You Are What You Repeatedly Do

As a child, you probably heard your mother say something to the effect of, "don't make that face! You'll get stuck like that!" Well, as ludicrous as it sounds, she might've been on to something.

Let's take, for example, someone who is a truck driver. His job requires him to be seated for 8+ hours at a time, hunched over a steering wheel. Over the years, his tissues will adapt to that sedentary job. His hip flexors are used to a shortened position, his shoulders are adapting to the constant internal rotation that driving demands, and his foot on the gas pedal might be locked in plantarflexion (in the pointed position). Day in and day out his body is learning these patterns, and, reflexively, it will forget about the muscles he doesn't use and automatically recruit the ones that he abuses.

Here is Rachel Yurkovich demonstrating some incredible power. Notice how her right arm reaches behind her while the left leg comes forward for counterbalance.

Now, let's say you're a javelin thrower. This person is repeatedly throwing with her dominant side,
which will be significantly stronger than her non-dominant side. The arms, obliques and rectus abdominis will surely have some asymmetries. Perhaps her hips are stuck in a slight rotation in the direction of which she throws. Maybe one of her shoulders is even hiked a little bit higher than the other. On one side of her body, she is able to produce a tremendous amount of power, while the other side might lack coordination.

You get the idea. Our brains (and, subsequently, our bodies) remember patterns. If you're doing the same thing day in and day out (like sitting or throwing), your brain will adapt accordingly. The areas where you carry tension are a direct result of the activities you do on a regular basis; those muscles are tight from overuse.

Fear not--there is a way to overcome the demands of your daily lifestyle.

The key is to assess the demands of your lifestyle and understand where you carry tension in your body and why. Once you've come up with a clear idea, the next step is to try to correct those imbalances or dysfunctional patterns.

One way to do this is to find the most ergonomic way to perform your given task. If you're spending a large portion of your day sitting, at least make sure you're seated in a good position. Get up every 30-40 minutes to get some blood flow to your legs and open up the hips a bit.

Now, the next step is to minimize those imbalances. Everyone has some type of asymmetry, but doing some work to correct that will prove to be beneficial. To go back to my earlier example, a javelin thrower is repeatedly throwing with a dominant arm (for the sake of this article, we'll say it's the right. When she throws the javelin with her right arm, she rotates her body towards the left side. The left obliques and hip flexors are overworked, so it would be helpful for her to isolate the right obliques (working the cross pattern of the left arm to the right leg) to give her left obliques a bit of a rest. She can make use of this on her off days in the gym with bands or bodyweight exercises, or maybe even practice throwing with the opposite hand.

Every once in a while, I do my split jerks with the opposite leg coming forward. Normally, my left leg reaches out in front of me, so my torso has become very comfortable and stable in that position. I've made an effort to try to give the right obliques some love.

Regardless of your profession or sport, we all have some type of repetitive motion or pattern we maintain for extended periods of time. Consider those patterns and try to lessen the impact by creating balance.

Why You Need to Have a Big Butt

Having a big butt is certainly preferable for models twerking in rap videos, but it's also extremely important in athletic performance. Weather you're a soccer player, a running back or just simply working out to maintain a healthy lifestyle, you need to make sure you're giving your butt the attention it deserves.

I know what you're thinking: "But Arianna! I can squat 250 pounds. My glutes are really strong!" In a perfect world, you would achieve glute activation in the back squat, but many of the back squats I see people execute in the gym make use of the anterior quadriceps muscle and recruit minimal activation from their posterior chain. The truth is, if you are a predominantly sedentary person (meaning you sit for 4+ hours a day at home or at work), you probably don't know how to correctly activate your glutes because you're not using them for the majority of the day. Fear not--you are part of the American majority who sits at a desk job all day. It's no wonder that we don't know how to activate the right muscle groups considering we don't use them as often as we should.

Underactive or weak glutes can cause a ton of problems, including lower back pain, knee pain, IT band syndrome, and a whole slew of other maladies. Your quadriceps may be strong enough to squat 250 lbs, but guess what? If you learned how to activate your glutes properly, you would easily squat over 300 lbs.

The gluteus maximus (one of three muscles that make up what we collectively call the "glutes") is the biggest muscle in your body. Now, if we learn how to properly employ the strength of this tremendous group of muscles, we are going to see some real magic happen. Whether we're doing a deadlift, a squat, a box jump or a clean and jerk, we need to learn to properly harness the power from our glutes in order to move the most amount of weight and avoid injury.

In order to utilize the strength of the ever-powerful gluteal muscles, we must focus on activating them. Some great exercises can be found in my previous article about warm-ups, but I'll list a few more that I really like here:

• Single leg or weighted glute bridges
• Banded walks
• Reverse hyper extensions
• Single leg Romanian deadlifts
• GHD raise
• Bulgarian split squats
• Reverse lunges
• Side plank with abduction

Once you learn to properly engage your posterior chain, you will see tremendous gains in strength while simultaneously protecting your body from injury. If you have humongous quadriceps and a small butt, that should be a red flag to you that your glutes needs some more attention. Channel your inner Nicki Minaj and start building a bigger booty!

Sitting Is a Killer

What are you doing right now?

Chances are you're sitting at your desk as you read this. We sit on the couch to watch TV, get up to sit in our cars, sit at our desks at work and then repeat this vicious cycle the next day. Nearly all of us are guilty of spending too much time on our bums.

Unless you're one of the lucky few (like me) who work on her feet, you're probably sitting down for at least 8 hours a day. The unfortunate truth is that, even if you workout semi-regularly, when we sit, we are wreaking havoc on our bodies. Low back pain? Tight hips? These things are likely the result of you being seated for extended periods of time.

Human beings are not meant to be sedentary animals. We evolved as hunter-gatherers, and at that time, we were probably not sitting for any length of time; we were out on our feet for hours on end trying to find food to feed our families. Even when we were sitting, we weren't sitting in a "chair" as we know it today--we were probably sitting on the ground or a stone/stump/something of the like. We are meant to be active, and our bodies were made to move.

Image courtesy of www.drfox.co.uk

So why is sitting so dangerous? For one, when we sit, our hamstrings are shortened, and our glute activation turns off. Further, our hips are closed for extended periods of time. Our bodies adapt to what we do often, and if sitting is what we are most frequently doing, it will adapt to sitting! If our hips and hamstrings are shortened for extended periods of time, our muscles and connective tissues become adaptively short to accommodate this position. It is no wonder why our society is so inflexible!

Here are some other scary truths about sitting:

• Energy expenditure drops to 1 calorie per minute
• Fat burning enzymes decrease their rate by 90%
• After two hours of sitting, your HDL cholesterol drops by 20%
• People with sitting jobs are 2 times more likely to get some form of cardiovascular disease
• Sitting time has increased by over 8% since 1980

So what are your options? The standing workstation has gained a lot of popularity within the past year or two. If this is not feasible for you, your best bet is getting up every 30-45 minutes and stretching, maybe taking a lap or two around the office.