Assess Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself
The brain. It's a pretty amazing organ. We are still learning more about how the brain works and functions, but what we do know is that it affects EVERYTHING in our bodies. My recent studies with Z-Health® Performance Solutions have given me a whole new level of respect for the brain, along with a much better understanding of how my brain can influence my movement capabilities, how quickly that influence can change, and how to assess that influence.
Think about the state of your body from day-to-day as you perform a fairly regular activity, say taking a walk, going to the gym, taking a dance class, gardening, etc. Do you find that some days you feel a bit weaker, tighter, less coordinated or less balanced than others? Yes, perhaps you didn't eat as well or didn't get enough sleep, but why does that mean you are tighter or not as strong? You usually don't have drastic changes in muscle tissue from one day to the next.
It all comes down to SURVIVAL.
Your brain's job is to keep you safe, and it has a lot of ways of doing that through what we call outputs. Pain, weakness, loss of coordination, nausea, dizziness, muscle tension and loss of balance are all potential outputs that the brain can create as a way to protect you from hurting yourself. Frequently we look at these as discrete problems that each have their own root cause, and while there certainly may be underlying conditions that lead to these outputs (and you should always check with a medical professional to rule those out), there is also the possibility that your brain simply perceives a threat to your survival.
Now in these times we don't have to worry about the ancient threats to survival (death by lion, for example) but anytime your brain does not receive clear or accurate information from the numerous senses of your body (vision, hearing, inner ears/vestibular system, smell, touch, joint position and movement) this is a potential threat. Your brain has to know where you are and how you are moving in order to feel safe enough to LET you move.
So enough talk -- let's test this out! Your brain makes judgements about threat instantaneously, so we can use assessment and re-assessment to judge the efficacy of any exercise or movement in reducing threat. Below is a link to a video blog post by Dr. Cobb, founder of Z-Health. The video guides you through a sensory warm-up, which works on feeding better and more accurate information to the brain so that it can better sense your body -- therefore reducing threat. For our test, do the following:
Assess -- do a forward bend, and see how far down your shins your fingers can reach or how close your hands are to the floor.
Sensory Warm-Up -- http://zhealtheducation.com/episode-145-how-to-do-a-proper-warm-up/ -- Either follow along with the whole warm-up (10 minutes) or choose one specific part of the warm-up to complete
Re-Assess -- do your forward bend again, and compare to the first assessment.
Hopefully, your re-assessment showed an improvement over your first forward bend! If your forward bend got worse, that tells you that your brain was actually more threatened by the movement you did (and I'll address this more in a future post). If you did see an improvement, your brain now feels less threatened, and in turn it is allowing you to have more mobility.
What is fantastic about your brain and this information is that you have the capability of assessing and re-assessing EVERYTHING you do. Walking on the treadmill? Assess before and then again after you're done. Gardening? Check your forward bend before and after. Even something as simple as reading a few paragraphs (which involves eye movement) can be assessed.
Use this tool of assessment to find out if those things you are doing to improve your health actually do decrease the threat to your survival and thus improve your movement. You wouldn't want to spend several hours each day putting your brain and body in a state of threat!