for practically everyone, with easier options given for those taking steps towards the full exercise, and additional challenges for those who find them relatively easy. 

People are often surprised at how working with healthy posture changes their experience of an exercise—depending on the situation, you may feel stronger and lighter, for example. Or you may discover that you were unknowingly “cheating” and can benefit your body by making different, healthier efforts.

If you have had an injury or surgery recently, or have a particular health issue, we recommend that you seek the advice of your preferred physician or health professional before starting the Challenge. We encourage everybody to work within their capabilities—this is not a no-pain, no-gain program!

I look forward to meeting you as we challenge ourselves to greater fitness, and healthier posture.

If you would like to find out more about how the Gokhale Method can help support you, sign up to join one of our upcoming FREE Online Workshops. . .

The healthy posture and positive change that antique images can bring to modern people are potentially transformational. In Part 1 of this series we looked at how learning from old photographs can benefit our upper body posture and in Part 2 the lower body.

Here we are going to focus on what antique portraits can teach us about small bends. The historical paintings for this post come from collections associated with Leland and Jane Stanford, famous for their business acumen, political influence, railroad building, and later, philanthropy as founders of Stanford University in California. 

Leland Stanford c. 1870. His open chest and posterior shoulder position are typical of the fine posture of his day. Wikipedia

How much do small bends really matter? After all, it is the deeper bends, perhaps with lifting involved, that pose a bigger threat to our spine. Here are three reasons to pay attention to small bends:

1. The start of a bend usually sets its trajectory. If you have a problematic start to your bend, it will likely continue that way.
2. Small bends are done more often. Any systematic error in your form can therefore create a significant amount of cumulative damage. They also present more opportunities for training in healthy posture habits.
3. Some people’s backs “go out” even with small bends.

Living on the Stanford campus for decades, I was a frequent visitor and admirer of many of the artefacts in the Cantor Arts Center (formally Stanford University Museum). Many of its artefacts represent the human story from foreign lands and ancient periods of history. But within the museum there is also a collection documenting the lives of the Stanford family, which represents a homegrown heritage that teaches us much of what we need to know about healthy posture. 

Let’s start with a painting of the Stanford family at leisure, celebrating the 10th birthday of Leland Stanford Jr. . .  

“Palo Alto Spring” by Thomas Hill, 1879, Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University. Kiddle

A girl playing croquet bends forward slightly (detail, right foreground). Kiddle

The girl playing croquet is an example of a small bend done pretty well. Notice how she angles forward almost exclusively at her hips, rather than at her waist, and also maintains an elegantly elongated spine. By angling forward at the hip joint, where the pelvis pivots around the top of the thigh bones, her hip joints get to enjoy the rotational movement they are designed for. Her spine follows her pelvis, with her back muscles and inner corset both gently working to keep her entire torso as one piece. 

When the pelvis and torso remain aligned, bending brings beneficial work for the hips,
 deep abdominal muscles, and back muscles (fig a.). 

This is a much healthier way to bend (fig a.) than fixing the pelvis in a tucked position and then rounding the spine to bend forward (fig b.). Rounding loads the discs, compressing them anteriorly and causing them to bulge posteriorly. With frequent repetition the microaggressions of even small bends take their toll on the discs. Rounding also overstretches the spinal ligaments, allowing for increasingly hunched posture. Even a small bend done in this way may be perceived by the brain as a threat and send the muscles into spasm, trying to prevent movement and protect against such misuse and damage. 

Rounding the back to bend squeezes the disc contents back, where they may bulge and impinge on the nerve roots  (fig b.).  

In the painting “The Last Spike” by Thomas Hill (below), you can see a small bend employed in a kneeling position. The two figures kneeling on either side of Stanford could be tucked and rounded, but instead, they are hinging at the hip joint and keeping their backs straight. The woman to their right, leaning on her parasol, also angles forward in a mild hip-hinge.

A late 19th century painting shows Stanford, one of the owners of the Central Pacific Railroad, standing ready to hammer the golden and ceremonial “Last Spike” into the ground at Promontory Summit, Utah, in May 1869. Wikimedia

Small bends can be as subtle as a nod or tiny inclination forward. In the foreground of a different painting below, also entitled “The Last Spike,” the onlooker on the left rounds his upper back as he looks downward. I suspect that his desire or need to show deference, also suggested by his removal of his cap, has overridden the prevailing bending posture of the day. Societal expectations around status and hierarchy are responsible for substantial postural degradation throughout history. More about that in a future blog post.

An alternative composition of “The Last Spike,” showing a less healthy type of small bend. historyisnowmagazine.com

This small degree of rounding is what many people do numerous times in a day to pick things up—perhaps to grab our car keys from a table or move things from the counter to the sink. Any forward movement with the upper back and head will often result in counter-tension in the lower back and/or pelvis to hold you there. Rather than compromise our backs, it is far healthier to keep our necks tall and bend at the hip joint. 

If you would like to practise this important contribution to your back health, join me for a “small bends” Gokhale Exercise class on Friday, November 12 at 9:45 a.m. (Pacific Time). If you have not yet subscribed to the 1-2-3 Move program, sign up now for your 7-day Gokhale Exercise Free Trial.

1-2-3 Move happens daily with Esther or guest teachers at 9:45 a.m. 
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)
Gokhale Moving Meditation with Roberta is Mondays at 2 p.m. and with Kathleen is Wednesdays at 12 p.m. (Pacific Time)