To me, one of the body’s most fascinating design features is something called the Kinetic Chain. If you’re a YFH regular, you might recall my mentioning that term a time or two (e.g. The Great Joint Compromise post). And being that it’s one of the most fundamental concepts of physical function–and thus of Functional Health–you can expect to see it mentioned here […]
Dogs have kneecaps? They have little patellae in front of their knees just like you do. And they serve the same function as yours do–to make it easier for the quadriceps muscles (yes, they have those too) to do their job. Well I thought it was a worthwhile post…….
The concept of balance is thrown around a lot these days. There’s the whole yin-yang kind of balance, the stability-mobility kind of balance, and then there’s traditional balance, the being steady kind. At a very basic level, this kind of balance enables you to stand and walk without falling (no easy feat considering that 80% of walking–and 100% of running–is […]
At the risk of contradicting weight room dogma, I’m going to boldly assert that not a single muscle is there to make us look better at the beach. While that may be the motivation to exercise for a lot of people, cosmetic workouts don’t, on their own, get you very far functionally and can even […]
If you’ve had the misfortune to need any significant physical therapy, you may have caught your therapist lightly jabbing or poking at a muscle that just wasn’t cooperating. Despite its amateurish appearance, it’s actually a bona fide technique to jump-start muscles that have shut down for one reason or another. And used appropriately, it can […]
“The body is a bundle of careful compromises” ~R. Nesse & G. Williams, Why We Get Sick Nothing exemplifies that statement better than your joints, the designs of which boil down to exactly that: a compromise. It’s an issue of stability versus mobility– each joint a trade-off between structural sturdiness and maneuverability. And […]
If I were a betting woman, I’d bet a pretty good sum that you’ve never heard anyone complain that their butt muscles were too tight. Or that their back muscles were just too darn loose. Coincidence? Au contraire, mon frere. It’s by design. While the broader concept of muscle imbalances certainly generates a lot of buzz these days [even in the YFH Blog: […]
So…speaking of pre-programmed body movements (seriously, I actually was in this last post on Engrams), there is one engram worthy of its own blog post. More accurately, it’s a component of a larger engram–of most engrams really. That alone is a large part of why it is so important. What I’m referring to is the […]
Have a muscle that just won’t loosen up no matter how often you stretch it? After all, the way to loosen a tight muscle is to stretch it, right? Wellllll……not necessarily. Not all muscles that are tight need to be–or even should be–stretched. It all depends on why it’s tight in the first place. Contrary […]
Functional Health is about using your body’s design to your advantage, and stretching should be no exception. There’s nothing wrong with the tried and true method of holding a muscle in a stretched position for a sustained period of time (generally 30 seconds). But one way to get a more effective stretch is by doing […]
Have you ever strained or even torn your calf muscle? And then, just when you thought you were all healed…it happened again? While there are several possible reasons for such a recurrence, one lesser known factor has to do with the anatomy of the calf. As you may know, the “calf muscle” is really a […]
By now, most of us have heard that we need to “engage the core” for better stability and function. But people often interpret “engage” to mean “suck in”…. So they proceed to suck in their belly buttons while exercising. Unfortunately that is the exact opposite of how you should engage the core as it actually […]
