Six Pack Abs Hack?

Like most earthlings, sit-ups, leg raises, and crunches kill my back and neck.

But I recently heard that there is a way to do them which not only protects those weak spots but also really hits your abs.

Apparently the key is to *flatten your lower back* all the way to the floor while doing them.

And now that I Google this a bit I can see that it's hardly a secret among the workout cognoscenti.

I'll have to give this a whirl now. Technique is everything in life!

J-Lo's Butt Secret - Walking The Straight And Narrow

I've already mentioned this before.

I learned from Esther Gokhale that THE proper way to walk is *on a straight line*. That is, your footprints should not be on two parallel lines - railroad tracks if you will. She calls it *glidewalking* and the technique utilizes the buttocks, the abs, a perfectly aligned spine, you land on your heel, and it stretches out your hamstrings and hip flexors NATURALLY. This is in contradistinction to how most people walk - a hunched-over stumbling forward fall which they break only by raising the opposite leg with their quad muscles. Who knew you were supposed to walk with your rump???!!!

Esther basically asserts that you shouldn't have to go to yoga class to stretch out your legs and hips nor should you have to do squats to develop your hindquarters. Walking with good form is really all that is needed.

Now I've tried this. And it freakin' works! You'll feel it instantly too.

Recently, while watching a recorded episode of American Idol I noticed that when the big-butted, tight-tummied Jennifer Lopez walks, that she not only puts one foot straight in front of the other....but that she even goes a little further. Watch this clip from the 2:15 mark and you'll see, most easily on her right leg, that she practically *crosses the line* with each stride.

For a primer on glidewalking, click on and enlarge the graphic below which is from Esther Gokhale's landmark book - 8 Steps To A Pain-Free Back:

I mean her book was crazy insightful. Because I suffer from a particularly bad back (car accident) I would even go as far as saying it, for me anyway, was as on par with Tim Ferriss' juggernaut - The 4 Hour Body. And in a sense, the two books belong in the same category. No one really has time for yoga classes and whatnot. So why not learn how to stretch and develop the important parts of your body naturally - sitting, standing, sleeping(!), and walking with perfect kinesthetic form?

One thing about Esther is that unlike many of the workout gurus with sub-optimal bodies and who often hide themselves behind *clothing*....she's personally developed the body she asserts is possible:

That might not be the ideal picture but it's the best I could find. Note her tight stomach and developed hiney. In the book there are even better illustrations.

You might want to skip the first 5 minutes or so of this one:

See also - My Pelvis - A Game-Changer.

My Pelvis, A Game-Changer

Remember how back when you were a dumb kid and you *fell in love* with a the perfect shapely broad or charming dude....remember how you'd be bouncing off the walls and infatuated to the point of complete distraction?

Well that's how I feel at the moment.  I was up all night and can't stop my mind from racing this morning.

And no it's not the perky bartender from last night.  (I was at a kids-eat-for-$1 family restaurant with 5 little brats.)

I think I may have FINALLY, yet again, found the solution to the mystery of my pain-ridden back.

Reading that book I mentioned the other day - 8 Steps To A Pain-Free Back - I discovered some major insights.

It was actually quite simple. I was sitting wrong, standing wrong, walking incorrectly, and sleeping in positions that were guaranteed to be hostile to my back.

While the yoga I was doing the past few years was a step in the right direction, I was still making a major *kinesthetic* blunder - my pelvis was tucked back instead of properly anteverted (pulled forward).

So all my efforts to battle head-forward posture, rounded shoulders, and to tighten my core were almost for naught on account of this foundational problem. One can't well straighten out their spine with the all-important bottom piece of it out of whack!

Above I said that I was bouncing off the the walls but that's not entirely accurate.

I've actually been *glidewalking* all over the condo - back and forth nonstop.

What's that?

It's a method of ambulation described in her book that merely stretches out your hamstrings, engages your core, and gives an incredible buttocks workout. Yeah, all from just taking a few steps across the room!

Much, much more on this development will be forthcoming.

Another Bad Back Book

While I've just started reading this one - 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back - I can tell it's going to be helpful. Perhaps it'll even be *the one* that helps cure my broken back. The focus of the book is *perfect posture*.

With over 170 reviews on Amazon it impressively still holds a 5-star rating. Click the link, read the reviews, buy it, and make yourself perfectly erect!

See also - Another Piece of Bad Back Puzzle.

Another Piece In The Bad Back Puzzle?

Long-time (and clairvoyant!) readers know that I seriously injured my back 11 years ago in a freak car accident.

Whiplash was the initial diagnosis; then TOS - Thoracic Outlet Syndrome - which was most manifest in a 99% occlusion of the vein in my left arm. I suffered a gradual loss of strength in my hands to the extent that the milk carton might fall out of my hand when pouring and that I had trouble opening a beer bottle (domestic!).

Ignorant, I underwent a risky invasive surgery where they cut all sorts of stuff out of my thoracic region. It was an attempt to free up physical space around the blood vessel and whatnot. The doctor from the opposing insurance company likened the procedure I subjected myself to, to *bloodletting*, i.e. contemporary quackery.  And he was probably right.

Anyways, there was no noticeable improvement in my condition post-surgery. At the follow-up with the doctor, he actually he sent one of his minions(!) who said, "Oh, you won't be able to tell if it helped for at least a year or longer; it takes a long time for nerves to decompress...". Heck the clown may as well have been a *financial adviser* wielding that long-run BS.

Even after the surgery, physical therapists, and the doctors, emphatically told me NOT TO DO any stretching, NOT TO DO anything like yoga because that would compress my blood vessels even more.

Of course they were, and are, complete Morons as *yoga* was the only thing that ever helped my back after surgery.

While my condition at the moment is stable, I am still far from 100% strong and healthy. But I'm honestly convinced that one day, before I leave this overheated, variable-climate planet....I'll discover the magical cure and restore my back completely.

Lately I've been reading a highly regarded, technical book - Trigger Point Therapy for Low Back Pain: A Self-treatment Workbook (New Harbinger Self-Help Workbook) - to that end.

A lot of the recommended treatment, to me, came off as highly technical and time intensive. It also seems like it's geared for *practitioners* and those who have much worse symptoms than I have. Though I'm sure if I reread it with application I'll really learn a lot - enough perhaps to become the masseuse that every chick dreams of marrying! (Years ago, I once had a young lady tell me that I should really study *massage*. And she was right! A man who can massage and dance proficiently will never have to suffer loneliness.)

When I went in for my surgery in 2001, my hands were weakening and all of my back pain was up high - from the upper back through the neck.

But when I came out, I started experiencing a new *lower* back pain. I would say the pain moved but after so many years of a stiff neck I can't even tell if my upper back is better now or if I just got used to it.

Whatever, this lower back pain is far more debilitating than the upper variety and actually goes down into the top of my hiney (images upon request).

From the book I'm inferring that my issues might be centered in my quadratus lumborum - which is the hard-to-target back wall of the abdomen or something.

The book says that one thing guaranteed to aggravate this particular area is *sleeping on one's side* - which I've done my entire life.

The author INSISTS that sleeping with the knees touching, one on top of the other like this, is very bad for this quadratus lumborum or whatever it is. It also leads to a postural imbalance which I also definitely have (left shoulder high) and have had since I was a kid.

She highly recommends that side-sleepers put a (king-sized) pillow between their legs at night.

Guess what. I tried it the other night and when I woke up, I was only 20% as stiff as I normally am. This may not sound like a big deal, but generally I wake up in such rough shape that I need to spend a full hour stretching each morning before I can fully function.

I was giddy all day yesterday thinking I may have finally found something helpful. So last night I leg-straddled a pillow again and also woke up this morning feeling positively bouncy.

Now I've had false starts before. After I bought an inversion table, the first time I used it I was euphoric and thought I had found the answer. Of course I didn't.

BTW, if you sleep on your stomach or flat on your back....you should also use pillows (under your stomach and under your knees respectively) to protect your spine - click here.

Blankets are always a good idea too - particularly when your camera-wielding buddies are around.

Healthy Humility Reminder

That's what my aching back feels like at the moment!

I was sitting down on the floor the other day, just about to start my yoga....I leaned forward ever so slightly when my back wretched.

I was screaming and couldn't get off the ground for almost five minutes.

This happened to me once before in the course of my yoga - last year when I was trying to reach my toes from a sitting position.

Over the nearly 11 years since my initial injury, I've had a handful of these kinds of incidents. It's not fun. I can hardly put my socks on and my shoes have been untied since Sunday morning. Even sitting in this $900 ergonomic desk chair has been painful.

Hence the recent low blog output...

It's feeling a little better each day. I should be fine in a week or two, I hope.

But when it happened, it was so painful I wondered whether or not I've swung a golf club for the last time. One can eat right (organic!), wear their seatbelt, and exercise all they want - but still, their health and well-being remains essentially out of their hands. In that sense, the flash of excruciating pain indeed felt like a lightning bolt from above.

See also - On Yoga.

On Yoga

One subject on this blog whose treatment is out-of-line with its importance in my life is yoga. I do it every morning for about 20-30 minutes. And, I've only being doing it for a year or so.

Let me just say that it is AWESOME. Forget the chanting, the *feel your thoughts float away like a butterfly* nonsense. Yoga is minimally about stretching and strengthening one's body. It'll improve your posture, respiration, and yes, even your *chi*.

What's great about yoga, beyond the results, is that you can do it without breaking a sweat; you can do it after eating a hearty breakfast; and that you can do it anywhere on this overheated Earth. It's cheap to boot!

I first started doing free on-demand yoga classes from Comcast on my color TV. Then I borrowed a book. Most recently I've been cruising the web and YouTube for new poses and stretches. That chick whose video I posted the other night (for her *qualities important to the superficial male*) I've actually found to be quite a good resource.



Here's the crux of yoga. Can you bend over, keeping your legs straight and touch your toes? Probably not - especially if you're a dude. Yoga people can not only do this, they can bend over so far that they can place their palms flat on the ground.

I mistakenly thought that I couldn't touch my toes because "I'm not flexible" and "Because of my bad back". But I discovered that my inability was actually due to *tight hamstrings*. I am happy to report that I can now not only touch my toes but almost get my palms completely flat on the ground. Note that I am still brimming with masculinity and I still have the very bad back!

None of this is philosophy or *detoxification*....It's pure anatomy. Hamstrings are, well, strings and you have about a bazillion of them (alright, maybe not that many). They get tight from our sedentary, automotive lifestyles and wreak havoc on our backs. Tightness in our bodies is a locally contagious affliction. What kills me to this day is that out of all of my doctors, not a one of them ever told me to stretch my hamstrings (or lose my gut) to mitigate my bad back. Remember I suffer from TOS (and had its invasive surgery) because of a freakish car accident almost 11 years ago now.

Not only did the doctors all push useless, expensive pills on me, and not only did they fail to recommend yoga, THEY STRONGLY ADVISED THAT I NOT DO STRENUOUS STRETCHING.

So they told me NOT TO DO the one thing that has helped the most!

The next thing you know, our powers-at-be will be prescribing for our debt-ravaged society....EVEN MORE DEBT!

Okay, I digress.

Yoga is one of these things that has the potential to really transform you physically. It awakens muscles you, even if a one-time star athlete, never knew you had. Heck, later in his career NBA icon Larry Bird used to *stretch* for a solid hour each day.

You naysayers need to realize that flexibility and strength are in no way disjoint goals.

I could add plenty more here on yoga but my time is short. Though I am going to add one final thought.

My wife - sagacious broad that she is - had unsuccessfully tried for years to get me to do yoga. I rejected the idea reflexively. I was turned off by the *people* who were into it, the airheaded philosophy of it, and probably the group/class aspect. I like to do things, make that just about everything, by myself. Essentially, I refused a life-enhancing practice because of the people, whom I believed, have co-opted it.

What I've truly learned over the past couple of years is to not reject ANYTHING based upon its practitioners.

Yeah, almost four years ago I set out to Marginalize Morons and in the process I accidentally got a whole lot more tolerant of them. Seriously.

So, again. Be careful what you ignorantly deprecate. How many meathead 'old coots' do you know that laughed at golf, retired, and then lamented the fact that they didn't take up the game decades prior?

My next post in this vein, will explain to y'all why I have started passionately studying ballet.