Muscle strategies

All of us have them, even our elite athletes. A muscle strategy is a way of eliciting a group of muscles to accomplish a task or athletic endeavor in order to do the activity in the most efficient, cost effective way for our body. However that being said, it doesn’t mean it’s being done in the best way for your body. Just because you have golfed, water skied, and biked for 10 years doesn’t mean you are doing it right. Know wonder sometimes your knees hurt, you back aches and your neck is stiff after the activity. These muscle strategies you have had with you for years may not be really as efficient as you thought.

Engaging muscles during strategies takes some forethought and brain power. Think of it, you are out hiking with your friends and you are talking away and you forget about anything related to your muscles. So I challenge you to do a little check, are my abdominal muscles actually engaged? Are they tight or don’t you even know what they should feel like? Is everything in working order. Lightly tighten your low tummy muscles by pulling them

back toward your spine, hold for a least a five count while you are walking, or sitting at the stop light or brushing your teeth. These deep Transverse Abdominus muscles should be firing all the time when we are active, they are one of the primary muscles of the anterior core. Often however we use other muscles to protect our core, like our hip flexors and excessive arching of our back. These strategies lead to all kinds of other problems and do not work well.

Recently I had an elite athlete who was doing just that. He used his hip flexors and his back to accomplish what his core trunk and hip muscles couldn’t do and now he had terrible knee pain keeping him away from his sport. We had to break down all his muscle patterns and reset them so everyone learned to fire in order. A forearm plank with glut lifts for one minute to reboot the abdominals and the booty and then a quick reset to the quadriceps using the hip adductors and the gluts in sitting position before he trained and now he is on his way.

There is something about resetting these muscles and waking up the right pattern before your activity that helps everything go smoothly. So before you decide to take a run or jump on the tramp with your kids it’s a good thing to stimulate the muscles you will be using to wake everyone up. Remember with activities you can often do a quick reminder before you start the activity. So before riding your bike lean forward on your bike in a small plank to the handle bars and engage your low abdominals along with your gluts to stimulate your back paraspinals for a minute. While you run tuck your low tummy muscles in and bend your arms at 90 degrees and this will engage your oblique abdominals as you go so your core is stabilized.

Good muscle strategies will change your life and prevent injury. Make sure you know how to turn on your core before activity and what to do when it’s not working well. Make sure your body knows how to do the things you love to do, with good muscle strategies onboard, come see us if you are unsure or have an injury. We want you to live well!

• • •

Sheree DiBiase, PT, is the owner of Lake City Physical Therapy and she and her awesome staff are here to help you learn better muscle strategies. Call us in Hayden a (208) 762-2100, Coeur d’Alene (208) 667-1988 and in our Spokane Valley office at (509) 891-2623.