Get Pumped!
When your muscles are not firing optimally, moving from point A to B is the least of your worries. When deficiency is present in any movement pattern we must remember that muscles aren’t just for movement, they help pump vital fluids. They help your heart pump blood and lymph through your body. After all, the heart is a muscle, but like all muscles it works more efficiently as part of a team. So taking what we have learned from the pushing and pulling example, if someone is a weak puller we can assert that there is some weakness in their back musculature which will affect the way they pump cerebral spinal fluid and how well lubricated their spinal discs are. We will see stagnation in the lymph system secondary upper cross syndrome (a tightening of the muscles that round the shoulders and pull the head forward).
Are you starting to see that movement is so much more than getting from point A to point B? It really encompasses our whole being, health, and life.
As we continue to look at muscles as a pump, we need to look at how movement affects digestion. Dr. Guy Voyer has a specific abdominal series for digestive issues based off of the way that the abdominal muscles help with peristalsis! Being able to perform a full squat is essential for digestive health, as this motion creates compression of the colon, further facilitating elimination. Let\’s not forget how the diaphragm (which is also a muscle) creates a massage effect on the organs, again facilitating digestive health (more on this in the breathing chapter).
Back to our example of the strong pusher and weak puller; lets examine how that’s going to affect the joints. The muscles creating a push motion (triceps, pecs, deltoids, etc…)are going to undergo hypertrophy, meaning that they are going to be larger, and produce more torque on the joint than the muscles that pull. This is going to create issues with joint torque, cause trigger points in the musculature, affecting blood flow, and muscle pH balance—which all create further dysfunction throughout your being.
Movement really is life! If your movement is imbalanced, your life is as well.
stay tuned for part 3 next week……
