Fitness
3 Exercises to Improve Hip Mobility
Hip Mobility Series
Do you have tight hips? Do you want better hip mobility? Here is a series of three hip drills that will help improve your mobility and stability.
We’ll also articulate how to create dexterity around the hip. When we have dexterity, we have more control. Creating more control allows us to have better movement, and better movement awareness, depending on various activities.
When it comes to the hips, we typically assume we move the leg kind of around the body, which is important. But some of these drills will show how we can move the body about the hip, which is really important for sports and performance because a lot of these rotational movements or other movements are going to be our torso and our hips moving around our stable hip, which is planted into the ground.
I’m Dr. Antonio with Live Loud Chiropractic and Coaching in Lafayette, Colorado, and today I’m going to show you these hip exercises in series, and explain how you can go about them, and how they can help your hip mobility and stability.
PLAY VIDEO ⬇︎
The Hip Airplane
We can do the hip airplane in a couple of different ways. The main thing to keep in mind is when we’re doing a lot of movements around the hip, the leg is moving around the pelvis.
But here, we want to ask, how can we control the body moving around the hip?
We’re going to first start with a split stance. A split stance simply means one foot forward and one foot backward.
From here, I’m going to try to put the majority of my weight in my front leg. And my back toe is simply touching the ground for a little bit of stability. So here, what we’re going to practice is just opening and closing the hip. So the front leg ideally has toes pointing straight ahead. And the front hip ideally has the knee in line with the toes.
But you can see in the video how my torso rotates around. So what we wouldn’t want is if I’m falling, my knee comes in, or as I’m coming out, that knee is pushing out. I want to maintain some rigidity and planting through the ground. I’m thinking about is my pubic bone and my sternum, opening away, and then closing towards. I don’t twist through my back because I want this whole system to come with me.
That is the first step to understanding the whole movement.
Now, ideally, what we’re going to build up to is being able to do this without any help. So what you can do is use a foam roller or a countertop to help you balance so that we can create that first stepping stone into understanding the movement.
As you can see in the video, using my hands to balance, I’m going to reach my heel and my hand away from each other. Same thing as before: I open away from the leg, then come down and close towards the leg. (What’s nice too is you’ll actually feel a nice big stretch in the hip muscle here.)
You can also put a plate on a squat rack to use for balance and rotate on that plate as it’s anchored into a barbell or whatever rack you have.
The importance is the control of the torso moving around a fixed point (the planted foot). This is important for a lot of sports and activities that we do because a lot of what we do is plant a foot and then everything else rotates around that fixed leg.
Hip airplanes are not intended to be done fast or sloppy. These are about control, creating dexterity, and improving mobility. If you’re finding that in one of these planes of motion you feel a little tighter, you can actually hang out there a little bit and get a stretch. So there you have it–hip airplanes. If you’re not doing them, give it a try. They’re super beneficial for good hip health.
The Windmill
Now we’re focusing on creating torsion or torque within the hip. We tend to think of torsion as tight. Think of torsion as creating lines of tension where we want lines of tension, and then releasing where we don’t want it.
To do the windmill, the feet maintain a fixed position, and then we rotate in whichever direction from there. This can be a great mobility test, which I learned from a previous colleague of mine, Dr. Jordan Shallow with Pre-Script. He uses it as a test because by fixing this, we really get a true understanding of thoracic rotation and hip rotation.
I like being in a more open position for the actual mobility drill, I don’t like fixing it. Because again, primarily, my patients are not as performance-based, where they’re having a range of motion restrictions; I don’t want to put their shoulders in precarious positions, or create too much tension in an area that needs to move.
So our feet are going to move opposite to the direction of the hand that has the weight. We’re going to start with just bodyweight first, meaning it’s just my arm up–I don’t want to load yet. But you can see in the video how my toes turn.
Now, the most important part of this movement, just like when we do a hinge, is that my butt moves away from my toes, or in the same direction on my heels. The same goes true here. So if I’m square to you, and I turn 45 degrees, I do not want my hips moving. This way, my hips should be moving away from my toes in this diagonal fashion that we’ve just created.
Now, a very helpful cue is taking the front arm, or the down arm, and trying to slide your forearm down your thigh, towards your inner shin. As one arm comes up, opposite to the front leg, the other arm slides down, and my hips shift away. The majority of the weight is on your front, you can even bend the toes on the back foot a little bit if you want. This allows me to sit into that front hip more to work the mobility and stability of that front hip.
Again, those go hand in hand. When we’re trying to create stability, we have to have a certain amount of mobility. And for that mobility to happen, we have to feel oftentimes very comfortable with the stability in that hip. So that’s why we’re talking about both of these processes together.
I’m also testing and working on thoracic rotation, which is good as part of the test we have just indicated. And if I have a weight above me, I’m working on that shoulder stability as well.
But from a mobility perspective with the hip, we can now change that toe variation angle to coil and create more tension, as previously mentioned by Dr. Shallow. By squaring up, then doing my motion, I’m going to challenge the amount of hip and thoracic rotation we see.
I like doing these in sets and reps. I tend to not do them crazy heavy because I am working on it from more of a thoracic rotation and hip mobility perspective. You can load it up a little bit heavier if you want to challenge shoulder stability and some other factors as well.
I’ll try to get weight overhead. I tend to use between 12, 16, and maybe 20 kilos, and then I’ll do some easy movements. I might find, oh, this one’s a little tight. Then I’ll sit into that hip a little bit more, then I’ll come up. And when I’m down there, too, I’m playing around and just wiggling to see where I might need to focus a little more time and attention.
The windmill can be done with a kettlebell, a dumbbell, or just bodyweight. But it’s a fantastic exercise for challenging first and foremost, shoulder stability, but what I really love it for is a spinal mobility movement and a hip mobility movement, which really helps open up the hips.
The Turkish Get-up Windmill
This is great for challenging mobility and stability, but also for working on positioning. A lot of times we can’t progress with the Turkish Get-up because we’re missing certain stages that are super advantageous for stacking yourself appropriately to then transition into the next phase so that you can get up.
We’re going to do it first with bodyweight. To start, whether I’m going down or up, I’m going to be in this lunge pattern. Now, what’s important is if I’m coming down or up this middle phase, I need to square my hips. What does that mean? One toe is pointing in one direction and the back toe is facing another direction. My knees are facing 90 degrees away from each other.
This allows me to sit my bottom hip towards the back heel, allowing me to hinge down into the movement. Now, this is where the mobility comes in. A lot of people with tight hips will see that that top knee collapse down, but we want to try to keep that stacked. That’s where I get that 90-degree shape I had. I’m also starting to open up and challenge that downward knee or inner thigh as I hinge and turn. So this is the Windmill within the Turkish Get-up.
So I’ll stage this for clients or patients as practicing what this feels like to just work on hip mobility and stability in a different context. If you start to fall in as you go back and forth, we see where that tension is wanting to pull you in, and where we’re biased to not being able to appropriately load.
So we’re going to practice this first, without weight, coming up and down, loading into that hip, and coiling up and down, starting to loosen up both hips extremely well.
So let’s say, for instance, I’m coming down, I’m going to lunge back, then I’m going to windshield wiper my top foot so that my knees are at a 90-degree angle. I’m going to sit this bottom hip back towards my heel, slide the hand down in line with the knee. Now I’m in the position to kick that leg through, and then I would reverse down.
On the way up, it’s the same thing. Once I’ve come up to my hands. I’m going to pull that knee through, but it’s got to open up at 90 degrees to the top, so I can pull my leg through into that windmill. Then sit the hip back, pop up, windshield wiper the leg around, and then we’re gonna stand.
So that is the windmill position within the Turkish getup to challenge mobility, not only in the thoracic spine, definitely in the hips, but also challenging the stability of the shoulder as well.
The Prying Goblet Squat
The goblet squat is one of my favorite exercises. It is great for teaching the squat pattern, but also for showing and challenging how we integrate core stability.
It is also really good as a hip mobility drill because it puts you in a position where you’re loaded and helps you get down into that deep position where you can kind of offset that weight. But because you can get your elbows down inside of your knees, you can start to pry your hips open to use it as a mobility drill.
First take a weight, bring it up like we normally would for a goblet squat. And then we’re gonna simply squat down. And notice if I hold it away from me that’s going to allow me to stay more upright. But now I can wedge those elbows in between my knees, and start to bob and weave and shift and pry open to stretch those inner thighs and that inner hip.
Now, you could try to maintain a straight back and still do the same thing. We’re just showing that if we want to try to get into this position, to use the elbows to open up the hips and widen that space to create more mobility. This is something that we que consistently when working on a squat pattern.
Oftentimes, our squat patterns turn poor where we’re leaning forward or something. Not always because we have poor mobility, sometimes we’re just too narrow and we’re not able to utilize a hip range of motion.
So we’re trying to find that squat stance and enhance that range of motion by prying the hips open. So what we mean by pry is if my two ball and socket joints in the femurs move away from each other, now I have more space for my torso and pelvis essentially, to sit down in between, which helps me keep some more upright squat pattern, which will help in performances, such as front squats, overhead squats, even back squats, depending on the position of the bar, so prying goblet squat is a fantastic mobility drill.
Conclusion
Remember, you do need to have a certain amount of mobility to even get down into these positions. So you might need to utilize a lot of other hip mobility drills that we have to first get there because we don’t want anyone to sacrifice or create any issues by forcing yourself down low enough just to get your elbows in.
Goblet squat or prying goblet squat–use it as a good mobility drill. Use it as a great warm-up before your squats or any of your other workouts because I know it will be beneficial for you.
Keep up the great work and LIVE LOUD!
Becoming a Hybrid Athlete With Katie Knight EP|55
Live LOUD Life Podcast
Lafayette Colorado
Episode 55
Becoming a Hybrid Athlete With Katie Knight EP|55
With Dr. Antonio Gurule
Show Notes:
- We go over some of the unique adventure events and races:
- Hyrox
- DEKA Fit
- Spartan Races
- Tough Mudder
- Training for Mix Modal Events and Races
- Having an Aerobic Capacity Base is needed
- Biking is a great way to keep up aerobic capacity while reducing the load
- Playing different sports as a child will create a better more well-rounded athlete
- Nasal breathing can be helpful to determine what your rate of running or aerobic training could be at
- Heart rate monitors are wonderful tools to help determine what zone or rate you should be training at
- Learning how to gear up and down is critical, most of this is down through understanding how to control your breathing rate and heart rate during your rest intervals
Connect With Katie:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/k80_knight/?hl=en
Training Application: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSetITKhnA8JEI-Ij-3f8Q5yDF4zlE5SkAsEX92pXYqt6rjb_Q/viewform
Connect With Antonio and the Live LOUD team:
Subscribe to my YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/c/LiveLoud
Visit the website: http://www.lifeloudlife.com
Like the Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/liveloudchiropractic/
Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/live.loud.life/
Guiding your to the adventurous life you were made for! If you dig this give it a like ❤️, if you’re loving it let me hear you with a comment 🗣👂, and if you know it will help someone or anyone out please share 👥📲
About Dr. Antonio Gurule
Background:
- Father
- Doctor of Chiropractic
- Owner of Live LOUD
- Personal Trainer & Health Coach
Check Out Some of Our Other Blog Posts and Podcast Episodes
Anthony Gurule 00:00
Hey what’s up guys, welcome back to another episode of the Live LOUD Life podcast. My name is Dr. Antonio, I’m your host of the Live LOUD Life podcast. My wife and I, we co-own Live LOUD Chiropractic and Coaching here in Lafayette, Colorado. We are just outside of Boulder, Colorado in Boulder County. And our mission is to help families. We want to help make families stronger, so that we can build a stronger community. We want to help guide you to the adventurous life that you and your family were meant for. And we do this through chiropractic and coaching. chiropractic, obviously being more of a hands on approach, more of a clinical conversation, clinical diagnostics, but the coaching aspect is really what we believe is, you know, the foundation of what our system methodology, whatever you want to call it is, because a lot of this comes around through just coaching suggestions and recommendations. also, you know, obviously within that comes into clinical prescriptions of certain things to eat or supplements, so on and so forth. But it’s coaching a lifestyle, it’s coaching, it’s coaching a philosophy and a foundation about how to live an active healthy life as an individual, and setting an example of a healthy active life for your family, for your immediate family, for your friends, and more importantly for your community. So stronger families to make a stronger community as a whole would be a win win, right? And that’s what we want to be able to do. we want to be able to help fill in the gaps in the holes that you’re maybe not getting from, from other roles and conditions.
Anthony Gurule 01:43
And today that’s in particular where we’re going to talk about. it’s going to be a little bit more of a shorter episode because this is more of a quote unquote, you know, just discussion around how to lay out a framework and a better understanding of how to work out or what exercises are safe or maybe not safe during pregnancy. This is a very, very common question that we get.
Anthony Gurule 02:12
My wife Nichelle has created a mini course that has some workout ideas, recommendations, and prescriptions than laid out into a workout. She guides and educates other clinicians on how to broach this topic as a chiropractor, how to better serve prenatal patients through chiropractic care, but also exercise recommendations and prescriptions, having recommendations with other personal trainers within the community whether that’s CrossFit whether that’s Orange Theory, chatting with coaches and owners and saying hey, if you have prenatal patients and they’re having these types of symptoms, or this has happened, here’s some better recommendations, not modifications. We call them lateralizations–you’re just you know, you’re doing something something different or something else we you know, we borrow that term from Charlie Weingroff, who’s a physical therapist and strength conditioning coach. But it also and also doulas, right, doulas and midwives and OBs who are directly involved with the prenatal process from nearly conception all the way through, having this conversation. we know that exercise is important during pregnancy,
Anthony Gurule 03:19
There are so many different studies that talk about the benefits of exercising during pregnancy, not only for the mom, but also for baby, which is quite interesting. They’re seeing increased cognitive-what’s the word I’m looking for? Excuse me, their cognitive output as a as an as a child through as they age is actually better from moms that actually worked out during pregnancy.
Anthony Gurule 03:50
Now this is tough, right? How do you define working out or exercise? it’s different for everybody. But we want to, and we encourage that, and yet we’re sympathetic to the different stages of life, aches and pains, so on and so forth, which obviously would limit what you can do from an exercise perspective. So you know, it’s a bit of a gray area on determining what is working out? what is exercise? What are the physical guidelines or recommendations for pregnancy? And without getting into the like, nitty gritty detail of every single thing. And obviously, every potential situation, if you had this versus this, what could happen? we’re not gonna be able to do that. What we just want to lay out is what is what are we trying to accomplish here, and we want to encourage you to stay as physically active as possible.
Anthony Gurule 04:41
And one of the things that constantly comes up is, well, should you add something in that you have not already been doing? Let’s say for instance, someone just through the stages of life with work and kids or whatever that is, they were not able to work out as much before they got pregnant, but now that they’re pregnant, whether they have more time or they understand the importance of exercises during pregnancy, well, would we say, “Well, you haven’t been exercising, so you shouldn’t do too much.” No, that doesn’t, that doesn’t really make sense. Now, we would encourage not to do too much, there’s obviously, you know, a too far swinging the pendulum of the other way. But we wouldn’t say “no, don’t exercise because you weren’t doing something before,” we just have to find those first few stepping stones to help them start to gain some momentum. and help hold their hand, if you will, So that their technique and they feel confident about lifting, or how far they’re walking or whatever that is. And that’s an important topic, because a lot of times people want to add things in, but they weren’t quite ready or weren’t doing them before. And they then assume that they’re not able to do them at all. So you do have to take that in consideration, there is a ton that you can do, and that you can still add, even though you weren’t doing them prior to pregnancy.
Anthony Gurule 05:54
Now on the big questions is, is it safe? you know, outside to contact sports, or different things like that the majority of what you’re going to do is safe for pregnancy, right? Rock climbing, we have pregnant patients that have been rock climbing before, obviously, there’s a certain inherent risk with certain sports or activities. You know, you could fall off riding your bike, you could fall over running, right, so we’re not encouraging any of these by any means. We’re just kind of, you know, setting some suggestions, if you will. And you have to take into consideration.
Anthony Gurule 06:31
Now, there are certain things to consider when you’re talking about like weightlifting, and how heavy and the intensity that you’re doing. And if you’re doing Valsalva movements, which is essentially holding your breath to maintain a more rigid or stiff torso, as you’re seeing changes in blood volume and blood pressure, you know, you do have to take that in consideration. And that is again, of course a conversation with your provider that is managing your, your pregnancy, but we recommend Mama’s weight lift, or do resistance training. During pregnancy, again, we talked about about load management and the intensity and things like that, but you can still lift and do fairly intense things. And it’s a fairly as a you know, as a scale and a wide range during pregnancy and see a ton of benefit from that. Now, are we trying to hit one rep maxes and PRs during pregnancy, I mean, some would argue yes, but I would argue, why, that’s not really an accurate representation of what your strength is anyways. So you know, you do have to to kind of keep manipulating the numbers and the weights and the intensity and the sets and reps in order to do it. But weightlifting and resistance training is safe, and it is effective. Now, outside of that, there’s not a lot of unsafe things to do, again, outside of contact sports, or things that would elicit, you know, potential trauma to you or baby based on impact we’ve had, again, not our recommendations, but some have tried very just easy scheme, because they’re in the winter months, and they wanted to and they felt very confident about not falling. So you know, you have those types of things.
Anthony Gurule 08:16
Overall, again, we’re talking about movement. You need to move, and it’s good to get your heart rate up. And it’s good to breathe hard. So that doesn’t mean just because you’re pregnant, you can’t do HIIT training or circuit training or CrossFit or Orange Theory. But you do have to listen to your body and understand certain signs that would indicate that things might be too much, right? Now those are going to be different for everyone, but a lot of this comes down to you know, lightheadedness, you know, breathing too hard. Certain aches and pains within lower extremity, chest, abdomen, so on and so forth would be obviously like your more extreme ones. If you’re becoming pale or anything like that, I mean, again, these are the same criteria, though, that would be if someone else was working out or training too hard. So it’s realistically the same thing. It’s just that your threshold level for all those most likely have gone down. And depending on what type of an athlete you were before, you’re going to be maybe a little frustrated that you’re not able to do the things you were able to do previously, which makes sense. But if you’re someone who wasn’t exercising before, you’re probably going to be a little bit more hyper aware of that, of just feeling that shortness of breath or that uneasiness. So again, we’re not saying you have to push through that because we’re not trying to set yourself up for a strength and conditioning program to increase your metabolic capacity to increase your strength and conditioning during pregnancy. We’re trying to help you maintain a healthy active pregnancy.
Anthony Gurule 09:54
Now, walking. walking is great. but in general, we encourage you to do something above and beyond walking. Obviously, again, certain things would dictate that you would not be able to do so. And this is again, any exercise. Any exercise that you do during pregnancy needs to be consulted with and work through and have a conversation with the primary physician who is managing your pregnancy, whether that’s your nurse practitioner, your midwife or your OB or obstetrician, right. But we would encourage more than just walking. walking is fantastic, but that’s kind of like your baseline minimum, right? Just like our activities, or recommendation activity guidelines. We want a few days a week of where we’re kind of just doing this steady state getting our steps in, you know, kind of pushing ourselves, we’re huffing and puffing, but still just kind of at that conversational level, but you’re not really getting a lot of benefits outside of that.
Anthony Gurule 10:55
So if you’re just walking, high five. kudos. can you do something more? Can you do some bodyweight squats? Can you do some bodyweight, you know, good mornings? can you do some walking lunges? do you have a suspension training, we’re able to do some bodyweight rows? Do you have some bands that you can do some rows with? You know, there’s a lot that you can do that allows you to get a little bit more out of that. Now, again, this all comes back down to preferences of exercises that you like to do, because that’s gonna allow you to maintain the most consistency, but then also the intensity that you like to do. And we do encourage having an open mind and at least being willing to try some high intensity things that allow you to still get your heart rate up a little bit. And it’s okay to lift more than five or 10 pounds. And not saying that that is a bad thing. There’s programs out there where it’s all directed around that where it’s lighter weight, high rep, but I just don’t want individuals and mamas to feel like they’re not able to do more and or being ashamed because other people are just saying they should back off because they’re pregnant. “why would you need a lift that much?” It fits within your strength, and your comfort, and your wheelhouse, that is totally fine.
Anthony Gurule 12:05
Again, you if you’ve been doing that enough, you understand the risk reward ratio and having a conversation with your practitioner has driven us to kind of help navigate and guide as you start to get further through pregnancies, what things maybe we need to change or manipulate. But that’s totally fine. Now outside of that, the question around safe also comes up around core exercises. diastasis recti, pelvic floor strength, so on and so forth, we want to enhance the capability of understanding how to control tension within your abdominal wall and your pelvic floor through pregnancy, because the pressure is increasing due to baby taking up more space. But we’re not we’re not necessarily we’re not gaining more strength, right.
Anthony Gurule 12:45
And so what a lot of people assume it’s when we’ve seen this, is “I don’t want diastasis. So I’m doing more core work to prevent diastasis from happening.” diastasis recti will happen in 100% of moms, it’s estimated at the week 35 Everyone will have some form of it. Now it is technically not a quote unquote diagnosis, though, until 12 weeks postpartum, because it is a normal thing that everyone will get. So you can’t diagnose someone with something that everyone will get–doesn’t make sense, right? So after that, though, if you still have weakness or spacing issues, then we can have a you know, a stronger conversation about putting a diagnosis on that.
Anthony Gurule 13:26
But what we’re trying to enhance and help is what exercises are quote unquote, not safe versus unsafe, but adding too much pressure or tension into the abdominal wall or the pelvic floor and creating more laxity. again, as that pressure for as baby’s growing starts to put more pressure on the pelvic floor and the abdominal wall. If you’re doing more things that increases the pressure within the within the abdominal cavity that’s going to push on that separation even more and/or push on that pelvic floor even more, creating potential incontinence or prolapse issues and/or more bulging and doming within the abdominal wall stretching out that separation or that gap even further, potentially making the recovery process more challenging or slightly longer. I’m not saying that it will but potentially, so we do have to take that in consideration. So we go through activation exercise of the pelvic floor, of the abdominal wall so that you better understand how to control those pressure increases while you’re lifting or exercising so that you simply can stay at a management level.
Anthony Gurule 14:28
And that in turn, helps you get through pregnancy of understanding how to lift up your older kiddo, having to lift up dog food or anything like that. It’s just managing and controlling pressure. So there’s really not anything that I would say that safe or unsafe. Now, things that we would advise against for core exercises is sit ups or crunches. You know a lot of those things that create like hanging knee raises and different things like that during pregnancy. A lot of those things that create a lot of intra abdominal pressure and tension. and especially during a flex position, that tends to put a lot more pressure on the abdominal wall, the separation where diastasis will occur as well as the pelvic floor.
Anthony Gurule 15:09
So, you know, while we never say never, there’s definitely a category of things that we definitely urge against because the risk/reward benefit and again, risk not being “injured,” But risk of potentially putting more pressure and making the recovery process on the other side harder, is not is not something that we find to be as advantageous. But you can still get the benefits of quote unquote, core exercises through full body movements such as goblet squats, such as deadlifts, you know, depending on the phase that you’re in, push ups, which are, you know, a dynamic plank. or being able to do a TRX row, which is a reverse plank as you’re just lifting yourself up. three point rows where you’re on, you know, two hands or doing like a row on a bench, where you’re in a tabletop position that’s adding anti rotation exercises. So there’s a ton that you can do that still highlights and isolates, the core isolates, sorry. that highlights and will emphasize core activation, but through a full body compound movement. And what’s great about that is during pregnancy, depending on your energy levels, it’s hard to do all the little isolated accessory and all these separate exercises as it is. So it’s kind of nice being able to combine everything, so you get more bang for your buck, especially if you’re a parent and you’re on and you’re on baby number two or three, right?
Anthony Gurule 16:31
So what exercises are safe for pregnant women to do? All are. reduce or eliminate for sure contact activities, different things like that. the increased risk activities of you know, trauma and things like that. Outside of that you’re managing pressure, I would definitely encourage reducing anything that’s heavy lifting, that’s, that’s requiring you to do Valsalva moves, you’re having to hold your breath for an extended period of time. that changes blood pressure, so on and so forth. But outside of that, Pregnancy is a completely safe time to do all exercises. we definitely as we highlighted, urge and encourage, you know, certain things over other ones just for you know, added bang for your buck or full body movements, so on and so forth. And that, but outside of that you are free to do what you want.
Anthony Gurule 17:19
If you want guidance, though, you know, there are there are trainers out there that work specifically with prenatal patients. we would love to be able to have that conversation with you if that’s something you want to bounce back or navigate. Because we do want to encourage as much as we can. A very, very active pregnancy through exercise working out or however you want to describe that. So if you found this beneficial, please like share, subscribe. if you’re pregnant, I hope you can utilize this and take some of the information for you and yourself. If you have anyone else you know… a relative a family member, a friend who is pregnant and they’re unsure they’ve been you know asking this question what things I don’t know what things I can do. I don’t know if it’s safe for baby share this video with them. We’d love to be able to provide a better frame of reference and or context to be able to ask better questions so that they can find the workout program or the movements that work best for them during their pregnancy. Until next time guys live loud .if you’re currently pregnant, Congratulations, and we look forward to helping and serving in the future.
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Your Home Gym Top 4 Pieces of Equipment EP|41
Live LOUD Life Podcast
Lafayette Colorado
Episode 41
EP|41 Your Home Gym Top 4 Pieces of Equipment
With Dr. Antonio Gurule
Notes:
Pandemic aside these are my Top 4 Pieces of Equipment need for your home gym.
Everyone should have a home gym because you never know when a pandemic will hit and you will need to be working out from home.
But in all honestly keep it simple and effective!
Connect With Antonio and the Live LOUD team:
Subscribe to my YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/c/LiveLoud
Visit the website: http://www.lifeloudlife.com
Like the Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/liveloudchiropractic/
Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/live.loud.life/
Guiding your to the adventurous life you were made for!
If you dig this give it a like ❤️, if you’re loving it let me hear you with a comment 🗣👂, and if you know it will help someone or anyone out please share 👥📲
About Dr. Antonio Gurule
Background:
- Father
- Doctor of Chiropractic
- Owner of Live LOUD
- Personal Trainer & Health Coach
Check Out Some of Our Other Blog Posts and Podcast Episodes
Anthony Gurule 00:00
Hey what’s up guys, welcome back to another episode of the Live LOUD Life podcast. My name is Dr. Antonio, I’m your host of the Live LOUD Life podcast. My wife and I, we co-own Live LOUD Chiropractic and Coaching here in Lafayette, Colorado. We are just outside of Boulder, Colorado in Boulder County. And our mission is to help families. We want to help make families stronger, so that we can build a stronger community. We want to help guide you to the adventurous life that you and your family were meant for. And we do this through chiropractic and coaching. chiropractic, obviously being more of a hands on approach, more of a clinical conversation, clinical diagnostics, but the coaching aspect is really what we believe is, you know, the foundation of what our system methodology, whatever you want to call it is, because a lot of this comes around through just coaching suggestions and recommendations. also, you know, obviously within that comes into clinical prescriptions of certain things to eat or supplements, so on and so forth. But it’s coaching a lifestyle, it’s coaching, it’s coaching a philosophy and a foundation about how to live an active healthy life as an individual, and setting an example of a healthy active life for your family, for your immediate family, for your friends, and more importantly for your community. So stronger families to make a stronger community as a whole would be a win win, right? And that’s what we want to be able to do. we want to be able to help fill in the gaps in the holes that you’re maybe not getting from, from other roles and conditions.
Anthony Gurule 01:43
And today that’s in particular where we’re going to talk about. it’s going to be a little bit more of a shorter episode because this is more of a quote unquote, you know, just discussion around how to lay out a framework and a better understanding of how to work out or what exercises are safe or maybe not safe during pregnancy. This is a very, very common question that we get.
Anthony Gurule 02:12
My wife Nichelle has created a mini course that has some workout ideas, recommendations, and prescriptions than laid out into a workout. She guides and educates other clinicians on how to broach this topic as a chiropractor, how to better serve prenatal patients through chiropractic care, but also exercise recommendations and prescriptions, having recommendations with other personal trainers within the community whether that’s CrossFit whether that’s Orange Theory, chatting with coaches and owners and saying hey, if you have prenatal patients and they’re having these types of symptoms, or this has happened, here’s some better recommendations, not modifications. We call them lateralizations–you’re just you know, you’re doing something something different or something else we you know, we borrow that term from Charlie Weingroff, who’s a physical therapist and strength conditioning coach. But it also and also doulas, right, doulas and midwives and OBs who are directly involved with the prenatal process from nearly conception all the way through, having this conversation. we know that exercise is important during pregnancy,
Anthony Gurule 03:19
There are so many different studies that talk about the benefits of exercising during pregnancy, not only for the mom, but also for baby, which is quite interesting. They’re seeing increased cognitive-what’s the word I’m looking for? Excuse me, their cognitive output as a as an as a child through as they age is actually better from moms that actually worked out during pregnancy.
Anthony Gurule 03:50
Now this is tough, right? How do you define working out or exercise? it’s different for everybody. But we want to, and we encourage that, and yet we’re sympathetic to the different stages of life, aches and pains, so on and so forth, which obviously would limit what you can do from an exercise perspective. So you know, it’s a bit of a gray area on determining what is working out? what is exercise? What are the physical guidelines or recommendations for pregnancy? And without getting into the like, nitty gritty detail of every single thing. And obviously, every potential situation, if you had this versus this, what could happen? we’re not gonna be able to do that. What we just want to lay out is what is what are we trying to accomplish here, and we want to encourage you to stay as physically active as possible.
Anthony Gurule 04:41
And one of the things that constantly comes up is, well, should you add something in that you have not already been doing? Let’s say for instance, someone just through the stages of life with work and kids or whatever that is, they were not able to work out as much before they got pregnant, but now that they’re pregnant, whether they have more time or they understand the importance of exercises during pregnancy, well, would we say, “Well, you haven’t been exercising, so you shouldn’t do too much.” No, that doesn’t, that doesn’t really make sense. Now, we would encourage not to do too much, there’s obviously, you know, a too far swinging the pendulum of the other way. But we wouldn’t say “no, don’t exercise because you weren’t doing something before,” we just have to find those first few stepping stones to help them start to gain some momentum. and help hold their hand, if you will, So that their technique and they feel confident about lifting, or how far they’re walking or whatever that is. And that’s an important topic, because a lot of times people want to add things in, but they weren’t quite ready or weren’t doing them before. And they then assume that they’re not able to do them at all. So you do have to take that in consideration, there is a ton that you can do, and that you can still add, even though you weren’t doing them prior to pregnancy.
Anthony Gurule 05:54
Now on the big questions is, is it safe? you know, outside to contact sports, or different things like that the majority of what you’re going to do is safe for pregnancy, right? Rock climbing, we have pregnant patients that have been rock climbing before, obviously, there’s a certain inherent risk with certain sports or activities. You know, you could fall off riding your bike, you could fall over running, right, so we’re not encouraging any of these by any means. We’re just kind of, you know, setting some suggestions, if you will. And you have to take into consideration.
Anthony Gurule 06:31
Now, there are certain things to consider when you’re talking about like weightlifting, and how heavy and the intensity that you’re doing. And if you’re doing Valsalva movements, which is essentially holding your breath to maintain a more rigid or stiff torso, as you’re seeing changes in blood volume and blood pressure, you know, you do have to take that in consideration. And that is again, of course a conversation with your provider that is managing your, your pregnancy, but we recommend Mama’s weight lift, or do resistance training. During pregnancy, again, we talked about about load management and the intensity and things like that, but you can still lift and do fairly intense things. And it’s a fairly as a you know, as a scale and a wide range during pregnancy and see a ton of benefit from that. Now, are we trying to hit one rep maxes and PRs during pregnancy, I mean, some would argue yes, but I would argue, why, that’s not really an accurate representation of what your strength is anyways. So you know, you do have to to kind of keep manipulating the numbers and the weights and the intensity and the sets and reps in order to do it. But weightlifting and resistance training is safe, and it is effective. Now, outside of that, there’s not a lot of unsafe things to do, again, outside of contact sports, or things that would elicit, you know, potential trauma to you or baby based on impact we’ve had, again, not our recommendations, but some have tried very just easy scheme, because they’re in the winter months, and they wanted to and they felt very confident about not falling. So you know, you have those types of things.
Anthony Gurule 08:16
Overall, again, we’re talking about movement. You need to move, and it’s good to get your heart rate up. And it’s good to breathe hard. So that doesn’t mean just because you’re pregnant, you can’t do HIIT training or circuit training or CrossFit or Orange Theory. But you do have to listen to your body and understand certain signs that would indicate that things might be too much, right? Now those are going to be different for everyone, but a lot of this comes down to you know, lightheadedness, you know, breathing too hard. Certain aches and pains within lower extremity, chest, abdomen, so on and so forth would be obviously like your more extreme ones. If you’re becoming pale or anything like that, I mean, again, these are the same criteria, though, that would be if someone else was working out or training too hard. So it’s realistically the same thing. It’s just that your threshold level for all those most likely have gone down. And depending on what type of an athlete you were before, you’re going to be maybe a little frustrated that you’re not able to do the things you were able to do previously, which makes sense. But if you’re someone who wasn’t exercising before, you’re probably going to be a little bit more hyper aware of that, of just feeling that shortness of breath or that uneasiness. So again, we’re not saying you have to push through that because we’re not trying to set yourself up for a strength and conditioning program to increase your metabolic capacity to increase your strength and conditioning during pregnancy. We’re trying to help you maintain a healthy active pregnancy.
Anthony Gurule 09:54
Now, walking. walking is great. but in general, we encourage you to do something above and beyond walking. Obviously, again, certain things would dictate that you would not be able to do so. And this is again, any exercise. Any exercise that you do during pregnancy needs to be consulted with and work through and have a conversation with the primary physician who is managing your pregnancy, whether that’s your nurse practitioner, your midwife or your OB or obstetrician, right. But we would encourage more than just walking. walking is fantastic, but that’s kind of like your baseline minimum, right? Just like our activities, or recommendation activity guidelines. We want a few days a week of where we’re kind of just doing this steady state getting our steps in, you know, kind of pushing ourselves, we’re huffing and puffing, but still just kind of at that conversational level, but you’re not really getting a lot of benefits outside of that.
Anthony Gurule 10:55
So if you’re just walking, high five. kudos. can you do something more? Can you do some bodyweight squats? Can you do some bodyweight, you know, good mornings? can you do some walking lunges? do you have a suspension training, we’re able to do some bodyweight rows? Do you have some bands that you can do some rows with? You know, there’s a lot that you can do that allows you to get a little bit more out of that. Now, again, this all comes back down to preferences of exercises that you like to do, because that’s gonna allow you to maintain the most consistency, but then also the intensity that you like to do. And we do encourage having an open mind and at least being willing to try some high intensity things that allow you to still get your heart rate up a little bit. And it’s okay to lift more than five or 10 pounds. And not saying that that is a bad thing. There’s programs out there where it’s all directed around that where it’s lighter weight, high rep, but I just don’t want individuals and mamas to feel like they’re not able to do more and or being ashamed because other people are just saying they should back off because they’re pregnant. “why would you need a lift that much?” It fits within your strength, and your comfort, and your wheelhouse, that is totally fine.
Anthony Gurule 12:05
Again, you if you’ve been doing that enough, you understand the risk reward ratio and having a conversation with your practitioner has driven us to kind of help navigate and guide as you start to get further through pregnancies, what things maybe we need to change or manipulate. But that’s totally fine. Now outside of that, the question around safe also comes up around core exercises. diastasis recti, pelvic floor strength, so on and so forth, we want to enhance the capability of understanding how to control tension within your abdominal wall and your pelvic floor through pregnancy, because the pressure is increasing due to baby taking up more space. But we’re not we’re not necessarily we’re not gaining more strength, right.
Anthony Gurule 12:45
And so what a lot of people assume it’s when we’ve seen this, is “I don’t want diastasis. So I’m doing more core work to prevent diastasis from happening.” diastasis recti will happen in 100% of moms, it’s estimated at the week 35 Everyone will have some form of it. Now it is technically not a quote unquote diagnosis, though, until 12 weeks postpartum, because it is a normal thing that everyone will get. So you can’t diagnose someone with something that everyone will get–doesn’t make sense, right? So after that, though, if you still have weakness or spacing issues, then we can have a you know, a stronger conversation about putting a diagnosis on that.
Anthony Gurule 13:26
But what we’re trying to enhance and help is what exercises are quote unquote, not safe versus unsafe, but adding too much pressure or tension into the abdominal wall or the pelvic floor and creating more laxity. again, as that pressure for as baby’s growing starts to put more pressure on the pelvic floor and the abdominal wall. If you’re doing more things that increases the pressure within the within the abdominal cavity that’s going to push on that separation even more and/or push on that pelvic floor even more, creating potential incontinence or prolapse issues and/or more bulging and doming within the abdominal wall stretching out that separation or that gap even further, potentially making the recovery process more challenging or slightly longer. I’m not saying that it will but potentially, so we do have to take that in consideration. So we go through activation exercise of the pelvic floor, of the abdominal wall so that you better understand how to control those pressure increases while you’re lifting or exercising so that you simply can stay at a management level.
Anthony Gurule 14:28
And that in turn, helps you get through pregnancy of understanding how to lift up your older kiddo, having to lift up dog food or anything like that. It’s just managing and controlling pressure. So there’s really not anything that I would say that safe or unsafe. Now, things that we would advise against for core exercises is sit ups or crunches. You know a lot of those things that create like hanging knee raises and different things like that during pregnancy. A lot of those things that create a lot of intra abdominal pressure and tension. and especially during a flex position, that tends to put a lot more pressure on the abdominal wall, the separation where diastasis will occur as well as the pelvic floor.
Anthony Gurule 15:09
So, you know, while we never say never, there’s definitely a category of things that we definitely urge against because the risk/reward benefit and again, risk not being “injured,” But risk of potentially putting more pressure and making the recovery process on the other side harder, is not is not something that we find to be as advantageous. But you can still get the benefits of quote unquote, core exercises through full body movements such as goblet squats, such as deadlifts, you know, depending on the phase that you’re in, push ups, which are, you know, a dynamic plank. or being able to do a TRX row, which is a reverse plank as you’re just lifting yourself up. three point rows where you’re on, you know, two hands or doing like a row on a bench, where you’re in a tabletop position that’s adding anti rotation exercises. So there’s a ton that you can do that still highlights and isolates, the core isolates, sorry. that highlights and will emphasize core activation, but through a full body compound movement. And what’s great about that is during pregnancy, depending on your energy levels, it’s hard to do all the little isolated accessory and all these separate exercises as it is. So it’s kind of nice being able to combine everything, so you get more bang for your buck, especially if you’re a parent and you’re on and you’re on baby number two or three, right?
Anthony Gurule 16:31
So what exercises are safe for pregnant women to do? All are. reduce or eliminate for sure contact activities, different things like that. the increased risk activities of you know, trauma and things like that. Outside of that you’re managing pressure, I would definitely encourage reducing anything that’s heavy lifting, that’s, that’s requiring you to do Valsalva moves, you’re having to hold your breath for an extended period of time. that changes blood pressure, so on and so forth. But outside of that, Pregnancy is a completely safe time to do all exercises. we definitely as we highlighted, urge and encourage, you know, certain things over other ones just for you know, added bang for your buck or full body movements, so on and so forth. And that, but outside of that you are free to do what you want.
Anthony Gurule 17:19
If you want guidance, though, you know, there are there are trainers out there that work specifically with prenatal patients. we would love to be able to have that conversation with you if that’s something you want to bounce back or navigate. Because we do want to encourage as much as we can. A very, very active pregnancy through exercise working out or however you want to describe that. So if you found this beneficial, please like share, subscribe. if you’re pregnant, I hope you can utilize this and take some of the information for you and yourself. If you have anyone else you know… a relative a family member, a friend who is pregnant and they’re unsure they’ve been you know asking this question what things I don’t know what things I can do. I don’t know if it’s safe for baby share this video with them. We’d love to be able to provide a better frame of reference and or context to be able to ask better questions so that they can find the workout program or the movements that work best for them during their pregnancy. Until next time guys live loud .if you’re currently pregnant, Congratulations, and we look forward to helping and serving in the future.
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The Game of Recovery Playing Chutes and Ladders EP|40
Live LOUD Life Podcast
Lafayette Colorado
Episode 40
EP|40 The Game of Recovery Playing Chutes and Ladders
With Dr. Antonio Gurule
Have you ever experienced pain?
It can be frustrating when you cannot get control of the situation and you feel like your going up and down.
You can strategically plan your recovery though…
Connect With Antonio and the Live LOUD team:
Subscribe to my YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/c/LiveLoud
Visit the website: http://www.lifeloudlife.com
Like the Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/liveloudchiropractic/
Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/live.loud.life/
Guiding your to the adventurous life you were made for!
.
If you dig this give it a like ❤️, if you’re loving it let me hear you with a comment 🗣👂, and if you know it will help someone or anyone out please share 👥📲
About Dr. Antonio Gurule
Background:
- Father
- Doctor of Chiropractic
- Owner of Live LOUD
- Personal Trainer & Health Coach
Check Out Some of Our Other Blog Posts and Podcast Episodes
Anthony Gurule 00:00
Hey what’s up guys, welcome back to another episode of the Live LOUD Life podcast. My name is Dr. Antonio, I’m your host of the Live LOUD Life podcast. My wife and I, we co-own Live LOUD Chiropractic and Coaching here in Lafayette, Colorado. We are just outside of Boulder, Colorado in Boulder County. And our mission is to help families. We want to help make families stronger, so that we can build a stronger community. We want to help guide you to the adventurous life that you and your family were meant for. And we do this through chiropractic and coaching. chiropractic, obviously being more of a hands on approach, more of a clinical conversation, clinical diagnostics, but the coaching aspect is really what we believe is, you know, the foundation of what our system methodology, whatever you want to call it is, because a lot of this comes around through just coaching suggestions and recommendations. also, you know, obviously within that comes into clinical prescriptions of certain things to eat or supplements, so on and so forth. But it’s coaching a lifestyle, it’s coaching, it’s coaching a philosophy and a foundation about how to live an active healthy life as an individual, and setting an example of a healthy active life for your family, for your immediate family, for your friends, and more importantly for your community. So stronger families to make a stronger community as a whole would be a win win, right? And that’s what we want to be able to do. we want to be able to help fill in the gaps in the holes that you’re maybe not getting from, from other roles and conditions.
Anthony Gurule 01:43
And today that’s in particular where we’re going to talk about. it’s going to be a little bit more of a shorter episode because this is more of a quote unquote, you know, just discussion around how to lay out a framework and a better understanding of how to work out or what exercises are safe or maybe not safe during pregnancy. This is a very, very common question that we get.
Anthony Gurule 02:12
My wife Nichelle has created a mini course that has some workout ideas, recommendations, and prescriptions than laid out into a workout. She guides and educates other clinicians on how to broach this topic as a chiropractor, how to better serve prenatal patients through chiropractic care, but also exercise recommendations and prescriptions, having recommendations with other personal trainers within the community whether that’s CrossFit whether that’s Orange Theory, chatting with coaches and owners and saying hey, if you have prenatal patients and they’re having these types of symptoms, or this has happened, here’s some better recommendations, not modifications. We call them lateralizations–you’re just you know, you’re doing something something different or something else we you know, we borrow that term from Charlie Weingroff, who’s a physical therapist and strength conditioning coach. But it also and also doulas, right, doulas and midwives and OBs who are directly involved with the prenatal process from nearly conception all the way through, having this conversation. we know that exercise is important during pregnancy,
Anthony Gurule 03:19
There are so many different studies that talk about the benefits of exercising during pregnancy, not only for the mom, but also for baby, which is quite interesting. They’re seeing increased cognitive-what’s the word I’m looking for? Excuse me, their cognitive output as a as an as a child through as they age is actually better from moms that actually worked out during pregnancy.
Anthony Gurule 03:50
Now this is tough, right? How do you define working out or exercise? it’s different for everybody. But we want to, and we encourage that, and yet we’re sympathetic to the different stages of life, aches and pains, so on and so forth, which obviously would limit what you can do from an exercise perspective. So you know, it’s a bit of a gray area on determining what is working out? what is exercise? What are the physical guidelines or recommendations for pregnancy? And without getting into the like, nitty gritty detail of every single thing. And obviously, every potential situation, if you had this versus this, what could happen? we’re not gonna be able to do that. What we just want to lay out is what is what are we trying to accomplish here, and we want to encourage you to stay as physically active as possible.
Anthony Gurule 04:41
And one of the things that constantly comes up is, well, should you add something in that you have not already been doing? Let’s say for instance, someone just through the stages of life with work and kids or whatever that is, they were not able to work out as much before they got pregnant, but now that they’re pregnant, whether they have more time or they understand the importance of exercises during pregnancy, well, would we say, “Well, you haven’t been exercising, so you shouldn’t do too much.” No, that doesn’t, that doesn’t really make sense. Now, we would encourage not to do too much, there’s obviously, you know, a too far swinging the pendulum of the other way. But we wouldn’t say “no, don’t exercise because you weren’t doing something before,” we just have to find those first few stepping stones to help them start to gain some momentum. and help hold their hand, if you will, So that their technique and they feel confident about lifting, or how far they’re walking or whatever that is. And that’s an important topic, because a lot of times people want to add things in, but they weren’t quite ready or weren’t doing them before. And they then assume that they’re not able to do them at all. So you do have to take that in consideration, there is a ton that you can do, and that you can still add, even though you weren’t doing them prior to pregnancy.
Anthony Gurule 05:54
Now on the big questions is, is it safe? you know, outside to contact sports, or different things like that the majority of what you’re going to do is safe for pregnancy, right? Rock climbing, we have pregnant patients that have been rock climbing before, obviously, there’s a certain inherent risk with certain sports or activities. You know, you could fall off riding your bike, you could fall over running, right, so we’re not encouraging any of these by any means. We’re just kind of, you know, setting some suggestions, if you will. And you have to take into consideration.
Anthony Gurule 06:31
Now, there are certain things to consider when you’re talking about like weightlifting, and how heavy and the intensity that you’re doing. And if you’re doing Valsalva movements, which is essentially holding your breath to maintain a more rigid or stiff torso, as you’re seeing changes in blood volume and blood pressure, you know, you do have to take that in consideration. And that is again, of course a conversation with your provider that is managing your, your pregnancy, but we recommend Mama’s weight lift, or do resistance training. During pregnancy, again, we talked about about load management and the intensity and things like that, but you can still lift and do fairly intense things. And it’s a fairly as a you know, as a scale and a wide range during pregnancy and see a ton of benefit from that. Now, are we trying to hit one rep maxes and PRs during pregnancy, I mean, some would argue yes, but I would argue, why, that’s not really an accurate representation of what your strength is anyways. So you know, you do have to to kind of keep manipulating the numbers and the weights and the intensity and the sets and reps in order to do it. But weightlifting and resistance training is safe, and it is effective. Now, outside of that, there’s not a lot of unsafe things to do, again, outside of contact sports, or things that would elicit, you know, potential trauma to you or baby based on impact we’ve had, again, not our recommendations, but some have tried very just easy scheme, because they’re in the winter months, and they wanted to and they felt very confident about not falling. So you know, you have those types of things.
Anthony Gurule 08:16
Overall, again, we’re talking about movement. You need to move, and it’s good to get your heart rate up. And it’s good to breathe hard. So that doesn’t mean just because you’re pregnant, you can’t do HIIT training or circuit training or CrossFit or Orange Theory. But you do have to listen to your body and understand certain signs that would indicate that things might be too much, right? Now those are going to be different for everyone, but a lot of this comes down to you know, lightheadedness, you know, breathing too hard. Certain aches and pains within lower extremity, chest, abdomen, so on and so forth would be obviously like your more extreme ones. If you’re becoming pale or anything like that, I mean, again, these are the same criteria, though, that would be if someone else was working out or training too hard. So it’s realistically the same thing. It’s just that your threshold level for all those most likely have gone down. And depending on what type of an athlete you were before, you’re going to be maybe a little frustrated that you’re not able to do the things you were able to do previously, which makes sense. But if you’re someone who wasn’t exercising before, you’re probably going to be a little bit more hyper aware of that, of just feeling that shortness of breath or that uneasiness. So again, we’re not saying you have to push through that because we’re not trying to set yourself up for a strength and conditioning program to increase your metabolic capacity to increase your strength and conditioning during pregnancy. We’re trying to help you maintain a healthy active pregnancy.
Anthony Gurule 09:54
Now, walking. walking is great. but in general, we encourage you to do something above and beyond walking. Obviously, again, certain things would dictate that you would not be able to do so. And this is again, any exercise. Any exercise that you do during pregnancy needs to be consulted with and work through and have a conversation with the primary physician who is managing your pregnancy, whether that’s your nurse practitioner, your midwife or your OB or obstetrician, right. But we would encourage more than just walking. walking is fantastic, but that’s kind of like your baseline minimum, right? Just like our activities, or recommendation activity guidelines. We want a few days a week of where we’re kind of just doing this steady state getting our steps in, you know, kind of pushing ourselves, we’re huffing and puffing, but still just kind of at that conversational level, but you’re not really getting a lot of benefits outside of that.
Anthony Gurule 10:55
So if you’re just walking, high five. kudos. can you do something more? Can you do some bodyweight squats? Can you do some bodyweight, you know, good mornings? can you do some walking lunges? do you have a suspension training, we’re able to do some bodyweight rows? Do you have some bands that you can do some rows with? You know, there’s a lot that you can do that allows you to get a little bit more out of that. Now, again, this all comes back down to preferences of exercises that you like to do, because that’s gonna allow you to maintain the most consistency, but then also the intensity that you like to do. And we do encourage having an open mind and at least being willing to try some high intensity things that allow you to still get your heart rate up a little bit. And it’s okay to lift more than five or 10 pounds. And not saying that that is a bad thing. There’s programs out there where it’s all directed around that where it’s lighter weight, high rep, but I just don’t want individuals and mamas to feel like they’re not able to do more and or being ashamed because other people are just saying they should back off because they’re pregnant. “why would you need a lift that much?” It fits within your strength, and your comfort, and your wheelhouse, that is totally fine.
Anthony Gurule 12:05
Again, you if you’ve been doing that enough, you understand the risk reward ratio and having a conversation with your practitioner has driven us to kind of help navigate and guide as you start to get further through pregnancies, what things maybe we need to change or manipulate. But that’s totally fine. Now outside of that, the question around safe also comes up around core exercises. diastasis recti, pelvic floor strength, so on and so forth, we want to enhance the capability of understanding how to control tension within your abdominal wall and your pelvic floor through pregnancy, because the pressure is increasing due to baby taking up more space. But we’re not we’re not necessarily we’re not gaining more strength, right.
Anthony Gurule 12:45
And so what a lot of people assume it’s when we’ve seen this, is “I don’t want diastasis. So I’m doing more core work to prevent diastasis from happening.” diastasis recti will happen in 100% of moms, it’s estimated at the week 35 Everyone will have some form of it. Now it is technically not a quote unquote diagnosis, though, until 12 weeks postpartum, because it is a normal thing that everyone will get. So you can’t diagnose someone with something that everyone will get–doesn’t make sense, right? So after that, though, if you still have weakness or spacing issues, then we can have a you know, a stronger conversation about putting a diagnosis on that.
Anthony Gurule 13:26
But what we’re trying to enhance and help is what exercises are quote unquote, not safe versus unsafe, but adding too much pressure or tension into the abdominal wall or the pelvic floor and creating more laxity. again, as that pressure for as baby’s growing starts to put more pressure on the pelvic floor and the abdominal wall. If you’re doing more things that increases the pressure within the within the abdominal cavity that’s going to push on that separation even more and/or push on that pelvic floor even more, creating potential incontinence or prolapse issues and/or more bulging and doming within the abdominal wall stretching out that separation or that gap even further, potentially making the recovery process more challenging or slightly longer. I’m not saying that it will but potentially, so we do have to take that in consideration. So we go through activation exercise of the pelvic floor, of the abdominal wall so that you better understand how to control those pressure increases while you’re lifting or exercising so that you simply can stay at a management level.
Anthony Gurule 14:28
And that in turn, helps you get through pregnancy of understanding how to lift up your older kiddo, having to lift up dog food or anything like that. It’s just managing and controlling pressure. So there’s really not anything that I would say that safe or unsafe. Now, things that we would advise against for core exercises is sit ups or crunches. You know a lot of those things that create like hanging knee raises and different things like that during pregnancy. A lot of those things that create a lot of intra abdominal pressure and tension. and especially during a flex position, that tends to put a lot more pressure on the abdominal wall, the separation where diastasis will occur as well as the pelvic floor.
Anthony Gurule 15:09
So, you know, while we never say never, there’s definitely a category of things that we definitely urge against because the risk/reward benefit and again, risk not being “injured,” But risk of potentially putting more pressure and making the recovery process on the other side harder, is not is not something that we find to be as advantageous. But you can still get the benefits of quote unquote, core exercises through full body movements such as goblet squats, such as deadlifts, you know, depending on the phase that you’re in, push ups, which are, you know, a dynamic plank. or being able to do a TRX row, which is a reverse plank as you’re just lifting yourself up. three point rows where you’re on, you know, two hands or doing like a row on a bench, where you’re in a tabletop position that’s adding anti rotation exercises. So there’s a ton that you can do that still highlights and isolates, the core isolates, sorry. that highlights and will emphasize core activation, but through a full body compound movement. And what’s great about that is during pregnancy, depending on your energy levels, it’s hard to do all the little isolated accessory and all these separate exercises as it is. So it’s kind of nice being able to combine everything, so you get more bang for your buck, especially if you’re a parent and you’re on and you’re on baby number two or three, right?
Anthony Gurule 16:31
So what exercises are safe for pregnant women to do? All are. reduce or eliminate for sure contact activities, different things like that. the increased risk activities of you know, trauma and things like that. Outside of that you’re managing pressure, I would definitely encourage reducing anything that’s heavy lifting, that’s, that’s requiring you to do Valsalva moves, you’re having to hold your breath for an extended period of time. that changes blood pressure, so on and so forth. But outside of that, Pregnancy is a completely safe time to do all exercises. we definitely as we highlighted, urge and encourage, you know, certain things over other ones just for you know, added bang for your buck or full body movements, so on and so forth. And that, but outside of that you are free to do what you want.
Anthony Gurule 17:19
If you want guidance, though, you know, there are there are trainers out there that work specifically with prenatal patients. we would love to be able to have that conversation with you if that’s something you want to bounce back or navigate. Because we do want to encourage as much as we can. A very, very active pregnancy through exercise working out or however you want to describe that. So if you found this beneficial, please like share, subscribe. if you’re pregnant, I hope you can utilize this and take some of the information for you and yourself. If you have anyone else you know… a relative a family member, a friend who is pregnant and they’re unsure they’ve been you know asking this question what things I don’t know what things I can do. I don’t know if it’s safe for baby share this video with them. We’d love to be able to provide a better frame of reference and or context to be able to ask better questions so that they can find the workout program or the movements that work best for them during their pregnancy. Until next time guys live loud .if you’re currently pregnant, Congratulations, and we look forward to helping and serving in the future.
–
Fix Your Pain & Power With A Proper Bike Fitting EP| 38
Live LOUD Life Podcast
Lafayette Colorado
Episode 38
EP| 38 Fix Your Pain & Power With A Proper Bike Fitting
With Dr. Antonio Gurule
Live Loud Life Podcast EP|37 Fix Your Pain & Power with a Proper Bike Fitting Description:
Dr. Antonio Gurule goes into detail with some of the factors that come along with a solid bike fitting with specialist and physical therapist Jeff Fulford.
As a physical therapist Jeff has a keen eye for movement and maximize your potential on the bike with the right tweaks and fixes.
It comes down to a game of angle. And when altered and played right you will experience less pain when riding and even be able to increase your power output!
If you are local to the Boulder and Weld County area in Colorado be sure to look up Jeff and email him Here:
Connect With Jeff:
About Dr. Antonio Gurule
Background:
- Father
- Doctor of Chiropractic
- Owner of Live LOUD
- Personal Trainer & Health Coach
Check Out Some of Our Other Blog Posts and Podcast Episodes
Anthony Gurule 00:00
Hey what’s up guys, welcome back to another episode of the Live LOUD Life podcast. My name is Dr. Antonio, I’m your host of the Live LOUD Life podcast. My wife and I, we co-own Live LOUD Chiropractic and Coaching here in Lafayette, Colorado. We are just outside of Boulder, Colorado in Boulder County. And our mission is to help families. We want to help make families stronger, so that we can build a stronger community. We want to help guide you to the adventurous life that you and your family were meant for. And we do this through chiropractic and coaching. chiropractic, obviously being more of a hands on approach, more of a clinical conversation, clinical diagnostics, but the coaching aspect is really what we believe is, you know, the foundation of what our system methodology, whatever you want to call it is, because a lot of this comes around through just coaching suggestions and recommendations. also, you know, obviously within that comes into clinical prescriptions of certain things to eat or supplements, so on and so forth. But it’s coaching a lifestyle, it’s coaching, it’s coaching a philosophy and a foundation about how to live an active healthy life as an individual, and setting an example of a healthy active life for your family, for your immediate family, for your friends, and more importantly for your community. So stronger families to make a stronger community as a whole would be a win win, right? And that’s what we want to be able to do. we want to be able to help fill in the gaps in the holes that you’re maybe not getting from, from other roles and conditions.
Anthony Gurule 01:43
And today that’s in particular where we’re going to talk about. it’s going to be a little bit more of a shorter episode because this is more of a quote unquote, you know, just discussion around how to lay out a framework and a better understanding of how to work out or what exercises are safe or maybe not safe during pregnancy. This is a very, very common question that we get.
Anthony Gurule 02:12
My wife Nichelle has created a mini course that has some workout ideas, recommendations, and prescriptions than laid out into a workout. She guides and educates other clinicians on how to broach this topic as a chiropractor, how to better serve prenatal patients through chiropractic care, but also exercise recommendations and prescriptions, having recommendations with other personal trainers within the community whether that’s CrossFit whether that’s Orange Theory, chatting with coaches and owners and saying hey, if you have prenatal patients and they’re having these types of symptoms, or this has happened, here’s some better recommendations, not modifications. We call them lateralizations–you’re just you know, you’re doing something something different or something else we you know, we borrow that term from Charlie Weingroff, who’s a physical therapist and strength conditioning coach. But it also and also doulas, right, doulas and midwives and OBs who are directly involved with the prenatal process from nearly conception all the way through, having this conversation. we know that exercise is important during pregnancy,
Anthony Gurule 03:19
There are so many different studies that talk about the benefits of exercising during pregnancy, not only for the mom, but also for baby, which is quite interesting. They’re seeing increased cognitive-what’s the word I’m looking for? Excuse me, their cognitive output as a as an as a child through as they age is actually better from moms that actually worked out during pregnancy.
Anthony Gurule 03:50
Now this is tough, right? How do you define working out or exercise? it’s different for everybody. But we want to, and we encourage that, and yet we’re sympathetic to the different stages of life, aches and pains, so on and so forth, which obviously would limit what you can do from an exercise perspective. So you know, it’s a bit of a gray area on determining what is working out? what is exercise? What are the physical guidelines or recommendations for pregnancy? And without getting into the like, nitty gritty detail of every single thing. And obviously, every potential situation, if you had this versus this, what could happen? we’re not gonna be able to do that. What we just want to lay out is what is what are we trying to accomplish here, and we want to encourage you to stay as physically active as possible.
Anthony Gurule 04:41
And one of the things that constantly comes up is, well, should you add something in that you have not already been doing? Let’s say for instance, someone just through the stages of life with work and kids or whatever that is, they were not able to work out as much before they got pregnant, but now that they’re pregnant, whether they have more time or they understand the importance of exercises during pregnancy, well, would we say, “Well, you haven’t been exercising, so you shouldn’t do too much.” No, that doesn’t, that doesn’t really make sense. Now, we would encourage not to do too much, there’s obviously, you know, a too far swinging the pendulum of the other way. But we wouldn’t say “no, don’t exercise because you weren’t doing something before,” we just have to find those first few stepping stones to help them start to gain some momentum. and help hold their hand, if you will, So that their technique and they feel confident about lifting, or how far they’re walking or whatever that is. And that’s an important topic, because a lot of times people want to add things in, but they weren’t quite ready or weren’t doing them before. And they then assume that they’re not able to do them at all. So you do have to take that in consideration, there is a ton that you can do, and that you can still add, even though you weren’t doing them prior to pregnancy.
Anthony Gurule 05:54
Now on the big questions is, is it safe? you know, outside to contact sports, or different things like that the majority of what you’re going to do is safe for pregnancy, right? Rock climbing, we have pregnant patients that have been rock climbing before, obviously, there’s a certain inherent risk with certain sports or activities. You know, you could fall off riding your bike, you could fall over running, right, so we’re not encouraging any of these by any means. We’re just kind of, you know, setting some suggestions, if you will. And you have to take into consideration.
Anthony Gurule 06:31
Now, there are certain things to consider when you’re talking about like weightlifting, and how heavy and the intensity that you’re doing. And if you’re doing Valsalva movements, which is essentially holding your breath to maintain a more rigid or stiff torso, as you’re seeing changes in blood volume and blood pressure, you know, you do have to take that in consideration. And that is again, of course a conversation with your provider that is managing your, your pregnancy, but we recommend Mama’s weight lift, or do resistance training. During pregnancy, again, we talked about about load management and the intensity and things like that, but you can still lift and do fairly intense things. And it’s a fairly as a you know, as a scale and a wide range during pregnancy and see a ton of benefit from that. Now, are we trying to hit one rep maxes and PRs during pregnancy, I mean, some would argue yes, but I would argue, why, that’s not really an accurate representation of what your strength is anyways. So you know, you do have to to kind of keep manipulating the numbers and the weights and the intensity and the sets and reps in order to do it. But weightlifting and resistance training is safe, and it is effective. Now, outside of that, there’s not a lot of unsafe things to do, again, outside of contact sports, or things that would elicit, you know, potential trauma to you or baby based on impact we’ve had, again, not our recommendations, but some have tried very just easy scheme, because they’re in the winter months, and they wanted to and they felt very confident about not falling. So you know, you have those types of things.
Anthony Gurule 08:16
Overall, again, we’re talking about movement. You need to move, and it’s good to get your heart rate up. And it’s good to breathe hard. So that doesn’t mean just because you’re pregnant, you can’t do HIIT training or circuit training or CrossFit or Orange Theory. But you do have to listen to your body and understand certain signs that would indicate that things might be too much, right? Now those are going to be different for everyone, but a lot of this comes down to you know, lightheadedness, you know, breathing too hard. Certain aches and pains within lower extremity, chest, abdomen, so on and so forth would be obviously like your more extreme ones. If you’re becoming pale or anything like that, I mean, again, these are the same criteria, though, that would be if someone else was working out or training too hard. So it’s realistically the same thing. It’s just that your threshold level for all those most likely have gone down. And depending on what type of an athlete you were before, you’re going to be maybe a little frustrated that you’re not able to do the things you were able to do previously, which makes sense. But if you’re someone who wasn’t exercising before, you’re probably going to be a little bit more hyper aware of that, of just feeling that shortness of breath or that uneasiness. So again, we’re not saying you have to push through that because we’re not trying to set yourself up for a strength and conditioning program to increase your metabolic capacity to increase your strength and conditioning during pregnancy. We’re trying to help you maintain a healthy active pregnancy.
Anthony Gurule 09:54
Now, walking. walking is great. but in general, we encourage you to do something above and beyond walking. Obviously, again, certain things would dictate that you would not be able to do so. And this is again, any exercise. Any exercise that you do during pregnancy needs to be consulted with and work through and have a conversation with the primary physician who is managing your pregnancy, whether that’s your nurse practitioner, your midwife or your OB or obstetrician, right. But we would encourage more than just walking. walking is fantastic, but that’s kind of like your baseline minimum, right? Just like our activities, or recommendation activity guidelines. We want a few days a week of where we’re kind of just doing this steady state getting our steps in, you know, kind of pushing ourselves, we’re huffing and puffing, but still just kind of at that conversational level, but you’re not really getting a lot of benefits outside of that.
Anthony Gurule 10:55
So if you’re just walking, high five. kudos. can you do something more? Can you do some bodyweight squats? Can you do some bodyweight, you know, good mornings? can you do some walking lunges? do you have a suspension training, we’re able to do some bodyweight rows? Do you have some bands that you can do some rows with? You know, there’s a lot that you can do that allows you to get a little bit more out of that. Now, again, this all comes back down to preferences of exercises that you like to do, because that’s gonna allow you to maintain the most consistency, but then also the intensity that you like to do. And we do encourage having an open mind and at least being willing to try some high intensity things that allow you to still get your heart rate up a little bit. And it’s okay to lift more than five or 10 pounds. And not saying that that is a bad thing. There’s programs out there where it’s all directed around that where it’s lighter weight, high rep, but I just don’t want individuals and mamas to feel like they’re not able to do more and or being ashamed because other people are just saying they should back off because they’re pregnant. “why would you need a lift that much?” It fits within your strength, and your comfort, and your wheelhouse, that is totally fine.
Anthony Gurule 12:05
Again, you if you’ve been doing that enough, you understand the risk reward ratio and having a conversation with your practitioner has driven us to kind of help navigate and guide as you start to get further through pregnancies, what things maybe we need to change or manipulate. But that’s totally fine. Now outside of that, the question around safe also comes up around core exercises. diastasis recti, pelvic floor strength, so on and so forth, we want to enhance the capability of understanding how to control tension within your abdominal wall and your pelvic floor through pregnancy, because the pressure is increasing due to baby taking up more space. But we’re not we’re not necessarily we’re not gaining more strength, right.
Anthony Gurule 12:45
And so what a lot of people assume it’s when we’ve seen this, is “I don’t want diastasis. So I’m doing more core work to prevent diastasis from happening.” diastasis recti will happen in 100% of moms, it’s estimated at the week 35 Everyone will have some form of it. Now it is technically not a quote unquote diagnosis, though, until 12 weeks postpartum, because it is a normal thing that everyone will get. So you can’t diagnose someone with something that everyone will get–doesn’t make sense, right? So after that, though, if you still have weakness or spacing issues, then we can have a you know, a stronger conversation about putting a diagnosis on that.
Anthony Gurule 13:26
But what we’re trying to enhance and help is what exercises are quote unquote, not safe versus unsafe, but adding too much pressure or tension into the abdominal wall or the pelvic floor and creating more laxity. again, as that pressure for as baby’s growing starts to put more pressure on the pelvic floor and the abdominal wall. If you’re doing more things that increases the pressure within the within the abdominal cavity that’s going to push on that separation even more and/or push on that pelvic floor even more, creating potential incontinence or prolapse issues and/or more bulging and doming within the abdominal wall stretching out that separation or that gap even further, potentially making the recovery process more challenging or slightly longer. I’m not saying that it will but potentially, so we do have to take that in consideration. So we go through activation exercise of the pelvic floor, of the abdominal wall so that you better understand how to control those pressure increases while you’re lifting or exercising so that you simply can stay at a management level.
Anthony Gurule 14:28
And that in turn, helps you get through pregnancy of understanding how to lift up your older kiddo, having to lift up dog food or anything like that. It’s just managing and controlling pressure. So there’s really not anything that I would say that safe or unsafe. Now, things that we would advise against for core exercises is sit ups or crunches. You know a lot of those things that create like hanging knee raises and different things like that during pregnancy. A lot of those things that create a lot of intra abdominal pressure and tension. and especially during a flex position, that tends to put a lot more pressure on the abdominal wall, the separation where diastasis will occur as well as the pelvic floor.
Anthony Gurule 15:09
So, you know, while we never say never, there’s definitely a category of things that we definitely urge against because the risk/reward benefit and again, risk not being “injured,” But risk of potentially putting more pressure and making the recovery process on the other side harder, is not is not something that we find to be as advantageous. But you can still get the benefits of quote unquote, core exercises through full body movements such as goblet squats, such as deadlifts, you know, depending on the phase that you’re in, push ups, which are, you know, a dynamic plank. or being able to do a TRX row, which is a reverse plank as you’re just lifting yourself up. three point rows where you’re on, you know, two hands or doing like a row on a bench, where you’re in a tabletop position that’s adding anti rotation exercises. So there’s a ton that you can do that still highlights and isolates, the core isolates, sorry. that highlights and will emphasize core activation, but through a full body compound movement. And what’s great about that is during pregnancy, depending on your energy levels, it’s hard to do all the little isolated accessory and all these separate exercises as it is. So it’s kind of nice being able to combine everything, so you get more bang for your buck, especially if you’re a parent and you’re on and you’re on baby number two or three, right?
Anthony Gurule 16:31
So what exercises are safe for pregnant women to do? All are. reduce or eliminate for sure contact activities, different things like that. the increased risk activities of you know, trauma and things like that. Outside of that you’re managing pressure, I would definitely encourage reducing anything that’s heavy lifting, that’s, that’s requiring you to do Valsalva moves, you’re having to hold your breath for an extended period of time. that changes blood pressure, so on and so forth. But outside of that, Pregnancy is a completely safe time to do all exercises. we definitely as we highlighted, urge and encourage, you know, certain things over other ones just for you know, added bang for your buck or full body movements, so on and so forth. And that, but outside of that you are free to do what you want.
Anthony Gurule 17:19
If you want guidance, though, you know, there are there are trainers out there that work specifically with prenatal patients. we would love to be able to have that conversation with you if that’s something you want to bounce back or navigate. Because we do want to encourage as much as we can. A very, very active pregnancy through exercise working out or however you want to describe that. So if you found this beneficial, please like share, subscribe. if you’re pregnant, I hope you can utilize this and take some of the information for you and yourself. If you have anyone else you know… a relative a family member, a friend who is pregnant and they’re unsure they’ve been you know asking this question what things I don’t know what things I can do. I don’t know if it’s safe for baby share this video with them. We’d love to be able to provide a better frame of reference and or context to be able to ask better questions so that they can find the workout program or the movements that work best for them during their pregnancy. Until next time guys live loud .if you’re currently pregnant, Congratulations, and we look forward to helping and serving in the future.
–
EP|34 A Lifestyle of Fitness With Chris Johnson of Cerus Fitness
Live LOUD Life Podcast
Lafayette Colorado
Episode 34
EP|34 A Lifestyle of Fitness With Chris Johnson of Cerus Fitness
With Dr. Antonio Gurule & Chris Johnson
Hello!
Be sure to subscribe to the show, share it with your friends, and please give us a review and comment!
If you have not connected with us yet outside of the show you can find us at www.liveloudlife.com, or Facebook Live Loud Chiropractic & Coaching You can follow us on Instagram @live.loud.life. Connect with us directly on Facebook and Linked In Antonio Gurule.
Be sure to find more useful content, videos, and demonstration on YouTube, Live Loud (←Click)
To connect with Chris or his team go to their website HERE or visit the instagram page HERE.
Enjoy the show!
- Filling in the gaps to training
- A lifestyle of fitness that goes beyond the gym
- You fitness should not just be an expression of the what you can do in the gym
- The majority of us know what changes need to be made yet wait until the right time, and still complain that we are not there yet
- Give yourself grace knowing what phase of life you are in, you cannot do it all
- Life is about constantly juggling many different balls, some are rubber some are ceramic, this helps
- you prioritize which one you need to catch and which ones you can let fall
*If you enjoyed the show be sure to subscribe to the show, share it with your friends, and please give us a review and comment!
About Dr. Antonio Gurule
Background:
- Father
- Doctor of Chiropractic
- Owner of Live LOUD
- Personal Trainer & Health Coach
Check Out Some of Our Other Blog Posts and Podcast Episodes
Anthony Gurule 00:00
Hey what’s up guys, welcome back to another episode of the Live LOUD Life podcast. My name is Dr. Antonio, I’m your host of the Live LOUD Life podcast. My wife and I, we co-own Live LOUD Chiropractic and Coaching here in Lafayette, Colorado. We are just outside of Boulder, Colorado in Boulder County. And our mission is to help families. We want to help make families stronger, so that we can build a stronger community. We want to help guide you to the adventurous life that you and your family were meant for. And we do this through chiropractic and coaching. chiropractic, obviously being more of a hands on approach, more of a clinical conversation, clinical diagnostics, but the coaching aspect is really what we believe is, you know, the foundation of what our system methodology, whatever you want to call it is, because a lot of this comes around through just coaching suggestions and recommendations. also, you know, obviously within that comes into clinical prescriptions of certain things to eat or supplements, so on and so forth. But it’s coaching a lifestyle, it’s coaching, it’s coaching a philosophy and a foundation about how to live an active healthy life as an individual, and setting an example of a healthy active life for your family, for your immediate family, for your friends, and more importantly for your community. So stronger families to make a stronger community as a whole would be a win win, right? And that’s what we want to be able to do. we want to be able to help fill in the gaps in the holes that you’re maybe not getting from, from other roles and conditions.
Anthony Gurule 01:43
And today that’s in particular where we’re going to talk about. it’s going to be a little bit more of a shorter episode because this is more of a quote unquote, you know, just discussion around how to lay out a framework and a better understanding of how to work out or what exercises are safe or maybe not safe during pregnancy. This is a very, very common question that we get.
Anthony Gurule 02:12
My wife Nichelle has created a mini course that has some workout ideas, recommendations, and prescriptions than laid out into a workout. She guides and educates other clinicians on how to broach this topic as a chiropractor, how to better serve prenatal patients through chiropractic care, but also exercise recommendations and prescriptions, having recommendations with other personal trainers within the community whether that’s CrossFit whether that’s Orange Theory, chatting with coaches and owners and saying hey, if you have prenatal patients and they’re having these types of symptoms, or this has happened, here’s some better recommendations, not modifications. We call them lateralizations–you’re just you know, you’re doing something something different or something else we you know, we borrow that term from Charlie Weingroff, who’s a physical therapist and strength conditioning coach. But it also and also doulas, right, doulas and midwives and OBs who are directly involved with the prenatal process from nearly conception all the way through, having this conversation. we know that exercise is important during pregnancy,
Anthony Gurule 03:19
There are so many different studies that talk about the benefits of exercising during pregnancy, not only for the mom, but also for baby, which is quite interesting. They’re seeing increased cognitive-what’s the word I’m looking for? Excuse me, their cognitive output as a as an as a child through as they age is actually better from moms that actually worked out during pregnancy.
Anthony Gurule 03:50
Now this is tough, right? How do you define working out or exercise? it’s different for everybody. But we want to, and we encourage that, and yet we’re sympathetic to the different stages of life, aches and pains, so on and so forth, which obviously would limit what you can do from an exercise perspective. So you know, it’s a bit of a gray area on determining what is working out? what is exercise? What are the physical guidelines or recommendations for pregnancy? And without getting into the like, nitty gritty detail of every single thing. And obviously, every potential situation, if you had this versus this, what could happen? we’re not gonna be able to do that. What we just want to lay out is what is what are we trying to accomplish here, and we want to encourage you to stay as physically active as possible.
Anthony Gurule 04:41
And one of the things that constantly comes up is, well, should you add something in that you have not already been doing? Let’s say for instance, someone just through the stages of life with work and kids or whatever that is, they were not able to work out as much before they got pregnant, but now that they’re pregnant, whether they have more time or they understand the importance of exercises during pregnancy, well, would we say, “Well, you haven’t been exercising, so you shouldn’t do too much.” No, that doesn’t, that doesn’t really make sense. Now, we would encourage not to do too much, there’s obviously, you know, a too far swinging the pendulum of the other way. But we wouldn’t say “no, don’t exercise because you weren’t doing something before,” we just have to find those first few stepping stones to help them start to gain some momentum. and help hold their hand, if you will, So that their technique and they feel confident about lifting, or how far they’re walking or whatever that is. And that’s an important topic, because a lot of times people want to add things in, but they weren’t quite ready or weren’t doing them before. And they then assume that they’re not able to do them at all. So you do have to take that in consideration, there is a ton that you can do, and that you can still add, even though you weren’t doing them prior to pregnancy.
Anthony Gurule 05:54
Now on the big questions is, is it safe? you know, outside to contact sports, or different things like that the majority of what you’re going to do is safe for pregnancy, right? Rock climbing, we have pregnant patients that have been rock climbing before, obviously, there’s a certain inherent risk with certain sports or activities. You know, you could fall off riding your bike, you could fall over running, right, so we’re not encouraging any of these by any means. We’re just kind of, you know, setting some suggestions, if you will. And you have to take into consideration.
Anthony Gurule 06:31
Now, there are certain things to consider when you’re talking about like weightlifting, and how heavy and the intensity that you’re doing. And if you’re doing Valsalva movements, which is essentially holding your breath to maintain a more rigid or stiff torso, as you’re seeing changes in blood volume and blood pressure, you know, you do have to take that in consideration. And that is again, of course a conversation with your provider that is managing your, your pregnancy, but we recommend Mama’s weight lift, or do resistance training. During pregnancy, again, we talked about about load management and the intensity and things like that, but you can still lift and do fairly intense things. And it’s a fairly as a you know, as a scale and a wide range during pregnancy and see a ton of benefit from that. Now, are we trying to hit one rep maxes and PRs during pregnancy, I mean, some would argue yes, but I would argue, why, that’s not really an accurate representation of what your strength is anyways. So you know, you do have to to kind of keep manipulating the numbers and the weights and the intensity and the sets and reps in order to do it. But weightlifting and resistance training is safe, and it is effective. Now, outside of that, there’s not a lot of unsafe things to do, again, outside of contact sports, or things that would elicit, you know, potential trauma to you or baby based on impact we’ve had, again, not our recommendations, but some have tried very just easy scheme, because they’re in the winter months, and they wanted to and they felt very confident about not falling. So you know, you have those types of things.
Anthony Gurule 08:16
Overall, again, we’re talking about movement. You need to move, and it’s good to get your heart rate up. And it’s good to breathe hard. So that doesn’t mean just because you’re pregnant, you can’t do HIIT training or circuit training or CrossFit or Orange Theory. But you do have to listen to your body and understand certain signs that would indicate that things might be too much, right? Now those are going to be different for everyone, but a lot of this comes down to you know, lightheadedness, you know, breathing too hard. Certain aches and pains within lower extremity, chest, abdomen, so on and so forth would be obviously like your more extreme ones. If you’re becoming pale or anything like that, I mean, again, these are the same criteria, though, that would be if someone else was working out or training too hard. So it’s realistically the same thing. It’s just that your threshold level for all those most likely have gone down. And depending on what type of an athlete you were before, you’re going to be maybe a little frustrated that you’re not able to do the things you were able to do previously, which makes sense. But if you’re someone who wasn’t exercising before, you’re probably going to be a little bit more hyper aware of that, of just feeling that shortness of breath or that uneasiness. So again, we’re not saying you have to push through that because we’re not trying to set yourself up for a strength and conditioning program to increase your metabolic capacity to increase your strength and conditioning during pregnancy. We’re trying to help you maintain a healthy active pregnancy.
Anthony Gurule 09:54
Now, walking. walking is great. but in general, we encourage you to do something above and beyond walking. Obviously, again, certain things would dictate that you would not be able to do so. And this is again, any exercise. Any exercise that you do during pregnancy needs to be consulted with and work through and have a conversation with the primary physician who is managing your pregnancy, whether that’s your nurse practitioner, your midwife or your OB or obstetrician, right. But we would encourage more than just walking. walking is fantastic, but that’s kind of like your baseline minimum, right? Just like our activities, or recommendation activity guidelines. We want a few days a week of where we’re kind of just doing this steady state getting our steps in, you know, kind of pushing ourselves, we’re huffing and puffing, but still just kind of at that conversational level, but you’re not really getting a lot of benefits outside of that.
Anthony Gurule 10:55
So if you’re just walking, high five. kudos. can you do something more? Can you do some bodyweight squats? Can you do some bodyweight, you know, good mornings? can you do some walking lunges? do you have a suspension training, we’re able to do some bodyweight rows? Do you have some bands that you can do some rows with? You know, there’s a lot that you can do that allows you to get a little bit more out of that. Now, again, this all comes back down to preferences of exercises that you like to do, because that’s gonna allow you to maintain the most consistency, but then also the intensity that you like to do. And we do encourage having an open mind and at least being willing to try some high intensity things that allow you to still get your heart rate up a little bit. And it’s okay to lift more than five or 10 pounds. And not saying that that is a bad thing. There’s programs out there where it’s all directed around that where it’s lighter weight, high rep, but I just don’t want individuals and mamas to feel like they’re not able to do more and or being ashamed because other people are just saying they should back off because they’re pregnant. “why would you need a lift that much?” It fits within your strength, and your comfort, and your wheelhouse, that is totally fine.
Anthony Gurule 12:05
Again, you if you’ve been doing that enough, you understand the risk reward ratio and having a conversation with your practitioner has driven us to kind of help navigate and guide as you start to get further through pregnancies, what things maybe we need to change or manipulate. But that’s totally fine. Now outside of that, the question around safe also comes up around core exercises. diastasis recti, pelvic floor strength, so on and so forth, we want to enhance the capability of understanding how to control tension within your abdominal wall and your pelvic floor through pregnancy, because the pressure is increasing due to baby taking up more space. But we’re not we’re not necessarily we’re not gaining more strength, right.
Anthony Gurule 12:45
And so what a lot of people assume it’s when we’ve seen this, is “I don’t want diastasis. So I’m doing more core work to prevent diastasis from happening.” diastasis recti will happen in 100% of moms, it’s estimated at the week 35 Everyone will have some form of it. Now it is technically not a quote unquote diagnosis, though, until 12 weeks postpartum, because it is a normal thing that everyone will get. So you can’t diagnose someone with something that everyone will get–doesn’t make sense, right? So after that, though, if you still have weakness or spacing issues, then we can have a you know, a stronger conversation about putting a diagnosis on that.
Anthony Gurule 13:26
But what we’re trying to enhance and help is what exercises are quote unquote, not safe versus unsafe, but adding too much pressure or tension into the abdominal wall or the pelvic floor and creating more laxity. again, as that pressure for as baby’s growing starts to put more pressure on the pelvic floor and the abdominal wall. If you’re doing more things that increases the pressure within the within the abdominal cavity that’s going to push on that separation even more and/or push on that pelvic floor even more, creating potential incontinence or prolapse issues and/or more bulging and doming within the abdominal wall stretching out that separation or that gap even further, potentially making the recovery process more challenging or slightly longer. I’m not saying that it will but potentially, so we do have to take that in consideration. So we go through activation exercise of the pelvic floor, of the abdominal wall so that you better understand how to control those pressure increases while you’re lifting or exercising so that you simply can stay at a management level.
Anthony Gurule 14:28
And that in turn, helps you get through pregnancy of understanding how to lift up your older kiddo, having to lift up dog food or anything like that. It’s just managing and controlling pressure. So there’s really not anything that I would say that safe or unsafe. Now, things that we would advise against for core exercises is sit ups or crunches. You know a lot of those things that create like hanging knee raises and different things like that during pregnancy. A lot of those things that create a lot of intra abdominal pressure and tension. and especially during a flex position, that tends to put a lot more pressure on the abdominal wall, the separation where diastasis will occur as well as the pelvic floor.
Anthony Gurule 15:09
So, you know, while we never say never, there’s definitely a category of things that we definitely urge against because the risk/reward benefit and again, risk not being “injured,” But risk of potentially putting more pressure and making the recovery process on the other side harder, is not is not something that we find to be as advantageous. But you can still get the benefits of quote unquote, core exercises through full body movements such as goblet squats, such as deadlifts, you know, depending on the phase that you’re in, push ups, which are, you know, a dynamic plank. or being able to do a TRX row, which is a reverse plank as you’re just lifting yourself up. three point rows where you’re on, you know, two hands or doing like a row on a bench, where you’re in a tabletop position that’s adding anti rotation exercises. So there’s a ton that you can do that still highlights and isolates, the core isolates, sorry. that highlights and will emphasize core activation, but through a full body compound movement. And what’s great about that is during pregnancy, depending on your energy levels, it’s hard to do all the little isolated accessory and all these separate exercises as it is. So it’s kind of nice being able to combine everything, so you get more bang for your buck, especially if you’re a parent and you’re on and you’re on baby number two or three, right?
Anthony Gurule 16:31
So what exercises are safe for pregnant women to do? All are. reduce or eliminate for sure contact activities, different things like that. the increased risk activities of you know, trauma and things like that. Outside of that you’re managing pressure, I would definitely encourage reducing anything that’s heavy lifting, that’s, that’s requiring you to do Valsalva moves, you’re having to hold your breath for an extended period of time. that changes blood pressure, so on and so forth. But outside of that, Pregnancy is a completely safe time to do all exercises. we definitely as we highlighted, urge and encourage, you know, certain things over other ones just for you know, added bang for your buck or full body movements, so on and so forth. And that, but outside of that you are free to do what you want.
Anthony Gurule 17:19
If you want guidance, though, you know, there are there are trainers out there that work specifically with prenatal patients. we would love to be able to have that conversation with you if that’s something you want to bounce back or navigate. Because we do want to encourage as much as we can. A very, very active pregnancy through exercise working out or however you want to describe that. So if you found this beneficial, please like share, subscribe. if you’re pregnant, I hope you can utilize this and take some of the information for you and yourself. If you have anyone else you know… a relative a family member, a friend who is pregnant and they’re unsure they’ve been you know asking this question what things I don’t know what things I can do. I don’t know if it’s safe for baby share this video with them. We’d love to be able to provide a better frame of reference and or context to be able to ask better questions so that they can find the workout program or the movements that work best for them during their pregnancy. Until next time guys live loud .if you’re currently pregnant, Congratulations, and we look forward to helping and serving in the future.
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Obstacle Course Racing & Aerobic Capacity Training EP|32
Live LOUD Life Podcast
Lafayette Colorado
Episode 32
EP|32 Obstacle Course Racing & Aerobic Capacity Training
With OCR Athlete, Volunteer FireFighter, and Strength Coach Dylan Miraglia
Let’s GO!
Live LOUD connected with OCR Athlete, Volunteer FireFighter, and Strength Coach Dylan Miraglia to bring you some high-value content on how to train for OCR racing and how to build a better capacity.
Connect With Us:
@live.loud.life
www.liveloudlife.com
**Be sure to Follow Dylan on Instagram and connect with him if you want to work with him**
Trains in and around Boulder as well as remote coaching if you need help with your aerobic capacity training, over functional strength, and OCR (Obstacle Course Racing) Training
- Passion for obstacle course racing started.
- Became an OCR athlete and pursued that sort of career.
- Personal Trainer for over 10 years and Currently Volunteer FireFighter
- 5 Under 5. Same Clock #500 Deadlift and Mile all under 5 min (Dylan will be attempting with the squat
- Focus on improving your speed as a runner
- Cannot beat the traditional big lifts like squatting and deadlift
- Plyometrics will help make you a faster runner
- Ex. of good Running Plyometrics bouncing, single-leg hops, hurdling over objects
- Balance training for control
- It is all about absorbing energy and redistributing it
- Progressive plyometrics using bands, 50% of your max weight FAST
- Example lunges off a platform with a band, so estimate at the bottom 50% but at the top up to 60-65%, fast down and the trying to jump up with power 5 reps on each leg
- Bands follow strength curve well, take off pressure where you need it and adds tension where you are weakest
- Build your aerobic base with long steady state
- Mix up with intervals where you can whether with other modalities from your long steady state method or interval with bursts
- Easy long steady-state, talk test, can you hold a conversation with someone
- Long Steady State Armor complex switching sides for 20 minutes 5 KB cleans, 3 squats, one press
- pair with explosive work with either swings or snatches for intervals
- Think control not how fast you can go
- Walking can be a hell of a warm up
- Reverse Hyper for traction and de-loading of the spine (please seek help in using this equipment)
About Dr. Antonio Gurule
Background:
- Father
- Doctor of Chiropractic
- Owner of Live LOUD
- Personal Trainer & Health Coach
Check Out Some of Our Other Blog Posts and Podcast Episodes
Anthony Gurule 00:00
Hey what’s up guys, welcome back to another episode of the Live LOUD Life podcast. My name is Dr. Antonio, I’m your host of the Live LOUD Life podcast. My wife and I, we co-own Live LOUD Chiropractic and Coaching here in Lafayette, Colorado. We are just outside of Boulder, Colorado in Boulder County. And our mission is to help families. We want to help make families stronger, so that we can build a stronger community. We want to help guide you to the adventurous life that you and your family were meant for. And we do this through chiropractic and coaching. chiropractic, obviously being more of a hands on approach, more of a clinical conversation, clinical diagnostics, but the coaching aspect is really what we believe is, you know, the foundation of what our system methodology, whatever you want to call it is, because a lot of this comes around through just coaching suggestions and recommendations. also, you know, obviously within that comes into clinical prescriptions of certain things to eat or supplements, so on and so forth. But it’s coaching a lifestyle, it’s coaching, it’s coaching a philosophy and a foundation about how to live an active healthy life as an individual, and setting an example of a healthy active life for your family, for your immediate family, for your friends, and more importantly for your community. So stronger families to make a stronger community as a whole would be a win win, right? And that’s what we want to be able to do. we want to be able to help fill in the gaps in the holes that you’re maybe not getting from, from other roles and conditions.
Anthony Gurule 01:43
And today that’s in particular where we’re going to talk about. it’s going to be a little bit more of a shorter episode because this is more of a quote unquote, you know, just discussion around how to lay out a framework and a better understanding of how to work out or what exercises are safe or maybe not safe during pregnancy. This is a very, very common question that we get.
Anthony Gurule 02:12
My wife Nichelle has created a mini course that has some workout ideas, recommendations, and prescriptions than laid out into a workout. She guides and educates other clinicians on how to broach this topic as a chiropractor, how to better serve prenatal patients through chiropractic care, but also exercise recommendations and prescriptions, having recommendations with other personal trainers within the community whether that’s CrossFit whether that’s Orange Theory, chatting with coaches and owners and saying hey, if you have prenatal patients and they’re having these types of symptoms, or this has happened, here’s some better recommendations, not modifications. We call them lateralizations–you’re just you know, you’re doing something something different or something else we you know, we borrow that term from Charlie Weingroff, who’s a physical therapist and strength conditioning coach. But it also and also doulas, right, doulas and midwives and OBs who are directly involved with the prenatal process from nearly conception all the way through, having this conversation. we know that exercise is important during pregnancy,
Anthony Gurule 03:19
There are so many different studies that talk about the benefits of exercising during pregnancy, not only for the mom, but also for baby, which is quite interesting. They’re seeing increased cognitive-what’s the word I’m looking for? Excuse me, their cognitive output as a as an as a child through as they age is actually better from moms that actually worked out during pregnancy.
Anthony Gurule 03:50
Now this is tough, right? How do you define working out or exercise? it’s different for everybody. But we want to, and we encourage that, and yet we’re sympathetic to the different stages of life, aches and pains, so on and so forth, which obviously would limit what you can do from an exercise perspective. So you know, it’s a bit of a gray area on determining what is working out? what is exercise? What are the physical guidelines or recommendations for pregnancy? And without getting into the like, nitty gritty detail of every single thing. And obviously, every potential situation, if you had this versus this, what could happen? we’re not gonna be able to do that. What we just want to lay out is what is what are we trying to accomplish here, and we want to encourage you to stay as physically active as possible.
Anthony Gurule 04:41
And one of the things that constantly comes up is, well, should you add something in that you have not already been doing? Let’s say for instance, someone just through the stages of life with work and kids or whatever that is, they were not able to work out as much before they got pregnant, but now that they’re pregnant, whether they have more time or they understand the importance of exercises during pregnancy, well, would we say, “Well, you haven’t been exercising, so you shouldn’t do too much.” No, that doesn’t, that doesn’t really make sense. Now, we would encourage not to do too much, there’s obviously, you know, a too far swinging the pendulum of the other way. But we wouldn’t say “no, don’t exercise because you weren’t doing something before,” we just have to find those first few stepping stones to help them start to gain some momentum. and help hold their hand, if you will, So that their technique and they feel confident about lifting, or how far they’re walking or whatever that is. And that’s an important topic, because a lot of times people want to add things in, but they weren’t quite ready or weren’t doing them before. And they then assume that they’re not able to do them at all. So you do have to take that in consideration, there is a ton that you can do, and that you can still add, even though you weren’t doing them prior to pregnancy.
Anthony Gurule 05:54
Now on the big questions is, is it safe? you know, outside to contact sports, or different things like that the majority of what you’re going to do is safe for pregnancy, right? Rock climbing, we have pregnant patients that have been rock climbing before, obviously, there’s a certain inherent risk with certain sports or activities. You know, you could fall off riding your bike, you could fall over running, right, so we’re not encouraging any of these by any means. We’re just kind of, you know, setting some suggestions, if you will. And you have to take into consideration.
Anthony Gurule 06:31
Now, there are certain things to consider when you’re talking about like weightlifting, and how heavy and the intensity that you’re doing. And if you’re doing Valsalva movements, which is essentially holding your breath to maintain a more rigid or stiff torso, as you’re seeing changes in blood volume and blood pressure, you know, you do have to take that in consideration. And that is again, of course a conversation with your provider that is managing your, your pregnancy, but we recommend Mama’s weight lift, or do resistance training. During pregnancy, again, we talked about about load management and the intensity and things like that, but you can still lift and do fairly intense things. And it’s a fairly as a you know, as a scale and a wide range during pregnancy and see a ton of benefit from that. Now, are we trying to hit one rep maxes and PRs during pregnancy, I mean, some would argue yes, but I would argue, why, that’s not really an accurate representation of what your strength is anyways. So you know, you do have to to kind of keep manipulating the numbers and the weights and the intensity and the sets and reps in order to do it. But weightlifting and resistance training is safe, and it is effective. Now, outside of that, there’s not a lot of unsafe things to do, again, outside of contact sports, or things that would elicit, you know, potential trauma to you or baby based on impact we’ve had, again, not our recommendations, but some have tried very just easy scheme, because they’re in the winter months, and they wanted to and they felt very confident about not falling. So you know, you have those types of things.
Anthony Gurule 08:16
Overall, again, we’re talking about movement. You need to move, and it’s good to get your heart rate up. And it’s good to breathe hard. So that doesn’t mean just because you’re pregnant, you can’t do HIIT training or circuit training or CrossFit or Orange Theory. But you do have to listen to your body and understand certain signs that would indicate that things might be too much, right? Now those are going to be different for everyone, but a lot of this comes down to you know, lightheadedness, you know, breathing too hard. Certain aches and pains within lower extremity, chest, abdomen, so on and so forth would be obviously like your more extreme ones. If you’re becoming pale or anything like that, I mean, again, these are the same criteria, though, that would be if someone else was working out or training too hard. So it’s realistically the same thing. It’s just that your threshold level for all those most likely have gone down. And depending on what type of an athlete you were before, you’re going to be maybe a little frustrated that you’re not able to do the things you were able to do previously, which makes sense. But if you’re someone who wasn’t exercising before, you’re probably going to be a little bit more hyper aware of that, of just feeling that shortness of breath or that uneasiness. So again, we’re not saying you have to push through that because we’re not trying to set yourself up for a strength and conditioning program to increase your metabolic capacity to increase your strength and conditioning during pregnancy. We’re trying to help you maintain a healthy active pregnancy.
Anthony Gurule 09:54
Now, walking. walking is great. but in general, we encourage you to do something above and beyond walking. Obviously, again, certain things would dictate that you would not be able to do so. And this is again, any exercise. Any exercise that you do during pregnancy needs to be consulted with and work through and have a conversation with the primary physician who is managing your pregnancy, whether that’s your nurse practitioner, your midwife or your OB or obstetrician, right. But we would encourage more than just walking. walking is fantastic, but that’s kind of like your baseline minimum, right? Just like our activities, or recommendation activity guidelines. We want a few days a week of where we’re kind of just doing this steady state getting our steps in, you know, kind of pushing ourselves, we’re huffing and puffing, but still just kind of at that conversational level, but you’re not really getting a lot of benefits outside of that.
Anthony Gurule 10:55
So if you’re just walking, high five. kudos. can you do something more? Can you do some bodyweight squats? Can you do some bodyweight, you know, good mornings? can you do some walking lunges? do you have a suspension training, we’re able to do some bodyweight rows? Do you have some bands that you can do some rows with? You know, there’s a lot that you can do that allows you to get a little bit more out of that. Now, again, this all comes back down to preferences of exercises that you like to do, because that’s gonna allow you to maintain the most consistency, but then also the intensity that you like to do. And we do encourage having an open mind and at least being willing to try some high intensity things that allow you to still get your heart rate up a little bit. And it’s okay to lift more than five or 10 pounds. And not saying that that is a bad thing. There’s programs out there where it’s all directed around that where it’s lighter weight, high rep, but I just don’t want individuals and mamas to feel like they’re not able to do more and or being ashamed because other people are just saying they should back off because they’re pregnant. “why would you need a lift that much?” It fits within your strength, and your comfort, and your wheelhouse, that is totally fine.
Anthony Gurule 12:05
Again, you if you’ve been doing that enough, you understand the risk reward ratio and having a conversation with your practitioner has driven us to kind of help navigate and guide as you start to get further through pregnancies, what things maybe we need to change or manipulate. But that’s totally fine. Now outside of that, the question around safe also comes up around core exercises. diastasis recti, pelvic floor strength, so on and so forth, we want to enhance the capability of understanding how to control tension within your abdominal wall and your pelvic floor through pregnancy, because the pressure is increasing due to baby taking up more space. But we’re not we’re not necessarily we’re not gaining more strength, right.
Anthony Gurule 12:45
And so what a lot of people assume it’s when we’ve seen this, is “I don’t want diastasis. So I’m doing more core work to prevent diastasis from happening.” diastasis recti will happen in 100% of moms, it’s estimated at the week 35 Everyone will have some form of it. Now it is technically not a quote unquote diagnosis, though, until 12 weeks postpartum, because it is a normal thing that everyone will get. So you can’t diagnose someone with something that everyone will get–doesn’t make sense, right? So after that, though, if you still have weakness or spacing issues, then we can have a you know, a stronger conversation about putting a diagnosis on that.
Anthony Gurule 13:26
But what we’re trying to enhance and help is what exercises are quote unquote, not safe versus unsafe, but adding too much pressure or tension into the abdominal wall or the pelvic floor and creating more laxity. again, as that pressure for as baby’s growing starts to put more pressure on the pelvic floor and the abdominal wall. If you’re doing more things that increases the pressure within the within the abdominal cavity that’s going to push on that separation even more and/or push on that pelvic floor even more, creating potential incontinence or prolapse issues and/or more bulging and doming within the abdominal wall stretching out that separation or that gap even further, potentially making the recovery process more challenging or slightly longer. I’m not saying that it will but potentially, so we do have to take that in consideration. So we go through activation exercise of the pelvic floor, of the abdominal wall so that you better understand how to control those pressure increases while you’re lifting or exercising so that you simply can stay at a management level.
Anthony Gurule 14:28
And that in turn, helps you get through pregnancy of understanding how to lift up your older kiddo, having to lift up dog food or anything like that. It’s just managing and controlling pressure. So there’s really not anything that I would say that safe or unsafe. Now, things that we would advise against for core exercises is sit ups or crunches. You know a lot of those things that create like hanging knee raises and different things like that during pregnancy. A lot of those things that create a lot of intra abdominal pressure and tension. and especially during a flex position, that tends to put a lot more pressure on the abdominal wall, the separation where diastasis will occur as well as the pelvic floor.
Anthony Gurule 15:09
So, you know, while we never say never, there’s definitely a category of things that we definitely urge against because the risk/reward benefit and again, risk not being “injured,” But risk of potentially putting more pressure and making the recovery process on the other side harder, is not is not something that we find to be as advantageous. But you can still get the benefits of quote unquote, core exercises through full body movements such as goblet squats, such as deadlifts, you know, depending on the phase that you’re in, push ups, which are, you know, a dynamic plank. or being able to do a TRX row, which is a reverse plank as you’re just lifting yourself up. three point rows where you’re on, you know, two hands or doing like a row on a bench, where you’re in a tabletop position that’s adding anti rotation exercises. So there’s a ton that you can do that still highlights and isolates, the core isolates, sorry. that highlights and will emphasize core activation, but through a full body compound movement. And what’s great about that is during pregnancy, depending on your energy levels, it’s hard to do all the little isolated accessory and all these separate exercises as it is. So it’s kind of nice being able to combine everything, so you get more bang for your buck, especially if you’re a parent and you’re on and you’re on baby number two or three, right?
Anthony Gurule 16:31
So what exercises are safe for pregnant women to do? All are. reduce or eliminate for sure contact activities, different things like that. the increased risk activities of you know, trauma and things like that. Outside of that you’re managing pressure, I would definitely encourage reducing anything that’s heavy lifting, that’s, that’s requiring you to do Valsalva moves, you’re having to hold your breath for an extended period of time. that changes blood pressure, so on and so forth. But outside of that, Pregnancy is a completely safe time to do all exercises. we definitely as we highlighted, urge and encourage, you know, certain things over other ones just for you know, added bang for your buck or full body movements, so on and so forth. And that, but outside of that you are free to do what you want.
Anthony Gurule 17:19
If you want guidance, though, you know, there are there are trainers out there that work specifically with prenatal patients. we would love to be able to have that conversation with you if that’s something you want to bounce back or navigate. Because we do want to encourage as much as we can. A very, very active pregnancy through exercise working out or however you want to describe that. So if you found this beneficial, please like share, subscribe. if you’re pregnant, I hope you can utilize this and take some of the information for you and yourself. If you have anyone else you know… a relative a family member, a friend who is pregnant and they’re unsure they’ve been you know asking this question what things I don’t know what things I can do. I don’t know if it’s safe for baby share this video with them. We’d love to be able to provide a better frame of reference and or context to be able to ask better questions so that they can find the workout program or the movements that work best for them during their pregnancy. Until next time guys live loud .if you’re currently pregnant, Congratulations, and we look forward to helping and serving in the future.
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How to Customize Your Squat Stance to Your Anatomy
How to Customize Your Squat Stance to Your Anatomy
If you feel like you’re limited by your squat, feeling like you can’t go down low enough, not getting enough strength, or having pain in your knees, low back, ankles, or hips, this blog post is for you.
My name is Dr. Antonio with Live Loud Chiropractic and Coaching in Lafayette, Colorado. Today, we’re going to be talking about why everyone should have a different squat stance. Not everyone has the same body type, so not everyone should be squatting the same way. But yet in our fitness classes, we’re all taught to squat hip-width apart, with our toes facing straight. But that doesn’t help if your anatomy doesn’t line up with that stance.
PLAY VIDEO ⬇︎
Understanding the Anatomy of the Hips
To start, here’s a brief anatomy lesson that will help you understand why you should be considering the different squat stance, and a couple of different things that you that you can do to determine what your perfect perfect squat stance is. Picture your spine. Underneath the spine, we have our pelvis. The pelvis and the spine attach in back at the sacrum. Now the important part to notice is that this is a unit—the pelvis moves as a unit. The place where we see more movement is in the ball and socket joint itself. The ball and socket joint is a nice, big, greasy joint, that should move a lot. It can pivot, twist, and go through all sorts of ranges of motion. We also have to consider what is attatched to this joint. The femur attaches to the tibia through the knee joint, and then down into the foot. Because of that, the position of the foot will change the articulation of the hip joint. And the space that the feet are apart from each other, depending on the activity or the movement, will also determine how much the joint is moving.
But let’s zoom in even further. We have two sides of the joint: the ball, and the socket. The socket is shaped differently for different people. For some individuals, it is kind of down and to the side. For other individuals, it might be down and slightly forward. Or, it might be slightly angled higher, and out and up. The shape of the joint determines how the head of the femur actually fits in there. The femur can also have retro or introversion, meaning the the positioning of the actual head could be slightly forward or slightly back. That then will also determine how the rest of the leg is oriented in relationship to the pelvis, based on what that orientation is. So right off the bat, we’re talking about two basic variations that will determine a much different stance and position among different individuals.
The actual depth of the socket might also be different. Meaning, how deep is the acetabular rim in comparison to others? For some people, they have a very shallow rim, which means the range of motion they can express is a lot higher. For other people, they might have a deep rim, which means they’re not going to be able to express as much hip range of motion, because that will start running into bone on bone.
How Do the Ball and Socket Hip Joints Move Together?
First, hip flexion. If you’re just standing, the hip flexes up when you walk, it swings back behind you, it can also internally/externally rotate a little bit. And then there’s any combination of that abduction, like bringing your leg out to the side. Now when we go into a squat, that expresses a really deep amount of hip flexion. As you go through various ranges of motion based on how the socket is shaped, it’s going to change the position of the femur. So if any kind of coach gives everyone the same coaching on squat form, you’re probably going to be running into some issues.
What kind of issues?
- Bone rubbing up against bone. If you’re not in the proper orientation, you’re going to start rubbing that joint in a way the joint was not set up for. Oftentimes, I get individuals complaining of a pinch, deep in their hip, with that deep flexion of the deep part of the squat. That’s because that bone is rubbing up on either the acetabulum or the labrum.
- Your body is going to run out of space. You’re going to tilt your pelvis upward, which is that classic butt wink or dumping of the low back. When you do that, the pelvis rotates upward. You’ve now changed the position of the acetabulum to scoop out to give you more hip range of motion. By doing the butt wink, I tilt the pelvis underneath, and then can actually get a lot more hip flexion. So is the butt wink bad? That it depends on the context. If you’re under a lot of load, we don’t want to be dumping that lower back or tucking the pelvis very much. But if you go to the bathroom in the woods, or if you’re sitting on the floor playing with your kids, or eating a meal, it is completely fine to be in that position. But under load, when trying to maintain this neutral lumbar spine, I start tucking the pelvis, the lower back starts to flex, and I will be under compression because I have weight on me, and I’m moving the spine.
Those are the two scenarios that we do not want, that tends to lead to to a potential injury. Now, many will argue that is not true, or we don’t know that to be 100% true. But the fact is, no one wants to flex their back when lifting. And it doesn’t take a lot to get injured. If I’m under load, and I’m buckling just a little bit, I’m going to see, since the pelvis moves as a unit, that motion coming from lower back. It’s not going to be the pelvis. So when people usually complain about lower back pain after squatting, many people say it’s an SI joint because they’re pointing close to the SI. But the L-4 and L-5 are right there as well. And again, since the pelvis is moving as a unit, you’re not going to typically see just SI joint disfunction, it’s typically going to be a lumbar derangement, or some sort of lumbar issue.
Doing a Hip Scour to Improve Your Squat Form and Flexibility
Here’s how to assess your anatomical makeup to figure out where you should be squatting. This is something you can do on your own, laying on your back by simply scouring your hip. We want to figure out where the hip socket is the deepest. So when you bring the knee up in this the narrow midline area, you’re going to run into that bone on bone position that we talked about. If you keep that hip in that front, in that sagittal plane, you might run out of space. But if you allow the knee to dive out, follow where the hip wants to go, you’re going to see a much wider opening. That’s what’s going to get into a deeper squat position. If you’re being coached to go deeper and your stance is narrow, it’s probably not going to happen and you’re going to run into a lot of issues.
How to Squat With Proper Form
When you’re squatting, there are two main rules: don’t let your feet move, and try to maintain a long, neutral spine throughout the movement. By expressing more hip range of motion, you’re going to reduce the amount of lumbar or low back movement. You’ll want to try two different squat positions to determine the most ideal position for you.
Play with the position of your feet and the angle of your toes. If you’re in a narrow stance, hip width and toes straight, as you lower you might feel a block. Even if your force yourself to go lower, your hips might block you from doing so. It might force you to dump into your lower back which is not what we want.
Now try a wider stance. If you struggled with the narrow stance, hopefully you’ll see now that you can easily go lower without compromising the low back, and by expressing more hip range of motion. When you find the right position, your your body in your mind should go, “Oh, that was easy.” You shouldn’t need to force yourself into the depth, you should be able to just line up everything so that you can drop in and use each range of motion from each joint as needed.
Simply changing your setup makes a world of difference, especially for those who are dealing with the pain and tension in front of their hips.
Conclusion
Be sure to refer back to the hip scour as something you can do on your own. If you’re unsure how to do it, we can do it in a simple video assessment. Just from watching you do a couple repetitions, I’ll be able to guide you in the right direction. So if you’re interested in that, please reach out to us. If you know someone who’s struggling with the squat send them this video. If it’s a coach, this might be a little bit tougher, but please share this with them because it makes such a world of difference. It improves not only the strength that you express, but also the potential to reduce injuries and deal with pain.
Thanks for reading! I hope this blog brought you extreme amounts of value for your health and fitness. Be sure to subscribe to the YouTube channel so that you can keep up with all the videos that are coming through. Be sure to check out the rest of our website, podcast episodes and other forms of content that I know will be super valuable for you.
Until next time, guys, Live LOUD!
5 Reasons Your Feet Hate You
5 Reasons Your Feet Hate You
It is sometimes crazy to think about your feet. I mean it is one of those body parts that just seem to be there. But when you consider that we are bipedal animals they basically do everything for us.
So here are a few reasons they are not too jazzed with how you have been treating them lately or for your whole life.
5 Reasons Your Feet Are Mad At You
1. You Never Give Them a Hug
When was the last time you touched your feet? I mean like grabbed that beauty pulled it in and gave it a nice squeeze. I bet the majority of you don’t even wash your feet all that well.
Ah, they are so far away.
We tend to forget that when we think about something our focus because more direct and intentional about those things and then it starts taking off from there. You start to realize that you have some sore points on the bottom, or a weird nail thing going on that you didn’t even notice before.
Now the point is not to focus on weird feet things that you may or may not have but more importantly, we are trying to get you to understand that your feet are a very important part of your body especially as it pertains to movement, health, and fitness.
2. You Force Them To Take Odd Shapes
I know we all know this but we basically turn a blind eye, and men and women are just as guilty to blame because some of the guy’s shoes out there that I have seen are crazy.
If your shoe comes to a point then your toes are pointing to you the middle finger!
We are not just talking about the front of the shoe we are also throwing in their heels, width, arches, all of it!
Now stop freaking out, cause I know ½ of you right now are thinking, “well I have flat feet” or “my arches are too high and they need support”.
This is not a one shoe size fits all conversation! (hey ooooo)
But one might argue that your feet are now this way because of what you did to them in the past. Neither here nor there we are trying to progress forward and not reminisce too hard on the past and what we could have done differently.
BUT!!!
All we are saying is that if you try to put a soft peg in a hard square hole eventually that peg will change its shape to fit in the constraints in which you are forcing it in.
Ideally, you want to have enough space in your foot wear for your foot to mold and adapt and change based on the various tasks and demands you are putting it through. Something as simple as walking required the middle part of the foot to splay out and spread to help disperse forces, all while transitioning from various positions of supination and pronation.
All of the micro-movements, although mostly unconscious mostly because we are disconnected from our feet see bullet #1, control lower limb positioning above, hip function and movement, pelvic alignment, and so on and so forth.
3. They Never Get a Massage
We could really argue this for our whole bodies. Most of us do not give ourselves the TLC that we deserve.
But with the shoes, you wear, walking throughout the day, sports and activities we do, the feet take a good beating!
Something as simple as taking a tennis ball, lacrosse ball, spikey ball, edge of a coffee table, really whatever you want and pushing and poking and digging in can create a massage session for your feet. This can reduce tight muscles and tension throughout the feet.
It will also improve joint mobility and motion which is absolutely critical for overall function of the feet.
Not to mention all of the benefits in proprioception you get afterward. Just touching an area of your body brings more awareness to the area, more awareness creates better mind to body connection which is what proprioception essentially is. The more aware I can be the better I can manage and operate that area of my body.
4. You Suffocate Them
I am very surprised by how many people I work with who report wearing their shoes for literally 95% of the day.
They wake up and spend maybe 30 min to an hour barefoot or in socks and then throw shoes on and do not take them off until they are getting ready for bed.
Let those puppies breath!!!
Have you ever tried to do a squat or bend down towards the ground in a new pair or jean or some kind of tight clothing? Your hips and knees cannot bend and move and they should and thus your ability to move is altered and changed.
The same is true for your feet in your shoes. If they do not have the simple spacial capacity to move when we are weight-bearing then the joints will not be able to move and ultimately start giving you issues. On the performance side, we need the toes to be bending and spreading out to ground us and distribute force adequately among the whole foot.
The better the distribution the more balance we have and more balance equal more control and we could argue that better control can lead to efficiency and performance.
5. They Don’t Live To Their Full Potential
As with most of our joints, our feet do not live up to their full potential.
What do we mean by this?
We use them in a very limited capacity and they are not able to do what they have the ability to do. Even if we are considering wearing shoes in which the feet are somewhat limited, depending on the type of shoe, we are not doing things barefoot.
So what do we suggest.
Find times and opportunities especially around the house or your yard to start wearing your shoes less and play and move with your dogs or your kids to challenge your feet, to make them stronger, to mobilize them and keep all of your joint healthy.
As we have stated many times in our articles motion is lotion, the more mobile and free we can keep our joints the healthier they will be, the better they will perform, and they will feel amazing!
So kick off those shoes and live a little!!
What is Sciatic Nerve or Sciatica Pain?
What is Sciatic Nerve or Sciatica Pain?
Everyone has an Uncle Frank! You know Uncle Frank, the uncle who when you politely ask, how have things been going, responds with: “OOOOH my sciatica has been acting up again.” As if it was a chihuahua that has been getting into the trash to dig out a taco bell bag and they cannot figure out why it would be doing such a thing.
But just like Uncle Frank, most people are somewhat confused when it comes to the term sciatica and what it actually means or what the symptoms actually are.
So we will run through and give you everything you need to know about sciatica and what you may be able to do if you think you may have it.
What is Sciatica?
When someone refers to their sciatica acting up they are really referring to their sciatic nerve. To simply say my sciatica is acting up is no different than saying my back is acting up. Well is it your upper back? Your lower back? You get the point. They are simply stating a known buzzword or phrase that has little to no context. 
The sciatic nerve is one of the largest nerves in your body that is comprised of a number of lumbar and sacral nerve roots that exit the spine and combine into one larger nerve. When evaluating the image of the nerve we can see how the different levels of the spinal nerve roots blend together to form the sciatic nerve. This is important to understand as we will highlight how this helps determine the origin of irritation or pain for someone who is dealing with these symptoms.
The sciatic nerve then travels along the pelvis on each side and will begin to branch off into various different nerves that supply motor and sensory function to the lower extremity or legs. This too is also very critical information that will provide a great clinician detailed information about what and where there might be an underlying cause to your pain, numbness, or weakness.
As the nerve continues from the pelvis it runs along the back of the legs following the hamstring muscles to the back of the knee. What if tight hamstring muscles are really a result of a tight nerve? This may create valid arguments as to why tight hamstrings are not necessarily the cause of lower back pain but a response to the pain and a generator of guarding and protection.
A brief comment on the anatomy of nerves. Nerves like any other tissue structure in the body are compromised of cells and these cells require nutrients and oxygen just the same. And the also respond the same when their blood supply is occluded or compressed. Interesting enough because their operational functions are critical for many different functions throughout the body, it does not respond well when they are irritated.
In our office, we commonly portray the picture of the irritated friend, who that would otherwise be cool when planks are played on him now will all of the sudden lash out and overreact because he was already irritated. These normal stimuli that would not evoke a response have now set off a cascade of furry and fire! Internally our nerves are operating at a very similar capacity. If they are irritated through a chemical response, physical compression, or too much tension any simple act such as even putting on your socks and shoes can create an inflated pain response.
This concept is absolutely critical when trying to tease out the correct responses one should be trying to imply in order to seek recovery and reduce their overall pain sensitivity. Because the more you are in pain, the more pain you will be in.
While there are still some minor differences in opinion as to the the true definition of sciatica or sciatic pain there are some publications that have done the work for us to include some of the inclusion criteria for classifying sciatica. In the article “Clinical diagnostic model for sciatica developed in primary care patients with low back-related leg pain” in PLOS ONE 2018 authors have provided us a clear scoring table to predict the probability of sciatica. Reported symptoms in the studies were: reported pins and needles or numbness in the involved lower limb, reported pain below the knee, leg pain that is worse than their back, they had a positive straight leg raise test and/or femoral nerve test and/or slump test, and did they have any myotome (muscle) / reflex or sensory deficits in the lower extremity.
Based on the sum score as seen in the table in the article HERE one could then determine the probability of having sciatica.
This does not indicate the exact cause of the pain though it simply classifies where the pain is, although we may have some insight as to what the driving cause is from the history and intake questionnaires.
Based on who your provider is and their background will always have a slightly biased direction as to what they believe the underlying cause is, and that is why a full examination and provocative testing is best done to complete the evaluation and determine the best course of action. Based on the above symptoms you can see that some individuals can present with different types of symptoms and different locations of symptoms making this somewhat of a challenging issue.
More importantly than anything it continuing to have a conversation with you the patient to determine what were some of the activities we were or were not doing at the time the pain had come on. This may provide your clinician with valuable information as that what you should be doing and potentially not be doing. This also bridges us into what you want to be doing.
More often than not the fix or relief for these symptoms is found in the directional preferences of movement and the short term avoidance of others.
For example: Let’s say Uncle Frank’s lower back was sore from shoveling snow from a recent snowstorm. It was a heavy storm and he was hunched over for a period of time and now he struggles to put on his boots, socks, and pants. When he flexes forward he aggravates the nerve roots that were pissed off from the shoveling and now he is in more pain. But through guided movement therapies, we help Uncle Frank learn how to hip hinge more appropriately and reduce excess loading in the lumbar spine and improve the shared loading into the hips, all of the sudden what appears to be the exact same movement had reduced the patient’s discomfort and allowed them to improve their function. So the directional preference, in this case, was avoiding flexion of the spine when bending forward. This overtime will eventually not be the case but while things are sensitized it is wise to follow these preferences to help reduce pain and allow for faster recovery.
Let’s review the main way nerves get pissed off or irritated and cause us pain:
- Compression
- Tension
- Chemical
There are other pathological reasons for nerve irritation but we are focused primarily on functional and biomechanical alterations that would create your symptoms.
You will not always know that you have an irritated nerve though as many of the symptoms are different and occur in different areas for individuals. Here is a list of common symptoms:
– Radiating pain down the arm or the leg
– Muscle guarding, spasm, or cramping
– Numbness
– Pins & needles
– Aches that do not ease with pain medication
– Difficulty finding a comfortable, pain-free position
– Latent pain/tightness in response to stretching, posture, or activity, and
– No pain, but a tightness that does not loosen up (e.g. in the neck, back, hamstrings, etc.)
In our case for the sciatic nerve, you will see these symptoms occurring as high in the hip or glute/butt muscles and down all the way into the toes.
What to do if you have an irritated nerve?
Try not to piss it off more!
Easier said than done right? It is really about paying more attention to when you have symptoms and what was done prior. For some, it might be that you were literally not doing anything. Sitting and not moving might be aggravating depending on how much tension or compression is in the nerve. This is why it is important to have a proper evaluation and consultation with a professional.
With the sciatic nerve one of the most common complaints, is either a tight hamstrings or tight calf muscles and this prompts individuals to throw a leg up or start stretching these areas to only irritate things further. If it is a lumbar root driver, then prolong sitting or driving will commonly aggravate the symptoms.
How we work through this pain in our office:
- Directional Preferences
- Hip Hinges and Spinal Hygiene
- Passive Lumbar extension (McKenzie Extensions)
- Neural Mobilizations
- Lifting Weights and Resistance Training
- Directional Preferences
As mentioned above you want to understand and determine what directions are not responding well to the patient and find the positions that offer relief and or reduce symptoms. Progress is not always zero pain but also simply reduce symptoms or less pain down the leg. When the pain is relieved through these directional preferences we are taking either compression off of the nerve allowing it to reperfuse with blood and reduce chemical irritation, relieving compression forces and reduce signal transmission, or putting slack in the line reducing irritation. And the more you can offer this to the nerves the better they will respond.
1. Hip Hinging and Spinal Hygiene
Being able to hip hinge will have great carry over to any and most aspects of life as it affords you the ability to carry out functional tasks most efficiently as you learn to balance the load between the low back and the hips. When we can hip hinge the glute and hamstring are more involved reducing the amount of tension also put through the passive structure and nerves. This will also relieve any excess tension or pressure that might be pushing through the discs and causing nerve root irritation
2. Passive Lumbar extension
Many times the directional preference that responses best for individuals with sciatic nerve pain is the extension of the lower back. This is from McKenzie’s work and the active care model approach of self-managing your pain. These can be performed as press up or hip drop, but the key is to keep the low back muscles and butt muscles passive and relax. This will help reduce lumbar disc bulges and herniations, as well as put slack in the nerve roots, and give the guarded muscles and opportunity to relax. This tool is so powerful it is often overlooked. It is also recommended to be used throughout the day to relieve tension or tightness from prolong sitting.
3. Neural Mobilizations
Neural mobilizations are also referred to as nerve glides or nerve flossing. The intention is to keep the nerves mobile and sliding through the sheaths that surround them. Connective tissue restrictions can create kinks or binding restrictions that pull on the nerve creating more irritation. This may also be a result of inflammation accumulation from an injury that we want to try and maintain neural mobility. These should be done under the guidance and instruction of a professional as it is easy to put too much tension in the nerve and aggravate it further.
4. Lifting Weights and Resistance Training
We want to try and maintain as much of our functional capacity as we can through this time and there is no other best way than adding some resistance training. Resistance training will stimulate the body to continue adapting and recovering. It helps solidify technique and form. Most importantly if provides contextual feedback for how the body is feeling in real-time. If you are able to perform, lift, or do as a task without discomfort or pain then your body and nervous system will start to put together the pieces that your body is doing well and that you are not falling victim to these symptoms. The less you are in pain the less you will be in pain and if you can do that with challenging tasks then even more power to you!
Conclusion
The intention of this article was to provide insight and guidance into the most common causes of sciatic nerve pain or “sciatica”. This was in no way intended to diagnose your symptoms and what is causing the pain. There are other opportunities that may create similar symptoms and it is always suggested that you schedule a consultation and evaluation with a professional.
I’m Dr. Antonio with Live Loud Chiropractic and Coaching in Lafayette, Colorado. If you have any questions I am more than happy to help answer what I can and you can always call my cell phone number. 303-520-8974
