Before you go rushing to the weight room, we need to take a step back.

Even though you can still exercise, play sports, and move in general with a herniated or bulging disc, there are a few precautions and steps you need to take to stop the owie from kicking your butt big time.

Short answer? Yes.

Before you go rushing to the weight room, we need to take a step back.

Even though you can still exercise, play sports, and move in general with a herniated or bulging disc, there are a few precautions and steps you need to take to stop the owie from kicking your butt big time.

First, you need to understand your injury. Know thy enemy and all that.

What Is a Herniated Disc?

Your spine consists of small sections of bone called vertebrae. In-between each of these bones is an intervertebral disc.

These guys are there for three reasons.

1. Shock absorption
2. Protection
3. Allow movement

Oh, and to piss you off when you try to lift something clearly too heavy for you.

A disc bulge or a disc herniation is when one of these fluid-filled discs is injured.

It can either protrude out or rupture, usually causing a restriction on nerves and generating intense pain.

On the other hand, most adults have disc bulges and suffer no effects at all. In general, it’s completely natural.

Many people get MRIs and decide they are done for when it shows herniated or bulging discs.

But if you’ve ever herniated a disc, you know the kind of pain it can trigger.

When I herniated three discs, I could not move at all without intense pain. I mean, really could not move, and if you are in that kind of pain this minute, I sympathize with you. I do understand because it sucks big time.

There Is Light at the End of the Tunnel

It might not seem like it, but there is.

You can come back from herniated discs just as strong if you take the right steps.

It’s all about building back the proper support around your spine and convincing your brain that it is safe and doesn’t need to generate that pain action signal.

There are four essential steps to getting you back in action.

1. Isometric Exercises

• Listen, if you’ve had a backsplosion (going to TM that btw), you need to take a step back and scrape it all down to your training foundations.
• That means learning to tense your muscles again by re-learning to brace your trunk ane support your spine. You are re-educating your brain, confirming that you know what you’re doing, you’re addressing the issue, and most importantly, it’s re-establishing your relationship with gravity.
• Also, by building isometric strength, you are giving your spine the support it needs to move safely and eventually accept a load.
• Proper support means less pressure on your discs.

2. Find Movements and Exercises You Can Do

• It sounds simple.
• But that’s not all. It would be best if you found exercises you can do that replicate the ones you can’t.
• For example, the second exercise in the video is the split stance lunge. This exercise replicates the back squat’s muscular activation, and it won’t leave you in tears the next day trying to get out of bed.

3. Start to Reintroduce Hinge Movements

It would be best if you started re-introducing your trunk and spine back into hinge movements.

Slowly!

Just hinging at the hip could be too much for your spine to take straight off, so you need to find a way to hinge but with consideration for initial weight and movement range.

Next, you need to increase weight gradually.

• Enter the Split-Leg-Good-Morning.
• This is the perfect exercise to re-introduce hinge movements into your training.
• The benefit is that you can add or lessen the weight with the stance’s size, and when you’re ready, you can add weight.

4. Build control

It would be best if you build control of the spine and the muscles that support it.

If you can’t control and support your spine, you’ll never fully recover from a herniated disc.

Try the all-fours-spinal-wave in the video to start building the control you need to keep moving well.

After all, if you can’t control the car you’re driving, you can’t expect it to stay on the road, can you?

It makes complete sense when it’s laid out, but sometimes it’s hard to see the wood for the trees.

The post Can I Train With A Herniated Disc? appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

The first thing you can do to increase your mobility is to look at pain as a warning.

I get it. It hurts when you move, so you try to limit the amount you move so you don’t suffer as much. It’s a natural reaction. And it’s one your brain is counting on. Let’s chat about why your mind is banking on you doing that, and what’s the sneaky bugger doing?

The first thing you can do to increase your mobility is to look at pain as a warning.

1. Increase Your Range of Motion

I’m going to start by saying this. Your brain loves you. Like really loves you and doesn’t want you to get hurt. But much like a toddler and a mud puddle, it can’t trust you to make the right choices.

So, to keep you safe and alive, the main job of the brain is protection and survival. To do that, it needs to be a bit of an ass at times and make some tough decisions. You may want to run, lift, swim, or whatever it is you want to do, but the brain will have to step in, be a momma-bear, and stop you.

Remember, your brain’s priorities aren’t the same as your priorities. And with that in mind, let’s talk about mobility. Barring any mechanical restriction, it’s your brain that is putting a stop to your mobility gains. It’s true.

Let me tell you why. There are generally two reasons your brain will limit your mobility:

1. Strength in a position or range
2. Lack of use

Think about it. If you’re weak in a range or position, why the hell would your brain let you go there if you can’t get yourself back? If your mind, even for a second, thinks you’re not safe in a range or position and that you run the risk of getting hurt, then it’s going to stop you. Guess how it’s going to stop you? That’s right, by hurting you.

Pain is a warning. Pain is the best tool your body has to make you pay attention to what your brain is telling you, and it uses it to draw attention to boo-boo’s and to stop you from doing anything that’s going to hurt you.

So how do we get healthy in our range of movement, so the brain lets us go there? Well, the answer is bit-by-bit. You need to earn the trust of your mind, and that will happen as you build strength. Take this exercise from the Mobility Reset program.

The L-sit to tabletop is the perfect trust-building exercise between you and the big squishy thing upstairs.

Not only does the movement help you build range by asking the brain to complete the task of reaching an excellent flat-end position, but it also makes the strength for:

• Shoulder extension support and stability
• Hip extension, glute, hamstring, and spinal erector activation
• Co-ordination throughout the whole body

And co-ordination builds comfort, which builds trust. See what I mean?

Try it here:

2. Strength and Stability Are Crucial to Mobility

That brings me to the second thing. Use the ranges that you currently have.

One of the truest things I have ever learned about the brain-body connection is if-you-don’t-use-it, you-lose-it. Your brain doesn’t want to devote any time or space, and that means neurons, to crap it doesn’t use.

It doesn’t matter if you were an Olympic gymnast. If you don’t frequently move into the ranges you have, then you will lose them. To make that more relatable:

• If you sit at a desk all day, slouch, and you never move your spine in a different direction, what do you think will happen? You’re going to end up with a humped posture, an inability to extend or rotate your back, and pain.
• The way the brain sees it is like this. We haven’t arched or rotated our spine in weeks, so do I need to keep devoting brain map space to this ability? Hell no, I don’t. I’m going to use those neurons for something else.

If this sounds like you, try this spinal wave exercise from the Mobility Reset Program. See if you can move your spine the way you should be able to move it.

So what I’m saying is this. To be mobile or build mobility, you need to develop the strength and stability in the ranges you want for the brain to let you go there.

And you have to couple that with using those ranges frequently or your brain will take the ability to use them away from you. It all comes down to using a joint like a joint and using it often.

Both of these exercises are from our Mobility Reset program.

The post The Two Ways to Fix Your Mobility appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

The shoulder is the most mobile joint in the body, so it’s not surprising that it’s one of the most commonly jacked-up joints as well. Nearly everyone I have worked with has messed up their shoulder at one time or another (including me). It’s easy to do once you know how, thankfully, it’s also relatively easy to fix.

To know what exactly we have to do, we have to understand how the shoulder works. The humerus bone (upper arm) is the ball of the ball-and-socket joint, and it sits in the glenoid cavity of the scapula, which, you’ve guessed, is the socket—a shallow socket at that.

Happy Shoulders

So this is a happy shoulder joint below.

• If your shoulder is truly happy, it should be sitting in the middle of the socket with all the tendons and muscles acting on it equally to keep it balanced, strong, and mobile.
• If you do too much of specific movements, it can cause an imbalance and pull the shoulder too far out of its happy place in the center of the joint.
• If all you do is bench, bench, bench, your shoulder is probably sitting somewhere around here.

Now you might not mind those rounded pulled forward shoulders, but I’ll tell you what you will mind.

The boo-boo you get once you try to do anything at all differently. What I’m trying to say is, if you have muscle weakness or tightness, it will affect how your shoulder operates.

• Tight lats? Crap overhead flexion
• Tight pec? Rounded shoulders
• Tight traps? Headaches

Yadda, yadda, yadda.

Do you see where I’m going? What you need to do to fix all of your shoulder problems is to treat your shoulder joint like a joint. That’s it.

That means training it in all directions and ranges of motion under control.

And, I know it’s easy to say, but it doesn’t have to be that difficult to do either.

If I had to pick three things for you to add to your workouts to give you happy, healthy shoulders that can do anything you want them to, it would be these:

1. Shoulder Controlled Articular Rotations, (CARS)

No, not Brum, Brum cars. CARS is a fancy name but simple to do and a basic concept. It means just moving your shoulder through its full range of motion with control and intention.

Try this one below, and it should highlight any range restrictions you might have. This is the shoulder CAR from the Mobility Reset Program.

2. Cuban Rotations

These are just great. Cuban rotations strengthen all four rotator cuffs, and rotator cuffs are one of the main culprits in a shoulder injury. There isn’t enough time for all the good things I have to say about this exercise.

3. Work Your Extension

Most folks have terrible shoulder extension. Shoulder extension is a seriously undertrained range that your shoulder should have.

This quick video will show you how to build strength in that long-forgotten range.

Look, everyone wants to do the fun stuff. I get it. But you need to pay attention to the pitfalls of ignoring how your body is supposed to move because it will bite you in the ass, and you won’t be doing any fun stuff when you’re injured.

Keep an eye on your body because spending a bit of time keeping everything ticking over nicely will end up with you having more time doing what you love.

If you’re interested in moving pain-free, check out my Reset Series. It’s an easy to follow, and especially right now, at-home course to help you move better and pain-free.

The post Better Shoulder Health With 3 Mobility Routines for Impingement Problems appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

When I say flexibility, what comes to mind? I bet the first thing that you think of is as strong as f**k, right? Not. That’s because when people think of flexibility, they think of little gymnasts folded in two just hanging out, or dancers in splits for what seems like forever.

Okay, guys, let’s take a second here and have a bit of a chat, will we?

When I say flexibility, what comes to mind? I bet the first thing that you think of is as strong as f**k, right? Not. That’s because when people think of flexibility, they think of little gymnasts folded in two just hanging out, or dancers in splits for what seems like forever.

Now you’re not wrong there. The practice of holding a stretch and allowing gravity to pull you into it is a type of stretching called passive flexibility. Depending on the context, as the context is king, after all, it might well be the correct choice.

But I’ll be honest. I’m not a fan of passive stretching as I’m not a fan of creating all this extra range of movement if you’re not making the joints stable or you aren’t developing the strength to support them. Because creating a new range is only one part of the puzzle.

The Square of Awesomeness

You can’t forget the square of awesomeness. (A shit name I know). The four elements or corners are:

• Mobilize
• Lengthen
• Stabilize
• Strengthen

If you train only one of these four elements, the square falls to hell, and I’m afraid that is where injury lies, my friend. Each of these elements is vital for creating a strong, mobile, and most importantly, a versatile body that can adapt to the unexpected.

So how do we build strength, length, or mobility all at the same time as stability?

Stretch With Weights

Wait; what? That’s right, you heard me. This magical thing I speak of is called active flexibility.

Active flexibility is stretching with purpose. You are using a full combination of things to build that range and, more importantly, the strength and stability in that range.

1. Muscles

You are using your muscles if you’re doing any active flexibility correctly from the engagement and extension to the antagonist’s muscles, pulling you into the stretch.

If you’re doing it right, you should be all a-quiver and have a pump afterward.

2. Tasks

You are naturally flexible. Just look at passed out drunks. Your brain is what inhibits that natural flexibility.

Your brain won’t let you do anything it thinks isn’t safe and that you have a chance of f**king up. So, if you’re not strong enough to get yourself out of a position, then hell no, it won’t let you get into it.

So, a way around this is to give your brain a task. The brain loves tasks.

If your brain has a task, it will allow you to move into deeper ranges to accomplish that task.

Every time you step into those ranges, you’re cementing those neural pathways telling your brain you’re not an idiot, you won’t get hurt, and you’re safe in that range.

3. Weights

We can use weights to help us move into deeper ranges and build muscle and stability in those ranges. Which, in turn, will build neural confidence. After all, you’ll always regret not training the position in which you got injured.

You need to develop the link between body and brain that says you have the strength to move through these positions.

Front Split

I’ll cover one exercise for front splits, one for middle splits, and one for a straddle fold. Let’s start with the front splits. We’ll apply the task principle here:

• What we are going to do is get into a half-kneeling position with a small ball in front of the lead foot.
• Straighten the front leg and slide out into as big a split as you can while pushing the ball in front of you.

Now here’s the task part:

• As you reach the limit of your split, you need to hook the foot and press that straight front leg into the floor.
• Bring that ball back with you as you return to the start position.

Watch the video to see how to do it.

Straddle Split

Next, we’ll go with the straddle fold and the working muscles principle:

• We are going to start quite high, so sitting on the couch is perfect.
• Shuffle your bum to the edge of the couch.
• Get your legs into as wide a straddle as possible. This is your starting position.
• Lean forward and try to get your upper body as close to parallel to the floor as you can.
• From there, you’re going to engage those glutes and adductors to help yourself stand up without momentum.
• Then you’re going to lower yourself back down, under control to the couch.

Here’s the video to get you started:

Middle Split

Lastly, we’re going to bust out the weights for the middle splits. I’m sure we all know the horse stance as a conditioning tool, but if not, I cover it in the video below.

We get into a nice wide horse stance while holding a weight in each hand.

• We need to make sure we can still get deep enough that our knees are bent at 90 degrees.
• We are then going to shoulder press the weights alternatively, and every time we press up, we straighten the legs to stand up.
• As the weight comes back down to the shoulders, we let that extra weight help us sink deeper down into the horse stance each time.
• Eventually, we keep widening the horse stance until it resembles the middle split.

Here’s the full video:

True For All Training

Out of all these different aspects of active flexibility comes one thing, and it’s true for all training. Flexibility, movement, and muscle activation live in the brain.

When you train at the gym, you aren’t training your body. You’re training your mind. You’re giving your brain a task, and as it does that task, it’s building neural maps and increasing the muscle activation needed as it sees that task has to be completed regularly.

To accomplish any training goal, you have to convince the brain that the goal is safe and vital enough on which to focus because, after all, your brain’s priorities aren’t necessarily your priorities. Your brain doesn’t give a shit if you want a six-pack. It wants you not to fall off that balcony trying to impress Brenda.

Get some flexibility gains and some brain gains by taking a more neuro-biomechanical approach to your training. Think of the square of awesomeness. You’ll get in a hurry less, and you’ll never look back.

The post Use Your Brain to Get Flexible Fast appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

1. Walking
2. Running

We are built to move. Our brains evolved to process information, integrate that information, and produce the appropriate movement. Two of the most familiar movement patterns that your brain recognizes are:

1. Walking
2. Running

The body has been shaped by the brain to move, run, jump, and explore. But, as natural as all of these movement patterns might be, you can still do them wrong. Nothing is so easy that you can’t mess it up. Look at milky cups of tea.

Running Prep

Most people get ready for running by, you guessed it, running. But would you get prepared for a max deadlift attempt by making a max deadlift attempt? No, of course, you wouldn’t.

I don’t need to prepare the body for walking, so why is running any different I hear you cry. Well, I’ll tell you why. When you run, the same as in walking, you are spending 50% of the time on one leg.

This standing on one leg takes balance, stability, and a certain amount of strength. However, unlike walking, the forces that your body experiences compound during running.

When you run, up to three times, your bodyweight can be hurtling up through your foot and dissipating through your lower body each time you strike the ground.

Now, I’m no genius, but that amount of force repeatedly is going to cause some problems if you aren’t running correctly or maintaining your condition.

Most people do not consider basic running a tough exercise, but my God, it is. Without necessary stability, strength, and a functional movement pattern running will get you injured. It will just take a while.

The Best Exercises for Running Condition

I am going to list a few exercises to do before you go out running to help you move better and, more importantly, help get everything working as it should so you can run better for longer.

Strengthening the Runner’s Feet

The feet are one of the essential parts of the body when it comes to movement and pain. They have a vast amount of bones, tendons, and muscles, all working in unison. So, when something goes wrong, it hurts a lot.

Feet are built to be in contact with the ground. They feed our brains loads of information about the world we are moving in, and they are intended to move. But what do we do?

We shove them into restrictive shoes that don’t allow them to do their job. It’s surprising how many people have lost the ability to control their feet. Their feet do not even function as feet at all.

Try this little exercise to start strengthening your feet and building the control you might have lost.

Now that we have mentioned probably the most important thing for happy running, strong feet, let’s cover something that’s the bane for most runners.

Training Against Shin Splints and Knee Pain

These bad boys can stop people running for good just because they are so damn painful and debilitating. The good news is that you can get rid of them and for good.

With a bit of dedication, you can strengthen the tibialis muscle that runs down the front of your shin. It’s not a muscle that people often think about, but it helps pull the foot up when you step forward in the run. The same as the calf helps it extend.

Now people train calves all the time, but folks rep out exercises for the tibialis. When this muscle is weak but gets asked to pull the foot forward repeatedly while receiving the massive hits from pounding the pavement, something is going to give and that, my friends, are when shin splints develop.

You can help strengthen the tibialis with this simple little exercise below. Combine these with the 45-degree squat also in this video to make sure your knees are robust enough to handle all the miles you plan to get under your belt.

Opening Up Hips with Lunge Exercises

Now they don’t take the same amount of punishment as the feet, shins, and knees, but they do have quite a small range of movement when running.

If you don’t work at keeping a healthy range of movement in the hips, then you are going to lose the range you do have, and the muscles around the joint won’t activate fully, and that will lead to pain.

One of the best exercises for opening the hip and taking it through its full range of motion is the long lunge with a hip drop from the Mobility Reset Program.

Stability and Strength with Single-Leg Rotation Exercises

Now that we’ve covered the range in the hips, we need to mention stability and strength because you need these just as much as a range to keep you moving pain-free.

Try this single-leg hip rotation, and it should highlight any control issues you have in the hips.

I have given you five excellent running exercises that should be done as a warm-up before you run and also as a cool down after your run. Just to help keep everything friendly and happy.

These will get you started, but the Vestibular and Mobility Reset Programs will identify and eliminate your balance and mobility restrictions.

The post Want To Run Better and Longer? Condition and Strengthen appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

All movement, skill, thought, and everything that makes you, you is encompassed in this 3lb organ.

All that you have ever experienced, will ever experience, all the exercises or personal bests you have ever pulled off have started and ended in your brain.

All movement, skill, thought, and everything that makes you, you is encompassed in this 3lb organ.

• How does your brain know what to do at any given moment?
• How does your brain gather information?
• And of the information it gathers, how does it decide what to do with it?
• More importantly, does the way your brain gathers information and what it does with it have an effect on your training, performance or recovery?

You bet your arse it does!

Now, this isn’t a neurology lecture but before we get into how important the way your brain gathers information is and how to improve it, we need to, in a very basic way understand how the brain works.

Brain Basics

Your brain uses sensory inputs to gather information. These sensors receive input and the peripheral nervous system (PNS) and the central nervous system (CNS) sends these signals to the brain which then basically decides the action and then creates motor output relevant to whatever was decided.

At a very basic level that’s it.

The brain has three ways to gather information or inputs:

1. Exteroception: monitoring the outside world
2. Interoception: bodily awareness and feelings
3. Proprioception: awareness of the body and limbs in space

These inputs are then integrated together to build and update the brain’s map of everything. Of you, the world around you and how you are moving through it. The brain updates previous experiences, senses, and predictive processes to make decisions that drive the body’s actions.

Now that we broadly understand how the brain does things, we need to figure out why it does them.

Well, the answer to that one is easy: survival.

Your brain’s goal is to keep you alive. Full stop. Not keep you alive ten years from now but right now, today.

How it does this is through prediction. Our brains are masters at pattern recognition. Every second of every day the 120 billion neurons in the brain are processing information based on previous experience to predict outcomes to actions, this is your brain using pattern recognition to decide actions.

There is a hierarchy to the inputs your brain uses to move through the world:

1. Visual
2. Vestibular
3. Proprioceptive

If these sensory inputs match (i.e. there is clear information from all three systems and there is good integration in the brain) your brain will allow you to function well and perform when it matters. Whether that’s CrossFit, powerlifting, or just picking something up of the floor.

When there is a mismatch is when we run into problems. If there is bad information informing the brain maps and pattern recognition abilities, then I am afraid it is going to try to limit the chances of death—usually by generating pain to draw attention or inhibiting movement.

In this article, I am going to focus on exercises to improve your visual system as 70-90% of all sensory input is visual.

The Role of Vision

There are two classifications of vision in humans:

1. Gaze stabilization: A foundational element of all other eye movements and allows us to see objects and to interpret the visual scene to create perception.
2. Gaze shifting: This allows us to keep the focus on a moving target. Think that ball hurtling towards your face on the pitch.

There could be any number of things affecting these two patterns and hindering your visual system, which in turn could be dramatically holding your performance back without you even knowing it.

The key to training your visual system for performance is training the musculature of the eyes to function correctly. After all, poor muscular function will cause problems in gaze shifting and gaze stabilization.

We are going to cover one drill for stabilization and one for shifting. Reference my video for a demonstration of each drill.

I recommend you record yourself performing the drill and watch it back to see how you perform. That way, you can adjust accordingly.

Drill 1: Gaze Stabilization

1. Stand in a neutral stance.
2. Hold a target (pen) at arm’s length directly in front of you. Stare at the target for 30 seconds.
3. You must remain focused on the target because an inability to do gaze stabilization usually means very small, fast movements of the eyes off the target and then back onto it.
4. When watching yourself back try to notice excessive facial tension, eyelid flutter, excessive blinking, or watering of the eyes as you attempt to keep focus on the target.
5. Once you have performed this assessment in a neutral position, you will then perform the same test in each of the other four positions. Up, right, left and down.
6. Take special note, as it is highly likely that you will find one or more positions in which you struggle with your gaze stabilization.
7. It is vital that the target remains in focus at all times. If it goes out of focus reduce the distance away from neutral, you hold it.
8. Do this drill three times through each position.

Drill 2: Gaze Shifting

Stand in a neutral stance holding a pen out in front of you in a neutral position.

Try to smoothly follow the pen as you move it from neutral into one of the eight positions below and then back to neutral:

1. Up
2. Down
3. Right
4. Left
5. Up and Right
6. Up and Left
7. Down and Right
8. Down and Left

You should repeat this test three times in each of the eight positions. You will be looking for two things when you watch the drill back:

• Excessive body sway.
• Badly coordinated movement of the eyes. This will usually be seen as a ratcheting or jumping type of motion that stops them from smoothly following the target.

Each of these can indicate poor visual-motor control.

Get Your Vision Straight

The aim of these drills is to get your eyes functioning properly so the information your brain gets is as clear as possible. That way your brain won’t be afraid to let you move fully in all of your available ranges of motion.

Remember, when the brain can predict, you can perform.

References:

1. Gaymard, B., & Pierrot-Deseilligny, C. (1999). Neurology of saccades and smooth pursuit. Current Opinion in Neurology.

2. Hughes, A. E. (2018). Dissociation between perception and smooth pursuit eye movements in speed judgments of moving Gabor targets. Journal of Vision.

3. Ingster-Moati, I., Vaivre-Douret, L., Bui Quoc, E., Albuisson, E., Dufier, J. L., & Golse, B. (2009). Vertical and horizontal smooth pursuit eye movements in children: A neuro-developmental study. European Journal of Paediatric Neurology.

4. Krauzlis, R. J., Goffart, L., & Hafed, Z. M. (2017). Neuronal control of fixation and fixational eye movements. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

The post Vision Drills for Better Performance in Physical Movement appeared first on Breaking Muscle.