Mastering your body mechanics
Body mechanics is the way you use your body to perform any physical activity from sitting to running. Good body mechanics will help you to stay active longer with less pain and using less energy. On the other side bad body mechanics will cut your activities short, may cause more pain and use more of your energy.
Whether or not we realize it we use body mechanics in everything we do. Lifting, carrying, sitting, standing, walking, running and even sleeping. Any time you are using your body you are engaging your muscles to pull on your bones to either put your body in place or to keep it in place. The more strenuous the activity or the longer the activity the more they matter. That doesn’t mean that quick or easy movements don’t matter especially if we do them repeatedly, think of how you sit or stand while you are texting. Are you hunched over your phone all the time rounding your shoulders and bending your neck forward? That would be an example of bad body mechanics putting strain on your muscles and joints.
Great now that I know what body mechanics are what can I do to fix it if I have bad body mechanics?
Tips to improve your body mechanics
1- Maintain proper posture: Our posture always matters, regardless of what we are doing. Even the way that we sleep can cause issues. How many times have you woken up and said “I must have slept funny my neck or my back hurt.” I’m definitely guilty of that as I’m sure most of us are. Imagine a straight line from your ears through your shoulders, hips, and knees. In general the closer those points are to a straight line the better our posture is. This step is actually one of the first things we look at with our clients. Any misalignment here can give us important clues when working with our clients. Quick side note about posture, when working to correct your posture many of us will pull our shoulders back tightly, like we are trying to hold a pencil between our shoulder blades. By doing this we cause a ton of other restrictions that can even effect our ability to breath properly. Try not to pull your shoulders back that hard. You want to have a nice relaxed spine and shoulders.
2- Lift with your legs: Its an old saying with good reason. Our legs are very strong and great for lifting. If we remove our legs from the lifting equation the risk for back injury skyrockets. When lifting something bend at your hips and knees and keep what you are lifting close to your body. This allows you to use the strength of you legs to lift and to keep your center of gravity relatively stable. This will help you remain balanced and protect your back in the process.
3- Avoid twisting and bending: When you lift or reach for something try to avoid twisting while doing it. If you’re like I was you probably engage in a common bad body mechanics habit of keeping your bag in the back seat of the car. This means that when you go to grab it you have to twist and lift it in order to pull it to the front seat. If your bag is light this isn’t usually a problem but if you tend to overstuff it or keep rocks in it you are now creating an environment where muscles or joints can be strained. It might be a good idea to reevaluate where you toss your bag in the car. There are lots of other times that we twisting while lifting, pay attention to your daily movements to identify other times that you are guilty of this movement.
4- Use ergonomic equipment: Sometimes we don’t have a choice what equipment we use. Think about that office chair that needs to be replaced because its cushion is older than we are. How do you feel when you get up from a long time sitting in it. A well designed chair or desk space can work wonders for keeping us in proper body alignment, lead to more productivity while using it and less pain when we are done.
5- Balance your load: How many trips does it take you to carry in your groceries? One of course. We load up like our cars will explode when we walk away and the groceries will be vaporized if we don’t get it all in one trip. Most of us will load as many bags as we can with milk, eggs and other heavy items in one hand and try to leave the other hand free to open the door because we don’t want to put down the monstrosity that we created to carry them in. So now we have all this weight in one hand on one side of our body and that side is screaming for a break because its overloaded. This overload goes right to our spines. The spine is a wonderful part of our body and it is capable of a great deal and it handles a lot but overloading it isn’t a good idea. This doesn’t even touch on all the strain we are putting on that one arm and shoulder. Having a load that isn’t balanced is a recipe for disaster. What other tasks take you out of balance?
6- Warm up and Stretch: Warming up and stretching before physical activity is a great idea. It sends a signal to our bodies that ‘hey we are about to do something here, get ready’. The more we can set ourselves up for success by taking care of our muscles and joints the better we will be long term.
7- Stay active: Take a look in your junk drawer. We all have at least one in our kitchen usually the closest one to the trash can. Grab that rubber band that’s been sitting in there since you moved in and try to stretch it. Odds are it will snap because its been sitting, unused and drying out for so long. The muscles in our bodies are like that rubber band, the less we use it the tighter it gets. Vigorous activity helps loosen us up. Regular use in a proper functional way keeps us healthy and elastic. Don’t let your body sit in a drawer drying out, use it.
8- Listen to your body: Pay attention to any discomfort or pain, it’s the easiest way to know if you are moving in a non functional way. If something doesn’t feel right, adjust what you are doing or how you are doing it. Ignoring your pain can lead to long term issues.
If you notice that you are developing long term pain or have had long term pain reach out to us at Optimal Performance Massage Therapy for a session. We specialize in helping people get out of pain. Our treatments are targeted to you because they are based on our evaluation of your unique posture and movements.
