samba

The abdominal crunch, though ubiquitous, is actually quite detrimental to the spinal discs and nerves. Better to find an abdominal exercise which respects and protects the spine! Image courtesy Jonathan Borba on Unsplash.

Happy Holidays! The dawning of a new year is a time when many people make efforts to establish new habits, many of them body-related. With the desire to improve ourselves often comes a (sometimes unhealthy) heightened awareness of how our bodies and their shapes appear to others. This is particularly true of abdominal muscles. Photoshopped, unrealistic images of sculpted torsos plaster newsstand covers every January. Crunches are the most commonly recommended exercise for increasing ab strength, often with six-packs as the goal. But do six-packs actually indicate broad-spectrum ab strength? What is actually the best ab exercise —  something protective of our backs rather than detrimental to our spinal health? How can we balance form with function?

The Gokhale Method describes two important sets of abdominal muscles that keep us healthy: the “rib anchor” and the “inner corset.” The rib anchor helps prevent the lower back from arching. The inner corset protects the back from a variety of compressive threats — weight-bearing, impact, and vibration, as well as any distortion in shape like arching, rounding, or twisting. The inner corset includes the rib anchor plus a more extensive set of deep abdominal and back muscles.  

Well-designed ab exercises would:

• tone the deeper layers of the abdominal wall that constitute the rib anchor and inner corset muscles, while de-emphasizing the shallower rectus abdominis (six-pack) muscle 

• put no unhealthy stress on your neck, spinal discs, or spinal nerves

• take as little time out of your day as possible

Here, my daughter Monisha, a high-level athlete, demonstrates how rib anchor and inner corset activation can make all the difference in pull-up form.

Now for some specific measures to strengthen the rib anchor and inner corset muscles. Based on how much time they take out of your day, we will divide them into 3 tiers: 

Tier 1: Everyday activities
These strengthening measures are fully integrated into your everyday activities. They don’t take any time at all out of your day. Your daily activities need to be vigorous enough that they would ordinarily stress your spine. However, by activating the rib anchor and/or the inner corset every time your spine would get stressed, you not only prevent damage — you get your ab exercise as well. Think about this approach like “on-the-job training.” The advantages are numerous:

• You strengthen the various components of your “brace” or “inner corset” in exactly the proportion they need to be strong. No overdevelopment of the six-pack (this is common and tucks the pelvis); no neglecting the deeper abdominal and back muscles (this is also common and leaves the area weak and unprotected).

• There’s no threat or damage to your spinal discs, nerves, or neck in this approach. Compare this with the threat and damage caused by crunches, which unfortunately remain the most popular ab workout in gym routines. 

• It takes no time! It takes no longer to lift well (with the inner corset engaged) than it takes to lift poorly. It takes no longer to twist well (with the inner corset engaged) than it takes to twist poorly. And it takes no longer to run well (with the inner corset engaged) than it takes to bounce around willy nilly and destroy your discs and nerves.

Proper abdominal engagement is crucial for safe running technique — and it doesn’t necessarily look like a six-pack. Image courtesy nappy on Pexels.

Tier 2: Modified activities
These ab strengthening measures are slightly contrived (but not awkward) ways of modifying everyday postures and ways of moving to get our ab exercise needs taken care of. This is the next best choice if your everyday activities don’t quite cover your exercise needs.  As many of us sit behind computers for larger and larger fractions of the day, I’ve begun recommending engaging the inner corset 10% whenever a student can remember to do so. This is the extent to which these muscles would have been recruited in sitting were they primed by carrying weights as much as our hunter-gatherer ancestors clearly did.

Laptops and other computers are wonderful tools, but they also encourage us to be passive and increasingly sink into ourselves over the course of a work day. Inner corset and rib anchor activation, even 10%, can help us learn to “wake up” our deeper abdominal muscles. Image courtesy Brooke Cagle on Unsplash.

Tier 3: Supplemental exercises
Doing supplemental exercises and therapies to strengthen the abs. These take time. To be efficient, I recommend whole-body exercises, yoga poses, or dance sequences that enable you to do several exercises in parallel. Some of my faves are chair pose, samba, and TRX planks.

Samba is a fun, social, sensual way to actively engage and strengthen the inner corset. It’s never too soon to start getting ready for Carnaval! Original image courtesy PlidaoUrbenia on Wikimedia Commons under CC BY-SA 2.5.

Helping it stick
Do you find it difficult to fit posture work into your daily schedule, or struggle to form new habits? (This is part of being human!) I’m excited to announce our new Gokhale Exercise Challenge, a live-streamed, daily 15-minute exercise session I’ll be leading personally at 7:00am Pacific / 10:00am Eastern every morning from January 1, 2020 through January 21, 2020. This enrichment of our Online University content is free for all Online University members.

If you are an alum of our Foundations Course or Pop-up Course and haven’t yet enrolled in our Online University, join today by calling 1-888-557-6788 to receive a special discount on your annual membership between now and January 8, 2020.

Q. What if I miss a session or live in a completely different time zone — can I still participate?
A. Yes! If this time slot doesn’t suit you, you can watch each session at your convenience for up to 24 hours after the live session.

Q. I’m not in great shape. Is this accessible to me?
A. Absolutely! All Gokhale Method alumni at any level of fitness will benefit from these exercises.

I look forward to starting the New Year with you!

SALVADOR, BRAZIL

Salvador, Bahia in the Northeast of Brazil throbs with a pulse that is African and Brazilian all at once. In spite of the particularly brutal conditions of slavery in Brazil, the African immigrants kept their musical and dance traditions alive. Salvador, Bahia is where the Afro roots of Brazilian culture are most in evidence. I visited two times and those visits reawakened something in me from way, way back — from when my ancestors drummed and danced in Africa 60,000+ years ago. There’s nothing that gets to my gut the way African / Afro-Brazilian drumming and dancing does. Here follow some posture lessons I brought home from that magical place.

Healthy posture is sexy

Bathing beauty in Salvador, Bahia.

Healthy posture looks sexy, feels sexy...it is sexy! Healthy movement patterns result in a slimmer waist and juicier hips for women, and broader shoulders and better-toned gut for men. As one of our slightly bawdy physician referrers puts it, “you get a tummy tuck, boob job, and butt lift all for the price of one course.”

More seriously, you’re really not doing your reproductive organs a good turn when you internally rotate your legs, tuck your pelvis, and put your (imaginary) tail between your legs. The reproductive system, like all your other systems, needs sound architecture, vigorous circulation, and healthy innervation (nerve action) to perform its amazing range of functions. Over the years, our Gokhale Method teacher team is very proud to have been proffered credit for romantic matchups, improved sexual function, conception of babies, and sans trauma deliveries.

Healthy posture connects with and facilitates joy of life

Preparations for Carnaval in Salvador, Bahia.

You’ve got to give it to the Brazilians for outstanding ability to have fun in the face of grave challenges. As with all strengths, when taken to extremes, strengths can become weaknesses — sometimes work doesn’t get done; sometimes children roam the streets uncared for...

I visited Salvador, Bahia two times, including during Carnaval preparation time in December. Salvador is the party capital of Brazil, with most events happening in outdoor spaces and on the streets. It doesn’t matter what you wear; most people are stripped down to little clothing. In the bigger parties, you are surrounded by people whose energy is infectious. Limited to a tiny space, dancers express themselves in small writhing movements that are artful and powerful and do not escape your notice. The song callouts notch up the general energy level and the crowd takes it from there. Truly intoxicating.
 

There’s magic to be had from samba or any traditional dance form

Dancing in El Pelourinho in Salvador. The name of the plaza means pillory, or whipping post, where African slaves received punishment for various infractions, as well as for disciplinary purposes.

In trying to figure out what makes Brazilians stand out (though this is sadly changing with the rise of junk food consumption) in their physique, I concluded that samba was a part of the equation. Samba is ubiquitous in Brazil. You samba to celebrate a soccer win, you samba to spend time with your friends and family, you samba (differently) when you need to work through a difficult emotion (e.g. saudade, a feeling of longing, melancholy, or nostalgia that is a mainstay of Portuguese or Brazilian culture). Whatever your reason, samba means you are toning your glutes, abs, and leg muscles, loosening up your shoulder girdle, stimulating circulation throughout your body, and laying down helpful neural pathways in your brain. Samba, I came to an early conclusion, is the ideal counter activity to sitting (or standing) behind a computer. It strengthens and lengthens appropriate muscles, it patterns you for healthy walking, it helps keep dementia at bay (helpful for your computer job — tell your HR person that!), and it helps connect members of a corporation or community.

So here’s a little snippet of what lies ahead of you, straight from the environs of Brazil:

But first (yes, there’s a catch!) you must learn your basics in our ever-popular Gokhale Method Foundations course. Our course, which has earned us the #1-ranked intervention (out of 44 interventions for lower back pain) on the crowdsourcing website healthoutcome.org, will teach you the basics needed to samba without swaying your back and pounding your joints, and rather, become the new (old) sexy, joyful, healthy you!

This post is part of a series about posture lessons learned from Esther's travels. See the previous installment, about Burkina Faso, here.

Over the years, Gokhale Method Foundations course alumni have often reported that they lost weight. Occurring too frequently to be coincidence, these testimonials have spurred me to thinking about the weight loss – posture connection. Here are some possible mechanisms:

1. After restoring their primal posture, students are out of pain, feel better, and indulge in the natural human impulse to move and go back to an active life. 

Try it: 

• There are myriad ways to get moving again: learn the samba, start weight training, or join a hiking group.

Beach workout in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil

2. Students learn to use their muscles and spare their joints. This ramps up their metabolisms.

Try it: 

• The next time you're driving on a bumpy road, taking a jog, or jumping over a puddle, engage your inner corset. These muscles, which are the abdominal muscles closest to your spine, protect your spinal discs and nerves from damage while making you sleeker and taller.

A good time to engage your inner corset muscles is when jumping

• Adopt glidewalking by using your glutes to propel you forward and lend control for a soft landing. This prevents pounding down on delicate knee and ankle joints.

3. Students learn to recruit larger muscles for challenging tasks rather than stressing smaller muscles. This increases muscle mass, raising the basal metabolic rate and encouraging fat loss. 

Try it:

• When carrying loads, use the muscles in your upper arms rather than your forearm.
• While glidewalking, recruit your gluteus muscles to push you forward rather than relying on your quadriceps to pull you forward.

Excellent use of the glutes in glidewalking (Salvador, Brazil)

4. With the emphasis on using deeper abdominal muscles to protect the spinal discs and nerves, students develop stronger abs. I suspect that this may help with eliciting an appropriate feeling of fullness with meals. Also, the sleek feeling that goes with the inner corset may induce a healthy spiral in approving one’s appearance.

Try it: 

• Instead of damaging crunches, try the plank pose: assume a push-up position and hold for 30-60 seconds.

If you have any weight loss stories to report, please write to us.

Cheers to a healthier you,
Esther

Join us in an upcoming Free Workshop (online or in person).  

Find a Foundations Course in your area to get the full training on the Gokhale Method!  

We also offer in person or online Initial Consultations with any of our qualified Gokhale Method teachers.

Why Samba?

Apart from the fun, the exercise, and the infectious music that's central to this Brazilian dance form, I endorse Samba as a way to promote healthy posture. Among the many benefits, dancing Samba:

• Involves a lot of lateral motion and hip mobility, something especially needed in our culture, where so many of us tend to move mostly forward and backward and not so much from side to side.
• Engages the gluteal muscles, including the gluteus medius, which--though vitally important to so many kinds of natural movements--are underdeveloped or even "fast asleep" in too many people throughout the developed world.

If  you're still not persuaded to join our online Samba workshop, watch even just a couple of minutes of this 4-minute video, and I'll wager that many of you will accept my invitation to dance.

Samba de Roda

What you just saw was a marvelous demonstration of Samba de Roda, or "Samba in the round," which features solo dancers surrounded by musicians and other dancers, singing and clapping and sequentially inviting others to take their turn. An aspect of this form of Samba that holds special appeal as the basis for a training workshop is that learning involves a great deal of observation and imitation, and that those with relatively less skill are among those in the circle invited to join in. Also appealing is the fact that not only are the dancers' feet, calves, legs, hips, and abdomens constantly working, their gluteus medius muscles are also fully engaged. So much so, that before we start dancing I'd like to highlight this important pair of muscles.

To engage, or not to engage (the gluteus medius)...

...can there be any question?

Even when considered from the pure-vanity standpoint of having an attractive, perky derriere, my guess is that most of us would favor the Ubong tribesmen's gluteus medius muscles, which can easily be seen in the upper, outer quadrant of their buttocks just below their cloth belts, to the less distinctive gluteus medius muscles in the photo below.

What accounts for this "flat butt" look is the fact that these important muscles are underdeveloped and have not been adequately used.

What are the gluteus medius and why develop them?

The gluteus medius play an essential role in all kinds of natural movement, including walking, glidewalking, running, and samba dancing. In particular, these muscles:

• Help keep the pelvis level on the hip joint of the weight-bearing leg. (Without the gluteus medius, we would take a step and your pelvis would sink to one side.)
• Are essential to holding the pelvis in the anteverted, or tipped forward, position. (This is essential because the pelvis serves as our architectural foundation; when it is inappropriately tucked in, the rest of the body cannot properly stack, and pain problems may ensue.)
• Are essential to gait and facilitate "soft landings" when we walk. (Unlike our hunter-gatherer ancestors who lightly, quietly tread when hunting prey, too many of us thump around causing damage to our structures.)

The gluteus medius are shown in red

A couple of other reasons, which we will only touch on here, but will explore in future posts, relate to two painful disorders that arise, at least in part, out of underdeveloped or suboptimally performing gluteus medius muscles:

• Patellar femoral pain syndrome (PFPS) 
• Pyriformis syndrome

In a nutshell, a growing body of evidence indicates that gluteal medius health strongly correlates to knee health. If you have good strength in your gluteus medius, your knees will be in better shape, and PFPS is less likely to afflict you. Similarly, if your pelvis is appropriately oriented and your gluteus medius muscles are doing their job, the pyriformis muscles, which lie directly beneath gluteus medius, won't have to pick up inappropriate load and, due to suboptimal orientation and / or hypertrophy, impinge on the sciatic nerve, which exits the pelvis just underneath.

One technique to locate the gluteus medius is to raise your leg back and up and turned out

How to locate and engage your gluteus medius and practice basic Samba steps

1. Identify your gluteus medius as shown in the above photo. Once you feel where this muscle is, step away from the chair.
2. Now, take a small step back with your right leg, press your heel into the ground, straighten your right leg, and squeeze the gluteus medius muscle in the upper, outer quadrant of your buttock until you can feel with your hand how hard it is.
3. When your right gluteus medius is engaged, hold this position for a beat.
4. Return to your starting position by moving your right leg forward.
5. Now, go through the same motions with your left leg.
6. Practice these steps, alternating right and left legs, until the squeezing of your gluteus medius becomes natural and familiar.

Samba steps teleseminar

A fun and helpful way to prepare for the teleseminar on Monday, October 21, 2013, is to watch one or more of the following Samba YouTubes, each highlighting slightly different aspects and methods. What's really helpful about this first video is that the dancer starts with pre-Samba steps, emphasizing the side to side movement of the hips. Keep in mind that there are many varieties of Samba, and that this dancer demonstrates just one style. My only cautionary note about this demonstration and the one that immediately follows is that the dancers slightly arch their upper lumbar regions in a way that's not ideal.

Apart from the occasional sound of wind in the microphone, the second video is worth watching because it offers another lesson in the basic Samba step--this time with music.

The third video also highlights a very basic Samba step very similar to the one just above, but the dancer does so without swaying her back. Another nice feature of this video is that the dancer varies the speed of the Samba steps, starting slowly and then picking up the pace to the point where the Samba becomes attractive.

Because some of you might be inspired by pure music, I also suggest that if time permits you check out some of my favorite Sambistas:

• Jorge Aragão
• Olodum (percussion group from Bahia)
• Zeca Pagodinho

And if you join me for our Samba steps teleseminar, I'll share some of these favorites with you.

Photo and Video Credits: Samba de Roda YouTube: pousadamorrodesaopaulo.net Ubong Tribesmen: Esther Gokhale Gluteus Medius Anatomical Drawing: Wikimedia Commons Esther Engages Her Gluteus Medius: Gokhale Method Institute Samba Dancer: Wikimedia Commons Samba Steps Youtube: sambabody.com Learn Samba with Gianne Abbot: Bella Moda Brazil Basic Samba Footwork: Michele Bastos