1. Intimidated
2. Don’t know how
3. Lazy

is astounding.  No longer do you need to be one of the countless masses, ordering pizza every night and wondering why you are still fat.  Let Josh teach you how to cook

• Brreakfast
• Lunch
• Dinner
• Knife Skills
• Pan Skills
• How to boil water
• The all important Paleo-IF-PSMF-Friendly Meatza recipe!

In fact, why don’t I let him explain this for himself?  You can check out his product over at the website: What Did You Bring For Lunch?

Don’t let the drive-thru get another dollar!

• Are you tired of wasting your money at fast food restaurants?
• Do you wish that you could have a home cooked meal that didn’t come from a box?
• Do you secretly want to cook but have no idea where to begin?

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a self cooked meal AND save a few dollars right about now?

They’re both possible and YOU can be on your way to cooking a meal faster than you think!

  “What did you bring for lunch?” is a SIMPLE program that teaches you how to cook.  This is not your ordinary cook book and its not another 30 minute meal knockoff.  

The DVD includes step by step instructions so YOU can master basic cooking techniques that will help you create thousands of meals.

 Follow along as it takes you from the basics of boiling water all the way up to a 3 course breakfast fit for a king!

The included ebook covers shopping for cookware no matter what your budget is!  Detailed guides tell you how to score great equipment for little or no money and what to look for.

Maybe your wallet is bigger than your watch?  No problem!  I’ve done all your homework for you!  Click here to have everything delivered to your door so you can be cooking in a matter of days, AND you won’t spend a fortune!

Unlike other cooking programs I don’t leave out steps or assume that anything is too basic.  My goal was to create a complete program that could benefit people that have never even opened a box of mac n cheese as well as guide those that want to understand the science behind cooking.

Most cooking shows are filmed in a super expensive kitchen where the chef has everything he could ever want at his disposal. Wouldn’t that be nice?!?  Every segment was filmed in the kitchen of my 1100 sq foot pad.  

Needless to say if I can make it work in my tiny apartment you can too! 

  In this tough economic time every dollar counts.  

We’re all looking for ways to save money and food is no exception.  How many times have you decided to save money by eating at home only to find that the recipe was expensive and the food sucked? Don’t let that turn you off from giving cooking another shot.  With What Did You Bring For Lunch I’ll show you how to cook meals that are designed to be taken to work or school the next day (or two). As you build your arsenal of ingredients at home you’ll find you take less trips to the store and have lower grocery bills.

What Did You Bring For Lunch actually pays for itself in 3 weeks!   

I’ve watched my coworkers go out to eat every day for lunch for years.  Rarely do they bring anything.  They spend 20 minutes driving to a restaurant, waiting in line, and then making the “walk of shame” through the front door with their grease soaked bag they call “lunch”.  By the time they sit down and begin to eat I’ve already eaten a delicious home cooked meal and have time to spend my lunch break outside in the fresh air or enjoy a book at the picnic table.  Every day on their way out the door they peer over my shoulder and ask “What did you bring for lunch?”.  Sometimes they come bursting into the break room demanding to know what that fantastic smell is.  

I just smile knowing that my lunch is healthier, tastier and less expensive.

  Let’s get back to saving money, shall we?  What Did You Bring For Lunch really does pay for itself in a few short weeks.  I polled my coworkers and found that the average fast food lunch runs seven dollars. Seven dollars for a combo meal!  Wow!  Most of my meals will run about three dollars.  

Using my system saves you 20 dollars the first week!  

How does putting 80 DOLLARS back in your pocket this month sound?  Pretty good, eh?  Do you have to bring your lunch every day?  No.  Let’s assume you eat out 2 days a week.  This still saves around 40 DOLLARS a month.  Did I mention this is only for lunch?  Once you’re able to cook for yourself dinner will no longer be the expense it once was.

With What Did You Bring For Lunch you’ll be on your way to eating better AND saving money in no time!

I’m not here to give you a fish, I’m here to teach you how to fish. 

My Story

   Let’s skip all the pretentious snobbery involved with cooking and get down to the meat and potatoes, shall we (get it?).  I’m just a regular guy who has a passion for food.  I like food that tastes good and doesn’t take all day to cook.  I work erratic shifts and while I would love to spend all day in the kitchen cooking I simply can’t.  I live alone so there’s no one to make me food if I’m hungry.  Cook or starve!  It all started when I was about ten years old.  I remember cooking my first meal one summer.  It was chicken breast and potatoes.  The chicken was tough and the potatoes were WAY underdone.  I cooked it myself and was proud even though it tasted like crap.  I kept making the same meal over and over again until it tasted right.  I tried to understand what the food was doing so I could replicate it time after time.

   Fast forward to high school.  I come from a busy family and my parents were often at work and/or traveling for work.  I decided to put my cooking skills to use and make dinner for myself so that I could save my money and not starve.  This served me well as I continued this tradition in college and on into adulthood. 

Now I want to share what I’ve learned with you. 

My method of teaching is simple; let’s work together. 

How It Works

The videos are shot in my kitchen and I explain each step so you can follow along at home. 

With the included Ebook you’ll have all the specifics so you can make the recipe by using the skills you learned at the beginning of the video.  

The skills that are taught will help you make the recipes I’ve included and inspire you to make your own meals.  

What Did You Bring For Lunch? builds on itself so once you’ve mastered the basics the sky is the limit.  

The Ebook includes a section on how to create your own dish using the skills you’ve learned.

What’s on the DVD?

Recipes:

Breakfast.

• potatoes
• eggs
• bacon
• crumbled sausage

Cheeseburger Soup

    use as a template for constructing your own soup recipes

Carnitas

    savory Mexican style pork

Chicken Wings

    watch the game at home and save a bundle

Meatza

    a meat based pizza? It can be done and it IS delicious!

Greek Yogurt

    It’s easier (and cheaper) than you think

Lasagna

    Just like mom’s!

How To’s

Care for your cookware

• Washing it properly.

Cutting Board Basics

• Save time and effort by mastering your knife

Ground beef

• It’s a staple in many recipes so why not learn to do it right.

Saute

• How exactly do I use this pan anyway?

Boil Water

• There’s slightly more to it than it sounds. Slightly.

Cook Vegetables

• Caramelizing has nothing to do with cake.

I’ll give you the knowledge if you’ll provide your own imagination.  Let’s make dinner together!

Order Now!

Michael Boyle is a strength coach I highly admire and respect, so imagine my surprise when this morning he published a post about saving an Acapella singing show on TV!

I know, most days we are talking strength and conditioning or nutrition but today we visit the world of entertainment. The Sing Off, the best show on TV, is in danger of not having season 4. Please sign this petition so that we can have another great season of acapella music.

Acapella music is a dying art form, for no other reason than we have come to rely on technology and “Auto Tune” so much that these singers who get paid millions of dollars, can’t give a quality live performance.  As a professionally trained musician, this is one of my pet peeves; it offends my work ethic, my sense of discipline and demeans those who work so hard at this art form and get little to no reward.  As someone who grew up and still attends a church where we do not have instrumental music, but only do acapella singing, I can attest to the worth of this.  God gave us voices to use, not to be re-done by technology.  Let’s reward those with the talent and discipline to learn to sing acapella.  Read the information below from the Petition and please join me in signing.  This is a huge part of American heritage, let’s not let it die!

The Petition

The Sing-Off, outside of being the one of the networks 3rd highest rated shows, is one of the most positive shows on television.

It is an instrumental part of developing a stronger appreciation for the arts at a time when the teaching of art and music is under attack at almost every level.

While other entertainment venues of its kind rely on either negativity, or dumbing down of the skill involved in the art-form.

The Sing-Off fosters a real standard of quality in those that tread across its stage. The past contestants of The Sing-Off have shown themselves to be resilient practitioners of A Cappella music and stalwart champions of music in education. They have shown depth of character in helping their fellow competitors, long after the end of their respective seasons. They have gone around the world to help show that music can truly be the universal language. Help this continue! Sign this petition, and help convince the NBC network that The Sing-Off deserves another season.

 

“So, you know that I’m playing with a couple community groups around the area, but with my job and other things I have going on, I don’t have the time to dedicate to taking lessons and I don’t practice as much anymore y question is, I was wondering if you had suggestions on some etudes or exercises that I could play around on to keep my fingers and technique at least where it is.

Basically, I was wondering if you had suggestions on things I can do to keep up my technique. I can tell I’m not at the level I was at in college anymore… but I don’t want to keep declining. I have a few scale exercises from college, but I just thought I’d ask if you had any thoughts or suggestions or words of wisdom?”

 

I have no doubt her question actually resonates with a large percentage of the population.  Maybe you started out in music, maybe even got a music degree and for whatever reason, life took you away from being able to play and now here you find yourself all this time later, not as good as you once were but no idea how to get back into it.

These are my suggestions to her:

Hi L! Good to hear from you!  Sure, I’ve got some suggestions.

There are lots of fun etudes that are challenging as well, my favorites are the Piazzola Tango Etudes and there is also a book of Flamenco etudes that are fun as well. I JUST bought the Trevor Wye Omnibus edition (books 1-5) to use with his piccolo practice book and wondered why I didn’t know about it sooner! it’s like you’re taking lessons with him when you go through the books. I would DEFINITELY go get that one. You can get it here:

Trevor Wye has an Omnibus edition, which is books 1-5 of his lesson books and it covers tone, technique, intonation, articulation, vibrato, you name it.  He has another book after that, book 6 which is his Advanced Practice Book.  I highly recommend these

look inside

Trevor Wye’s Practice Books for the Flute (Omnibus Edition Books 1-5). For Flute (Flute). Music Sales America. Classical. Softcover. 200 pages. Novello & Co Ltd. #NOV120851. Published by Novello & Co Ltd. (HL.14036445) (1) …more info

Book 6: the Advanced Practice book – it incororates a lot of things from the first 5 books:

Trevor Wye Practice Book for the Flute (Volume 6 – Advanced Practice). For Flute. Music Sales America. Softcover. 36 pages. Novello & Co Ltd. #NOV120591. Published by Novello & Co Ltd. (HL.14036443)

…more info

Etudes, as you know, are a great way to incorporate everything that you have been working on in detail (tone, technique, etc.) into a tuneful studey. I’m much more of a fan of etudes that have an ethnical flair to them. The Piazzola Tango Etudes are nice enough that you can even play them in concert if you have the opportunity. Here’s the Piazzola;

look inside

Tango-Etudes pour Flute seule (for Flute Solo) By Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992). Arranged by Pierre Andre Valade. For flute solo (or violin solo). Latin, Argentina and 20th Century. Difficulty: difficult. Flute solo book. Standard notation. Composed 1987. 11 pages. Published by Editions Henry Lemoine (LM.24897)

(8)
…more info

The Flamenco Studies are a lot of fun too – they are technically challenging but for me, much more fun as they can really help you work on your rubato and phrasing:

3 Virtuoso Flamenco Studies By Krystof Zgraja. Schott. 15 pages. Schott Music #ED8425. Published by Schott Music (HL.49007999)

…more info
An additional book I’ve found immensely helpful in practicing piccolo (since I haven’t had piccolo lessons in a long time, it’s a nice way to have a refresher course) is Trevor Wye’s Practice Book for Piccolo.  What’s great about this is that you can use it in tandem with the Omnibus edition, but even if not, there’s excellent information in it, like you are getting a piccolo lesson from Trevor himself.  After discussing a particular practice method he puts them into practice by including a massive amount of orchestral excerpts, immensely helpful in my opinion. No piccoloist should be without it.

look inside

Practice Book for the Piccolo For Piccolo. Music Sales America. Softcover. 214 pages. Novello & Co Ltd. #NOV120658. Published by Novello & Co Ltd. (HL.14036416) (2) …more info

There is a vast amount of literature when it comes to practicing flute and getting back into it after a hiatus, however long, can be a bit daunting.  I’m sure others will chime in with what they like and have used, such as the Taffanel and Gaubert studies, Reichert Daily Exercises and multitudes of exercises by Moyse, but these are my suggestions as a starting point for basics to get into it, as just about all of the above is covered in some way in these tomes.

I invite you to leave your comments below on what has worked for you, what you use with your students, etc.

If you don’t know who the Muppets are, well, Google it, I don’t have time to explain it to you.  To those of you who DO know, the name “Beaker” might ring a bell.  Beaker was one half of the Science duo of Dr. Bunson and his assistant Beaker.   Beaker’s remarkable traits were his his face (a perpetual frown) and voice (something akin to the Road Runner). When explaining a “correct” embochure to my students, I tell them several things, but I usually end up referring to Beaker.  So now, if I see them getting a little too tight, (this works great with the little ones) I tell them to “make your Beaker face!” and when they quit laughing from feeling so silly, the sound improves.

There are probably as many opinions on what a correct flute embouchure is as there are people on the planet.  I have two philosophies:

1. If you sound great in all registers and you have no complaint with your tone quality or lip flexibility, I don’t care what it looks like.  If you sound great and like it, rock on with your bad self.
2. If #1 does not apply to you, I will teach you the way that works for me and makes the most sense to me.  Every student that has mastered this to some degree has come away with a MUCH better tone quality, lip flexibility and ability to control the air than otherwise.  This embouchure is to pout and frown….more correctly, make the Beaker face!

I’ve convey this by saying several things.  See which works for you:

1. Pout: your bottom lip comes out.  Now keep it there by
2. Frowning.   Pretend you’re a 4 year old about to throw a fit.  What do you look like?

These two things of course, tend to overexaggerate the correct embouchure but it’s a start.  From there….

• Stick your fingers in the corner of your lips and pull down.  Now grab your fingers with your lips (corners).  That is how you hold your lips down.
• Put your hands on the side of your face and pull down.  What happens to your lower lip? It comes down and goes out.  When you stop laughing see if you can hold it there.
• Think of your bottom lip as an aircraft carrier.  The planes have to have enough runway to fly, right? Well, if you pull your corners back what happens to your lip? It gets sucked in and then your run way is too short and what happens to the planes?  We don’t want to kill pilots, so let’s keep the runway nice and long, ok?d
• Now that you have your run way set, let’s talk about your top lip, what does it do?  Think of it as being like a garage door, it goes up and down.  Put your hand i front of your face and blow a stream of air from the bottom of your hand to the top (without moving your jaw).  How did you do it?  Your top lip moved the air stream.

So, now that you’ve got your Beaker face set up, now what?  This would be the finished product:

1. Corners are down, pulling the lip out.
2. The top lip is from where all the control originates.
3. Keep your lips together and then let the air create a hole.  Blow steadily – this is your new embouchure.

So how do you work on keeping this new embouchure?  USE A MIRROR! So many times we think we are doing one thing when we are actually doing another.  Get set up and look in the mirror.  Is it what you thought? Can you do more?  Play and watch, does it change? Can you hold it there?

The guy at left is doing it pretty well actually!

Now, if you find yourself with your embouchure starting to tighten back up and your corners pulling back, try this little trick: inflate your cheeks, yup, just like Dizzy Gillespie.  Ok, so you don’t have to LOOK like him, but you get the idea, right? You can’t pull your corners back and puff out your cheeks at the same time, it can’t be done, you have to pick one or the other!

Why would you want to inflate your cheeks?  It FORCES you to learn to use your upper lip to direct the air, instead of the corners, where you probably learned.  I’ve seen that you can only go so far with your tone and lip flexibility with tight lips on a flute.  If you don’t relearn how to use your top lip to direct the air, you will be very limited in what you can do to play.

RELAAAAAXXXX……..

This is something I tell all flute players: we work too hard to play.  We make it so much harder than it actually is!  Playing the flute should be easy.  And that’s relatively easy, mind you.  What I mean is that if your jaw hurts or neck hurts or lip hurts after playing…you’re doing it wrong.  We have the most relaxed embouchure in the band/orchestra.  Don’t copy anyone else’s embouchure because it just won’t work. You’re not a clarinetist, oboist or trumpet player, so your embouchure shouldn’t look like there’s either!

If you would like more detailed help with your playing, I’m available for lessons via Skype and in person in Nashville come August 2012.  Please send me an email at angela@musicstrong.com or check out the “lessons” tab at the top under Music Services.

In the meantime, let Beaker be your guide – and make your Beaker face when you play!

In the fitness world it seems there are two types of people and ne’er the twain shall meet:

1) slackers.

2) Overachievers

The former group is comprised of people who complain about what they don’t have, read books while walking on the treadmill, aimlessly wander the  gym picking up dumbbells here and there and then return to the treadmill where it’s “safe” to continue another chapter, content in their mediocrity yet constantly complaining they don’t get “results”.  This can also apply to the people who never leave their couches who are merely content to order every ab-blaster, Shake-Weight, Hydroxy-Slim-Wham-Bam-Fat-Be-Gone-Pill and other late night TV infomercial weight loss wonder.

The latter consists of those who don’t understand de-loading, rest weeks or the power of rest in general and if they take more than a day or two away from exercise or lifting start to get cabin fever.  These are also the people who tend to run themselves into the ground, wonder why they don’t see “results”, get sick, injuries or their muscles quit “growing”.

Granted, all these things can be chalked up to other causations but if you’ve ever step foot in a gym, you will doubtless have see these two types of people.  Rare is the person who lifts 2-4 days MAXIMUM, does little cardio (if at all) for weight loss and only if they enjoy it (aka cycling, running, etc) and it’s a rare day to see them be in the gym for more than an hour at a time.  Comprise this with either of the two individuals above who aspire to either end of the spectrum, doing too much or too little and you’ll see what I mean.  Moderation is rare.  In our country where we are all about excess, this spills over to the stupid slogan of the 1980′s “No Pain No Gain”.

I cry foul.

As I have stated in previous posts,  there is a definite time and place for rest and time away from exercise.  Now, if you find yourself part of the first group, this isn’t your problem.  Your problem is that you have no idea what to do so you are paralyzed by a fear of the unknown and are content to stay in your “safe” zone.  How do you fix this?  Hire a trainer for goodness sakes.  It will be the best thing you have ever done for yourself.  You’ll learn proper form, good workouts that aren’t senseless (this is if you have a trainer who has a clue what they are doing, and there are plenty who have no idea….they just think they do because it worked for them….those are the trainers to stay away from.  Get a trainer who can explain EVERYTHING to you, even if you don’t care, because that will show you they know what they’re talking about) and with good luck and good help, you will progress to the elusive and desirable “Moderate” category.

If you find yourself part of the 2nd group, working out 6 days a week, sometimes 2x’s a day, first off, ask yourself WHY?  Why do I really want to devote this much time to the gym?  When was the last time I got measurable results?  When was the last time I took a week off?  If you can’t remember when, then for goodness’ sake, do us all a favor and walk out of the gym right now and don’t touch another pair of dumbbells for two weeks.  Yes, TWO WEEKS.  GET OVER IT.

Yes. Rest is good.

The body was designed to move, yes, but we also need rest.  You don’t grow in the gym you tear down.  Literally.  You rebuild outside of the gym when you are resting.  When you don’t rest, you don’t recover and eventually the body will start giving you warning signals (illness, sleeplessness, brain fog, aching joints, DOMS that doesn’t go away, low energy) and if you ignore these, it can completely shut itself down and you can get injured or become very ill.

I could go on and on as to “why” certain people fall into this category:

• Type “A” Personality
• Think more is better
• Don’t undertand the relationship between lifting and rest/recovery
• Only read muscle mags and blogs about how pain is good and you have to really kill yourself in the gym everytime you go or you’ve wasted your time
• Avoiding home
• Avoiding other things or people
• Feel like the gym and your body is the only thing over which you have control

If any of the last three are you, I strongly recommend finding a friend to talk to, a counselor or finding some other way to face your problems head on instead of coping with them through exercise.  If you don’t, they can move on to other coping mechanisms like addiction, strange food behaviors, becoming unsociable, etc.

This post is inspired by my current state.  If you keep up with me on Facebook at all, you’ll notice my schedule is go-go-go nonstop seems like.  Lifting, training for a cycling century, training my clients, teaching flute lessons (driving to all said appointments) orchestra rehearsals, Drill with the Army in another state, more driving….

It caught up with me. 

The last few days I’ve noticed this:

• Immediately after I get out of bed I wonder where I can get some caffeine
• After a full night’s sleep I am tired/exhausted
• I don’t nap and if I just lay down for a second I fall asleep
• I can’t sleep at night
• During the day I feel jittery, on edge and tired all at the same time
• No energy for every day activities
• My appetite is whacked out/not normal
• Lifting and cycling are more difficult than they should be.

These are all warning signs and symptoms of adrenal fatigue.  I have consumed too much caffeine, been under a little too much stress and not taken adequate time off to recover.  While my schedule can’t change, I can change.  For the rest of the week, I WILL NOT EXERCISE.  No cycling, no lifting, just general activity and lots of rest when I can.  Considering I have to drive to TN back within a 48 hour time period, shoot at the range with the Army, play a dress rehearsal with the orchestra and play a solo at an Orchestra Concert there is really no reason to add vigorous exercise on top of it.  My body is yelling at me to rest and thankfully, I’m at least wise enough to listen.

Sadly, too many exercisers are so addicted to their “sport” that they don’t listen until their bodies force them to pay attention.

Listen up, if any of those symptoms above apply to you, if you feel burned out in the gym, if you’ve been hitting it hard and just don’t have the motivation then STOP.  Your body is asking for some time off.  Even if it isn’t, a few days can do wonders for you and won’t hurt a thing.  You won’t lose muscle (if you’ve been lifting hard, you might even gain), you won’t get fat (unless you overeat during your time of resting)  – in fact, you just might lose some water weight as your cortisol and inflammation markers come down.

Sometimes time off has a convenient way of putting itself in our schedules when we travel, have family over, life circumstances get in the way, but for those for whom the gym is life, if you do not take time off, this is sure to befall you:

Is there more than one type of rest?

Yes, there is passive and active rest.  Passive is just what it sounds like, you don’t do ANYTHING but enjoy doing nothing.  Active rest is something very low impact and low intensity, a walk, an easy spin on the bike but don’t take that to mean brisk walking and spinning class, you’re missing the point.  Enough movement to get the blood flowing to aid recovery and no more.  Lyle McDonald wrote a great article about it all here: The Importance of Rest.

How often should I take a break?

You should take, at minimum, 1 day COMPLETELY off (as in passive rest) once a week, and maybe one more of active rest.  All of this, of course, depends on what you do for training.  For those who workout intensely several times a week, a general rule is to go hard for 3 weeks and take 1 week easy.  If you are part of the NASM crowd and follow the OPT model, this can be put into the model as well.  Even if you are training at level 1 Strength Endurance, even though you are lifting very high repetition, the intensity level can still be high depending on your level of fitness. Add to this the slowness of tempo of your movements and you have a deceptively hard workout.  You can do a de-load week or, lower the intensity a bit and then move to the next phase.  What I like to do with my clients is plan off weeks for 1-2 weeks here and there during the year, mostly to coincide with when they couldn’t be training anyway: vacation, family time, travelling, etc.    From Lyle:

Almost all athletes take easy periods in their training (some call this unloading or deloading) although this depends significantly on how they are training. And the ones that don’t should. The average scheme is to train intensely for 3 weeks and then take an easy week where volume, intensity, frequency or all three are reduced. Others will go 5-6 weeks and then take an easy week. My generic bulking routine, alternates 2 weeks of easy training with 4-6 weeks pushing the weights up I’d probably suggest, on average, taking a full week off from training after every 3 cycles (18-24 weeks) of continuous training.

Longer cycles of 16-18 weeks are often followed by periods of 5-10 days completely off from training. Charlie Francis, sprint coach extraordinaire, often gave his athletes 5 days completely off from training between every 12-16 week block. So they’d work up to a new peak over 12 weeks (on a 3 week hard/1 week easy schedule) including their final taper, take 5 days off to recharge and then do it again. Yet most people training recreationally think they can go all out year round (bodybuilders are notorious for this).

Additionally, at the end of every training season, most athletes will take anywhere from 2-4 weeks away from their sport during what is called the transition phase (where you transition from the previous season of training to the next). This used to be called the off-season, athletes would sit around for a month or two but, with periods that extended, they would detrain and lose a lot of fitness. Now it’s closer to 2-4 weeks but with some amount of activity to prevent too much fitness loss.

 

The short of the situation is this:

• If you can’t remember the last time you took a break, now is a good time. Face your fears.
• If you have any of the symptoms listed above physically, now is a good time for a break.
• Don’t discount the mental side.  If you just aren’t “into it” at the gym, burn-out is real, listen to your body and what it’s trying to tell you. TAKE a break.  When you come back to the gym you’ll be pumped to be there.
• If your weight loss has stalled or your joints hurt it’s time for a break.

My suggestions for break time?

• Eat good foods.  Use this time to really concentrate on your diet, eating stuff without labels and getting plenty of protein, and FATS (great for your hormone levels, joints, etc.) and focus on eating some anti-inflammatory foods like fish oil, coconut oil, pineapple and cherries.
• Make good friends with the foam roller.  Use this time to roll every day and find your tender spots.  Get your body back into alignment.
• Get a massage
• Go see the chiropractor before/after said massage
• Drink lots of water
• Enjoy the rest and maybe get in the sun for a little extra vitamin D you may have been missing out on
• Catch up on some reading, never have time? Now is good.
• Reevaluate your training plans and goals.  Is it working for you?

As always, I”d love to hear your thoughts.  Have any of you been here? Are you a rehabbed Thing 1 or Thing 2 and proud to have joined the “moderate” group?  Share you success stories and leave your questions, I’m always here for you.  And join my conversation over on Facebook, I post a lot of great articles there as well.

How to Lose Fat – The TRUTH About Fat Loss

Even though the main impetus of Music Strong is to help people create stronger, less pain-riddled, more mobile, fully functioning bodies (with an emphasis on musicians) as a personal trainer, the majority of my clients still come to me with one main goal in mind: FAT LOSS.  That’s why YOU would hire a personal trainer, right? Even though exercise can have a great impact on body composition (within the realm of gaining shape, muscle, more definition, etc.) the results you do or do not achieve when it comes to fat loss are directly related to what goes in (or does not go into) your mouth.

With every program I write, I give each client some general nutritional advice. My goal is to educate my clients on good food choices that will help them achieve their goals, but most can’t, won’t or just don’t seem to follow it because I’m “too vague”. You see, most diets today use gimmicks to achieve results.  They have one thing in common though, and that is that they achieve the same goal, the one true thing that will achieve fat loss, A CALORIC DEFICIT. If you do not eat less than you need, you will not lose weight/fat, period.

I don’t care if it’s organic, vegan, vegetarian, home-grown, scratch-made or anything else – you eat more than you need you won’t lose. PERIOD.

• Weight Watchers has you track points. You stay at your points or under and you lose weight because you have created a CALORIC DEFICIT.
• Adkins eliminates all carbs = less calories = CALORIC DEFICIT
• Paleo eliminates processed foods and grains, this has you eating less calorically dense foods which can = a CALORIC DEFICIT.
• “Clean Eating” has you eliminate most processed foods (which are more calorically dense) and focus on “clean” foods (i.e. 1-ingredient, non-packaged items) causing you to fill up faster on less calories which =  A CALORIC DEFICIT.
• Even Slim Fast: 2 shakes per day and a “sensible dinner”. What the heck does that mean? You know, deep down what that means, it’s common sense, it’s what your ENTIRE diet should be comprised of, however, since you replaced 2 meals with liquid you have created a CALORIC DEFICIT.

See a trend?

Sadly, most people think that the balanced approach won’t work for them because it’s “too vague”.  Sure, it’s more vague because you don’t eliminate entire food groups, you have less rules and you know what the real problem is?  It makes you WORK for it.  It means you have to educate yourself.  You have to read labels, count calories, write down your food and most of all PAY ATTENTION.  This is the main problem for our country, we have no attention span and when it comes to fat loss, which is hard enough on its own, telling us to work for it by:

• cooking meals yourself (not pre-packaged diet foods via Lean Cuisine, etc)
• Reading nutritional labels
• writing down what you eat
• counting calories – yes ALL of them
• planning out what you are going to eat for the day with each meal having protein, carbs and fat, and not just eliminating a food group or a meal all together…

Yes, it’s harder, but it’s also worth it.  Why? Because you can eat like a normal person, just less and lose. And the kicker is, when you get to the weight at which you want to be, you can maintain that weight doing the same things that got you there, only eating a little bit more.  What happens when Atkins is over? You eat carbs again, you get fat again. Why? Because you didn’t change your HABITS.

More work, but worth it.  Enough of my ranting, listen to the author below (full link is above to the blog) – they say it so eloquently.

Being A Flutist in the National Guard – Friday 4:30 PM

The first presentation will be Friday at 4:30 PM and is entitled “Being a Flutist in the National Guard”.

Drawing on my 8 years of experience as a member of the 129th Army National Guard Band and as a recruiting assistant,I wool be bringing you all kind of information to let you know about this viable job opportunity, the demands and the perks of joining. So many musicians know about the Premier bands and Active Duty band but are unaware that there is a part time military band opportunity that offers fool time benefits but would allow you to go to school, finish school, keep your job and not even have to move to live somewhere else. There will be time for Q&A and LOTS of FREE goodies to everyone who comes. If you have a question you would like answered, feel free to leave a comment below, email me at Angela@Music Strong.com, or leave a message on the facebook page.

Morning Mobility – Sunday 9 AM

The second presentation wool be given in Sunday morning at 9AM and is entitled “Morning Mobility”.

This presentation will be more of an interactive workshop as I will lead you through a property whole body warm yup to address your muscle imbalances, increase your mobility, and get you ready to play for the day. Exercises and stretches learned will be appropriate for preparing fits the practice eton out the weight room. In addition, the equipment used in class shook be available for purchase right then: $15 for a foam roller and $5 for a mini-band. This will save you cost plus shipping if you were to buy them online and this way tippy learn how to use them right in the class and can take them with you to start using right away whereas if you wait to buy you might forget how to use them. Again, if you have specific areas our questions you would like addressed, leave a comment below, email me or leave a message on the facebook page.

Special Bonuses for Flute Convention Attendees!

Bonus #1 FREE Assessment

As a special bonus for those already at the convention,I will be offering FREE live assessments and consultations, to get yours all you need to do is email me to let nd know you are interested and we will set up a time. There is no cost and no obligation for this, the info is free and I will be able to show  you your probable individual muscle imbalances and exercises and stretches to help you address them.

Bonus #2

As a secondary bonus, I will also be offering single training sessions at a reduced rate. If you would like to get a free assessment with me AND an individualized workout where I can lead you through a proper workout for you to take home and do on your own, I will be offering training sessions in the hotel gym for $40 for a whole hour, that’s a reduction of from my usual hourly rate of $65 – a $25 savings!  Again, this offer is only good through Sunday the 29th.  I will be arriving at the hotel Thursday night and will have time that evening, Friday morning and select hours thereafter to lead you through your workout.  Contact me TODAY!

Bonus #3

As a thank-you to all convention attendees, if you sign up with me for 3 months, you will get 50% off your first month with me!  With online training only costing $100/mo, that’s a $50 savings and you get SO much: an assessment, individualized plan, access to online meal tracking softwear and video demonstrations, goal tracking information, motivational emails, Skype session, nutritional information and more!  This is a deal that can’t be beat, so make sure to sign up with me at the Convention, because this deal expires on Sunday the 29th.

So, to reiterrate, here are your bonuses if you are going to the convention:

• Free assessment
• Special reduced price of $40 for 1-hour on-site training session
• 50% off first month of training with me when you sign up for 3 months of training

What do you need to do to take advantage of these offers?

• Contact me via Facebook: www.Facebook.com/MusicStrong
• Send me an email at Angela@MusicStrong.com
• Leave a message below this post
• At the convention, you can get ahold of me by texting/calling 931-698-3130.

See you in Orlando!!!

Hard to believe it’s here, isn’t it?  While you’re out doing your Christmas shopping, admit it, occasionally you buy your gifts with an ulterior motive.  Sometimes you buy your husband a gift certificate to Netflix, a restaurant or the movies…because you know you will benefit from it, too.  Well, fitness gifts can have that reputation, too.  In fact, if you gave a person you love a gift certificate for personal training, even though they say they want to get in shape, isn’t it usually given to the spouse or loved one that you really wish would get healthy/lose fat/insert ulterior motive here?

Of course you do!

Whether you have ulterior motives, you are looking for good gifts to help the ones you love feel better, or you’re just looking for a good deal for yourself for the Christmas and heck, why not treat yourself?  Isn’t one of the best gifts you can give your spouse is taking care of your health?

That said, I’ve compiled a list of my top 10 fitness gifts for this year.

Foam Roller

If by now, you don’t know why I love foam rollers, you obviously haven’t been reading many of my posts?  Why give yourself or someone you love the gift of a 1-time massage when you can give the gift of daily self-massage?  Foam rollers provide just that.  They break up adhesions, release trigger points, increase mobility and circulation and just feel GOOD!

From Lee Burton, PhD, ATC, CSCS

“Using sticks and foam rolls can be a great way to prepare your body for a more dynamic warm-up or movement prep activity.  These can provide an increase in blood flow or create more extensibility in the tissue which will allow for more effective mobility and flexibility work.  These two pieces of equipment also play an integral role in recovery after a workout to help alleviate soreness, trigger points, or tightness in tissue.  Sticks will provide more isolated pressure over a specific area of a muscle which may be sore due to a trigger point.  Foam rolls provide general pressure which will help increase blood flow, assisting in alleviating generalized soreness after a workout.  Both are self-help techniques which should be part of a both the warm-up and recovery phases of training.”

The Stick

Funny name, but that’s exactly what it is: a stick with rolling individual spindles that increase blood flow and massage the knots out of your body.  These are excellent for those who cannot use foam rollers (like the elderly, those with osteoporosis or the obese)  or those who desire a more concentrated  pressure than the foam rollers provide.

Spikey Ball and Thera-Roll and/or Tennis Ball




These three are along the same lines as the first two, but they provide more targeted treatment.  These items are small and can get into hard to reach places like the rhomboids (in between the shoulder blades), the arch of the foot, in the rotator cuff, the neck, the attachment point of the chest muscles to the arm, etc.  If you’ve ever had a massage, you know that these areas are rife with trigger points and are usually painful. The great thing about all these items is that they are very small, portable and just as effective.

Gymboss Interval Timer


I first found out about this little guy through Martin Berkhan on his Leangains site.  Why do I like it and what is it for?  We all know intervals suck and it’s super easy to take longer than necessary to rest.  Sticking to prescribed rest times in a program (besides tempo) is one of the hardest things to do.  The Gym Boss Timer will beep out your intervals for you after you set them and since it keeps going, you have no excuse not to keep going, too!  Much better than a stopwatch because this is hands free.  You set it and go.

• Makes workouts easier to plan and execute with more consistency
• Auto mode repeats intervals; manual mode acts as a countdown timer.
• 1 or 2 different time intervals can range from 2 seconds to 99 minutes
• Alarm beeps, vibrates or both in durations of 1, 5 or 10 seconds.

Plate Mates and Fractional Plates

I love these little gems.  If you’ve ever done the Dogg Crapp 5×5 program or a similar program that has you progressing in a certain way over time, you know that eventually you get stuck and going up 5 lbs. is just too much.  These little guys are magnetic and come in much smaller increments; mine add 1 1/2 lbs.

The fractional plates break it down even smaller, into 1/4 lb.s, 1/2 lbs, 3/4 lbs, 1 lb, etc.  which is a huge motivation booster because when you are trying to bust through that plateau on your deadlift, squat, row, bench, whatever and you only have 5 lbs, you are going to be stuck at that weight for quite a while.  If you have these little guys, you can see progress almost each and every time you go because you are going up in such small increments, you aren’t stalling!

Bumper Plates

I know very few gyms who have these and it drives me crazy.  Why? Well for one, I’m a short lady at only 5’3″ and two, I had to completely scrap my deadlift technique and start over from scratch.  What does this mean?  It means that unless I get boxes, and keep stacking them under the plates and bar, I CANNOT practice setting up correctly for a deadlift because the proper deadlift height is the 45 lb. plates.  I’m sorry, but when you’re new to training, you can’t start out with that much weight, and picking the bar up from the floor with 5′s or 10′s is asking for an injury.  Bumper plates allow you to add only 5-10 lbs. per side but they are the same size as 45 lb. plates.  Problem solved.

Mini Bands,JC Travel Bands and Super Bands



These bands, in my opinion, are indispensable for several different reasons.  First off, bands are the easiest and most portable workout equipment you can use.  They fold up into just about any suitcase, backpack, gig bag, you name it and can you say that about a dumbbell?  Even if you don’t belong to a gym or are travelling and can’t get in your normal workout, you can come pretty close to it with bands.  Here are my favorites for what to do with each:

• mini bands:
  
  wrap around ankles for lateral band walks for glute activation, place around knees when squatting or pressing as tactile cue to keep knees out
• JC Travel Bands: just as good as the full-length version but smaller and easier to take when traveling. Favorite feature?  The loop in the middle with the knot at the end.  Perfect for shutting in a door or wrapping around a door knob to do rows, pull downs, face pulls, even  bicep curls.
• Super bands
  
  : Best way to improve your pullups: band-assisted pullups.  Also great for x-band walks, partner rows, band-resisted squats, RDL’s and even pushups.

Boot Camp Gift Card

Ok, so ANY exercise class can make you tired.  Why not join a class that will leave you feeling energized, enthused and give you results and the tools you need to carry through on your goals in everyday life?  There are a ton of “boot camp classes” out there, and you have to be careful whom you pick.  Align your goals with the instructor; is the instructor there just to collect money or do they have a vested interest in each and every camper and in getting them their specific results?  That’s for whom you want to look. Sure, we usually think of getting these kinds of things for ourselves, but this really can be a great gift.  I just ran a special and had a few people buy registrations to my boot camp classes for several reasons:

• her granddaughter is home-schooled and needs more “PE”
• her sister is overweight and doesn’t fit into the gym scene, but desperately wants to lose weight and be motivated by other people
• A husband bought it for him and his wife so they could get fit together this new year.  She wanted it for Christmas!
• She wanted a boot camp class in which she could involve her whole family, not only as a fitness experience, but as a bonding experience, so she bought gift cards for everyone!

As you can see, there really aren’t many reasons not to get in on this one, especially if you join them!

Want to sign up for my boot camp classes or give a gift of a class?  Click here, add your class to the cart and upon checkout, write a note in the “note” box specifying that this is a gift! Include the name of the person and their email address and they will receive a special email note letting them know of your gift to them.

In fact, I’ll make it sweeter for you. Enter the code NEWYEAR at checkout and get 25% off each registration.  That is their first week free!

Personal Training Package

The ultimate in gift giving – the gift of fitness. Cliche? Sure, but with good reason.  If you can give someone the gift of one on one time with a personal trainer, or even sign them up with some friends (maybe even including yourself or your family) in on a semi-private group training session, everyone gets in on the experience.  They end up not only with

• better self esteem and more confidence
• fat loss or muscle gain
• better balance, bone strength and mobility
• a more positive outlook on life
• Organization and self-discipline that can easily spill over into other areas of their lives
• a new wardrobe (they’re buying it, not you! )

It’s a great option for those who lack the motivation to get in shape, and really need someone right there to show them what to do, help them along, write out the plan for them, and motivate them. But it’s also a great gift for those who are dedicated “gym rats” who might need some training tweaks or want to train with friends or heck, just could use the extra motivation and guidance once a week or so.  In any case, I’ll say this, I would LOVE for someone to buy ME a package of personal training sessions.  So if they have complained forever about losing the weight or changing their bodies, etc., why not help them stop complaining and start getting the results they want?

Become a Personal Trainer!

Do you know someone who would love to be a trainer but they don’t know where to begin or they just don’t have the money?  It’s not cheap, but getting certified is the first step towards helping countless other people ietheir results, be it muscle gain, strength gain, fat loss, increased mobility, athletic achievement or just getting over all healthier and getting to live without pain.  My job as a trainer is so rewarding to me, and especially as I can see how strength training helps those dearest to me, the musicians in pain get over their imbalances and return to playing with renewed vigor and strength, the payoff is priceless.
So, in today’s tough economy, this is a great way to help someone get a job.  If you or someone you know has been thinking about becoming a trainer, go with the best, go with the only one who will teach you how to ASSESS people and build a plan based on proven, science-backed training model, not bodybuilding myth and media hype.  Give them the best, and get them a certification or a specialization through NASM.

 

Can you believe the New Year is almost here? We will be celebrating the arrival of 2012 in 2 weeks, and at the stroke of midnight, thousands and thousands of people will be making the resolution that “ok, this is the year I will FINALLY get in shape, lose the fat,etc.”

We know how those usually happen, right? Well, why not take the steps to actually going through with it? It’s tough to do it on your own, and Panama City Beach Boot Camp is here to help you make it happen!

We’ve got 3 classes in which you can register:

• Beginner’s
• Advanced
• Women’s Only

The Beginner’s and Women’s Only classes will meet 12 times during January (roughly 3x’s a week) and the Advanced class will meet 17 times (roughly 4x’s a week). If you would like to see the class schedule (soon to be finalized), you can view all class dates, times and locations here: www.pcbeachbootcamp.com/classes.htm

Boot Camp classes make great gifts, too, so if you’re stuck on what to get someone, why not give them the gift of health? Heck, why not get one for yourself, too and then you BOTH can go together?

Why should you join PC Beach Boot Camp instead of any other exercise class?

• It costs less than a personal training session
• For a whole month of workouts it’s less than a gym membership with group training sessions
• You get individualized attention
• Each camper will get a FREE individualized assessment
• Any exercise class can make you tired, our class will actually make you healthy, fit and teach you HOW to reach your goals in a lasting way. But you’ll get tired, too!
• You will get nutritional information, guidance and recipes
• You will get goal tracking tools
• Weekly encouragement from your trainer
• The cameraderie of being in a motivational close-knit class where everyone is meeting their goals together. Peer support (and sometimes pressure) can be one of the most important tools to reaching your fitness goals.
• We will help you overcome your specific muscle imbalances by showing you HOW to take care of yourself inside and outside of class.
• Access to HFPN.com – the online resource for exercise tracking, instruction, meal tracking and sample meal plans made out by registered dieticians, goal tracking, you name it!
• Discounts on Music Strong Personal Training packages!
• Discounts with Massage Works!

So as you can see, there are a myriad of reasons you should join, and not a whole lot of reasons why you shouldn’t. So stop with the excuses and commit to finally making it happen. Fat loss should be a short-term journey, not a life-long one. Get it done, get fit, get healthy, get mobile!

To register for classes, go to either www.PCBeachBootCamp.com/store.htm

or

http://www.musicstrong.com/shop/panama-city-beach-boot-camp/

And just to sweeten the deal, if you need a little incentive to sign up, how about a discount?

If you purchase NOW, through the Music Strong site, you will get your first week FREE. That’s 25% off a whole month!

And when you join, you’ll be given the option at your first class to trade that in for an even SWEETER deal…but you’ll have to register to find out what THAT is.

So go to www.MusicStrong.com/shop/panama-city-beach-boot-camp/ and add your class to the cart. At checkout, enter the coupon code NEWYEAR for your discount and then watch your inbox for goodies, your information packet and all kinds of fun stuff about the classes.

I can’t highly recommend this series enough.  The rhomboids are a muscle that has become chronically stretched and weakened in our “bent over” society: when one bends over a steering wheel, table, computer or music stand the arms pull forward stretching the upper back muscles (and the rhomboids) forward when their main job is to contract and pull the shoulder blades BACK.  This can cause weakness, pain and ultimately lead to injury.

The YTWL is a warm-up that I have been seeing and using for quite a long time, sadly, I hardly ever see anyone in the weight room using these movements and if I do, they do them incorrectly.  Read and learn and if you want more detailed information he has a whole series on his blog, but he sums it up pretty nicely here.

Love to hear your thoughts in the comment section below!

To conclude my whole TRUTH about the YTWL Shoulder series. I wanted to do a recap summary of everything that was covered in my recent posts. – If you have already read/watched each post. Its still a good idea to read this because I’ve thrown a few key points that have yet to be covered. If you have not seen any of the TRUTH about the YTWL posts. I highly suggest you take a close look at each of the videos. -

An Swift and Orderly Change

- First off, the YTWL  is no longer Y-T-W-L It’s now the L-Y-T-P – The L’s are put first for the simple reason that they are the hardest / weakest movement. It only makes sense, if you place the weakest movement last, as in the traditional method, you’re more likely to have a harder time doing it correctly due to fatigue. – I’ve never understood why any one would put the weakest movement first. I guess we all just went in the order of the name YTWL. The L came last in the name so it came last in training. Well, no more! It’s L’s first from now on! -

Better Positioning = Better Results

Another issue that needed to be resolved is the traditional body positioning before performing the YTWL. Most folks are doing these from one of two positions – 1. Standing, bent over in a similar fashion to an RDL or how a Baseball short stop would stand. 2. Lying prone on the floor or on a bench. – Along with my good friend and colleague Mike Robertson,I really like the standing version! As Mike says “its a great way to integrate the torso”. How right he is! – Standing with the torso at a 45 degree angle is also a great way to change the force angle of the LYTP series. That said, I do have a problem with the prone version. – While doing the prone version from the floor or bench, there is nothing preventing you from extending your lumbar spine and reenforcing a compensatory/ dysfunctional pattern. – By using a stability ball and a bent knee position, you eliminate all possibility of the lumbar extension. – Plus, as Mike Robertson says “lying prone on a physioball so that they are forced to extend their t-spine actively versus passively”. – Mike is one of the best in our field because he understands this stuff and I highly recommend reading his Blog and checking out Mike’s products. -

Check out this video for more on how to use a swiss ball to improve your LYTP shoulder exercises.

A Quick Disclaimer

Before I move on to cover the rest of the letters (YTW), I wanted to make something very clear. My recommendations for each of these applications is very general and based on what I fell to be best for most healthy, uninjured people. – With these and any other exercise applications, there is never just one way to do things. I’m most certainly not claiming that these techniques are the best and only right way to do your shoulder pre-hab training. – As a Strength Coach, it’s my job to find methods that maximize success and minimizes error. I will tell you with confidence that, each of these techniques has been well thought out and battle tested successful in my setting with 100′s of clients and athletes of all levels. Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, lets talk some more shop!

A New Angle on Y’s

The first thing I want to address here is hand position. – When your hand goes over head as they do when performing Y’s, the safest position for your shoulder to be in is the neutral position. This is with your thumbs point toward the sky, if you’re lying prone. – This is not a new concept and fairly understood among coaches and trainers. However, I have seem some coaches performing Y’s while holding a dowel rod. This is problem because holding the dowel takes you out of neutral and places your shoulders into some internal rotation. In doing so, there is NO added muscular benefit, only an increased risk or shoulder irritation and impingement issues. -

This is why I choose not to use a dowel rod or to keep the palms flat while doing Y’s. So, when doing Y’s, keep those thumbs pointed up, toward the sky! -

Why Don’t Your Y’s Look Like Y’s?

The next mistake folks seem to be making, is the angle at which they are performing the Y’s. In many cases, people place their arms next to their ears (parallel to one another) as in a superman position. – First off, this arm position doesn’t even make a Y, it makes an I. – Secondly, and more importantly, this is not the best strategy to maximize recruitment of the lower traps which is the intended goal of the exercise. – Here’s a quick anatomy lesson. As you can clearly see in the picture, the lower trap muscle fibers run at a 45 degree angle. The best way to stimulate a muscle is to line up the force vector with the line of muscle (fibers) pull. – In other words, in order to perform Y’s effectively, the arms should be placed at 45 degree angle ( in the same line as the low trap fibers). – Some folks do Y’s with their arms at more of an angle. But, in most cases the angle is not as wide as it should be relative to the angle of the fibers in the low traps.

You can watch the video below to see the angle I recommend.

No More I’s

Certain folks are actually doing I’s (arms parallel) along with the rest of the letters. I recommend against this because there is no added muscular  benefit, only more room for error and compensation. -

How to get Maximal Lower Trap Recruitment

I could make this part a long and complicated discussion. But, its not my style. So, I’m going to hit the ground running.

If your arms are at the correct 45 degree angle, as I described above, there is no need to consciously pull your shoulder blades back and down as most coaches recommend. – In fact, doing so will more than likely cause you to compensate and use your lats as the primary muscle. This is also described in the below video. -

A great way to prevent compensation and maximally stimulate the lower traps, is to use a technique I learned from world renowned physical therapist Mark Comerford.- Once your ams are fully lifted into the Y position, attempt to reach outward away from your body. In other words, try to make your arms longer. If your arms are at the correct angle, you will NOT shrug your shoulders and compensate by using levator scap. – Due to the fact that lower trap is primarily a low load, local stabilizer muscle, this reaching out of the arms action will cause lower trap to activate to create scapular stability. -

Its also important to note, that due to fact that lower trap is primarily a low load stabilizer, it should be trained in a different load/ rep range than the rhomboids. Meaning, you will use a different rep range doing Y’s than you would doing doing T’s. – When doing Y’s, I recommend performing 5-10, 3-5 second isometric reps. I would also keep the weight low. 

(as a side note, you can see my other blog post about recruiting the lower traps)

See this video for more on Y’s

A Small Twist for Big Results on T’s

The goal of T’s is to hit primarily the rhomboids and mid traps. In order to do this, two adjustments from the traditional method need to be made. – First, when doing T’s its not necessary to external rotate your shoulders (keep your thumbs up). This has been recommended to add the additional stimulation of the external rotator muscles. – The problem with this is that most people don’t have weak external rotators as we once thought. Instead, we tend to have overused external shoulder external rotators. See the TRUTH about W’s video below for more on that. – Hard training on already overworked and irritated tissue is never a good idea. So, again, no need for that added external rotation.

If in the case you do actually have weak external rotators (which should be determined by a qualified physical therapist – not a trainer/coach who just attended a weekend assessment course), this weakness can cause them to struggle while doing T’s and interfere with the quality of the movement. – It can also distract them from the primary goal of this exercsie, which as I’ve said is to strengthen rhomboids and mid traps. As they say, if you chase two rabbits, you’ll never catch either. – In short, L’s are designed to strengthen your external rotators and therfore are better suited for that purpose. -

How to Maximally Recruit Your Rhombiods

While doing T’s, keep your shoulders and hands neutral (palms down while prone). – As you raise your arms to the side, pull your arms toward the mid-line of your body. – Don’t think of retracting you shoulder blades back and down. – Your rhomboids are responsible for scapular retraction and elevation. So, if your pull your shoulder blades down, you decrease rhomboid activation. – Plus , if you just think of puling your shoulder blades downward, you end up using your lats instead of rhomboids.

To reduce any chance of mistakes/compensation and maximize rhomboid recruitment, attempt to shorten your arms as if some one were trying to pull them out of the sockets. – Yes I know, this is the complete opposite of what I recommended earlier for performing Y’s. – It’s different for good reason!

Your Rhomboids are primarily mobility muscles. Where as you low traps are primarily stability muscles. – Put simply, muscles with different functional roles require different training protocols. – Unlike the low traps, the rhomboids are  high load dominat, mobilizers muscles. Therefore , we take a more traditional approach to training them by using heavier loads, with normal tempos for 8-12 reps. -

See this video for more on T’s…

Out with W’s, In with P’s

I’ve already given you more than enough smarter strategies for shoulder training to make your head explode. So,to keep you from having a brain overload, I’m going to keep this one short and to the point. – The W is the most useless of all the letters in the YTWL shoulder circuit. I explain exactly why in the video below. – I have replaced the W’s with P’s. The P stands for Pivot Prones, which are demonstrated in the below video as well. -

If you are wondering where the idea for the pivot prone comes from, the name originates from a neural developmental position we all learn before we start to crawl, while lying prone (on our belly) as infants. 

“At approx 5 months of age the child develops an interesting skill that contributes to their pelvic and scapular mobility.”“During the Pivot Prone posture or pattern, the upper extremities assume the high guard position with the scapulas adducted by the rhomboid muscles. The upper limbs are horizontally abducted at the shoulders and flexed at the elbows. This retraction of the shoulder girdle and posturing of the upper extremities enhances trunk extension. To assume the pivot prone posture, the anterior muscles must elongate.” Pediatric Physical Therapy, By Jan Stephen Tecklin, pg.34, Publisher:Lippincott Williams & Wilkins; Fourth Edition edition (October 1, 2007)

Now, that you understand the origin of this movement pattern, you can better appreciate the important role that pivot prones can play in regaining and maintaining a fundamental movement pattern that we all should posses. _ – Well, there you have it! I’ve given you the knowledge and the tools to improve your shoulder strength, stability and overall health. -

Enter the L,Y,T,P Shoulder Exercise Circuit

Just recently, the classes have gotten a complete overhaul in terms of how they were structured, payment, types of classes offered and we even added a new indoor location!  To kick off the revamp, the Panama City News Herald Deal of the Day has featured us all this week, December 5-10th, by offering our best option, the Month of Unlimited Boot Camp Classes, a $149 value, for ONLY $29!!!

To take advantage of this sweet deal: GO HERE
You only have a few days left to get in on this deal, and after this weekend prices will go up to normal rates:
4 Weeks: $109

6 Weeks: $129

Unlimited: $149

So get in on this while you can and try the new and improved PC Beach boot camp for only $29!  That’s less than a dollar a day and with 13 classes a week to pick from for 4 weeks, you can go to as many or as few as you want and you’ve still got the best value possible.

For full details, class schedules and updates, visit the Panama City Beach Boot Camp website at: www.PCBeachBootCamp.com

Again, this offer is only available from December 5-10th, 2011 and classes begin the week of January 1, so don’t miss out!  Go here to purchase and check out the deal!

One-On-One Private Training: I will come to your home, condo, or place of business and train you personally.  Excellent choice for those new to training, or those who are self-motivated but just need an individualized, periodized training program written for them and motivation 1-2x’s per week.

Semi-Private Group Training: Get the benefits of training with your friends while still getting an individualized program!

Online Training: Perfect for those who do not live in the Panama City area and are self-motivated, but want the stress of designing a periodized, goal-specific training program put into the hands of a NASM-CPT (soon to be CES!).

All programs come with a FREE assesssment to determine your individual muscle compensations and possible weaknesses.

Rates:

I love flexibility, don’t you?  I’ve designed my training packages to give as much flexibility as possible.  Have a unique situation? Contact me for a unique quote.

Semi-Private Group Training

I offer four different choices for in-home training.  Where you get the most bang for your buck is Semi-Private Group Training.  Most people love the cameraderie and motivation that comes with training in a group and as we all know, having someone to be accountable to is one of the keys to reaching your goals.  Our most effective option, this option is great for several groups:

• Best friends
• Walking partners wanting to take fitness to the next level
• Families
• Couples
• Mothers and Daughters
• Fathers and Sons
• Brides and bridesmaids

You get the point!  Isn’t it more fun to workout with your best friend? A little friendly competition makes you work harder, which means you get to your goals even faster! Each client will get an individual program unique to your needs and goals, but because the training session is shared, it’s more cost-effective.

Group training can be done in the home of one or another individuals or outside.

Our Semi-Private option is ideal if you:

• Love the cameraderie and support of training with a group but need an individualized program.
• You are looking for a cost-effective way to hire a personal trainer.

Short Term Commitment:                                           Annual Commitment:

1 x week: $199 per month x 3 months                             1 x week: $179 per month x 12 months

2 x week: $384 per month x 3 months                            2 x week: $344 per month x 12 months

3 x week: $539 per month x 3 months                           3 x week: $539 per month x 12 months

**Cost is per person

One-On-One Personal Training

For those clients who need more supervised instruction, require the utmost in privacy and attention to detail, 1:1 training is your package.  This is a great precursor to group training, as you will learn the skills you need to progress into training within a group.  This option is ideal for those who:

• are largely overweight and lead a mostly sedentary lifestyle
• Have little to no previous strength training experience
• You have been referred by a doctor, chiropractor, or other medical professional
• You require detailed technical instruction and closely supervised practice
• You prefer the additional privacy of 1:1 training

The beauty of this program is that, just like group training, I will come train you in the comfort and privacy of your own home, and you have no fear of failure in front of others.  There will be no other people to make you feel uncomfortable, no need to feel inadequate or out of place and you get 1:1 time with me.  You will still receive a FREE assessment where I will determine your possible muscle compensations and weaknesses and from there you will get an individualized training program that I will go through with you, step by step, exercise by exercise as you gain confidence and knowledge.

We offer three options, with the monthly option being the best value.  Not only are the rates reduced per session, with the 3 month commitment, you will have the opportunity to see your strength, fat loss or muslce gain, balance and coordination progress.

Short Term Commitment                                         

1 x per week: $200 x 3 months ($55/session)

2 x per week: $400 x 3 months ($50/session)

3 x per week: $540 x 3 months ($45/session)

With the individual packages, this is a good option for those who:

• are largely self-motivated
•  have a good amount of training experience but could use the supervision and motivation of a trainer 1-3x’s per week

Individual Session Packages

Single Session: $65/hr

4 sessions: $60/hr

8 sessions: $55/hr

12 sessions: $50/hr

24 sessions: $45/hr

Online Training

This option is excellent for those who are not in the Panama City area, but would like to still have a periodized training program that is designed specifically for them with their individual compensations addressed and goals in mind.  With this option, you will have access to HFPN.com.  I will design your training and/or cardio programs and they will be laid out for you on your own training calendar there.  You can log in, see your program laid out, complete with exercise videos and descriptions of each exercise.  You can also keep track of your diet, log your food, take your measurements and see your progress graphed on your chart.
All this for a commitment of only $100 a month. 

Gift certificates are also available. If you are interested in supporting Music Strong and giving the gift of fitness, please contact us with the package you would like to purchase and the details of the person to whom it is being given.  We will give you instructions from there.  We will have the kinks out of the system soon and the option to purchase up very soon, so please bear with us as we go through this transition period of update.

So stop dreaming and start achieving; let’s get started today!

Oh how I love this article.  Why?  Because it speaks the truth about what it actually takes to not only GET that lean body but more importantly KEEP it. In fact, as we approach Thanksgiving, the time dedicated for giving thanks for our many blessings…and promptly celebrating those blessings with eating as much of the “special” foods as we can, this article can help you address participating in that, without ruining your life.

It means being weird, sometimes.  Or what your friends might perceive as weird.

You might be riduculed.

Once you get off the fat train and onto the weight loss wagon you might notice the amount of discouragement you receive from your peers.  Those people you thought would support you instead try to sabotage you!  They see you losing weight and their first instinct is to bring you food and say “oh one donut won’t hurt, why not go off your diet for one day”?  And in the long run, they are right, but what they don’t tell you is that they will try to do this to you EVERY day and that WILL hurt you.

In fact, let’s talk about that for a minute.

Those of you who have lost weight, were you surprised at the amount of people, friends even, who didn’t support you?  They got mad at you, turned their backs on you, became snotty or what have you while they saw your success?  Sure, they liked you when you were fat, but when you actually did what you said you were going to do and started taking the weight off, suddenly they didn’t want to hear about your struggles any more?

There are a few reasons for that.

1. It makes them realize that THEY are all talk because they see what it takes to get it done and they don’t want to admit their laziness.
   It’s true.  If you don’t do the work to lose weight (and come on, you KNOW what it takes, deep down, right?) then you are not putting forth the effort, you aren’t doing the work, it’s YOUR FAULT.  Nobody makes you fat but you, and no one takes that weight off but you.  It’s easier to complain than to do the work and that’s why your friends don’t like you all the sudden, because it’s so much easier to have a friend to complain with and share in the blame game, than it is to actually suck it up and quit with the extra nibbles.  I know, because I have been there.  I like the extra bites.  But I know that when it comes down to it, those extras add up, and suddenly, I’m whining about not losing and my friend is.
2. Your success makes them feel like you are bringing their weaknesses into the light.  Aka: you call them out without meaning to.This goes along the same lines as the first point, but isn’t it true?  Why do we envy people?  They have what we don’t.  Some times we can change that.  If they have more money, well, get off your butt and go MAKE more money.  The government won’t give it to you, you have to, as Dave Ramsey says “get up, leave the cave, go kill something and drag it home”.  YOU are not entitled to anything.  This includes money, cars, fame, or that hot body that you want.  You want it?  Go after it and do what it really takes.  Stop kidding yourself.  You KNOW what you need to do but most people would rather complain about why things aren’t happening than looking inside saying “you know, this is going to be a butt-load of work, but I want it, so I’m going to do what it takes”.  This includes fat loss.  It takes HARD work to get that body.  It was hard to pass up the extra bites out of the candy dish at work.  It was hard to get up and go do your walk every day like you know you needed to.  It was hard to drag yourself out of bed early to go to boot camp class. or to workout with a trainer, or to pass up that extra whatever it is and eat more protein. Fat loss sucks because it’s HARD.  That’s why so few people succeed.  We’re not good at doing hard.  We want it and we want it now because I exist I have the right to have it.
   NO, you don’t.
   You have the right to go out and do it and get it, but you don’t have the right to just become it.  That’s why you’re still fat.  Ouch.  The truth hurts.  And that’s why your friends don’t like you.  You going out and DOING it brings light to the fact that being fat IS your fault, you CAN do it and all they are doing is complaining.  No one likes to be called out.

Oh wow, it’s easy to get on a soap box isn’t it?

What I said might hurt and you might be saying “but I have a medical condition! It’s genetic!  My parent’s fed me too much junk as a kid which meant I was a fat kid and I can’t be anything but fat!”

Ok, fine.  It’s still your fault.

No, it’s not your fault that you have a condition, you have “fat genes” or your parents didn’t know the difference between a box of Swiss Cake Rolls and an apple.  What IS your fault is what you are going to do about it.

If you are sitting here saying those things, then the answer is, you’re going to complain and blame….and stay right where you are.

I can say that, because I have fit in that category for too long.

Brief Explanation of Why I Can Say This Stuff

I wasn’t a fat kid, my parents aren’t fat and I didn’t struggle with body image growing up.
HOWEVER….

I was doomed.

You see, my mom, her mom and her grandmother ( my great-grandmother) AND my dad’s mom (my grandma) all have hypothyroidism.  To varying degrees, and I may be the worst out of the lot, only because I’ve had more tests done than they have.  You see, I competed in a figure competition and while I wouldn’t change that experience for the world (I did some seriously hard work and I reaped the rewards of watching my body change almost daily before my eyes), I did go about it blindly and stupidly and probably had a hand in wreaking my own health without knowing it.  I hired a well-known coach (he produces Olympians so I thought “get the best!”.) who did not provide hardly any support, would not sub out anything (I hate asparagus and cream of wheat but no, I had to eat them several times a day….really??) and gave me cookie cutter programs of 6 days a week training and 2x’s a day cardio. Sadly, the norm in the competition world.  If you see that, it’s the mark of a man or woman who doesn’t know the science behind it all, but sees it work on a few (maybe themselves) and gives it to many.  This is otherwise known as “bro-science”.

In any case, the addition of “fat burners” several times a day probably did nothing for my pre-disposed thyroid.

What happend?  Well,after the post-competition rebound weight gain of 20 lbs, I developed a habit of binge eating that destroyed my relationship with food that lasted for 2 years and culminated this past year in the resulting weight gain of my highest weight: 156.  I gained 20 lbs. in only a few months.  On a 5’3″ person, not so good.  My competition weight? 114 lbs.  A couple years ago I kept trying to lose weight, couldn’t and finally got to the point where the brain fog was so bad and lack of energy so pronounced as that I couldn’t get out of bed (literally) that I saw a doc who ordered tests, finding out 1) my thyroid had shrunk almost in half on one side 2) It hardly worked at all 3) what it did produce did not convert to the active form.

What does that mean?  Means I am on Armour Thyroid meds (combo T4 and T3) for the rest of my life and the dosages will have to be constantly tweaked according to my lifestyle.

Also means I have a NASTY time losing weight.

Point in case.  I was 156 in March. My fighting weight is a happy 120. If you’ve seen my wedding pictures, that’s where I was.  I decided that after much therapy I had broken the addiction to food and binging and was ready to try weight loss.

I lost 3 lbs in 5 months.

Says to me something’s wrong right?  First trip to the doc showed T3 levels were still about the levels of an 80 year old man.  So I upped the meds.  Came back in July and everything showed great!  Doc gave me the standard I have no idea what’s wrong with you answer “you’ll just have to work at it a little harder”.

He must not have heard me because at the time I was

• biking up to 100 miles/week
• leading 2 beach boot camp classes (participating as much as leading)
• Lifting 3 x’s a week
• Training several times a week
• Alternating trying to run with swimming (due to a hip injury that won’t heal)
• Restricting calories

Yeah, the mantra “move more, eat less” didn’t seem to be working.  Until my massage therapist opened my eyes.  She said
“Are you being consistant”?

The truthful answer was NO, I wasn’t.  I was tracking “everything” but leaving an awful lot out of the log, so I hit my 1500 calories but in reality was eating more than that.  No idea, because the extra bites of cereal, grapes, peanut butter, candy, you name it, didn’t go into the log.

I said ok, enough, I am the problem.  Let’s fix this.

So I have been HONEST with myself, logging everything.  Hitting my protein more often than not and my calories almost daily.  Yes, I’ve had slipups and those days have cost me progress, but I’m aware and honest and guess what?  I hit a new low today of 144.6!  Not that much but mind you, this is a learning process and every little ounce of fat loss is a victory for me.  I am staying consistant. Consistant with my tracking methods, honest, consistant with EVERYTHING.

I bemoaned my state for so long saying it had to be something else, my meds weren’t right, blah blah blah.  But really, I wasn’t being honest with myself.

So if you are fat, more than likely, you are the problem.  BE HONEST.  What are you not counting, not logging, lying to yourself about?  Just write it down and don’t feel like you have to make yourself have a large deficit, make it a small one, stick to it, and on days you feel like you can go lower, go lower.

Did I mention most of my weight loss has come in the last few weeks when I have been LESS active?   Yeah, I’ve gone to 2x’s a week lifting, not participating in boot camps and the cycling has come down.  Mostly this is due to the hip injury I’m getting looked at, but the good news is, my body responds positively to less.  That’s also a bummer

I can also say that the journey will be more difficult for some than others.  Maybe you have medical conditions, maybe you don’t.  Maybe you have an unsupportive family/spouse, maybe you are surrounded by people rooting for you.  Whatever it is, just go for it!  It’s your life, and life is too short to live in excuses.

There is, obviously by my case, more than one way to lose fat/weight.  Sometimes people can lose by just moving more (not in my case), some by just eating less, some by just being consistant.  The equation is always the same: Calories in vs calories out, you have to burn more than you consume.  Period.  How people’s bodies respond to different styles of training, different foods etc. are all different so the specifics of that formula will change as well.

• Some respond better to heavy exercise
• Some respond better to very light exercise
• Some do better on larger deficits
• Some do better on smaller deficits
• Almost everyone responds well to cycling programs (be it calories, carbs, both…)

There isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach as that figure coach made me believe.  Your body is different, so go find out what makes you different, how you respond.  But believe that weight loss is possible, because it IS!  Give it time, but go do it.  Don’t live another day under your own excuses.  And if you need help, well, that’s why I’m a trainer.   I can train you, I can point you to fat loss experts (Leigh Peele is one – I highly recommend her Fat Loss TroubleShoot if this article rings a bell with you.  Lyle McDonald is another, and you can see the items of his that I endorse on the boot camp site or on my fluteangel.net site.  He is the expert at this and can teach you so much, I HIGHLY recommend his books, especially the Guide to Flexible Dieting), and I am here for you.

Contact me and we’ll get started!

So, QUIT WITH THE EXCUSES!  If you want it, go get it!

And read the article above.  Well, shucks, I’ll post it here.

3 Lean Body Secrets No One Has Told You | Articles.

I’ve said this before…weight loss is easy. It is keeping the weight off that is difficult. The difficulty is due to the fact that maintaining a lean body over the long haul has little to do with grams of protein, fish oil, or block peroidization of you’re exercise program. Lifetime leanness is achieved not through nutrients per se it is achieved through persistence, fostering a lean culture, and feeling good (maybe superior?)about your achievements. Here’s what I mean.

Persistence

I’ll talk about this a little later in the post, but one thing you need to realize is that in order to consistently attain a lean body you will be fighting an uphill battle, especially with your diet. When you travel, no one is waiting for you at the gate with a grilled salmon salad for you to take on the plane with you. No, there is a 16 year old working at Qdoba that wants to sell you a 3 lbs burritos which contains 1/2 cup of sour cream. When you go out to eat at the local wing joint with your buddies, the waiter isn’t asking you if you’d like to order off the menu something healthier, no he just wants to know if you want blue cheese or ranch. This is why you need to be persistent. You need to be persistent about what you need to stick to your plan. Last week I was out to eat with some friends and my buddy Joe (how maintains 6% bodyfat) displayed the ultimate level of dietary persistence. We’re at Buffalo Wild Wings. Joe looks at the menu, sighs, the waiter comes over and asks what he wants -

Waiter – “Breaded or boneless wings? 12, 25, or 50?”

Joe – “I’m going to order off the menus.” Joe puts the menu down and doesn’t look at it. “Can you make me a big green salad, lots of vegetables, and then I’ll have two blackened chicken breasts on the side.”

Waiter – Blank stare. “Oookay. What kind of dressing would you like?”

Joe – “Do you have olive oil and vinegar? I’ll have that on the side.”

Waiter -”I don’t think we have olive oil….yeah we don’t have that.”

Joe – “Can you go check with the kitchen for me?”

Waiter – Visibly annoyed. “I’ll be right back.”

That is persistence. Joe knew what he needed for dinner and he asked for it. The waiter didn’t have all the answers so Joe asked him to go find the person that did. There were at least 3 opportunities where Joe could have given in, but he didn’t. He was persistent and he got what he wanted. It is going to be a rare occasions that you can order directly from the menu. It is going to be a rare occasion that you will wake up 10 minutes before your alarm goes off energized to hit the gym. That is why you must be persistent.

Culture

I cringe a little using the word culture because it is has become such a buzz word in business nowadays but it is the best way to describe this key. You need to create and foster a culture of healthy habits so that you aren’t making healthy decisions because you are forcing them upon yourself but because that is what you do. Here are two examples to illustrate my point. My kids eat fruits and vegetables at every meal and when they snack on baby carrots and red pepper strips during the day they say things like “Ummm that is delicious.” They eat broccoli, they eat peas by the handful (literally, it is a struggle to get Peter to use a spoon). They eat this way because that is just how we eat. Eating vegetables was never an issue for them because those are the foods that we eat. Fruits and vegetables were never signaled out as foods that we don’t really want to eat but do because we have to. We just eat them, that is the culture at our house.

In that recent trip to a seminar with Joe we got to discussing food choices and eating out (how could you not after that encounter with the waiter). He said that at his gym, all the trainers eat really clean as that is the culture. If you came to the gym with unhealthy food ‘you’d get made fun of.’ Sometimes you need that. Sometimes you need the added peer pressure when your tired and your guard is down so that you order your burger without the bun and to substitute the fries for vegetables instead of eating it as is on the menu. The point about culture is that you want to work to immerse yourself in a culture where the healthy habits you hold important are the norm. This is key for maintaining a lean body for the long haul.

Superiority

Okay, so this last one is a little controversial and I debated not including it. Andrew Carnegie once said that one of his keys to ultra achievement was carefully measured arrogance. This was mirrored by marketing and small business consultant Dan Kennedy when he applied Carnegie’s view to his own life regarding time and project management

A sense of lack of control is the worst thing. This is a common characteristic among chronically overweight people that I have worked with. So when you get control and are working your plan, feel good about it. Geez, near 70% of the U.S. population is overweight or obese. You’re succeeding against all odds! Against 99.8% of all food marketing. Against every gadget that makes life ‘easier’ so you can move and do less. Against all the thoughts flying in and out of your mind each day telling you to skip the gym or have the pancakes! Fostering a feeling of superiority doesn’t have to have negative connotations, it doesn’t mean that you are putting others and their dietary foils down – it means that you recognizing that you’re doing something great, something that pretty much everyone wants to do but can’t consistently.

Like I said at the beginning, it isn’t about nutrients and supplements. It is the mental stuff. It is knowing what you want and getting it whether it is the right food at a lousy restaurant or a quick workout at your in-laws house. It is about creating an culture where healthy behaviors are normal and then surround yourself with people who also feel that way. And it is about giving yourself credit for raging against the machine, doing what most people won’t, and then using that good feeling to fuel your persistence even more.

Technorati Tags: featured, mental fat loss tricks, weight management

Tags: featured, mental fat loss tricks, weight management

Author:Dr. Mike

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This is, by no means, the definitive work and end-all be-all answer to this question.  I am not a doctor, a therapist or other medical practitioner and EACH situation is different.  Therefore, understand that these are suggestions, to be used in conjunction with possible other training modalities and may be contraindicated by your specific issue, so check with your doctor first if you have any concerns.

The answer depends on what your specific muscle imbalances are. For you, what is tight, what is weak and what has caused your body to have these imbalances?  If you try to correct the imbalances without changing the lifestyle situation that caused them, guess what, you are fighting an uphill battle, just like walking the wrong way on an escalator.  If your situation is caused by trauma, this is different, but if you are the victim of a lifestyle issue (which is extremely common) understand that you can do all the stretches in the world and if you don’t change your posture on a daily basis (being aware of your body in daily life is the first step) then you will probably see very little improvement.

So, back to the problem at hand: what can I do for my J-Lo booty?

The first question is why are your glutes not firing properly?  Do you sit all day?  Do you have an anterior pelvic tilt?  The most likely culprits are:

• tight hip flexors
• tight quads
• poor core strength
• stretched hamstrings
• or other problems causing your lack of function.

There can be many other muscles contributing to the imbalances but these are the main ones I will address.

Tight Hip Flexors

If you have tight hip flexors, and most of the population does (with or without sleeping glutes) your first plan of attack is going to be static stretching, which we will follow up with dynamic stretching.  Actually, I would put foam rolling first as Self Myo-fascial release has been found to be most beneficial to decreasing the tension in chronically overactive muscles, however, it can be difficult to reach your hip flexors on a foam roller and with a tennis or lacrosse ball…well, honestly that’s just too much pain for me to handle and I’d rather a massage therapist work it out for me; they are the best option in any case.

Quick anatomy lesson; what are some of the hip flexors?

In human anatomy, the hip flexors are a group of skeletal muscles that act to flex the femur (thigh bone) onto the lumbo-pelvic complex, i.e., pull the knee upward.

The hip flexors are (in descending order of importance to the action of flexing the hip joint):^[1]

• Collectively known as the iliopsoasor inner hip muscles:
  • Psoas major
  • Psoas minor
  • Iliacus muscle

• Anterior compartment of thigh
  • Rectus femoris (part of the quadriceps muscle group)
  • Sartorius

• One of the gluteal muscles:
  • Tensor fasciae latae

• Medial compartment of thigh
  • Pectineus
  • Adductor longus
  • Adductor brevis
  • Gracilis

Kneeling Hip Flexor Stretch

• Kneel with one foot on the ground and the other leg having the knee resting (“take a knee”).
• Tilt your pelvis to a posterior tilt and squeeze your buttocks on the “down” leg.  This motion alone should light up your hip flexors, especially if they are tight.  In fact, you might not need any more than that.
• To progress this stretch, maintain the glute activation by squeezing and keeping the pelvis tilted and bend your front knee forward just an inch or two.  That should be enough of a stretch, but if you wish to intensify it, you can raise your arm on the side bein stretched, up and over and then back and twist just a bit to try to get to the psoas.
• If you are not on a padded surface, you might wish to put a mat or something under your kneeling leg.

Quadriceps Stretch

This is one that I like to do with the top of my rear foot laying on a bench with the bottom knee on the floor.  If you are quite flexible, you might find that this stretch works better for you.  Flexible is a bit of an oxymoron in this case since we are talking about stretching tight muscles, but if you are hypermobile in your joints to a degree (like myself) or have an otherwise good range of motion, you might not fee this stretch as shown above and may need to modify it to this stretch.

External Hip Rotators and Piriformis

These can be some nasty little muscles, and I HIGHLY recommend starting out your foam rolling session on the piriformis.  I have not progressed to the tennis ball yet, as  mine is usually tight.  If you sit on a foam roller, cross one knee over the other, place your hands behind you on the ground and lean to the side that has the foot up and begin to roll, you might find what feels like a “bone” in your butt.  As you can see from the pictures above, there is no bone there, but that tiny muscle called the piriformis which can be a nasty little guy.  In fact, it even has its own syndrome “piroformis syndrome”, which can be a common cause of sciatica as when the piriformis muscle becomes tight it can put pressure on the sciatic nerve.  Other symptoms may be aching in the leg or pain in the low back.

Make sure to give it lots of attention by this foam rolling move and stretch below. 

To foam roll your piriformis, here is a video: http://www.sharecare.com/question/how-do-i-foam-roll-my-glutes-piriformis

Lie on your back with one leg crossed over the other.  Put your hands behind the back of the knee facing away from you and pull it towards you, thus causing both knees to come towards you.  You will feel a deep stretch on the outside of your hip.  Hold anywhere from a minimum of 30 seconds to 3 minutes.  Remember to breathe.

Side Lying (Band-Resisted) Clams

This one might make you feel really awkward, so maybe don’t do it in the gym, but do it at home….or if you really don’t care what other people think, go ahead and do it in the gym, all the while staring at the guy with no butt, scoffing at him while he does his 1/4 squats in the smith machine with 8 plates and you know you are actually doing something functional and useful…..uh, sorry, you probably want to leave out the staring and scoffing bit.

• To do this, lie on your side with knees bent and feet stacked one on top of the other.
• Draw your navel in, contract your glutes and lift your top knee towards the ceiling.
• Make sure you keep your hips level, they should not move back and forth and your Range of Motion (ROM) should be fairly small with this.  If you find you can go fairly wide with no problem and no feeling of tightness in your glutes, shift your hips forward and try again.
• You can wrap a mini-band around your knees to progress this.

Lateral Mini-Band, X-band or Tube Walks

These are one of my favorites, and it incorporates some movement into your streching, otherwise known as Dynamic or Active Isolated Stretching.  Depending on the type of band you have, these will differ somewhat, but the end result is much the same.

• With a mini-band around your ankles, squat low, to parallel if you can, and take a wide step laterally (to the left or right).  Focus on picking the feet up and moving the knees apart.
• With a superband put the tube underneath the arches of your feet, cross the band in an “X” across your body and hold the top of the band.  If you have a resistance band with handles, put the band underneath the arches of your feet and hold the bands at your side.  The higher you raise the band the more resistance you get.
• Keeping the legs relatively straight and staying upright, move your leg out to the side (left or right) and take a large step laterally.  Make this movement slow and when you bring the other leg in, focus on that leg coming in slow, too.  You want to resist the tension in the band – do not allow it to “snap” your legs together.  That defeats the purpose. Walk the length of the room and back several times, not allowing the feet to fully come back together and keeping your low squat position.
• This video from Perform Better shows a lot of exercises for the mini-bands.  The Lateral walks are at the 2.30 mark. 
• Take about 10 steps in either direction and if you are doing this correctly you will feel a burn in your outer glutes (the glute medius)

Bridges

Bridges have to be my go-to all time favorite exercise.  They are simple and effective, albeit they do look rather awkward.  If you can get over the social awkwardness of these, your body will thank you.

• Lie on your back with your knees bent and feet flat on the floor
• lift your hips into the air, forming a straight line between knees to shoulders
• squeeze your butt HARD and hold for 2 seconds before descending slowly.  Repeat for up to 20-30 reps.

Now all these exercises have focused on warm-up and activation exercises for the glutes, what about progressing to training them as part of your workouts?  Bret Contreras, otherwise known as “The Glute Guy” is the definitive source on the subject, seeming to have done more research than any body so far on the topic.

Weak Core

I also mentioned that whether you have an anterior pelvic tilt or you have sleeping glutes, you may also have weak core musculature.  The pelvis is considered part of the core, when it is out of alignment, the deep stabilizing muscles may become stretched, inhibited or weak.

There are a huge amount of muscles attaching to the pelvis, from the back muscles to include the quadratus lumborum, multifidus and erectors spinae and lats to the transverse abdominis, pelvic floor muscles and obliques.  The job of these muscles varies from holding you upright, keeping in your internal organs, giving you stability to keep you from falling over, helping you bend  side to side, to the front, and even to the back, among other things.  When your pelvis is tilted, these muscles can become compromised, shortened, lengthened, tight, weak, etc.

Balance is key to core stability and you may find that as you start upon training your balance capabilities, that they are not as good as you once thought.  Having good balance is imperative for not only preventing you from falling and hurting yourself, but in maintaining core strength and optimal length-tension relationships.  Here are three exercises I would perform on a regular basis:

Single-Leg Balance

As you progress, begin to stand on increasingly unstable objects: a pillow, a dyna-disk, a bosu ball, upturned bosu ball, half foam roll, etc.

• Stand with your hands on your hips, feet shoulder width apart.
• Keeping knees bent, contract your glutes and bring one foot beside the ankle of the other foot.
• Do NOT let your leg go behind you – this makes it too easy to balance.  Keep your leg beside the other leg, a bit in front if you wish.
• Hold for up to 20 seconds to 3 minutes.  You will feel your underactive muscles begin to fire and start to burn as they work to hold you stable.

Bird Dogs

Planks

How to:

1. Lie face down on mat resting on the forearms, elbows directly underneath your shoulders.
2. Push off the floor, raising up onto toes and resting on the elbows.
3. Keep your back flat, in a straight line from head to heels.
4. Tilt your pelvis and contract your abdominals to prevent your rear end from sticking up in the air or sagging in the middle. Squeeze your butt hard!
5. Hold for 20 to 60 seconds, lower and repeat for 3-5 reps.

What I see when I see people doing this wrong?  They sag in the middle.  They don’t squeeze their butts or abs.  They sink in between their shoulder blades.  Do this with a partner and have them look at you.  If you don’t look exactly like this, you’re doing it wrong.  In fact, most people claim they can do it for 3 minutes no problem.  More than likely if you can, you’re doing it wrong.  Squeeze your butt while you do this and tell me THEN if you can do it for 3 minutes.

Putting it all together

So this would be just a sample of how to incorporate all these different exercises together into a program.

A. Foam Roll: Piriformis, IT band, quads, calves, lats, and do thoracic extensions

B. Static Stretching: – hold for 20-30 seconds each.
B1. Kneeling Hip Flexor Stretch
B2. Quad stretch
B3. Piriformis Stretch

C. Dynamic Stretching (Activation work) with Balance and Core
C1. Bridges 2-3×12-20
C2. X-band walks 2-3 sets length of room
C3. Bird Dogs 2-3×12-20
C4. Planks 2-3×30-60 seconds
C5. Single-Leg Balance 2-3x 30 seconds to 2 minutes each (depending on ability)

So, you would foam roll first, go through all of B, follow that up with C, going through the entire circuit of C once before repeating for sets.  If you train with me, this is the stuff you do BEFORE you even get to the resistance training portion of the program.  This, in and of itself can be done as its own program, especially if you suffer from sleeping booty, or, it can be the warm-up to any lifting program.  In fact, this is part of a warm-up I use almost every workout.  If you do this, your body will be well on its way to restoring proper length-tension relationships, force-couple relationships and just moving a heck of a lot better.

Which means, after all that, you probably don’t want to spend another 30 minutes doing 4 kinds of bicep curls.  Train your big movements with purpose and get out. 

For further reading and where I got some of my material

http://laurensfitness.com/2007/12/24/tight-hips-tips-to-loosen-your-hip-flexors/comment-page-2/#comment-86519

http://www.niashanks.com/blog/Wake+Up+Your+Glutes

http://posturecorrection101.com/nyc-posture-correction-training/muscles-that-cause-muscular-imbalances/anterior-pelvic-tilt-correction/

This brand new feature is already available! – so if you’d like to sign up, you can purchase your plan on the Shop page under “Online Personal Training”.  Cost is $100/mo and includes all of the above: HFPN log-in with workouts, initial Skype session, free assessment, constant email contact and encouragement and when you sign up, you’ll be billed on a continual monthly basis, allowing you to progress quickly and evenly through your workouts, seeing strength gains, balance improvements and body weight falling off (or coming on depending on your goals) with the convenience to cancel anytime.  Suggested minimum time for most improvement is three months.

As for the Panama City Beach Boot Camp – we are completely redesigning the program.  Classes have been put on hold while these changes are taking place, but keep a look out here, and on the camp website: www.PCBeachBootCamp.com for updates on when classes will resume with all the great new changes. You can look forward to

• updated classes with more flexibility
• more times
• new  locations
• discounted pricing.

You’ll know when all the different classes will be each month, and we will be hosting regular “Get Fit Challenges” along with

• beginners specific classes
• advanced classes
• women’s only class
• possibly even a new mom’s class.

If you have suggestions you would like to see added to the classes, please feel free to contact me at info@panamacitybeachbootcamp.com or through this website.  Thank you to those who have already given me great ideas, you will see them in action soon!

On an additional note, please keep a lookout for a very special Deal of the Day through the News Herald for both the Panama City Beach Boot Camp classes and my personal training.

We will keep you updated as things change!  Thank you for your patience, your encouragement and I want you to know that I am always here for you.  I want to see you achieve your dreams and leave the healthiest, pain-free life you can.

The following is a guest blog from physical therapist Michael Stare of Spectrum Fitness Consulting in Beverly, Ma. I don’t run a lot of guest blogs but, wanted to share this.

“In conversations with hundreds of people on the topic of aging, it seems that the consensus amongst those not in the fitness industry is that people inherently become weak as they age. Some recent research calls into question whether this is true.

It is true that people will tend to lose approximately 5-10% of their muscle mass every decade after the age of 40, and that rate significantly increases after 65 years old.

Countless studies have proven that much of this muscle and strength loss can be prevented with resistance training. This is true of all types of older adults, whether they are master athletes or previously sedentary.

So How Much Strength Can Older Adults Regain?

The issue has been solved about preventing muscle loss. But until recently, no one has looked at how much can be regained relative to younger adults. Essentially, can older adults who undergo supervised training regain strength and muscle mass that compares to younger men? Let’s look at some recent research on the topic:

Candow, et al JSCR, 25 (2) 2011

The researchers trained a group of older men 60-71yrs old with a supervised heavy resistance training program 3 times a week for 22 weeks. At the end of the study they measured muscle size and strength. Not surprisingly, they all gained muscle and strength. What was surprising was how much.

They compared the average strength levels and muscle size achieved by the older adults to the average strength and muscle size of a group of younger men 18-31 years old who were all physically active but not involved in resistance training. The results showed that there was not a significant difference in the muscle size or strength in the older men after supervised training compared to the younger men!

This means that older men can expect to attain the same amount of strength and muscle with a supervised training program as younger, physically active men!

Is it really that important to be stronger?

Research has shown a very strong correlation between strength and death from all causes: essentially, stronger older men have a lower risk of dying from all causes (Ruiz, et al.  BMJ July 2008;337:a439).

Strength is a the most important factor in fall prevention, and is also related to the performance of activities of daily living, balance, and walking  ( American Geriatrics Society; British Geriatrics Society and American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons Panel on Falls Prevention. Journal of the American geriatrics society, Vol. 49, 2001, pp. 664-72. Speechley, M. Canadian journal on aging, 2005.)

So the evidence is clear: being strong is important, more so for older adults.

Why Strength Training Is MORE important for Older Adults

In addition to the above evidence, increasing strength is significantly more important for older adults (anyone older than 60 and yes, that includes you Mom, Dad, Mary if you are reading . Simply put, strength is like money. The less you have, the more important it is. If a fit 35 year old  loses 50% of their strength, while they will struggle with high level strength, they can still perform all of their daily functions with little issue. If a 75 year old loses 20% of their strength, that might be the difference between living independently and needing assisted living.

Can you do it?

Getting stronger is certainly something you can do.  No matter your injuries, pain, age, weight, diseases, or time constraints – you can respond very well to strength training. The research is clear on this, and I’ve seen it with my own eyes. There are some inspiring videos of Spectrum clients that you should check out on the blog here ”

Ralph in his early 80′s

Jolyne in her early 70′s

Peter in his 80s:

What have I found?
The problem of tight hip flexors and weak glutes (“sleeping butt syndrome”) is a lot more prevalent than I thought.  It never fails – when I go to give a presentation I have all my workshop participants lie on the ground and do a glute bridge to test who has “sleeping glutes”.  There’s usually quite a bit of laughter and then I ask “who feels this in their hamstrings?”  and more hands go up then when I ask “who feels this in their butt?”.  It’s hugely common.

You might notice an increase in the amount of hip and glute posts from me in the near future; this is a major contributing factor to that.  Be you a desk jocky, musician, weekend warrior or seasoned gym goer, the likely-hood of you suffering from some degree of this is high, so I feel it my duty to report on it!  I’m happy to see a lot more articles and attention being given to the subject and I’ll do my best to lead you to them.  In the meantime, I’ll also share what I know.

What does this cause?

Lots of things, most notably:

1. an excessive low back arch
2. tight hip flexors
3. weak glutes
4. stretched hamstrings
5. possible low back pain
6. a J-Lo type bubble butt (no, that’s not the technical term, but you had to have a visual because I’m not posting a pic of MY butt!)
7. weakened core mucsulature, especially abdominals
8. Knee pain

How do you know?

First off, how do you KNOW you have an anterior pelvic tilt? Your first clue: exam the pictures below and then compare yourself to them:

Neutral                              Posterior Tilt               Anterior Tilt

If you look in the mirror, wearing a belt, and you see that your front belt line dips below the back belt line, that may be an indication.  As stated in the article where I got the above image:

The natural position your hips determines leverages of the muscles that control the hip. This is trainable. The hip flexors pull down on your pelvis while the lower back pulls up. The Abs pull up while the glutes pull down.

http://www.higher-faster-sports.com/noglutes.html

This is an excellent and comprehensive post on the problem and goes into great detail about testing and exercises, some of which I will cover in this series.

Secondly, is it possible to have sleeping glutes and NOT have an anterior pelvic tilt?

In a word, yes, it is.  There are a series of tests you can do to find out if your glutes are firing properly or you have muscle compensations.  But first, a word about what the glutes do; if not stated previously, the glutes are involved in hip extension, abduction and external rotation.  In layman’s terms, that means they bring the leg straight back, out to the outside of the body and around.  If they do not fire correctly, other muscles are forced to take up this job.

Tests to see if you have sleeping glutes

Thomas Test

words by Bill Hartman

Two More Tests: Prone Leg Lift and the Bridge (double-leg)

The Prone Leg Lift: Lie on your stomach with legs straight behind you.  Lift one leg at at time up and squeeze, testing to see if 1) you can keep your leg straight or have to bend at the knee and 2) if your hamstrings or glutes burn.  Here’s a video to demonstrate:    NtKKfG4xsbg

The double-leg bridge is not only a test to find out if your glutes are firing properly, but if you find they aren’t, it is also one of the exercises to help fix it. 

Lie on your back with feet very close to your butt, almost directly underneath your knees.  Put your arms on the ground to the side with palms facing up (to get a little extra pec stretch ). Tilt your pelvis toward you (so lower back flattens a bit) and drive your heels into the ground and lift your hips until your body is forming a straight line.  Squeeze your glutes for all they are worth, keep tension in them as you return to the ground ( do NOT let them “loose”) and repeat.  If you feel a burning in your hamstrings, this is a sure-fire indication that you have a muscle imbalance and your glutes are not firing properly.  You may call yourself “Sleeping Booty”.

Two More Tests From Nick Tuminello

Fundamental Movement Patterns
Before we get to the tests themselves, it’s important for you to understand that everyone should be able to do them without a struggle, as they’re based on fundamental, bio-motor (human movement) abilities.  This means that if you’re unable to successfully perform one or both of the tests, you essentially lack a basic ability that you need for healthy and efficient movement. As I mentioned earlier, it’s very common to find these tests difficult to perform, so it’s nothing to worry about; you just need to be retrained.
Glute Activation Test 1: Straight Leg Hip Extension
This test enables us to test the level of glute activation one can achieve in the straight leg position. This same straight leg hip extension occurs on both sides in the gym during exercises like two legged and single legged Romanian deadlifts.
So you’ve got the foundation of this test and how it relates to fitness training, now let’s talk about how it’s done.

Starting Position

1. Begin on your elbows, with one leg fully flexed at the hip and the knee. This leg should be tucked up as far as possible into your body with your thigh in contact with your ribs.\
2. The other leg should be extended straight back behind you and resting on the floor (see photos). The extended leg is the one that’s going to be tested.

Performing the Test

To perform this test, lift your extended leg off the ground as high as possible.Be sure to keep that leg fairly straight and avoid bending it. A slight bend (<15 degrees) is okay, however. Additionally, do not allow your ribs to loose contact with your thigh on the opposite side.

If you can lift your extended thigh and knee at least one to two inches off the floor without struggling, you pass.
If you cannot lift your rear leg without shifting your body or deviating from the starting position, or you find yourself struggling to do so, you have some work ahead of you.

Glute Activation Test 2: Bent Leg Hip Extension
First off, don’t even think of skipping this test just because you either passed or failed the first test. This test was adapted from my good friend and sports physical therapist Gray Cook, and it tests the glutes in a different manner; it’s important that you try both.

The bent leg test mimics how the glutes are recruited in sports during a different aspect of locomotive activties (running, skipping, etc.).  Bent leg hip extension is also required to effectively perform gym exercsies like Bulgarian split squats and lunges.

Starting Position

1. You’re going to need a tennis ball for this one. (Tennis balls are the latest in cutting edge fitness equipment.)
2. To begin the test, lie on your back with both knees bent and feet on the floor, resembling a traditional sit-up position.
3. Place a tennis ball below your bottom rib, then bring your knee up and use your hip flexors to squeeze the tennis ball between your thigh and bottom rib.

Performing the Test
Without deviating from your starting postion or losing the tennis ball, lift your hips as high as possible off of the floor.
In order to pass this test, you must be able to perform ten consectutive repetitions at a controlled tempo, without losing the pressure on the tennis ball or having it roll away altogether.
You also must be able to bridge high enough that your hip, knee, and underarm form a straight line.
If you’re successful at maintaining the tennis ball but fail to reach this hip height, you need some additional help from the specialized exercise progressions laid out below.

There Are Two Sides to Every Story
This should go without saying, but I’m going to say it just in case you need to hear it: Don’t forget to test both sides of your body. Just because one side’s working well doesn’t mean that the opposite will, too.

With that said, if neither one of your glutes is working well, just give each side some extra attention with the corrective training exercises provided here. However, if one side’s working great and the other isn’t, you’ll have to make some programming adjustments.

In that, performing bi-lateral exercises like squats and deadlifts will create unnecessary and possibly dangerous torque forces within your body as one side pulls harder than the other.

Imagine what would happen if you bent over and someone came along and forcefully twisted you to one side. If you have an imbalance, a similar action is happening every time that you deadlift, or squat.

If this describes you, then in addition to performing your corrective training as laid out below, I suggest you start learning to love unilateral exercises like single leg squats and single leg Romanian deadlifts — these will be much safer and more effective with imbalance conditions.

For Those Who Passed With Flying Colors
If you’re one of those rare finds who’s able to successfully pass both tests equally on both sides, congrats; you aren’t a charter member of the weak glutes club.

So how did you test?

Whether you have an anterior pelvic tilt and/or tight hip flexors or you tested just fine for both, in part 2, I will address some methods to help you alleviate your tilt and activation exercises to help you wake up those sleepy glutes!  In the meantime, leave a comment below, tell me if this applies to you: do you have the tilt?  Are you hip flexors screaming at you every time you get out of the car? Is your lower back killing you?  Have you done anything to help?  I’d love to hear your feedback.

Stay tuned for Sleeping Booty Part 2.

My current physical is somewhat frustrating and limiting, and altogether new to me, though not new to lots of people.  I have been suffering from a mysterious hip pain for the last year and have been to several physical therapists, massage therapists, chiropractors, and even an orthopedic surgeon to find what was going  on.

What my latest physical therapist has found is that I have a pelvic assymetry; meaning that my pelvis was tilted in three different directions: the left side was higher than the right, one side was farther in front than the other and the entire pelvis had an anterior tilt.  This condition is actually really common among women, according to this therapist, but my situation is compounded by the fact that I am hypermobile in most of my joints (not double jointed, but hypermobile, meaning too flexible) and my lifestyle is an extremely physically active one.  He believes these things are causing the problem.

Once the therapist put the pelvis back “in” to proper alignment, I have been in therapy to train my muscles to hold me “in”.  I’ve also not been allowed to 1) cross my legs 2) spread my legs 3) squat 4) do any kind of one-legged training or balance work 5) do plyometrics 6) go running.  So I’ve been pretty limited in what I can do; basically, I can ride a recumbent bike and go walking.  I can’t even demonstrate exercises to my clients!

So, now that I’m in the mountains, with no gym, how can I stay active?  Well, beyond the walking and hiking we plan to be doing, I have my resistance bands and that’s it.  Knowing that I’m on vacation and don’t have any desire to do a long workout, what kind of workout can I do that is A) effective and B) keeps me physical therapist (and my hips) happy?

The exercises:

Pushups
Band resisted shoulder presses
Dead Bugs
Planks
Bridges (with and without kickouts)
Bicep Curls
Overhead Tricep Extensions
Rows or Lat Pull Downs

There are several ways to structure this workout depending on the amount of days you want to do it.  You can cycle through all of them once or twice with no stopping in between, or you can break them up into movement patterns: vertical push/pull, or horizontal push/pull.  You will notice that there are some lower body movements in here namely the bridges, planks and dead bugs and for those people not able to move their legs at all these motions can be left out.  However, since these are exercises I am doing in physical therapy and they serve the purpose to strengthen my deep core muscles to hold me “in” while giving me a good overall upper body workout.  The glutes are targeted in the bridges, and the glutes are considered part of the core.

So how I might set this up:

Warmup: Static Chest Press, Lat Stretch, Arm Circles, Wall Slides

• Pushups (incline, flat, decline, narrow, etc) 12 reps or to failure
• Band Resisted Rows (this works with JC Travel Bands) 12-15 reps at a 1 back, 2 hold 4 negative tempo
• Dead Bugs 30 seconds hold superset with 15 glute bridges (with or without kickouts), repeat once
• Prone Iso-Holds or Planks (Iso Holds done at 124 tempo are MUCH harder!) 12-20
• Band Bicep curl to Band Resisted Shoulder Press to Overhead Tricep Extension (due to instability in my shoulders I would leave out the tricep extensions – they get hit in the pushups anyway) 12-15 each done slowly
• Lat Pull downs 12-15  with a 124 tempo
• End with one last round of pushups to failure.
• Repeat if you want to.  All reps should have been done with no rest in between

As you can see, when you go slowly things are more difficult and you can get away with doing only one set.  In fact, I’d encourage it, because even if you’re in the middle of a different workout back home, if you’re limited to just upper body, going back to slow rep work will challenge you in a new way.

Then go take a hike, walk, swim or whatever, but get out and enjoy your vacation!
Want more information about the cabin where we are staying?  Check out www.WildMountainHoneyCabin.com

The National Academy of Sports Medicine is the certification agency through which I became a personal trainer.  I plan on soon obtaining an advanced specialization of Corrective Exercise Specialist.  They offer three different specializations: CES (Corrective Exercise Specialist) and PES (Performance Exercise Specialist), and their newest specialization: the FNS or Fitness Nutrition Specialist.

NASM focuses on assessment, correcting muscle imbalances, which is imperative to optimal performance.  If you try to load bad movement patterns, you are asking for injury and using the NASM assessment system, you can find out what your specific compensations are, correct them and THEN properly load for hleping you meet your goals. I highly encourage you to check out their website, look around, ask questions.  I did before I committed.

From their website:

“Trainers get certified. REAL trainers get NASM Certified.”

Since 1987, the National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM) has been a global leader in providing evidence-based certifications and advanced credentials to health and fitness professionals. It is part of Ascend Learning, a leader in providing technology-based educational, assessment, testing and certification solutions for healthcare and other vocational fields.

In addition to its evidence-based NCCA-accredited Certified Personal Trainer (CPT) certification, NASM also offers a progressive career track with access to advanced specializations in Sports Performance (PES) and Injury Prevention (CES), Continuing Education courses, and accredited Bachelor and Master Degree programs.

The NASM educational continuum is designed to help today’s health and fitness professionals enhance their careers while empowering their clients to live healthier lives.

Our Mission
To provide health and fitness professionals with the best evidence-based education and systems

Our Values
Everything we do is focused on Excellence, Innovation and Results

Our Promise
Premier education for health and fitness professionals that delivers proven results
 

Last weekend, October 7-8, 2011 I spent two days at the NASM Live Workshop and my head is about to explode from knowledge and all the things I’m dying to share with you!

First off, let’s say my ego took a real blow. Back up; first off, I didn’t realize I HAD that much of an ego until I got there. Between struggling to do a single leg balance, figuring out what to do for my excessive low back arch compensation and getting worn out by STATIC stretches, then throw in finding out I was doing it all wrong….let’s just say I’ve been humbled.

To back track a little bit (and so my clients don’t start to look for another trainer) let me clarify by saying no, I don’t really mean that I’ve been doing everything wrong. You see, I have been training for years; I was certified by ISSA 3 years ago and this past year in January I received my NASM-CPT certification, no easy feat. Besides the comps for my master’s in music, easily the hardest and most stressful thing I’ve done. There is simply a TON of knowledge that goes into understanding the material, and the certification is just the basics to get you started!

I studied for my exam by reading the book, doing the workbook, watching the videos and listening to the audio, doing the flashcards, practice tests and all that, but not a lot of hands-on. That’s unfortunately because I’m a tactile learner, which simply means that 1)I’m getting started in building my business and since I’m on my own, not part of a gym, that means the building process can take longer (read, not as many clients as quickly) and 2) there’s a lot of information that you can forget.

It was really a lot of fun, especially watching the “meatheads” in the room get schooled on how they’re old bodybuilding myths (i.e. anything gotten out of Muscle and Fitness, or Fiction” as they called it) were full of error, not scientifically based and overall….wrong. The emotional teddy bears got snatched out of a lot of people’s hands.

Image via Wikipedia

What were the emotional teddy bears? Here are some:

• There is no need to do full squats (ATG) unless prepping for a sport that requires it. Going that low causes the pelvis to tuck under which takes the lumbar spine out of neutral and therefore puts greater stress on the spine.
• Plie or sumo squats are also not such a good idea. There is a high increase in abduction, which, coupled with the fact that most people’s knees cave inward already, is a recipe for nastiness.
• Balance and stabilization work is HARD, not sissy easy
• Tempo is SUPER important and if you think you can hold a plank for 3 minutes, you’re doing it wrong.
• If you think you are doing crunches or squats right, you’re probably doing it wrong
• If you haven’t assessed someone first, all you are doing is GUESSING.
• You don’t need to work out 6 days in a row
• You can get an EFFECTIVE workout in 9 minutes. Enough with the excuses.
• Almost every ab exercise you’re doing probably is more of a hip flexor exercise
• You train MOVEMENTS not MUSCLES
• You cannot truly isolate a muscle

And I could go on and on!

What were some of the main things I learned that I will be sharing?

Form

I thought I was a form-Nazi…until I went here. Then I realized how wrong my form was. My form is still better than 99% of the people in the gym, but was it optimal? Not until now. I will elaborate later.

Assessments

You need to assess everyone with whom you work with, and this is not optional. If not, you have no idea what compensations they have, what they are capable of, what you need to stretch, what they DON’T need to stretch,etc. Beyond the initial assessments, there should be CONTINUING assessments after each phase is completed.

The OPT Model

I have actually tried to stay pretty close to this with my clients since learning this, but my eyes were REALLY opened up to how effective it is and how truly difficult the first phases can be. Hypertrophy, max strength and power? No, those are the easy phases. Stability and strength endurance? BEYOND necessary. How necessary? So necessary that I will be scrapping my current program and going straight to Phase I myself, treating myself just like a beginner.

Pushups – you’re doing it wrong

This is where my former confusion of form comes in. First off, when I joined the military I did MASSIVE amounts of pushups. They didn’t care how you did them either, as long as you “broke the plane” and went past parallel. One drill sergeant told us to do wide pushups, because since you had a shorter distance to go down, they were easier, so I’ve been doing them that way for at least 8 years.

I’ve been reading up a bit on articles since then, and I thought you should keep your shoulder blades depressed and retracted during all movements, including pushups. Well, at this workshop I got schooled. Apparently, I am so jacked up from years of doing them “wide” that even though I could do them on my toes and all, I had a bad case of scapular winging going on and was told that I need to do them on a Smith machine and progress downward until I get my form righ, my core is strong enough and my shoulder blades move correctly (they need to move smoothly outward across my rib cage and back…mine want to just go up).

I”ll address a lot of these in more detail in later posts, but this is just a precursor to some of the amazing stuff I learned! I’ll be posting more as I go back through my notes, too. In the mean time, look at this list of stuff, does any of this strike a nerve with any of you? Leave me your feedback and let the humbling begin.

Related articles

• From NASM: Tips for Choosing a Personal Fitness Training Certification Program (fitnessguru33.wordpress.com)
• NASM Live Workshop (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
• How to Squat – From Diesel Strength (fluteangel.wordpress.com)

From Lyle’s page:

About the Book

The Rapid Fat Loss Handbook offers a scientifically based approach to quick weight and fat loss. Recognizing that people need or simply want to lose weight and fat rapidly, I set out to develop the safest, most effective way of accomplishing that goal.

I based the program around the idea of creating a diet that would provide the fewest calories possible while still providing all of the essential nutrients required by the body: protein, essential fatty acids, vitamins and minerals. This provides simply the safest and sanest way to lose fat quickly without sacrificing health (or muscle mass).

Every aspect about how to set up the diet is laid out in a step by step form and the diet is based around whole foods that can be found at any market. With purchase of the book, you’ll also receive instructions for how to access an online calculator that will set up the diet and provide food recommendations.

As well, the diet also incorporates concepts I’ve discussed on this site: free meals, refeeds and full diet breaks to help with both adherence and the body’s tendency to fight back when dieting. Guidelines are provided for when to take them, how to use them, etc.

In addition, guidelines for moving back to maintenance, as well as for using the program to transition into a more moderate fat loss diet are provided in detail.

Specific training guidelines are also provided in order to provide the best results with the least time investment. Massive amounts of exercise aren’t needed; quite in fact, too much exercise while on the rapid fat loss program can hinder results. Quite in fact, for the extremely overweight, no exercise is actually required to reap the benefits of the program.

The book provides specific recommendations (for everyone from beginners to advanced trainees) for both resistance training and aerobic activity in terms of how often and how much will provide the best results.

As well, realizing that most people can’t or won’t join a gym, I developed a small home-exercise handbook outlining a basic routine that can be followed with no or minimal equipment. This is included with your purchase as a digital download.

 

From Lyle’s website, his words about the book:

About the Book

Rather than presenting a specific diet, A Guide to Flexible Dieting is a look at some of the psychological and physiological reasons why diets so often fail. Among these is the research demonstrated fact that individuals who are too rigid in their approach to dieting (e.g. expecting complete unyielding perfection at all times) are actually less successful in the long-run than individuals who are more flexible in their approach.

Building on this research, as well as looking at the physiology behind bodyweight regulation, A Guide to Flexible Dieting examines three distinct strategies that dieters can use to make their fat loss efforts more flexible. Free meals (single meals that ‘break’ the diet), refeeds (periods of deliberate high-calorie consumption) along with full diet breaks (periods of 10-14 days where active dieting is not pursued) are all discussed in detail with specific guidelines for their implementation.

Dieters who find themselves falling into the trap of “I broke my diet by eating a single cookie, I should just go ahead and eat the entire bag (and another for good measure).” should read this book to see how such rigid attitudes towards dieting are ultimately both limiting and destructive to long-term success.

Assess and Correct empowers YOU by giving you all the tests and corrective exercises necessary to develop a killer warm-up routine.

This is one of my most highly referenced books.  Excellent for gym goers wanting to know how to design a warm-up before lifting and just as effective for musicians or desk workers to design a stretching routine before playing or stretches to increase mobility.

This is the one I recommend from Perform Better

Foam what?  I’m sure most of you have no idea what I’m talking about, but everyone should.  Ever had a massage?  I mean a good, deep tissue massage?  It hurts like mad while it’s being done, you’ll find tight and knotted muscles you didn’t know you had, but when you are done, don’t you feel so much better?  Possibly a bit sore the next day, but much looser, and if you got them frequently, you would probably move a lot more freely, your clothes might fit a little looser due to less knotting of the muscles and water retention and as an added bonus you would probably sleep a lot better.  So why don’t we get massages more often?  Well, cost can be an issue as can having oil/lotion worked into your hair.  We want these benefits….but what do we do?

My friends, let me introduce you to the foam roller; the poor man’s massage therapist.  It comes in varying sizes and lengths but in general, it’s about 36 inches long, looks like a pool noodle but is as hard as a brick.

To use, roll yourself strategically and slowly back and forth (one inch per second) over this device, focusing on the most tender spot.  When you find the most “tender” (read: painful) spot, stay on it for 20-30 seconds.  Hopefully you will feel some release as the trigger point/knot/adhesion begins to release and the muscle regains its normal range of motion.  This should be done before every workout as part of your initial warm-up and is also good to use later, especially before bed.
In athletic work, this helps muscles repair, facilitates stretching, promotes joint flexibility and stimulates blood flow/toxin flushing.  In musicians, all of the above are just as true.  With musicians, a tennis ball may be more of your friend, as it is easier to access your upper body muscles.  Please see the attached videos and articles for descriptions.  Rolling out the lats, upper back and thoraic attention will help a lot with musicians, because we tend to slouch over to our instruments and this can roll out our weak/tight muscles.

Contraindications

Those who should either not use  a foam roller or get a doctor’s permission first are those who:

• have osteoporosis or weak bones
• the obese with trouble getting up and down from the floor
• those who cannot support their body weight from the arm
• Severe Diabetics with reduced circulation in their lower limbs
• People with vericose veins (NEVER roll directly over a vein, the rest of the body is appropriate)

A note to those who have either low bone density (osteoporosis), are out-of-shape or overweight or the severely diabetic: you should know that the arms are heavily involved in foam rolling as they support your body weight while you are rolling.  You should also know that foam rolling can be painful and you should be able to distinguish the difference between pain and injury.  If you are not sure, go get a deep tissue massage with trigger point therapy and that will give you a better idea of what to expect.  Foam rolling should never cause bruising.

Other articles you might want to investigate:

http://www.tmuscle.com/free_online_article/sports_body_training_performance_repair/feel_better_for_10_bucks

  They come in different densities (softer to harder) and sizes, the can also look like this:

Here’s a video to help you see how to use it;

Eric Cressey Foam Rolling

First, understand I am not a nutritionist nor am I a registered dietician, so your specific health concerns might demand a different protocol, so please check with your physican first, especially before embarking on any kind of supplement regimen.

In the realm of general health, there are really only 4 supplements with which you need to concern yourself.  With many of these, I will be citing a medical doctor, Dr. Asa Andrew and his book “Empower Your Health”.  Understand that I make no money endorsing his product or any of the products below, these are his thoughts, my opinions and the products below are ones I regularly use.

According to Dr. Asa these 4 supplements are what he calls “The Foundational Four”.  I agree with him and from a training point of view, really, there are not a lot of extra supplements you actually “need”.

Whole Food Multivitamin

This is the first and if you get nothing else, please start with this.  The words “whole food” are incredibly important here.  Brands like “Centrum” and “One-A-Day” are what are called “synthetic” brands; made in a lab, not derived from food.  Whole food multivitamins  are exactly what they sound like: vitamins made from or derived from food.  Your body understands what to do with food (break it down, digest and absorb it), this may not always be true with synthetic, as is evidenced by the large number of “one-a-day’s” found in the bottom of port-o-potties.  (Sorry I had to go there!)

Quote from “Empower Your Health”

In essence, if you are taking a synthetic multivitamin, your body can use virtually none of it.  But they don’t just pass through the body.  Your body has to process anything you consume, so it must process these synthetic suupplments, which are man-made and often toxic.  In short, synthetic supplements can actually do more harm than good and may even have adverse side effects, some as severe as sterility.  On the other hand, whole food multis are whole foods with only the water and fiber removed.  They are, in essence, compressed, dried food.

 

So, what to look for?

• says “Whole Food” on the label
• limited shelf life
• have to take more than one (food can only be condensed so small)

What brand do I use and like?

It comes in different varieties, but I really do like how I feel with this.  One of the best parts?  They include a sample packet when you open it, so if you DON’T like it, you can still return the product “unopened” (This is the boxed version).  They also include a tested ingredient list with actual amounts on the inside, to let you know they tested each batch for accuracy, and you’ll see, what’s listed on the label is the  minimum, usually there’s a little extra in each.

Digestive Enzymes

From Dr. Asa

Enzymes help break down the food that we eat.  They help you assimilate all your nutrients…The enzymes you take with food will help break down protein, fat, sugar, starch and carbohydrates.  The body contains (or is supposed to contain) most of the enzymes it needs, but with the lifestyle choices of our fast-paced society and the depleted state of our soil, we have lost a lot of our enzymes’ beneficial processes.

The lack of proper enzymes in the body creates a two-fold problem: It impairs the functioning of the immune system, and it results in illness and disease.  Take them with every meal…they will also transform nutrients to become the new healthy cells that your body desperately needs to be well….Look for brands that contain chlorella, chlorophyllase and pepsin, as these are excellent enzymes; and avoid brands that say they have been freeze-dried or frozen, as this process takes away much of the enzymes’ potency.

I can vouch for this as when I do not take my enzymes I, um, don’t digest things well.  When I don’t take them on a regular basis for an amount of time, I REALLY don’t digest things well.  Even with a good diet rich in fiber, whole foods and plenty of water, I can still use these enzymes.  Some people naturally have less HCL in their stomachs, some have too much and if you are missing a gall bladder, you DEFINITELY need to get a brand with a high amount of lipase, the enzyme that breaks down fat.

What do I use?

This is my go-to favorite.  The pills are small, oblong, and smooth and therefore very easy to swallow. They do not have a potent smell.  I’m starting to notice a brand pattern.

Omega-3 Fish Oil (Cod Liver Oil)

This is the one that can really get people.  When I mention taking cod liver oil, most people immediately gross out. First off, don’t confuse it with castor oil, the nasty stuff your grandmother gave you as a kid.  Cod Liver Oil is the oil that comes from the liver of the cod fish.  That’s it.  Well, except that it has the highest concentration of Omega-3′s on the planet.  Yes, more than Salmon oil, anchovy, KRILL, flaxseed or anything else.  And let’s talk about flaxseed.  Yes, it’s an omega 3, however, 1) it has to be ground up before you eat it in order for you to absorb it 2) it must be CONVERTED to Omega 3 3) it has a poor absorption rate (only 15-20%), so why bother?

Why does Dr. Asa (and myself) recommend cod liver oil in liquid form? (Stay with me….) Lots of reasons

• there is less chance that the fish oil is rancid
• you get more for your money (do you know how many capsules per day you have to take to equal one Tablespoon of oil?  A LOT…do the math yourself)
• It’s much easier to digest and absorb (nothing to break down, no capsule, etc)
• Much less chance of contamination or mixtures of anything

In any case, if you were looking for a magic supplement, Omega 3′s are just about as close as we can get.  Google it, and the benefits will take up a whole page.  Back to the pill form, here’s Dr. Asa:

Here is a word of caution about taking oil capsules.  Would you eat fish if it were rancid?  Of course not.  Unfortunately, if you take oil capsules such as cod liver oil or fish oil, you have no way of knowing whether or not hte oil inside those capsules is rancid.  Fish oil is unstable and it starts to oxidize as soon as it is extracted from the fish and exposed to oxygen, metals, lighth and heat.  Fish oil can go rancid within days, although labels often say it’s safe to use it for 3 or 4 years.  Here is how you can protect yourself against this:

• Test fish oil capsules by biting into one.  It should taste fresh and mildly fishy.  If it tastes bad or excessively strong, throw them away and avoid that brand.
• Choose brands that include d-gamma and d-delta forms of tocopherols (vitamin E) to prevent harmful oxidation and rancidity

I could go on and on, but I’ll spare you.  Just google it!  Here are my recommendations on the best brands and best TASTING brands:

This is my favorite.  The brand has one of the highest concentrations of EPA and DHA and the strawberry flavor really cancels out a lot of the fishy taste.  Speaking of DHA and EPA, if you really want to go capsules, forget what it says about “1 gram of fish oil” and look at the label.  The Omega 3′s are the EPA and DHA and if they don’t add up to 1000 you aren’t getting 1 gram of omega 3′s.  1 gram of fish oil, sure, but who cares?  What you are after is Omega 3.  This brand totals up to 1.2 grams of OMEGA 3′s PER TEASPOON.  I take a tablespoon a day.  How many pills do you have to swallow to equal that?  Well, if two pills give you somewhere around 200-300 miligrams….you’d have to take 12 pills to equal one teaspoon.

Why bother?!??!  Just get the freakin oil, suck it up and quit whining.  You joints, metabolism, hair skin, nails, brain and immune system will thank you.

Need one more testimony? True story, if I stop taking this for a couple days in a row, my allergies come back with ROARING ferocity.  Think this has anything to do with the fact that cod liver oil is a potent anti-inflammtory?  I think so.

Second brand I like:

the lemon flavor is a little strong, but the stats are comparable to the Nordic Naturals brand.

Probiotics

Long and short of probiotics: these are the “good” bacteria.

Good bacteria are essential for proper digestion, increased immune function, and reduced inflammation…probiotic bacterial cultures help the body’s naturally occurring organisms in the digestive tract reestablish themselves and allow for effective and healthy digestion.  Choose brands that contain healthy strands of bacteria and are made from quality ingredients.  Most probiotics need to be refrigerated to maintain effectiveness even if they promote having a long shelf life.

This is the brand that I use.  There are 10 different strains of bacterial with 13 BILLION in each capsule.  When looking for probiotics, look for billions, you are wasting your time with millions.  Also, these are enteric coated, meaning, they are coated so that they will pass through the stomach undigested where they will be broken down in your intestines, where they are absorbed.  That’s what happens in your intestines, it’s where you absorb things.  Your stomach has the job of the breakdown, absorption happens in intestines.  When you get “burp free” fish oil capsules that are enteric coated, this is why; they are broken down in the intestines, and once they’ve passed to there, you can’t burp up stuff.  You have a sphincter muscle called the “duodenum” I believe, that connects the stomach and intestine.  Once things pass through there, it closes up, nothing comes back up.  If you burp up your “enteric coated, burp-free” fish oil…you know the brand is lying to you, or they are old.

So how much?

Only a doctor can tell you for sure, with your specific needs, but this is what I take and what is recommended:

• One serving of multivitamins a day (usually 3)
• 1 Tablespoon of cod liver oil per day (with food)
• digestive enzymes with every meal
• probiotics 1-2 times per day, morning on empty stomach or before bed

Anything else?

I personally recommend supplementing with some Vitamin C in your diet, especially if you do not eat or like large amounts of citrus, other fruits or green leafy vegetables.  It’s an antioxidant that protects your cells against free radical damage and can also  protect your fish oil against oxidation.

Hope you found this helpful, let me hear your thoughts!

You can see some of his work at Ally Nation & Starting Cube.

Thanks again,

 ~ Angela

Here are some of the images:

This is a comprehensive (read: long and highly detailed) post on HOW to squat.

It’s amazing that something so incredibly simple, something we did as 2-year olds without a second thought has become so incredibly difficult for us.  Unless your daily job has you squatting (like lots of people who are not in a cubicle-based-computer-obsessed societies do), we have forgotten this most basic of human functions.  Our hips are stiff, we bend at the “waist” because we don’t know where our hips  are, we round at the back and keep our legs straight….it goes on and on.

Just look at the picture of this child squatting and what do you see?  No problems with balance or flexibility, no excess tension, she hasn’t learned any muscle compensations – no, everything works exactly as it should.

Compare this with your typical desk jockey….think this range of motion would be easy?

Not likely.  Attainable yes, but with LOTS of work.  Which tells me there is hope for all of us!  Just because you can’t squat not doesn’t mean you can’t learn and get there.  You can work on your mobility, your flexibility and technique and it can happen for you.

And just because it makes me happy to look at pictures of happy kids squatting with perfect, unadulterated technique, here’s another picture of how we were born to squat….BEFORE we learned to mess it up. Yes, that’s right, we LEARNED to mess it up.  Which means you can un-learn it!

Everything about what this child is doing is right!  His spine is in neutral alignment, his neck is free, his knees are in line with his toes….how did we go from that to all wrong?

We went from this beautiful picture of ease to this:

You get my point.

In fact, let’s get back to the article at hand.  This article put out by Diesel Crew will show you a lot of different ways to squat and coaching cues to all of them.

The take-aways from this post  are EXACTLY what I talked about in my presentation at NFA: the 3 aspects of form you must master if you want to lift.  You must arch your back (keeping your chest tall, towards the ceiling) draw your shoulder blades back and down, and drawing the belly button in toward the spine – also known as “bracing” which they cover in the double breath.

From the article:

How to Squat Video Series Summary

How to Squat – Squat Tip #1 – Elbows Down, Chest Up
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNGnxRxCWPo

How to Squat – Squat Tip #2 – Setting the Lats
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edmMGoVIBW8

How to Squat – Squat Tip #3 – Setting the Lower Back
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVNMMJnotnQ

How to Squat – Squat Tip #4 – Fewest Steps Possible
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sm1OYuX0-sI

How to Squat – Squat Tip #5 – The Double Breath
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUka0l0BFf8

Tip #1 – Elbows Down / Chest Up

After you unrack the bar and before you even attempt to move into the squat, you must take care of your elbows and chest. You must drive the elbows down. Drive them down until they are facing the ground. As you drive the elbows down, you’ll notice something else; your chest rises. This is a good thing. In fact, you need to accentuate this thoracic extension.

Driving the elbows down will help you engage the lats for more stability and tension. The lats are an important part of the “core“. This, along with pulling your chest up, will keep your head up when you are in the bottom (hole) of the squat.

Because what will happen when your elbows drift up and back?

Your torso will fall forward and the hips will rise too early when you are drive upward. You see this with athletes who don’t have good torso strength or immobile ankles, hips and upper back. This might be ok when the weights are light, but will put a lot of stress on the lower back when the weights get heavier.

Remember “perfect practice makes perfect”, so keep drilling form.

So you’ll notice first off, the chest must be high and the elbows come back.  This CAN help retract and depress the shoulder blades, but what you’ll notice most of all is that you set the bar high on your traps (NOT ON YOUR NECK! ) and then only way to do this is to have your hands on the bar in a closer grip so that they are close to your shoulders, not far away.  This can lead to big time instability.

Tip #2 – Setting the Lats

When the lifter prepares to squat, they must first create tension. This is especially true if the weight is a max or near maximal effort. In the first part of the how to squat series we learned about pulling our elbows down and our chest up. As we do this, the next step is to squeeze the bar very hard. Not only squeeze the bar hard, but engage the lats by pulling the bar into your upper back. This tension is so important for stabilizing the torso, protecting the spine, helping you to remain upright and increasing the amount of weight you can lift.

In fact, renowned back special Stuart Mcgill states that the simple act of engaging the lats during the squat can add 20-30lbs to your squat weight immediately.

Remember, more tension equals more strength.

See that beautiful picture of the back muscles?  Those muscles are HUGE players in helping you play the flute.  If they are weak and can’t stand up to the task of holding the flute up, when they fatigue, your rotator cuff muscles and shoulders take over, even your chest muscles and your neck flexors take over and you wonder why you’re in pain.

SQUATS ARE FOR FLUTE PLAYERS!

If that last paragraph wasn’t enough to convince you, make sure to head over to the article via the link above and check out the videos.  You can see that when performing this squat, the shoulder blades are squeeze together (what he calls setting the lats) and arches the back (lots of lovely good tension there keeping the back in neutral alignment) and the core is safe and protected and stiff – in a good way.  The amount of strength and power to do any kind of squat with good form is immense and translates into being strong enough to handle the demands of playing Beethoven, Tchaikovsky or Debussy.  Squatting will give you a strong core and a strong body, which equals a strong flutist!

Tip #3 – Setting the Lower Back

Setting the lower back is as easy as slightly arching the lower back (into it’s natural curve) while taking a huge breath and isometrically contracting the abdominals simultaneously.

When you first watch the video it might look like Ryan is overarching his lower back. He is in fact, just setting it hard into its natural position and holding it. Most times when lifters unload the bar from the way they assume a posterior pelvic tilt under the weight. This position isn’t optimal especially when we talk about stabilizing the lower back and pelvis prior to squatting. He has to consciously move his pelvis back to neutral and “set it”. And like we stated, this is a dual effort with the bracing of the abdominals and his breathing pattern.

Coaching Cues

Remember, don’t just squat down. You will lose tension!!! Move the hips slightly back (loading the hamstrings and glutes and setting the back) and spread the knees. The act of spreading the knees will lower you (under tension) into the hole.

I didn’t go into too much detail with this at the convention.  Arching the lower back is good, and you should not do it to the point of lordosis (as you can see in the picture) but what it does is that it forces the spine to stay in neutral alignment and stay safe. Practice these basics of form without weight until your are comfortable, because as you can see by now they are crucial to safety and strength.

Something else they touch on is the hip hinge.  This is something I really talked a lot about in my presentation and if you’ve ever gone to any body mapping or Alexander Technique classes, you’ll know what it is.  The hip hinge is basically understanding where your hips are and bending from that place while keeping your spine in neutral alignment.  In layman’s terms?

• put your fingers in the crease between your leg and body
• Push
• your butt should go back
• if not, 1) you are pushing in the wrong spot 2) you are not pushing hard enough 3) your body doesn’t know what the heck you’re doing because you haven’t bent this way in so long and is trying to bend from the middle of the spine like usual.
• as your butt goes back, you should feel a pulling stretch in the back of your legs
• Keep your shoulder blades back and down, neck looking down or slightly in front of you and lower back arched – thus, keeping your back in neutral alignment.

You MUST master this before attempting any kind of big lifts like squats or deadlifts, or even Romaninan Dealifts, Good Mornings or split squat.  You truly need to understand that the body should bend at the hips (which are not the body things that stick out of your body at the top of your legs – that’s the top of your pelvis, your hips are the JOINT) and your butt and hamstrings should do the work of pulling you upright again.  We’ll get into this in a later article

To end the article I really like how they talk about mobility exercises for the upper AND lower body, because the squat is truly a full body exercise, not just a lower body one.  If you have lousy upper body mobility (aka, your arms don’t go backwards much, chest is tight, etc.) you will not squat well.  Period.  Give some of these exercises and stretches a shot and see how they work for you.  The favorites are the upper body mobility work, shown below.  This, believe it or not DOES have to do with your squat, but they are all excellent exercises/stretches to do:

• before your workout
• before your practice session
• in the morning or before bed
• any other time of day – the more you do them the more flexible you become!

Related articles

• What’s So Important About Core Strength? (huffingtonpost.com)
• Your Favorite Strength Training Moves (fitsugar.com)
• NFA Convention Recap (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
• Benefits of Weight Training Exercises (fitnesstipsforlife.com)
• Three Exercises to Activate and Strengthen Your Core (stack.com)

Oh yes, and if you want more information about my boot camp classes (the one to the right was taken at our beach location) you can check out the new website! It’s at www.PCBeachBootCamp.com  I’d love it if you left a comment and can give me your feedback.

So what happened at the NFA?
Presentations!!!!
As stated in previous blog posts, I was very blessed to have been able to give two presentations.  The first was on Friday at 5 PM and was a panel discussion titled “Injury Prevention and Pain Management”.  My fellow panel members, Dr. Susan Fain, Karen Lonsdale and Lea Pearson along with myself all spoke on different topics relating to playing the flute and some suggestions on overcoming the special health challenges it presented.  Lea talked about breathing and body mapping, Karen talked about the ergonomics of the flute and how to set up for practicing be it solo or in a band setting and Susan talked about some common injuries and solutions to them with posture and stretching.  I, of course, gave a quick overview on the benefits of strength training for flutists.  I had so much to say and sadly, I ran out of time – 10 minutes just isn’t long enough!

We had a really wonderful turnout and I did not have enough handouts for everyone to get one, so if you would like a copy of my handout for this presentation and did not receive one, you can download it here:

Using Strength Training to Prevent Injury and Improve Pain

My second presentation was just me and it was on Sunday at 8 AM.  I went far more into depth about the benefits of strength training for flutists, and then demonstrated proper weight lifting form (which we all did together), did a little body mapping in finding where our hips are (here’s a hint, it’s not the bone that sticks out) and then we did some sample stretches and some activation exercises.  It was a lot of fun, and again, I ran out of time.
The easiest way to for me to remedy my problem is for flute clubs and associations to hire me to come out for a day or a weekend to give a workshop and then we can really go  in-depth about how things work, and do some exercises together!  In fact, I had a few people approach me about doing that very thing so be on the lookout to see me coming to your area and if you would like me to come to your area, you can get in touch with me by emailing me at angela@musicstrong.com or via the contact link on my website: www.musicstrong.com

Again I had a great turn out and ran out of handouts so if you would like a handout and didn’t get one, you can download it here:

Lift, Play, Love : Basic Weight Lifting for Efficient Flute Playing

I also had a “muscle man” image that I used that went along with both handouts. You can get him here:

Career Development Workshop

I am very grateful to have been selected as a participant in the 2nd Annual Career and Artistic Development Committee’s Career Development Workshop.  The room was not nearly big enough to hold all the people and we had people spilling out into the hallway trying to get in!  We learned a lot of things: from how to write a mission statement, to a bio, to a cover letter, to how to take a good publicity photo and what NOT to do.

In addition, I and two other people got to present our business ideas to the group and ask for help on certain parts of our projects.  I presented my business Music Strong, and while it is not exactly in its fledgling stages and I have a lot of the work done, my biggest problem is in reaching my audience.  I needed help finding out how to go to where the flutists are and where the people who need me are.

I got a LOT of positive feedback from people who heard me; compliments on the business concept, comments on how excited people were that I was doing this and overall enthusiasm for my business.  I also got asked to come give a presentation in Texas, so be on the lookout for information there!

Other wonderful happenings

I had a lot of great things happen at the convention.  Besides my name getting out there and being recognized, I was also asked to help man the Performance Health Committee’s booth.  I was more than happy to do so – not only for the opportunity to socialize and network with my fellow health professionals, but to answer questions and help the myriad of people who came by with health questions.  It is so rewarding to be able to look at someone, listen to their problems and even if you cannot diagnose or fix their problems, you can give them HOPE and that is super exciting.

I made a lot of new connections, new friends and got a lot of great music I hope to be performing soon.  The convention was a success in every way and I’m very blessed to be able to have been a part of it. Now I’m working on presentation proposals for next year for Vegas!

If you went to the convention, if you got the chance to come to these presentations, workshops or even if you didn’t, I’d love to hear your comments about it and if you have suggestions on future articles or presentations, I am welcome to those as well.

Meanwhile, here are some pictures from the convention.  I hope you enjoy!

See you in Vegas!

Related articles

• It’s a Wild Ride… (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
• Off to NFA! (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
• 6 Ways to Mix Up Your Strength Training (fitsugar.com)
• Is Fitness Boot Camp For You? (everydayhealth.com)
• How to Lift Weights Properly for Strength Training (fitnesstipsforlife.com)
• A Flutist’s Self-Worth (innovativeperformanceandpedagogy.wordpress.com)

Be on the lookout very soon for a convention recap, complete with pictures and handout links.  There has been so much gong on I have not been able to do the recap yet, but it will be going out very soon!

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Simple, because of the 22 miles, 11 of them were INTO the wind. And not just any wind. Tropical something-or-other Lee blew through here the last few days. I rode down Hwy 98 and up 30-A, which for those who don’t know is right along the Gulf of Mexico the whole way. The waves are up and the wind was blowing big time in my face.

Why would I like that? Well, besides the fact that I knew that I would get to FLY back (oh and I did, it was fun!) was because I knew that mother nature was providing the resistance. It was like a Drill Sergeant: you never knew how long the challenge would last or what it would be. Just when I thought that I was going to get a break, I’d upshift to make it a little higher and I’d be hit with a 15mph gust that almost threw me off the bike. I’d put my head down and push through it…and the wind would let up long enough for me to enjoy the scenery.

Riding your bike outdoors forces you to challenge yourself. You have to peddle yourself back one way or another because no one is going to come get you! And you can’t just get off, like on a stationary bike. Besides this, you get scenery.

I guess that’s it, the challenge is what I’m after. I like being challenged, and the road does that. I don’t know what the wind will do, if I’ll have to be on my toes for potholes, or what, but it’s a challenge to take yourself out so far only to know you have to get yourself back and no amount of whining or complaining will change that.

It’s easy to get yourself off a piece of gym equipment, to walk out of the practice room, to just get up and leave things, but when you are out cycling, running, maybe even swimming if you aren’t in a pool, there’s no one but yourself to depend on to get yourself back.

In the Army, we call that INTESTINAL FORTITUDE.

I like it, but I also like to call it inner strength, and finding out that you really are made of more than you thought you were.

So find your method of challenge – and go discover your own amount of intestinal fortitude!

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Image by nickstone333 via Flickr

I came across this video the other day in a post I read from a girl powerlifter.  She also LOVES cookies, and calls herself the “Cookie Monster”.  She is living proof of 3 things:

1. You can be a female powerlifter and still be feminine
2. You can be a female who lifts a LOT of weight (like over 200 lbs.) and not get “bulky” – um, she’s TINY, but with fantastic curves (she’s very proud of them).
3. You can still enjoy cookies and not give them up for life, when you lift and enjoy them occassionally.   Read her blog sometime (watch out for her language though, sometimes she’s unedited, and she does that on purpose) and get inspired.

Musings of a Powerlifter « Munchies, Muscles, and Mischief.

Ok, but the point of this post is the video I found of Benedict Magnusson performing, get this, a 1015 lb. deadlift!  I believe he holds the title of world’s strongest man.

There are a few things to notice in this video:

1. The Power of the Crowd – do you think he could have done this without all the cheering, yelling, encouragement and yes, even the yelling he did himself to psych himself up for the lift?  I seriously doubt it.  Studies have been done on this very effect.  Studies aside, think about it. When you are doing something, anything that’s difficult, don’t you feel like you have the power to outperform even your own expectations because of the encouragement of the people around you?  Now think of a library, or a tennis court; it’s quiet, almost awkard it’s so quiet.  Imagine trying to perform this lift in that kind of atmosphere.  I seriously doubt it could happen.  This is why classes  like my Boot Camp Class are so good for you: you feel motivated, encouraged and you NATURALLY end up doing more because of the people around you.
2. His form was spot on.  He didn’t “hump” the weight.  No rounding of the back, waggling back and forth, compensating by putting his hips up first, scooping or anything else.  No.  His form was exactly the way it should be with his spine in neutral alignment and his body using the muscles God intended to be used for this lift: his posterior chain,  not his upper back, quads and hip flexors but his hamstrings, glutes and back muscles.  He didn’t have to compensate to look good in front of other people by sacrificing his form to get the weight up.  No, he did it exactly right on the way up AND down.  Did you notice that?  He set it down with perfect form, too!
3. He set it down with perfect form. He didn’t feel the need to drop the weight from that high instead of setting it down under control (1000 lbs. would probably have left a hole in the floor anyway).   How many people in the gym do YOU see, lifting more weight than they can with good form to convince themselves they are really stronger than they are (when all they are really asking for is a slipped disk)  I mean, I can’t even watch this video all the way it makes me cringe so bad. This guy is asking to be paralyzed.  But I see it in the gym every time I go in there.  He’s trying to make himself feel like he’s strong when he has no idea what he’s doing, and he WILL get hurt doing it.  What are the differences between him and Benedikt?  Can you see it?
4. The smile of satisfaction.  My favorite part of this whole video is when he got the weight locked out at the top and he looks around and smiles; the crowd goes nuts.  That is the look of a man who is satisfied with knowing he didn’t cheat, didn’t compensate, he lifted an INSANE amount of weight without hurting himself and he has every right to gloat.  The guy in the last video has no right to anything but a broken back.

I plan on posting a deadlifting post later, but for now, I just want to share this one because it makes me laugh with happiness everytime I watch it.  Everything about it is what’s good about lifting weight: you’re strong, you’re confident, you’re competent, you have no NEED to gloat about anything because you have control over your body.

Lift on.

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I count my brother among one of my best friends now.  He knows me unlike few others (save my husband and parents) and can relate to me on a large scale.  We both love music (though in different ways), LOVE lifting and can talk for hours about nutrition, psychology and our workouts.

One of the funniest things that happens between us happens over and over again.  One of us will call the other looking for advice about some aspect of nutrition or asking some question about “why is my strength stalling?  I can’t bust through my plateau!” etc. and invariably, one of us will ask the other

“When was the last time you took a break?”

It never fails, give us a few months and one of us will be calling the other complaining about something and that question will arise from the other one of us.  That’s one of the neat things about having a sibling with which you share a lot of common traits: we undersand that both of us

• overanalyze things to death
• are dead-set of getting things right the first time
• When we get into something we go in 110% – we don’t dabble….which invariably leads to burnout

All of these traits can be seen in a positive or negative light.   On the positive side, the analyzation leads to greater self-awareness and discovery with deeper understanding for future struggles and the perfectionism and enthusiasm belie a FANTASTIC work ethic.  On the negative, the analyzing will drive our friends and/or significant others crazy, we tend to lose out on the learning process by perfectionism and by ceasing to dabble in something, burnout occurs a lot faster.  I’m willing to bet that a lot of you reading this can relate to me on one, if not all of those personality traits.

So the question invariably comes up

When was the last time you took a break?

From dieting?

From training?

From practicing?

etc.
The list can go on and on.  We all need times of solitude, times of respite, of quiet.  We need times to break out of our routines and habits – which is why we go on vacations.  But sometimes, you don’t necessarily need a vacation from life, you need a vacation from your workout or your diet.

Two Take-Home Points

1. If you find yourself asking “when was the last time I took a break” and have a hard time answering definitively, that’s your first clue it’s time for a break

2. There are warning signs everywhere

• you are not sleeping well
• you have no desire to workout
• you are frequently tired
• You DREAD going to practice and when you are there, you get very little done, you have little stamina
• You are in pain more often
• The things that used to bring you joy now cause you dread
• just thinking about your workout makes you tired
• you suffer physically.  This can be seen in any number of ways, be it lack of sleep, lack of interest in things, joint pain, muscle pain, headaches, feeling “wired but tired”, hair becomes dry or falls out, you get sick more often and take longer to recover (sick can mean anything from viruses to allergies, because your immune system becomes cocmpromised)

The gym is for tearing down, rest is for repair and building

When you lift weights, you aren’t going to build or strengthen your body, you are literally tearing your body down.  You cause low-grade (sometimes mid-grade) inflammation and during REST is when your body repairs the damage you’ve done, creating new tissue, stronger or bigger tissue.  If you are constantly working out, going heavy 6 days a week and not giving your body a chance to repair, pretty soon you’re going to hit a wall.

Rest is underrated and you desperately need it.  If you’ve been lifting 5-6 days per week for years, I beg you to stop.  Switch to 3 days a week and work your whole body.  Do the big lifts: deadlifts, squats, bench press, pull ups or rows and throw in extra stuff for mobility and stability like lunges on top of it.  It will feel weird at first, but I dare you to do it for 3 months and see if you don’t grow more during that time than you ever have since you started.

Sometimes, you need a break from your diet.

We have break times like this at Christmas, Thanksgiving and maybe your Grandma’s birthday party, but if you have been anal retentive about your diet or even been gung-ho and “on your diet” for months and can’t remember the last time you just let yourself eat….it’s time.  You have to be willing to trust yourself that you will do yourself no harm by not tracking and weighing your food.  If you’ve been dieting for months and can’t remember the last time you ate at maintenance calories, then today is the day.  Stop today and take 2 weeks, starting today, and eat at maintenance calories.

What about practicing?

So what happens when you take a break?

You might find out that a host of good things happens.  Not only does your enthusiasm for the sport or the instrument return, in regards to lifting: you might have gotten stronger, or bigger or even leaner, depending on what you were trying to accomplish in the first place.  When the inflammation response goes down, water drops, muscle repairs and hormones stabilize, good things happen and suddenly, what you were training for, actually starts to work the way you were hoping.

Calves like these are grown OUT of the gym.  Just ask my brother, they belong to him and he works out 2 DAYS A WEEK.

In regards to practicing, I assure you, your technique does not fly out the window, your tone does not disappear, nor do you simply lose everything you worked for in the last decade. On the contrary.  Just like in lifting, good things can happen.  Your tone, your technique, your memory, whatever you’ve been working on can actually IMPROVE!

Point in case…

Let me tell you a story.  At some point during my first year of graduate school I said to myself “I want to be principal flute of USO” (the top university orchestra).  I thought this thought once and filed it away in my subconscious.  I worked very hard on my excerpts and worked all year to improve.

Then came the summer.  I knew I should practice, and I did, in fact, but I practiced piccolo mostly.  I didn’t practice that much.  A few hours a week, maybe, not a few hours a day.  I began practicing in earnest about a week or two before auditions for the next school year, just to see how things were.

I stepped into the practice room and to my amazement,

• my tone was better
• my technique was spot on, better than during the school year and more accurate
• my excerpts, while certainly not flawless, were better than I had ever played them, even without working on them all summer.

I went in to the audition room, played the Debussy the best I ever had (in one breath no less!) , nailed William Tell FLAWLESSLY, had FUN in the audition and guess what?  I got 1st chair.
What happened?

What happened was that I gave my body, my mind and my abilities time to rest.  I worked hard all year on improving my technique, my tone and my excerpts, then I basically took 2-3 months OFF.  It allowed my brain and my body to actually absorb and process what I had learned.  You see, you don’t necessarily get better when you are in the middle of practicing, the results show up later.  What they forget to tell you is that it’s partly a result of rest.

So, take heart from my story, and take a break.  Your body will thank you.

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Image via Wikipedia

What are the lower traps and what do I mean by activate?  This is by no means an exhaustive, comprehensive post, but this should give you a general idea.

There are three parts of the trapezius muscle: the upper fibers (used to bring your shoulders to your ears), the middle fibers that bring your shoulders up and also inward, just like the rhomboids, and the lower fibers (that pull your shoulder blades downward.)  If you will, try a little exercise with me for a minute: pull your shoulder blades down.  Kind of an odd feeling, isn’t it?  When was the last time you remembered performing this kind of action?  Probably not very recently, as we don’t spend a good deal of time with our shoulder blades back and down….unless we’re doing a good stretch because we’ve been sitting at the computer for too long.

Now, lift your shoulders towards your ears – fairly easy?  This action is performed readily when the “fight or flight” syndrome is engaged; pulling our shoulders towards our ears is a protective mechanism.  What else feels tight when you hold your shoulders there?  Well, if you hold your shoulders there long enough, you might feel several things

• tightness at the base of your neck
• a pain or pulling in your rhomboids or that vague area somewhere “in between my shoulder blades”
• your chest feels sore from contracting
• you begin to feel a pulling soreness along your rib cage

and several other things.  What happens all too often is that the “shrug mechanism” is seen in a lot of people’s posture today.  Our more sedentary lifestyles coupled with movements that encourage a protruding head and neck and arms forward posture have led to an epidemic of sorts of “bad posture”.  I say “bad” because really, what we get is altered posture due to muscle compensation.

This is one of the reasons I do not advocate anyone (except bodybuilders who are training for size and symmetry) include shrugging movements in their weight training regimens.  Most of us, who train for function and stability (and even those of us training for size) need to be focused on the middle and lower fibers of the trapezius.

When the upper traps are chronically activated, this can lead to dysfunction in the form of the lower (and possibly middle) traps becoming weakened to the point of “sleeping”.  This term is used not in a literal sense but to describe the problem of muscle imbalances caused by the upper traps being chronically activated, which causes the lower trapezius muscle fibers to not fire properly.

What to do: Activation Exercises

First off, as stated in several previous posts, you must first stretch what is tight.  In this case, that can be several muscles: the pectoralis major and minor muscles (chest), levator scapulae and scalenes (muscles in the neck) are the ones I would stretch first.  These can be accomplished with a doorway stretch (at 90 degrees to hit the pec major and with the arm extended to hit serratus and pec minor) and the specific stretches for levators as seen in the previous post: The Flutist’s Pain Points

Once the tight muscles have been stretched (also called autogenic inhibition – or static stretching) one can move into activation exercises: which could also be called active-isolated stretching.  This is done by a process called Reciprocal Inhibition which uses agonistic and synergistic muscles to dynamically move the joint into a range of motion.  These stretches are done for 1-2 sets of each exercise and hold each stretch for 1-2 seconds for 5-10 repetitions.

Activation Exercises

The lower and middle traps are vital for shoulder stability, so doing exercises to ensure they are doing their job is vitally important.  The first rule of strength training form is to retract and depress the shoulder blades.  This not only ensures that the middle and lower traps (as well as the rhomboids) are active and functional, it inhibits upper trap, levator and other compensatory muscles from taking over.  Use this motion any time during the day as an exercise on its own, and then use it during strength training sessions to make sure your shoulder girdle is stable and lower traps are activated.

Some excellent exercises for activating the lower traps (and rhomboids – as by now you can see they can be synergists) are wall slides, soup can pours, Face Pulls, Prone lower trap raises and LYTP’s.  The primary movements, as discussed before, are Adduction (retraction) and depression.   This website lists some excellent exercises, shows their movements and gives more anatomical descriptions.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but a few suggestions on some exercises you can do to “wake up” those lower traps.  For a warm-up, I might do something like this:

• Active Pectoral Chest Stretch (major and minor – 90 degrees and extended) 1-2 setsx5-10 reps each. Hold 1-2 sec.
• Wall slides 1-2 sets of 5-10 reps
• Arm circles 1-2 sets of 5-10 reps
• Scapular pushups or dip shrugs 1-2 sets of 5-10 reps
• LYTP’s on stability ball or bench
• Prone lower trap raises on incline bench

By now, your lower traps should feel a pleasant “burning” or tingling sensation, letting you know that the muscles are beginning to fire.  After this, I would probably follow up with a few rotator cuff exercises to help with shoulder stability.  In fact, Diesel Crew has put out an excellent circuit for “shoulder rehab” that you might want to check out.  You can sub it in for the circuit above. (Always check with your doctor or a qualified medical professional if you have any shoulder injuries, issues or concerns before attempting any of these exercises.)

(By the way, I LOVE the pull up retractions!)  And flutists (and other musicians) you should pay special attention to this video!  These are great exercises to perform before practicing, or any other time of day you want to counter balance the effects of playing your instrument.

From there, with whatever workout I was doing, I would make sure to include exercises that engage the lower traps and throw in one or two exercises to help strengthen the shoulder girdles, my favorite exercise being face pulls.  These are very easy to do incorrectly if the shoulder blades are not depressed and retracted.

The list goes on…

There are lots and lots of exercises to increase shoulder stability and when you make a regular habit of incorporating these activation exercises into your programs, you will not only see increased stability, but an increased range of motion, a possible decrease in pain and a possible improvement in upper thoracic posture.

Make sure to include lower trap activation exercises in every warm-up if not each workout!  Please let me know how these exercises worked for you and your own experiences!

Related articles

• Identifying Shoulder Pain – Part I (innovativeperformanceandpedagogy.wordpress.com)
• Shoulder Pain Part 1 (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
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• Shrugging at Shrugs (stephenholtfitness.com)
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So far:

Wednesday: Meet up with Flute Specialists and see if I can help them set up their booth.  This is after checking in, of course.

Friday:

8AM “You on the Page” Career Artistic Development Mini-Conference participant

9 AM: “You in Pictures” CAD mini-conference Participant

5 PM: Presenting  “Practical Steps Towards Injury Prevention and Management”

Saturday

8 AM: “You in Your Work” CAD mini-conference participant

9 AM: “You, learning from others” CAD

Sunday

8 AM: Presenting “Lift, Play, Love: Basic Weight Lifting for Efficient Flute Playing”

That, of course, doesn’t include going to the other lectures, exhibits, classes and playing!  I hope to do a good bit of reading and playing with others and I’m really looking forward to it.  If not there, you just might find me hanging out around the Flute Specialists table, maybe even in the gym doing my own workout or helping others.

Want to see the entire schedule?  Check out my previous post with a link to it!
If you’re there, I really look forward to meeting you- come say hi!  When I get back, I fully intend to write up a nice recap of the experiences with links to my handouts.  See you in Charlotte!

Image via Wikipedia

You know what annoys me most about exercising?

It isn’t getting up early or making time for it in my day, it isn’t the study and research involved in my job, it isn’t the educational aspect, it isn’t the soreness or the dedication or any of the obvious things.

It’s the increased oxygen flow to the brain that causes me to come up with so many great ideas (future blogs, articles, business ideas, etc) and the sucky thing is that well, I’m exercising and I can’t exactly write them down.  It’s next to impossible to write your ideas down when you’re on a bike or in the middle of a run, and of course, they leave you when you stop.

Now, can you make that work to your advantage?  Of course!  The case obviously can be made that the mild annoyance of not being able to record things as easily in the middle of a workout is far offset by the fact that 1) your brain is getting more oxygen 2) your blood is becoming more oxygenated 3) your lymph system is flowing better 4) your cardiovascular system is improving 5) you are getting stronger physically and mentally and because of all those wonderful things that come with movement 6) you are now getting better ideas than you would have had if you had just been sitting in front of the TV, computer or steering wheel.

A personal update:

Have I mentioned I suck at running?  If you recall my previous post about “Do What You Suck At” you’ll realize that since I said that, there’s a good chance I do it anyway….and you’d be partly correct.  See, I really despise running….mostly because I don’t do it well (isn’t that how it always goes?), however, that’s only part of the reason.  I’ve had problems running ever since I joined the Army.  I started running right before I joined because I thought “I’m going to basic training, and they run constantly, from what I’ve heard, and I don’t want to get injured or not be able to keep up”.  So I started running pretty regularly and actually started to enjoy it.  However, it’s been kind of a love/hate relationship since then.

While at basic training, I suffered a muscle strain in my left hip that left me limping for probably 6 out of the 9 weeks and running was painful.  The most I got was “no running, take ibuprofin and ice it”.  So I got out of running sometimes, though I tell you this, at basic, you run whether you are injured or not because 1) you don’t want to be seen as weak 2) you don’t want to let your comrades down or fall behind and 3) if the Drill Sergeants see you giving it your all if not 110%, they’ll let up on you a little bit, out of respect.  When my platoon had to run, even though I was on a profile, I ran with them, till the drill sergeants yelled at me because I wasn’t supposed to run.  But I refused to just sit there while everyone else had to do things.

I digress….

It wasn’t until later when I had a car accident that I went to a chiropractor who found out the probable cause of my hip pain: my pelvis is twisted….in 3 directions.  Your pelvis is supposed to face forward and be level.  Mine?  It’s tilted forward (top more forward than the bottom), twisted to the left AND one side is higher than the other, making one leg shorter than the other.

This translates, obviously to muscle imbalances: my hip flexors are not carrying equal load, nor are my low back muscles, glutes, piriformis, etc.  The hip complex has a whole host of muscles attached to it, and if things are not as they should be you are begging for problems.

What does this mean for me?  Well, it means that I have had all kinds of major problems from running, even with chiropractic adjustment: bursitis of the IT band, hip strains, calf strains, mysterious pain that originates on the side of the hip, shoots through the knee and down into the ankle and overall, and what ailed me after last year’s PT test, a mysterious hip pain on the right side that ended up being several causes: right side overstretched, left side understretched, a psoas weakness and a possible strain in the illiacus.

Sadly, this is genetic.  My mom has the same condition, so there was nothing I could do to avoid it.
There ARE things I can do to help, with today’s successful running venture a testament.

Combating Muscle Weakness, Pain and Imbalance with Proper Stretching

First of all, I made the foam roller a major friend today.  Knowing the left side is under stretched, I concentrated on foam rolling my TFL (tensor fascia latae) .  The TFL, if you notice, is a little difficult to get to, right on the outside side of the pelvic crest and can be extremely painful, as was my case today.  I concentrated on finding the most tender (aka painful) spot and sat on it, and then rolled around, trying to get it to relax.  From there I foam rolled all the hip flexors in front, especially on the left side, which this morning, were particularly painful.  They’re also a little difficult to get to, but what I noticed was that it was the origin points of the muscle (where they begin and attache to the  pelvis) that was the most painful: the quad origins, TFL, pectineus were all bothering me.  My piriforms muscles were also very tight today.  After rolling these, I made sure to hit my adductors and as I suspected, they also had trigger points and tender spots, most notably towards the knee.  When foam rolling, you will tend to find the most painful spots will be not in the middle of the muscle, but towards the ends: either the origins or the insertion points.  This is where the golgi tendon gets excited and gets “stuck” in contraction, causing the “knot”.  Foam rolling applies pressure to the middle of this knot, causing the golgi tendons to relax and the muscle to better reach its full range of motion.  This is why foam rolling is so important.

The rather technical description is as follows: Foam rolling is a self-myofascial release (SMR) technique that is used by athletes and physical therapists to inhibit overactive muscles. This form of stretching utilizes the concept of autogenic inhibition to improve soft tissue extensibility, thus relaxing the muscle and allowing the activation of the antagonist muscle. ^{(Gossman MR, Sahrman SA, Rose SJ: Review of Length-Associated Changes in Muscle: Experimental Evidence and Clinical Implications. Phys. Ther. 62:1799–1808. 1982}

The Stretches

Before attempting my jog this morning, I made sure to notice which muscles felt tight.  I already knew my hip flexors would need adequate stretching, glutes and hamstrings would need activation, but I moved around and noticed that my calves were rather tight as well.  So, this was my warm-up:

• Static Ankle Stretch
• Wall Ankle Mobility active stretches
• Active TFL stretch (crossover toe touch)
• External hip rotator stretch (put leg bent at 90 degree angle on railing and bent forward, then to side, letting hip musculature relax, then squeezing buttocks)
• Standing warrior stretch (also known as active psoas stretch – stretches hip flexors, activates glutes)
• Leg swings
• Standing hip outside swings (like doing fire hydrants standing up)

I then set out walking, making sure to notice how my body felt: was I tight anywhere still?  Not noticing anything excessively tight, I leaned forward and began an easy jog.  I felt good!  I kept up this self-observation as I went, sometimes walking, sometimes jogging – not pushing myself too hard, being more focused on how my body felt and was reacting.  Normally when I stop jogging to walk, going back to jogging triggers pain, and being aware of this I kept in mind “I’m just getting back to this.  There is a time and a place to push yourself, right now is not it, you can build speed and endurance, today you will just observe and be proud”.  And I was.  There was no pain after I resumed running each time and I noticed that my cardiovascular endurance was much improved (most likely due to my boot camp class where I am constantly out of breath – and my regular cycling that has me huffing and puffing; no machine for me!), so it was hugely encouraging for me 1) to know that my lungs were ready to run and my cardiovascular system had improved, even without regular running and 2) mentally, I was there  and 3) that my body was starting to cooperate.

When I finished I cooled down by walking and repeating the above stretches with more focus on static stretching.  I feel good now, but will definitely foam roll a little later and make that a regular part of my routine while getting back into running.

But Back to Being Annoying

Even though I’m proud of myself for running (ok jogging) and not being in pain….I still don’t like it.  I won’t like it till it’s easy.  In face, I am considering taking up triathalon training for that very reason: because while I like cycling, I’ve got a long way to go and I’m not very good at the other two disciplines – so why not give them a go?  No idea how well I swim, but if it keeps me in shape well enough to pass my PT test every year without wearing myself out and making my muscle imbalances worse, then why not?

Speaking of muscle imbalances, if your hips or low back give you problems, I highly recommend checking out this article put out by Critical Bench: Lumbo-Pelvic Hip Imbalances.  He does an excellent job of explaining muscle imbalances and giving stretches to counter-act them.  What I REALLY like about this article is that he breaks the benefits of those stretches and corrected muscle imbalances down into disciplines.  Meaning, that if you’re a cyclist, power lifter or just a regular adult, you will have specific benefits from doing these exercises.  To quote him:

Benefits:

Runners (all levels – beginner to marathoner):

• Improved mobility at the hip allows for better gait and stride efficiency

• Decreased braking during transition of foot strike to push off

• Increased stability at the ankle, knee, and hip

• Decreased rate of injury throughout lower body

Cyclists

• Improved activation of gluteus muscles providing for increased strength in pushing

• Decrease in lower back pain or discomfort

• Helps prevent chronic hip pain associated with high mileage over years of cycling

Adults (especially those with young kids):

• Fewer aches and pains from picking up and putting down children

• Improved lifting mechanics

• Decreased chance of “throwing out your back”

Keying in on your Goals

Incorporating these stretches and resistance exercises into your fitness program will provide better movement through the hip complex with increased gluteus muscle activation, reduce the risk of injury, and help to decrease the amount of anterior pelvic tilt you may be experiencing.

This improved posture will allow you to come closer to all of your fitness goals, whether they be muscle endurance, size, strength, or power; injury prevention or rehabilitation; or decreases in lower back and hip discomfort.

I hope this article has been helpful for you – I would love to hear your comments!

Related articles

• She’s In the Army Now – Fort Sill, OK (travelpod.com)
• Give Me Oxygen? (everydayhealth.com)
• Is Exercise a Pleasure or Chore? (fitsugar.com)
• Brain Bike Sharpens Your Mind, Tires Your Legs (fitsugar.com)
• Hip Pain: What Do Your Symptoms Mean? (everydayhealth.com)
• A Common Cause of Low Back and Sciatic Pain = the Piriformis (rhvillegas.wordpress.com)
• Core Concepts: Running (fitsugar.com)
• The Flutists’ Pain Points (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
• Core Knowledge (fitsugar.com)
• The Exercise You Hate Is Probably the One You Need Most (fitsugar.com)

So What the Heck Have I Been Doing???

Well, let me lay it out in bullet point format…I like bullet points.

• I travelled to Tennessee to spend two weeks with the Army National Guard Band.  We were engaged daily with the TN Arts Academy Conducting Symposium.  While there I got to play woodwind trios, organize the Army Band library (I’m in awe at the amount of music we have) and network.
• I bought a road bike!  I’d like to introduce you to my new friend, Lexa:
  

• With a new bike comes a lot of work – learning how to ride, acquiring the proper gear, skills and logging miles.  I went on a 40 mile ride yesterday and while it was fun, it was humbling to be with a group of people who rode faster than me – I found out just how far fitness-wise I have to go!
• I’ve been working like a mad-woman on my NFA  presentations I can’t believe it’s 2 weeks from now!!!  It’s crunch time now – getting all my presentation thoughts, handouts and ideas together.  I’ve also got the great news that I’ve been selected to participate in the NFA Career and Artistic Development Committee Mini-Conference, where I will be presenting Music Strong as my business and being mentored by great people in the flute world: Eva Amsler, Alberto Almaraz, Stephanie Jutt, Laura Barron,  and Jill Felber – so I’ve been getting those materials together, too.  In addition, I will hopefully be assisting Flute Specialists at their booth at NFA.  So it’s going to be a BUSY convention!  Oh, and did I mention my birthday is the 12th?  Right in the middle of the convention – not a bad present.
• I’ve been promoting Music Strong like crazy and have gotten a lot of work done!  We now have T-shirts for sale!! You can order them on the Music Strong website .  I’ve also gotten new business cards, been sending out announcements for my NFA presentations, and I’ve launched the PC Beach Boot camp!  We’re having a great time so far and if you’re interested in coming, we welcome all age and ability levels – you can tailor the class to your needs and what you can do.  We meet every Tuesday and Thursday morning at 5:30 at the PC Beach Pier Public Access.  And speaking of promotion, you might find some “Groupon” type deals for me in the Panama City newspaper, soon – they’re launching something called “Deal of the Day” and I plan to be a part of it!  So be on the lookout for that!

Ok, are you tired reading all this?  I am! So to finish up, I’d just like to let you all know that I WILL be posting soon, and I fully intend to do a NFA recap.

In the meantime, I’d like to wax poetic about my bike for a minute.

Why do I like it?  This thought has come to me more than once while riding and that is, I like it for the challenge. The mental challenge.  More often than not it’s not the physical challenge that is what is a struggle, it’s that it’s a mental challenge.  When you ride on a stationary bike, you can get off any time.  You can cite any excuse you like just to get off and quit.  When you ride a bike in the great out doors, you log a lot of miles and suddenly, you are in the middle of nowhere with no choice but to ride back.  Sure, you can get off and quit, but no one will come pick you up, you’ll have walk back, and who wants to do that when you’ve got a perfectly good bike?

My boot camp class is the same way, in a way: you can “get off” and quit at any point.  But you won’t.  Why? Because you’re there with a lot of other people and THEY aren’t quitting, and you don’t want to be seen as a quitter, right?  So you end up going farther, going harder, pushing yourself beyond where you THOUGHT you could go and that makes you stronger and can boost your confidence in a way you didn’t think was possible.  With every class I get sore and then I get stronger, physically AND mentally, and so do my “campers”.  With every ride, I can go longer, my cardiovascular endurance increases and my mental toughness increases because no matter how far back it is, no matter how hard the wind is blowing in my face and making it a struggle to go forward – I don’t have a choice, I HAVE to keep going.  Besides the fact that the scenery changes, THAT is why I love bike riding (and boot camp class).
So I hope to see you all at my class on Tuesday.  It really is a fun experience and who doesn’t love that feeling of accomplishing more than you thought possible?

Image via Wikipedia

I’ve been meaning to do this for awhile, and have finally been able to get things together. Currently, there is not a beach boot camp class in Panama City. Why, I cannot figure out, but that will soon be rectified.

We’ve got a start date of July 21st at 5:30 AM (yes, you read that right) and will be held Tuesdays and Thursdays from 5:30-6:30 AM at the Public Beach Access Pier. Not Pier Park, the other pier.

Why this early?  Several reasons

• You can get your workout done before the family gets up
• You still have plenty of time to get ready for work
• Mostly, because by 7 AM it’s already 90 degrees, so this will save us some heat exhaustion
• You get to see the sunrise on the beach 2x a week!  You know you’ve been meaning to go

Wondering what we’re going to do?

HA!! You’ll have to wait and see.   But I CAN tell you it will be fun and motivational.  I’m planning on using a lot of exercises I personally did while at Army basic training, but this will be a little bit  more of a relaxed atmosphere.  There’s a lot of fear and myth surrounding Army boot camp – most with roots to it, however, there was nothing dangerous involved in the PT we did and will do on the beach.  And working out with others in a big group setting, yelling and sweating together and laughing is a lot of fun, all while achieving a HOT BODY!

Ok, Great!  I’m in!  What are the deatails?

Glad you asked.  You know the time and place, so now you need to know:

1. Bring hydration of some sort (water bottle, camel back, Powerade, etc.)
2. Bring a beach towel
3. Bring $10 per class (unless you pay online first)
4. Bring a positive attitude!

That’s it.  $10 a class.  All you have to do is show-up, and I’ll do the rest….haha, sort of.

How do I pay for this thing?

Very easily.  You have a few options.

1. You can show up with $10 in hand.
2. You can pay via the Button on the Facebook page
3. You can email me to sign up (if the above button doesn’t work) and ask to be put on the mailing list to get special invitations, announcements and discounts, and I will send you the button.
4. Soon, you’ll be able to pay online at my website. www.MusicStrong.com

So, are you ready?  Ready to try a real boot camp?  Ready to make a lot of fitness friends?  Ready to FINALLY take steps to get the body you really want to have?

Great, then I’ll see you on the beach!

Panama City Beach Bootcamp is a product of Personal Training.

Related articles

• Have You Enrolled in a Boot Camp? (fitsugar.com)

Good news! Another study has proven the positive results of strength training in older/elderly adults.  You are never to old to exercise!

If you would like to read the entire study, you may do so here.

Some interesting things to note from the study:

Effects of strength (resistance) training in elderly people

Clinical as well as epidemiological studies showed the effect of athletic activity on morbidity and mortality indicators in elderly people. Laboratory-based studies showed that 20 to 30 minutes of strength (resistance) training, 2 to 3 times per week, has positive effects on risk factors for cardiovascular disorders, cancer, diabetes, and osteoporosis (6–9, e2). Furthermore, progressive strength (resistance) training is accepted in treating sarcopenia and to improve postural control (10).

The results of a recent Cochrane review including 121 randomized controlled trials (with some 6700 participants) showed that in most studies, strength (resistance) training is done 2 to 3 times per week. As a rule, this results in a notable increase in muscle strength, a moderate increase in the distance covered walking, a better performance for rising from a sitting position, and a subjectively higher mobility. Furthermore, increased stamina, an increased mitochondrial capacity, and a drop in the resting heart rate have been shown (6).

…

Physical activity can lead to an increase in, or reduction in the loss of, bone density, particularly in elderly postmenopausal women (7, e4). In low bone density, such effects on the spine as well as the hips have been shown (7). Adequate stimulation of osteogenesis and an increase in bone density can be achieved especially by means of very intense loading. However, results differ with regard to efficient dosage of training. Bemben et al. studied the effects of 8 months of maximum strength (resistance) training (3 times/week) and strength (resistance) training with additional whole-body vibration training on bone metabolism (among others, on alkaline phosphatase), bone density (DXA), and muscle force in postmenopausal women (11). They found greater muscle force in both intervention groups, but no differences regarding bone metabolism and bone density. Burke et al. found after a multimodal 8-week exercise program (balancing exercises and strength [resistance] training in postmenopausal women with confirmed osteoporosis) with high compliance rates an improvement of isometric muscle force in the ankle joint and knee joint muscles as well as balancing skills (12).

So, ladies, if you want to reduce or slow down your bone loss you have to

1) strength train

2) BE CONSISTANT, You can’t go once a week, or every couple of weeks, it’s 3 times a week, every week for 8 weeks MINIMUM.  This does not include the elliptical machine.

A current topic of discussion is whether or not the effects of strength (resistance) training also translate for elderly patients in different clinical groups (e5). Kingsley et al. observed after 12 weeks of strength (resistance) training in female patients with fibromyalgia an increase in strength and a reduction in symptoms (13). Mangione et al. studied the effect of 10 weeks of twice weekly, high-intensity, outpatient strength (resistance) training after a neck of femur fracture (14). One year after the fracture, the strength performance capacity, walking speed, the distance covered in 6 minutes’ walking, and the functional and medical results were statistically significantly better than in the control group. Similar results have been observed for patients with arthritis of the large joints of the leg (15, 16, e6). High-intensity strength (resistance) training seems therefore also useful and efficient in the treatment and after-treatment of selected symptoms in elderly patients.

The frequency of falls and injuries rises from the 5th decade of life. After the age of 65 years, 30% of people fall at least once a year (10). Orr postulates in the results of a systematic literature review a negative effect of insufficiency of muscle on postural control in elderly people, but causality should not be assumed as a given (10, e7). Daniels showed in this context that isolated strength (resistance) training is less effective for postural control than multimodal programs that include different components, such as balance, strength, flexibility, and stamina with mostly higher intensities. More recent studies have investigated whether sensorimotor training may be beneficial in addition to mere strength (resistance) training (17–19). Alfieri et al. conducted multisensory training in persons of about 70 years of age for 12 weeks, which included optimizing the stability of posture, strength (resistance) training, sensorimotor training on uneven surfaces, and coordinating tasks (17). The results showed that multisensory training is superior to mere strength (resistance) training with regard to the variable of postural control. Extending strength (resistance) training by sensorimotor training, or adding this component, is therefore beneficial in elderly people.

My certifiying agency, the National Academy of Sports Medicine firmly believes in incorporating all these modalities into a training program: core training, balance/stability work, flexibility/stretching AND strength training. And that’s what you get when you get a training plan from me: a personalized training program incorporating all these different modalities that is tailored to fit your lifestyle and your needs.

The discussion about using strength (resistance) training in a beneficial manner is often linked with the debate of possible negative side effects and contraindications, especially when elderly patients are concerned. Diverse studies that we have already cited have shown, however, that the rate of side effects is very low if the dose is adapted to the patient. Liu and Latham have conducted a systematic literature search of the adverse effects of strength (resistance) training (20). Only 25% of included studies reported adverse effects. The most common ones were musculoskeletal problems after training. In some studies, such adverse effects resulted in the subject being excluded from the study, but no precise exclusion rates can be verified.

Again, another statement that confirms the benefits outweigh the detriments of strength training if the dose is adapted.

And. my absolute favorite quote of the article:

The view that at an advanced age, load bearing intensity should be reduced in order to avoid injuries and chronic overuse is widespread. However, this effect is not supported by current evidence, and several working groups have pointed out the need for higher intensities for elderly as well as young people.

AKA: You are never too old to start training!  You’re not too young, either, so what are you waiting for?   Contact me and let me help design a plan just for you!

Related articles

• Strength training for grandma and grandpa (medicalxpress.com)
• Strength training counteracts muscular atrophy in old age (humankinetics.wordpress.com)

One of my mottos for awhile now has been “You are only as strong as your weakest link”.  This picture exemplifies the idea perfectly.  When I was in Army Basic Training, that was one of the things they told us almost constantly.  We had to do everything as a team, and if one person was wrong, you were all wrong.  If one person wanted to keep the Kevlar helmet on instead of taking it off, we all had to keep it on.  If one person got punished…well, that didn’t happen, we all got punished.

The point was that you HAD to learn to do everything as a unit, as a team, and that each person was as important as the next.  You are being taught to pay attention to detail and you realize very quickly that even if YOU excel in one area, your Battle Buddy probably doesn’t, and to work together as a team, everyone has to come together to support and encourage and work on their “weakest link” before you can excel as a team.

Your body works as a team as well and if you don’t address your weakest link, you are shortchanging yourself.  As a musician, you know that if you don’t work on your weak spots, you’ll never reach your full potential because being a musician is made of several “links” – scales, intervals, tone, technique, body awareness, attitude, work ethic, etc.

As for my title…

You’ll have to pardon the hanging participle and bad grammar….but it got your attention, didn’t it?

Here’s the point if you do what you’re good at, you’ll never get any better.  Makes sense, doesn’t it?  Sure, but what do we do?  We do the things at which we already accel.  Why?  Because we like doing well, we like feeling that good feeling that comes with doing well, and when you do something well, it’s, well…..easy.

Another way to say “do what you suck at” is to say “work on your weaknesses”.  Now, honestly if I had put that as the title, you wouldn’t have stopped by to read, would you?   Not nearly as interesting.  But the truth is there in both statements.  When you take a good look at the areas in which you lack and you go forth and WORK on those weaknesses what happens?

Well, it’s hard.
It’s generally not much fun.
You might fail….a lot.
But in the end, you end up succeeding and ultimately not only gaining a greater sense of achievement due to the feeling of overcoming something at which you used to not do well, but it gets easier from there for you to get better at it.

Two examples: music and fitness, of course

Fitness

Take your pick: squat, pushup or pullup.

Sure, there are other hard exercises like deadlifting and benching and rowing but in all honesty, these are tough for me and most women.  Most people do a HORRIBLE job of squatting with good form.  They either

• don’t go low enough
• elevate their heels and squat on their toes
• have their knees cave in
• point their toes way out

It’s sad really, because what should be easy to do (we did it as 2-year olds without another thought) becomes so much more difficult as we age.

Side note:
This is why I suggest EVERYONE get some training in Alexander Technique.  It’s not just for musicians and you will relearn how to use your body the way God intended and the way you used to, as aforementioned 2-year old but with better motor skills

Walk into almost any gym in the country and undoubtedly you will see a lot of the same things: the treadmills, ellipticals and bikes will be mostly full (sadly, mostly with women), lots of people using machines, and in the free weight section, the few people you see will be mostly men, mostly doing chest and bicep exercises.  Occassionally you’ll see a man doing a squat….probably only going half-way down with too much weight (because it’s always better to improve your ego by using too much weight with bad form than to use no weight with good form, right?) and even more rarely, you’ll see a lady in there, doing “toning” exercises with the pink dumbbells.  She’s doing it because she knows she needs to do something but isn’t sure what, so she sticks to what’s safe, what isn’t challenging, and pats herself on the back for venturing into the “guy’s” part of the gym. And year after year the ladies on the treadmills wonder why their bodies haven’t changed the way they “should”.

The guys do their same routines for the same reason: they work the vanity muscles using some outdated routines they found in magazines (that really only work for newbies) because they don’t know any better, it’s safe, it’s what the other guys are doing and hey, what woman looks at a guy’s legs – they look at his GUNS right?   And year after year, he does the same stuff, blindly going forward, his gains decreasing every year and wondering why.

I’ll tell you why.  It’s because they don’t work on their weaknesses.

Music

Where is your weakness when it comes to music?  Ignoring etudes, scales and technique exercises – only focusing on working on pieces?  Not really “wood shedding” the music, but just playing it over and over again?  Putting off memorizing something?  Not practicing much at all?

As a musician, my biggest weakness is 1) not making the time to practice and 2) not giving myself structure during practice time….which leads to feeling like I”m just wasting my time, so I end up not practicing at all!  If you are one of those musicians  who has been out of school for awhile, you know how easy it is to get out of the habit of daily practice, espcially when you aren’t surrounded by other musicians pushing you, endless rehearsals and recitals.  If LACK of practice is your nemesis, ask yourself why?  And chunk it into manageable goals: 1) I will  practice every day or every other day 2) I will work on these pieces and these exercises, etc.  Just write it down and give yourself structure.

If there is something specific you suck at and you’re just avoiding it, it’s time to take the bull by the horns and go after it!  If you are a person who plays by ear and has a difficult time deciphering rythms on the page…..well, you need to start reading more music with difficult rhythms.  If you suck at sightreading, the only way to get better at sightreading is to sightread a LOT.

See how this works?  Identify your weakness, have the courage to put your ego aside and say “ok, what do I really suck at?” and then do THAT.

Take your dreaded evil and look it square in the face and say

“Today , it’s you and me and while I may not conquer you today, maybe not tomorrow, I will not fear you, and I WILL do this”.

 

And from there, you start with Moyse Gamme Arpegge and work your way through

So Do What You Suck At

If you are a gym “bro” who splits his workouts into “chest days’ and “arm days”: have the courage to do a full body workout,

If you are a lady who does nothing but stay on the elliptical or do curls and crunches in the “guy’s part of the gym”, have the courage to pick up some 20 pounders or hire a personal trainer and learn how to do a real deadlift…I can tell you, there’s nothing more empowering than deadlifting your bodyweight (with excellent form) in a gym full of men who are doing superflous exercises (with bad form).

If you are a musician and you’ve been putting off attacking Berio’s “Sequenza” GO FOR IT!  You just might find that it’s way more fun than you ever realized.

In the end, we all have to work on our weaknesses, because there is only so far you can go in the areas you already excel.

Related Articles

• Are You Ready to Change? (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
• What Interests You? (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
• The Flutists’ Pain Points (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
• The Flutist’s Pain Points (innovativeperformanceandpedagogy.wordpress.com)
• Multitasking Move: Burning Squats (fitsugar.com)
• The Exercise You Hate Is Probably the One You Need Most (fitsugar.com)
• How I Discovered The Alexander Technique (lukeford.net)
• 3 Exercise Form Mistakes to UNLEARN Now (joshsgarage.typepad.com)

That beings said, even with all its benefits when performed and progressed properly…

It is not a cure-all.

In my posts, sometimes I get so caught up in talking about training, in how much I love it, and how I know it can help most people, I forget that my audience is not entirely made up of people my age to middle age with no contraindications. That my audience is also targeted at musicians who are in pain, whether from playing their instruments or otherwise, are elderly, have different injuries or conditions which I cannot foresee nor am I liscensed to be able to diagnose.

So let me just say this: while I believe STRONGLY in the power of strength training, if you have any kind of pain, you should not try to self-diagnose yourself and you should seek the help of a qualified medical professional.

My posts are enthusiastic and passionate because I want to educate the musician population about:

1. their own human anatomy
2. correcting their body map
3. how their bodies work to play their instruments
4. POSSIBLE causes of pain
5. POSSIBLE stretches and strengthening exercises that may help
6. the MYTHS surrounding weight training and why musicians especially SHOULD be doing it, perhaps more than other people should.

My posts are not meant to serve to self-diagnose or infer that if you have pain, if you just do some of these strength training exercises, hire a personal trainer or learn how to stretch properly that everything will be better.  In some cases, this may be true, but in some cases, the situations may be more complex than this, which is why you should NEVER self diagnose.  After reading my post on Shoulder Pain you should come away with a broader understanding of your anatomy, and you may also have a better idea of where or even why your pain is where it is, but you should not assume so.  It may be that you know where you feel pain, but the source of your pain is somewhere else (called pain referral) and you trying to self-diagnose ends up hurting you rather than helping you.  Take your new-found knowledge to a medical professional: I listed several at the bottom of that post.

If you have pain, you should see:

• A general practitioner
• A physical therapist
• A massage therapist
• An ART doc

to name a few.  I seek to give my readers knowledge about how their bodies work and to erradicate the fear that some of them may have about how weight training is something musicians should stay away from.

So, if you have seen the doc or PT about your problems, it has been diagnosed and you’ve gotten the go-ahead that weight training would not hurt you, by all means, hire a personal trainer to set up a personalized program for you to help you reach your goals and strengthen your body. When I get  a new client, one of the first things I do is collect information from them including any kind of medical history that may be detrimental to their training and make sure they have an OK from the doc if there are any contraindications.  Any personal trainer you hire should do the same.

So, bear that in mind when reading my posts.  Strength training offers a host of positive benefits that usually far out weigh the negatives, and if the only thing holding you back from the gym is fear (and not disease), then go ahead and conquer that fear.

Related articles

• The Flutist’s Pain Points (innovativeperformanceandpedagogy.wordpress.com)
• The Difference Between the Location of Symptoms and the Source of Dysfunction (mikereinold.com)
• 7 Reasons to Strength Train (fitsugar.com)
• Strength training counteracts muscular atrophy in old age (humankinetics.wordpress.com)

If you are like me, you’ve discovered the delicousness that is Greek yogurt.

You’ve also discovered the sticker shock that comes with it.

$4 for a PINT???  It’s about the same as a pint of raspberries.  Neither of which price I understand.  Until I can grow my own berry bushes, I will settle for making my own yogurt. It is RIDICULOUSLY easy.  I was told it was not good to do with skim milk – BALDERDASH!  That’s the only kind I make and it’s delicious.

All you need is:

• milk
• time
• something to use to strain – like a dish towel
• a thermometer
• an oven or crockpot
• minimum of 2 TB yogurt

There are a lot of videos out there, but you really don’t need to use one.  Just use this recipe and have some time to fiddle in the kitchen and you’re golden.

Greek Yogurt

Pour milk into a saucepan….or a giant pot.  Depending on how much milk you use determines how big the pot.   Turn heat on low and insert a thermometer.  Heat milk until it reaches 175-180ish degrees, stirring somewhat constantly. I say somewhat because you don’t have to stir it all the time, but if you leave it for too long, it will burn on the bottom and ruin the batch.

Once the milk reaches temperature, let it cool to 110 degrees.  Once cool, add a ladleful (or whatever) of the warm milk to the yogurt – stir with a whisk until incorporated.  Once done, dump back into the milk.   If you would like to add flavorings this would be the time to do so.  Take your milk still in the pot, and put it into the oven with the light on.  Leave for 12 hours.  Keep the thermometer in, because you do not want it to go below 100 degrees.  You can also be creative with this – put it in a crockpot surrounded by towels, or an ice chest, etc. as long as it stays warm.  “cooking” time can vary anywhere from 6-14 hours.  I use a solid 12 for mine.  Warm it up, throw in the oven, leave for the day.

2nd step: Straining.

Take your yogurt out of the oven.    You now have conventional yogurt with no additives or extra sugars!  To make it Greek, you have to strain it.

Take a colander and put it inside a large pot, so it fits inside. Line this with a dishtowel (one that hasn’t been treated with fabric softener).  Dump the yogurt in.  Put it in the fridge for another 12 hours.  The longer it drains, the thicker it gets.  After 12 hours or so the whey will have drained.  If you don’t have a use for it, pour it out.

BAM!  Greek yogurt!

If you’re looking for macros, I use the macros on Fage 0%, I figure it’s the same.

If you still want a video, this is how I learned:

I think what I’m going to do with my latest batch is throw it in the freezer and make “frozen yogurt”!

Related articles

• 10 Versatile Greek Yogurt Recipes (fitsugar.com)
• Calorie Count: Fat-Free Greek Yogurt With Fruit (fitsugar.com)
• The Benefits of Greek Yogurt (brighthub.com)
• Pineapple Goodness (eatdrinkloveandexercise.com)
• How to Make Greek Yogurt (salad-in-a-jar.com)
• Caramel Coffee & Grapefruit Honey Yogurt Scones (findingcoffee.wordpress.com)
• 10 Foods I Couldn’t Live Without (marksdailyapple.com)
• What is the difference between Greek yogurt and natural yogurt (wiki.answers.com)

Ask almost any flutist that has pain brought on by playing, and odds are they will mention one of these sites as giving them trouble: wrist, upper back (between shoulder blades), shoulder area or lower back. Sometimes the problem is that the pain is in ALL of these sites.

Studies have been done, but the results are inconclusive as to the results of what causes pain. A study I read recently studied the “History of Playing-related Pain in 330 University Freshman Music Students”. The interesting point is that MOST of the students had pain brought on by playing. The frustrating point was that the study was inconclusive as to the cause of the pain.

I have my own hypothesis, however, because this study did not cover my area of expertise: strength training. This is what the study found:

• More students did than did not exercise, but pain occurred in 79% of the exercisers and in only 76% of the sedentary. Data were collected though not analyzed regarding exercise type; jogging appeared to be a favorite, as was the use of a variety of exercise machines
• Most of the pain problems reported by instrumentalists are associated with the musculoskeletal system
• Several factors have played into the lack of regular exercise for musicians. First, those who start their instruments early in life…often have been warned of the potential injury that might befall especially their hands and fingers by participation in athletics. This avoidance behavior becomes habit as they grow older.
• There apppears to be an association between poor conditioning and musculoskeletal complaints, and vice versa; those who do have a regular exercise routine appear more resilient.
• When asked about “regular exercise” …our definition for inclusion here was exercise of at least two times per week for a minimum of 30 minutes. We did not differentiate between exercise modes, but just from casual scanning of the data, jogging was by far the most frequent activity, followed by some kind of machine and/or light weights and biking. A minority did heavy resistance weight training, swimming, soccer and/or basketball.

It is GLARINGLY obvious to me what could possibly be the cause of so many musician’s pain, here, but this was not covered by the researchers.

1. The type of stretching done, is probably out-dated, static stretching, which has been shown to be more detrimental than helpful
2. Jogging is a favorite activity….this does NOTHING to help weak muscles. If you play an instrument held in front of your body (aren’t they all?) then your body is forced to compensate after the primary muscles holding up the instrument fatigue. Thus leading to pain.
3. The MINORITY did heavy resistance training and soccer, swimming and basketball – sports that require a high degree of movement.

Can you see the pattern here?

So getting back to the flutists’ pain points

What are the points of chief complaint?  From what I have heard (though if you have another spot, please leave a comment below!) these are the most common

• wrist
• upper back
• shoulder
• lower back

With the exception of the wrist, the other three points are located on what we call the “posterior chain”  This is the back half of the body, responsible for a lot of pulling movements and fighting against the pushing movement of the front of the body, including keeping the body upright.  If your posterior chain muscles are weak, it causes them to stretch.

Example:

You sit all day, in rehearsals, driving, typing, practicing.  You probably slouch, meaning your chest comes forward, your abdomen caves in and your back rounds.  You are not balanced on your sit bones.  Your shoulders round forward.  Your head protrudes.

What does this lead to?

Try taking that posture for awhile and I bet the answer will be:

• my neck hurts
• my upper back hurts
• my hips hurt
• basically, everything on the back half of my body HURTS!

Can you see how this  posture, practiced day in and day out is compounded with holding a heavy instrument (or maybe your instrument isn’t heavy but after several hours of playing it becomes heavy to you) can wreak havoc on your body?

Solutions!!!!

The part you’ve been waiting for!  You can see where the problem lies, by now, I hope.  Weak posterior chain can equal pain.  What to do?  Strengthen it!  Let’s take this on a spot by spot basis.

Wrist

If your wrist hurts, there can be several causes, some of which may not have anything to do with your wrist, but  may actually be a symptom of poor upper body posture, shoulder position, etc.  Assuming you play an instrument that puts your wrist in somewhat of a contorted position (flute, guitar, violin, etc.) there are some stretches you can do.  Hold each for a count of 10, and follow with movement.  It is very important that after you do a static stretch (a stretch you hold without moving) that you follow that with a dynamic stretch (a stretch that involves movement).

These are stretches and of course there are exercises you can do to increase your wrist/grip strength.  However, I’m not sure that that is necessary, as my guess is that the reason the wrists hurt has more to do with being tight and needing to be stretched due to being in an awkward position for long lengths of time, rather than being weak.  However, grip strength is important when it comes to lifting weights.  Diesel Crew has a lot of information on improving grip strength.

Upper Back/Shoulder

This area could take all day to address, and I have in two posts and a guest post by Dr. Perry.  For detailed information see Shoulder Pain Part 1, Shoulder Pain Part 2 – What to Do About it, and Dr. Perry’s Post: Shoulder Pain Secret.

The chief culprits of pain are the rhomboids (the muscles in between your shoulder blades that work to pull them together), lower traps (pull shoulder blades back and down) and rotator cuff muscles.  When you lean forward with a rounded posture, or have your arms extended in front of you for a long time, these muscles that do the pulling in your upper back get stretched the opposite way and get kinda angry about it.  They are designed to pull the shoulder blades back, but if you do not strengthen these muscles, if they do not get used the way they were intended.  You get pain.

I think this is the biggest problem area among musicians and the most overlooked!

Strengthen your rhomboids and upper back by doing pulling movements and see if your pain doesn’t improve, not to mention your posture!

My favorite exercises are:

Lat Pulldowns/Pull ups, any type of rows (inverted, seated, barbell or dumbbell) and exercises for the rotator cuff: soup can pours, prone lower trap raises and wall slides.  You can see all three of the rotator cuff exercises in Shoulder Pain Part 2.

Before doing any of these exercises, however, it’s not a bad idea to stretch the muscles that are tight, before strengthening the muscles that are weak. That’s another post for another day.

Lat pull downs/Pull ups.

     Good form                       BAD FORM!!!

(Coaching cues – keep spine neutral – curve in lower back, no leaning backwards, and bring shoulder blades down)

The big thing to remember here is to that before and DURING the movement, is to let your shoulder blades go through their full range of motion and lead the motion with pulling them back and down.

Huh?

That means that when your arms are as far away from you as they can be, let your shoulder blades float outward to the side of your body and when you go to pull the bar down think of squeezing the bottom of your shoulder blades together first to bring your blades down, and then your elbows and arms follow to complete the movement.  This may cause you to not use as much weight as you would like, but so what?  If you use more weight than you can with good form, what are you really accomplishing?  THAT’S where you get into more pain and injury.  If you see someone swinging back and forth and flinging the weight up and down (or YOU are that person) then you know you are asking for injury and are performing the movement incorrectly.

Don’t waste your time.  Take your ego out of it (and don’t pay attention to the people around you – most people in the gym perform exercises with incorrect form, so don’t take your cues from them) and discover what weight you can lift correctly.  You will reap benefits much faster!

Inverted Row

Coaching cues: keep body “straight”, brace your abs and squeeze your butt, bring shoulder blades back and down and let your arms follow. Think of leading the motion by squeezing your shoulder blades together first, not that it’s an arm movement.

Coaching cues: sit tall, brace lower abs and pull belly button in towards spine, pull shoulder blades back, down and together, keep neutral arch in back, do NOT round your back when reaching for weight or pulling forward.  Let your shoulder blades “float” to the outside of your body when letting the weight go back.

Lower Back

If your lower back hurts, ask yourself how much you sit.  If the answer is “a lot”, you may have found your problem.  When you sit, your hips “flex”, this means that the knees come towards the body by means of the hip flexors   The hip flexors are pictured here and I know the Alexander Technique teachers will jump all over the psoas, as they should! That’s where I first found out about this very important muscle.  You can see how it attaches to your leg AND your low back. When you sit, this muscle flexes, or shortens, which (especially if your abs are too strong – aka, don’t do situps or crunches!!!!) causes you to bend forward, this muscle pulls on your low back.  The muscles on your low back (Quadratus Lumborum and spinal erectors, etc.) get stretched, just like the upper back muscles.

Solution?

Stretch the tight muscles, strengthen the weak muscles.  In this case, stretch the hip flexors, strengthen the low back muscles  and muscles of the core.  The CORE is actually made up of your entire torso and if you want an EXCELLENT book on strengthening the core in the non-traditional way (there is not a single “ab” exercise in this book!) I HIGHLY recommend getting New Rules of Lifting for Abs. 

I’m just finishing up this book myself and not only has it improved my posture, it has improved my balance, core strength and overall body strength.  I can lift heavier weights than I have in a long time and I have better posterior chain activation as well!

There are WAY too many exercises to list here for strengthening the core and lower back, and in fact, if you want more information on that, I cannot recommend anything here safely, which is why I recommend hiring a personal trainer to help you do these exercises, because done incorrectly you can cause more pain or even injury to yourself.

As for stretching the hip flexors, I have some great ones.

You can do this standing as well.  Make sure when you do this stretch, you lean backwards with your torso until you feel a stretch in the front of your hip and SQUEEZE your put on the stretched side.  When you stretch the hip flexor, you want to activate the opposing posterior chain muscle, in this case, the glutes.

This exercise is one you can do during rehearsals, while typing, or while lying down.  It will stretch your piriformis muscle (the angry little muscle in your butt that gets stretched out when you sit for too long).  I recommend doing this lying down: take the chair out of the picture and put the person on his back.  Grab the vertical leg and pull it towards the chest.  The horizontal leg (the one that is bent across the other) will feel a stretch in that glute and hip.

A good stretch for the psoas is this stretch:

Lie on the edge of a bed, bench or table and pull one leg towards your chest.  The other leg should dangle off the edge of the table.  DO NOT do this exercise if your doctor has told you not to or you have major back pain.  Check with your doctor first if you have concerns.  When doing this stretch, you should feel a deep pulling feeling in your abdomen, that is difficult to identify.  This is your psoas.  Hold for a count of 20-30, and switch sides.

You can also do this on the floor to test for hip tightness.  Lie flat on the floor just like in this picture.  If your lower back comes off the floor and rounds, it can be a sign of hip flexor tightness.

What are some exercises I need to NOT do?

As you can see in this post, training the posterior chain is of utmost importance.  Therefore, training the frontal chain, is not as important.  If you have muscular imbalances, you do not want to add any more strength to those muscles.  The opposite of the muscles covered in this post would be: chest, quads, biceps.

Exercises I do not recommend if you are in pain:

Chest presses, bench presses, cable flyes (basically any chest pushing exercise), crunches, situps, any kind of oblique twisting ab exercise,  leg extension machine.

Other GOOD exercises to include would be exercises that train the entire body:

• Pushups
• Deadlifts
• Squats
• Rows

Make sure you perform these exercises with permission from your doctor and under the supervision of a properly certified personal trainer.  If you have any kind of health condition, check with your doctor first.

Related articles

• Shoulder Pain Secret (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
• Shoulder Pain Part 1 (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
• Identifying Shoulder Pain Part 2 – What To Do About It (innovativeperformanceandpedagogy.wordpress.com)
• Identfying Shoulder Pain Part 2 – What to Do About It (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
• Identifying Shoulder Pain – Part I (innovativeperformanceandpedagogy.wordpress.com)
• De-Mystifying Support and the Diaphragm (innovativeperformanceandpedagogy.wordpress.com)
• Geoffrey Gilbert and the Use of the Body: Taking a Look at “The Gilbert Legacy” for Tips (innovativeperformanceandpedagogy.wordpress.com)
• 3 Exercises + 1 for Core Strength and Stability (innovativeperformanceandpedagogy.wordpress.com)
• What Interests You? (fluteangel.wordpress.com)

After my 8 hour drive I arrived at my parent’s house and smelled something absolutely marvelous cooking.  Asking “what’s for dinner”?  just like I was a kid back at home again, mom answered “quiche”.

A quick primer on my family: mom is a foodie and has passed that love of cooking and quality ingredients on to my brother and I.  From her side of the family also came the intense interest in health and fitness (my uncle is a cycling coach to US Cycling Team members and was a NASM-CPT back in the day; mom is really into alternative therapies, and my brother, well, he’s a weighlifting fool!  He got stuck on the DC 5×5 routine for years- let’s just say he and I are cut from the same cloth and he’s as dedicated as I am to lifting and health).

That being said, I knew I was in for a treat.

It. Was. Delicious!

I HAD to get the recipe from her which was this:

6 eggs
1 cup milk
1 cup cheese (swiss)
leftover ham
salt to taste
a dash of nutmeg
cook in oven at 350 for 50 minutes.

Needless to say, when I got home I HAD to make it.  Hubby was delighted with the results and I made it again tonight.  In fact, when I was in Tennessee last week I made it again!

The beautiful thing about quiche is that you can make it using whatever you have on hand.  My favorite way to think of flavorings is think of what cheese goes well on sandwiches: ham and swiss, turkey and cheddar, etc.  Really, the choice is up to you with whatever you have in the house.

I made mine higher in protein and lower in fat than my mom’s.  1st time around I kept everything the same, save I used 6 egg whites and 2 whole eggs. YUM! Now, I know a lot of quiches have crusts (basically a pie crust) and if you’re looking for extra calories, be my guest.  But as for me, I just wanted the protein, so crustless it is!

(by the way, I did not take a picture, this is for representative purposes only)

Tonight, this was the recipe:

High Protein Crustless Turkey Quiche

Image via Wikipedia

12 egg whites
2 whole eggs
1 cup skim milk
sauteed onions, peppers, mushrooms
1 cup fat free cheddar cheese
1 lb. lean ground turkey breast

Brown and drain turkey breast.  Meanwhile, saute veggies.  Mix together eggs, milk and cheese.  Add turkey and veggies to egg mixture.  Pour into a pie plate coated with cooking spray. Bake for 1 hour at 350.

Macros for 1/4 quiche:
333 calories   6g fat  9g carbs  59g protein

Not bad!

Needless to say you can add whatever you want, especially more veggies but this is what I had.  Enjoy!

After writing the blog post yesterday about busting the women’s bulky myth  I came across this blog post giving a list of blogs of ladies who aren’t afraid to lift heavy.

Looking for some more inspirational women?   Here’s the list, but check out the above blog post for more great information from The Fit Writer

Elsbeth Vaino
Molly Galbraith
Marianne Kane
Rachel Guy
Nia Shanks
Jen Grasso
Neghar Fonooni
Jen Comas Keck
Cassandra Forsythe
Kellie Davis

Bret recently posted this post and I got amazingly inspired by it – enough to write my own post!

Watching these girls is inspiring and makes me want to go practice my squatting and deadlifting right now!

Notice that NONE of these girls are what you would call bulky.  So why are you still waving around the pink dumbbells?  Pick up some real weight and you’ll get a body like these!  These are my favorite clips:

These clips go a looooooooong way to dispelling the myth that lifting heavy will make women bulky.  Would you consider any of these women “bulky”?  I thought not. If anything, these videos should inspire you to go see just what YOU can do!

Speaking of the “bulky” myth, it’s been hashed over and over and over again and it sees that no matter how many times those of us in the industry try to dispel it, the marketing gurus are one step ahead.

Ladies, it’s almost impossible for you to get huge.  The huge you are afraid of becoming is limited to women who 1) take steroids 2) take steriods and get big muscles and then diet to very low bodyfat making them LOOK bigger.  Neither of those things applies to 99% of the female population.  Do you take illegal performance enhancing drugs?  No?  Then don’t worry about getting “bulky”.

I bet most of you, would not mind looking like the very first Ms. Olympia, Rachel McLish

Compare that to the CURRENT Ms. Olympia, Ms. Iris Kyle, and I have the feeling that to most women, THIS is what they fear becoming.  To them, this is bulky.

As you can see, there is a huge difference between the two women, yet Rachel embodied what used to be women’s body building.  I am not incriminating Ms. Kyle in any way, however, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible to get her body without “help”.  So, do you want Rachel’s body?  Lift like the women in the videos above and read on.

To break things down to their simplest forms here’s what goes on when it comes to training

1. The amount of volume and amount of weight you use to train can have different effects.  You can train for strength, endurance, size, stability or power (not necessarily in that order).
2. Lifting heavy does not necessarily mean you will get big.  See these women up there?  If anything, the heavier you lift, the SMALLER you get.  You will become more dense, more compact, have less body fat and become smaller because you lift heavier weights.  If you want to stick to your elliptical machine, that’s fine, but don’t be surprised when your body doesn’t change the way you think it should.
3. If you want to lift for size, you have to work HARD.
4. Unless your diet is spot on and to some degree a bit obsessive, you have very little chance of losing enough body fat to have the detail and definition of a figure competitor or cover model.  Could you look like Rachel?  Maybe.  Iris? No way.

What does it mean to lift hard?

Ask yourself these questions

• Did I break a sweat?
• Did I feel shaky on the inside because I just couldn’t lift any heavier?
• Did I get out of breath?

If you answered “no” to any of these questions, you likely aren’t doing yourself any favors in the gym – you’re just kidding yourself.  Now, there’s a time and a place for stability training and workouts that don’t make you feel the need to sit down, but those type of workouts are generally short in duration (meaning 2 weeks or so) and are generally implemented during a break from weight training or at the beginning of a weight training program, or after you have cycled through several phases of a workout.

That brings me to my next point.

If you want to see progress, you have to:

• Challenge yourself.…never lifted a 20 lb. weight before? Go ahead, try it
• Lift heavier than is comfortable for you on a CONSISTANT basis
• have a consistant, periodized training program (this means you do the same workouts for a period of time, all the while still challenging yourself by adding weight, time, speed, etc. to the exercises to make it harder, before progressing to harder phase)
• Take a break – seriously, take a week off every now and then
• EAT!

As women, we DESPERATELY want to change our bodies, but most of us don’t.  Why?  We’re afraid, mostly of what we don’t know. Afraid we’ll get big and not fit into our clothes, afraid of getting stared at, afraid of doing things that only guys do in the weight room, afraid of ridicule, etc.  Sound familar?

Changing your body composition is HARD, I mean really hard!  And if you haven’t seen the results you want ask yourself “how much CHALLENGE have I really put into it?”  Have you been lifting the same 10 lb. dumbells for the last 10 years?  Do you spend an hour on the elliptical every day with no change?  To see results, you have to go outside your comfort zone. Is it worth it?  Ask yourself this:
Am I happy spending the rest of my life here?
Is anything worth getting, free?

The answer starts with “no”….:)

Hear me.  If you want the bodies of the women in these videos you have to

1. Lift heavier than you are now and consistantly continue to lift heavier.  That girl didn’t do a Turkish get-up with that weight from the beginning, she had to work up to it.  So do you.
2. EAT.  If you want to gain muscle size, muscle strength and/or lose body fat, you have to eat for it.  Meaning, if your diet consists of Lean Cuisine meals and sunflower seeds, stop kidding yourself.  Get at least 1g per pound of body weight in protein a day.  No idea what that means? That means recording what you put in your mouth and being purposeful about it.
3. Rest.  If you are lifting heavy enough to change your body, your body has to repair itself in order to change.  If you lift 5 days a week, really heavy, really hard and you’re training the same muscle groups all the time, you will suffer major burn out – physically, mentally and emotionally.  Don’t let this happen to you.  You don’t need to train 5 days a week anyway.  3 days a week of TOTAL BODY work is enough.
4. Understand.  This is not the stuff you read about in Self magazine.  You might read about it to an extent in Muscle and Fitness Hers or in Oxygen, but honestly,they are magazines, ladies.  They are for ENTERTAINMENT purposes.  Can you get some good information there?  Sure.  Everything you need to know?  Heck no.  Read good blogs and articles from people who KNOW what they’re talking about.  Don’t believe everything that comes out of some guru’s mouth just because it worked for a couple of people.  Find what works for you and understand the RESEARCH.  Here are some people worth checking out for real knowledge:

Leigh Peele

Nia Shanks

JCD Fitness

Alan Aragon

Lyle McDonald

Mike Robertson

Eric Cressey

Martin Berkhan

The FitCast Podcast

And of course, the guy who put up the videos – Bret Contreras  otherwise known as “The Glute Guy” for his EXTENSIVE research on butt training.  Not even kidding.

Of course, these are just a few, but start reading and you’ll soon not only find links to other smart fitness people, you will very quickly be able to tell the marketing nonsense from the truth.

If you are left with more questions than answers after reading this post (aka, ok! Now I know what NOT to do…but I have no idea what TO do!),you need to hire a competent personal trainer.  They will set up your program for you to walk you through correct form, periodization, etc. and pretty soon you’ll be well on your way to getting the results you want.  I currently have openings for in person and online training clients, so contact me and we’ll get you set up!
So, get lifting, and send me your videos of how heavy YOU lift!!!!

Related articles

• 6/14/11 (crossfit22.com)
• Booty Move: Deadlifts (fitsugar.com)
• 5/31/2011 Wk 12 Day 1 OHP/Deadlift (lonewolfstrength.wordpress.com)
• Great Fitness Deals (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
• I Don’t Want to Get Big and Bulky: Fitness Marketing and Its Effect on Women (JCDFitness.com)
• 5/17/2011 Wk 14 Day 1 Deadlift/OHP – Today is PR day (lonewolfstrength.wordpress.com)
• Cardio Out, Movement In and Hotel Workouts (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
• Defining Bulky Once and For All (leighpeele.com)

I first found Dr. Perry through his podcast: Stop Chasing Pain.  Dr. Perry is a DC who specializes in using laser therapy to treat people.  When I was doing research on my shoulder pain series, I mentioned it to Dr. Perry and he mentioned to me I might want to include the subscapularis in my posts.  I asked him if he had any particular exercises or suggestions for that particular muscle and he said sure!  The resulting blog post is a gift from Dr. Perry.  If you want to know more about him and what he does, you can find his website at The Pain Laser Center, view his blog at Stop Chasing Pain, listen to his podcast (you can also subscribe on iTunes), watch his YouTube channel, and find him on Twitter and Facebook.  Tell him you found out about him from me and this blog!  Enjoy!

Shoulder Pain Secret

The one place that never hurts, but causes so much misery everywhere else!

Perry Nickelston, DC, FMS, SFMA

I see lots of shoulder pain problems in my clinic. In fact it is the #1 condition I treat. By the time clients see me for help they have been everywhere else you can possibly imagine for therapy. They have had physical therapy, steroid injections, acupuncture, even surgery and the pain still exists. They wonder why?

They hear about my Stop Chasing Pain laser and movement therapy program via referral and always say the same thing on the first visit, “I tried everything else Doc, so I might as well give this a shot. I got nothing to lose.” My response is always the same, ‘Your shoulder pain is not the problem; it is a symptom. Pain is where your problem ended up, not where it started. Once we stop chasing pain and begin fixing the real problem, you will lose that pain.’

Without question the shoulder is the most common injury affecting athletes and is very tricky to treat (Halloween reference not intended), like unless you know the right places to look for dysfunction. Angela reached out to me and asked if I would take a look at her article series on shoulder pain. I was very impressed with her content. It is jam-packed with some terrific information that very few people know. You can learn more than most doctors know about the shoulder when you read her articles.

Yes, I am totally serious. Trust me, I see this stuff in the trenches every day and clients have never seen stuff like this before. So, I highly recommend implementing her strategies.

I suggested adding a section on some often neglected culprits of shoulder pain and dysfunction.  Angela asked if I would like to write a brief post about them myself. So here I am. These points are nasty culprits and very deceiving in their contribution to pain because of referred pain and movement compensation patterns.

You never feel pain where these muscles are located, and yet they can cause debilitating pain in other areas. We end up chasing the referred pain instead of the site of pain so relief is temporary at best. When these muscles are so knotted up and in constant spasm they lose the ability to control movement (stability) and your nervous system kicks in a compensation pattern by recruiting other muscles to do more work. This is a basic primal survival mechanism where your body does anything and everything to avoid pain. It may not be the best thing either.

Your body is not concerned about tomorrow and the negative effects of what it is doing to protect you. It is only concerned with RIGHT NOW! It only cares about what is necessary to keep you functioning in the moment. Before you know it, there is a spiraling domino effect of pain, spasm and dysfunction, making one unhappy person.

What are these two muscles? The subscapularis and the scalenes! Oh what fun these two muscles can be. Trigger points (muscle knots that cause severe pain and movement dysfunction) in these two muscles cause lots of misery. I recently published a Special Bonus E-book entitled ‘The Top 10 Trigger Points Every Health and Fitness Professional Should Know!’ for my friend Charlie Weingroff and his amazing new DVD Set ‘Training=Rehab, Rehab=Training’, and here are a few excerpts relating to these points. Also be on the lookout for my newest DVD coming out this summer entitled, ‘The Top 25 Trigger Points for Maximum Pain Relief!

Subscapularis

Subscapularis is one muscle that is very elusive and causes all sorts of problems in function and pain. This is the number one trigger point that is overlooked in most shoulder pain problems.

Sitting on the inside part of the scapula lining up against the chest wall he is deep inside the arm pit. Look at the pain pattern above and notice the intense red in the posterior part of the shoulder. That’s right…he is a primary cause of pain in the rear deltoid. Now a really amazing pain referral pattern of this muscle is chronic wrist pain! Imagine that. I have seen countless people complain of wrist pain and nothing seems to help.         That is an alarm signal for me to check the subscapularis and I always find a trigger point.

The subscapularis rotates the head of the humerus medially (internal rotation); when the arm is raised, it draws the arm forward and downward. It is a powerful defense to the front of the shoulder-joint preventing displacement or subluxation of the head of the humerus.

Think logically about what can happen when muscle inhibition (deactivation/tone) occurs from the trigger point. The head of the humerus may drift up and back in the shoulder socket causing an impingement (pinching) at the acromio-clavicular joint and priming up for a rotator cuff tear in the supraspinatus muscle. These are common injuries in athletes and fitness enthusiast, so the subscapularis should always be addressed in any recovery program.

Often the only way to reach this muscle is by hand. Stick your thumb or fingers inside the armpit while slightly distracting (pulling the arm forward) while client is in a supine position. I find that slight internal rotation relaxes the muscle and you can get a better pressure. It can be in such spasm that it feels like a golf ball is pushing back at you.

BE CAREFUL! This trigger point can be excruciatingly painful when pressure is applied. It can feel like your arm is being ripped out of the socket. That is a normal side effect feeling of an intense trigger point. That will subside in time.

Tread easy here and be aware of the subscapular nerve that sits in the area. If you apply direct pressure to the nerve there will be a sharp, numb type feeling shooting into the arm. Simply move off the nerve. You cannot damage anything if you mistakenly press on the nerve; it just feels really freaking weird.

Scalenes

Located in the anterior part of the neck and having an intricate connection to the first rib, these muscles are relentless in their contribution to pain. Check out my article on first rib fixation syndrome and the relationship to scalene trigger points here FIRST RIB ARTICLE.

An elevated first rib can cause chronic spasm in the upper trapezius muscle and neck. A first rib manipulation is often indicated to alleviate the condition in conjunction with releasing the trigger points.

The nerves of the neck criss cross in and around these muscles as they contour to the arm, so when they get trigger points nerves can become compressed.

That means tingling, numbness and pain. Many misdiagnosed cases of carpal tunnel syndrome (tingling in the hands) and symptoms of cervical disc herniations can be blamed on these trigger points.

I have found these muscles to be the most common cause of pain in the mid-back! Get all the massages you want and back cracks from your chiropractor and it will not help if these muscles are referring pain. Profound relief from years of chronic pain upper back pain can be helped if you look at these points. The scalene muscles rarely if ever feel pain directly. But when you apply pressure to them and they have trigger points, it can be REALLY painful.

A condition known as Thoracic Outlet Syndrome can arise when these muscles are too overloaded. They pinch on nerves and cause pain in the arm with tingling and numbness.

Scaleni are also accessory muscles of breathing. When they are dysfunctional your endurance level will suffer because your breathing is labored and less oxygen gets into the body. You can often increase the endurance of your athletes simply by working these muscles.

These points need to be worked by hand. Be careful not to apply over pressure on the side of the neck. But don’t be afraid to get in there and massage them out. Consult with a healthcare specialist as needed for more hands on intensive therapy. Just by the very nature of you discovering these points for you will go a long way towards getting pain-free.

Now part of the secret to alleviating these issues is to massage and do soft tissue work BEFORE you stretch them out. Stretching knotted muscles only tightens them further (think of stretching a rope with a knot). You feel temporary relief at best and it returns later. So massage first, then stretch, and then you can use the muscle.

Combine these points with the other information already covered in Angela’s post and you will notice improvement. Be patient and diligent. It can take several weeks for symptoms to completely resolve. I suggest consulting a skilled manual therapist is symptoms persist. There is only so much we can do ourselves.

Five suggestions to help:

1. If subscapularis is very tight check the wrist flexors for weakness. They are actually synergist. And vice versa….if the wrist flexors are always tight test the subscapularis for weakness…remember it can be TIGHT AND WEAK at the same time!
2. If the neck scalene are tight check the iliopsoas, wrist extensors, and thumb extensors for weakness. These are also synergists of movement.
3. Start training the neck extensors if your anterior neck is very tight. May have weakness there too.
4. Train your grip. Strengthening your hand grip will help your rotator cuff.
5. Check your opposite side hip and glute muscles for tightness or trigger points. The fascial connection can pull on the shoulder and alter mechanics. You will be surprised at how tender this area can be.

The one take away is that lots of things contribute to the shoulder. And the first rule of thumb is that if your shoulder hurts, lots of other things happened prior. Sure, check the shoulder, but also check the hips, and the thoracolumbar fascia. They are big players in the shoulder game. Have fun now! Also feel free to email me with questions. I love this stuff. Thanks Angela for the chance to play on your blog. So much fun!

Perry Nickelston, DC, FMS, SFMA

stopchasingpain@gmail.com

My Thoughts

Dr. Perry brings up some great points about these lesser known muscles, and I know that he hits on several conditions common to flutists (Carpal Tunnel and Thoracic Outlet Syndrome).  I especially enjoyed the part about the Scalenes and how not only can they cause pain in the arms/hands, they can interfere with breathing, something very important for musicians and athletes alike.

I know that this post may be a bit over the heads of some of my readers in regards to anatomy, but I hope you will go back and re-read it, understanding how YOUR muscles work and just what may be going on to cause that tingling in your hands, or numbness, or pain in the shoulder.

Dr. Perry gives several alternatives to what traditional doctors may say is causing you pain.  This is why I suggest seeing the several different types of medical professionals if you are dealing with any kind of pain or injury.    I HIGHLY recommend listening to Dr. Perry’s podcast, checking out his blog and website and look him up on Facebook!  He has some great things there.  While I know he is not posting things to deal with musicians specifically, it never ceases to amaze me how so much of what he sees and deals with are common problems in not just musicians, but athletes and office workers.

If you have experienced these types of pains, please leave a comment to help others know what worked for you!

Thank you so much for your post Dr. Perry!

Related articles

• Shoulder Pain Part 1 (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
• Identifying Shoulder Pain – Part I (innovativeperformanceandpedagogy.wordpress.com)
• Identifying Shoulder Pain Part 2 – What To Do About It (innovativeperformanceandpedagogy.wordpress.com)
• Got neck or shoulder pain? Try this! (healthynurse.wordpress.com)

Before I continue this post, I would once again like to state that I am not a licensed medical professional and this post is not intended to treat, diagnose or cure any medical injury, disease, cause, condition or ailment.  If you suffer from any type of pain you should seek the cousel of a qualified medical professional.  A partial list of these professionals is located in the second half of the first post.  The information in this blog is given with the intent to educate but not diagnose and I am not liable and do not claim responsibility for any emotional or physical problems that may occur directly or indirectly from the content of this blog.

Now that you know what your own anatomy looks like and how it functions (if you don’t, make sure you read Part 1 first!):

What are some things I can do on my own to address my shoulder pain?

Allowing that you do not have an injury and we are dealing with muscular issues, there are several things you can do.  Again, before attempting any type of self-diagnosis or treatment, if you have pain you should seek out the advice of a qualified medical professional.

Stretches

To even start to begin to correct this, we first have to stretch out the antagonists (chest and front delts) before we can begin to strengthen the posterior chain (rhomboids, etc.).  You can see all these stretches in a previous post here: Stretching Adequately Before/During/After Playing

1. Doorway or Wall Chest Stretch – will stretch your chest
2. Scapular Wall Slides – these will activate your lower traps and rhomboids
3. Arm Circles – be gentle on these
4. Upper Trap/Levator Scapulae Stretch
   
   With this exercise you can perform it standing and your non-moving arm can be extended straight down with thumb pointing towards the ceiling for a greater stretch

 Foam Rolling/Self-Myofascial Release

A foam roller cannot take the place of a massage therapist, but if you cannot afford to go, this is your best option. You can cover a wider area with the foam roller, and get more specific with a tennis ball, hitting your own trigger points.  Remember, pain is not necessarily at the point of discomfort, it can be “referred”  from another part of the body.  When you press on a trigger point, you may feel that  pain shoot through the body to where you felt discomfort.  Dr. Perry gives more examples of this in his guest blog post Shoulder Pain Secrets.

Guidelines for foam rolling: roll over the muscle to find the most tender spot.  Once you find it, lay on it for 20-30 seconds until the muscle begins to relax.  Then, roll the entire area.  Repeat if necessary.

Tennis Ball Work

This video from Synergy Athletics tells some of the do’s and don’ts of using a tennis ball. Actual usage is towards the end.

This is a really good description of how to use the tennis ball on trigger points in not only the shoulder but the neck.  As I have just recently found out from Stop Chasing Pain’s Dr. Perry, if you have shoulder pain, there is a good chance your scalences or SCM (or other deep neck flexors) could be too tight, as well.

In any case, this next description of how to use a tennis ball, I actually found on a message board.  I’m sorry that I don’t know to whom I need to give credit for this!
Use the following diagram for an idea of what muscles are being treated.

Image courtesy of http://www.sports-injury-info.com/im…er-muscles.jpg

So here we go.

This is how you treat your (upper) trapezoid muscles.

This is how you treat your rhomboids (down the trapezoids and between the shoulder blades) as well as your infraspinatus. You must squat down to apply pressure. You won’t get enough pressure on the ball if your legs are straight.

This is how you treat your side deltoids (you can do the same with the anterior and posterior deltoids). Put your bodyweight behind it.

This is how you treat the clavicular head of your pectoralis (the upper part of your chest):

Now, this is the tricky part, the side of your neck, the sternocleidomastoid muscle (the one that usually pulls to one side screwing things up.)

For this to work, you need to use the corner of a wall. Furthermore, you need to really drive your bodyweight. This is one of the strongest muscles. Don’t kill it but work on it.

Wanna Free E-Book?

You can’t get much better than this: Mike Robertson put out a  free e-book on Self-Myofascial Release using foam rollers, The Stick AND tennis balls.  It starts with lower body and the upper body tutorials are towards the end, but if you have a foam roller and a tennis ball, you can really work yourself all over with the help of this book. There is even a section on helping the wrist flexors!

Self-Myofascial Release Manual

Strengthening Exercises

As we have just learned, muscles of the upper back tend to become weak and stretched, due to hours of doing things with our arms in front of us, which leads to tight pectorals

Image via Wikipedia

(and Serratus Anterior, I forgot to mention).  This means these muscles need to be strengthened and one of the absolute best ways of doing this is resistance training.

Any kind of motion that counter acts the pushing motion (which is what your tight chest muscles are already doing) will help.

These motions are primarily any type of rowing or pulling motion.  If you think of these exercises in planes of motion, you have two choices: horizontal pulling and vertical pulling.

Horizontal pulling would be things like seated cable rows, 1-arm dumbbell rows, barbell rows, T-bar rows, X-cable crossovers, Face Pulls, etc.
Vertical pulling motions would be things like Pullups, lat pull downs, althernating pulldowns, chin ups, etc.

All of these exercises will be helpful to strengthening the back muscles.  The biggest thing to remember when performing these exercises is to get the form right.  What do you need to remember?  Retract and depress your shoulder blades and keep them that way THROUGHOUT the movement.  This means that when you are doing any kind of pulling motion, when you let your arms extend back, they should not be able to full extend because you still have the bottom of your shoulder blades pinched together.  This activates your rhomboids and lower traps and allows them to do their proper job of stabilizing your shoulder girdle.

For these movements you will have to have equipment of some kind, be it a pullup bar, bands or dumbbells, and that is really the only limiting factors of these exercises.  I have some great links to the kinds of bands I use on my website at http://fluteangel.net/links.htm  if you want to go pick up some.  They are very inexpensive and portable and can come in varying strengths.

Prone Lower Trap Raises

These have to be one of my absolute favorite exercises I had never heard of.  They  look deceptively easy until you try to do them and realize that just lifting your arms without any weight is heavy enough!  In fact, this is such a good idea, I might just do a blog post all about activating the lower traps…

Here is a version you can do at home if you don’t have a bench:

From Neanderthal No More By Eric Cressey and Mike Robertson

Ideally, this exercise is performed face-down with your chest-supported on an elevated flat bench (i.e. longer legs, so that you’re higher off the ground). However, if you don’t have access to such a bench, you can do it bent-over; just make sure that your upper body remains parallel to the floor at all times (no cheating!)

Hold a dumbbell in one hand with a supinated group (the thumb points up at the top of the movement). Begin with the arm dangling below you on the bench. Horizontally adduct (think reverse fly) your arm while maintaining the thumb-up position. At the top, your arm should be at the 9 (left) or 3 (right) positions, and the upper arm and torso should form a 90-degree angle. Throughout the movement, concentrate on retracting the scapulae while keeping it tight to the rib cage (no winging).

Rotator Cuff Exercises

There are an awful lot of these exercises, however, one thing to make sure you realize when performing these exercises is that it’s not about how much weight you can lift.  The SITS muscles are small and if they are causing you pain, they may not only be weak, they areprobably tight and stretched which means you need to be even MORE careful.  1-3 lb. dumbbells will be PLENTLY for these exercises.

The two you probably recognize are internal and external rotation exercises.  Stand perpendicular to a pole with a band attached.  While keeping your elbow tucked in closely to your side rotate your arm inward, pulling the band and then slowly back.  Turn the other way and now you are pulling the band across your body.

Soup Can Pours

Preventative Measures

Gerald Klickstein’s book The Musician’s Way: A Guide to Practice, Performance and Wellness is an excellent book on just those subjects.  In Chapters 12 and 13 (and reposted on the blog) he mentions 12 Habits of Healthy Musicians:

The Twelve Habits of Healthy Musicians by Gerald Klickstein
1.  Increase playing or singing time gradually
2.  Limit repetition
3.  Regulate hand- or voice-intensive tasks
4.  Manage your workload
5.  Warm up and cool down
6.  Minimize tension
7.  Take breaks
8.  Heed warning signs
9.  Take charge of anxiety
10. Keep fit and strong
11. Conserve your hearing
12. Care for your voice

The Musician’s Way specifies ways in which you can incorporate these twelve habits into your lifestyle. Here are a few highlights:

• #1: To avert overuse injuries, restrict any increase in your total playing or singing time to a maximum of 10-20% per week (p. 12).
• #4: Respect your physical limits and ask a mentor for advice before you take on an overload of duties (p. 243).
• #5: Pages 37-39 present a six-step process for warming up thoroughly and efficiently.
• #6: Two sections in Chapter 13 – “Balanced Sitting and Standing” & “Meeting Your Instrument” – depict how musicians can form easeful habits. Forty-one photos are included.
• #7: In solo practice, play or sing no more than 25 minutes before pausing for a 5-minute respite. The Musician’s Way itemizes six restorative movements that help to invigorate breaks (p. 75-82).
• #8: Injury symptoms can be subtle, as are the social issues that come into play when unwell musicians who are expected to perform need to rest instead. Pages 237-241 untangle these topics.
• #9: Anxiety doesn’t just scuttle musicians on stage but also impels some to overpractice to the point of injury. Strategies to neutralize anxiety interweave throughout The Musician’s Way and come to the fore in Chapter 7, “Unmasking Performance Anxiety.”
• #10: Music making requires mental, physical, and emotional vigor. Healthy musicians, therefore, mind their nurtrition, rest, exercise, and other self-care needs much like top athletes (p. 245-246).
• #11: Strategies that thwart music-induced hearing loss are summarized in my post “Hear today. Hear tomorrow” and fleshed out on pages 277-291.
• #12: A section titled “Voice Care” encapsulates vocal hygiene under seven headings, the first of which is ‘Drink plenty of water’ (p. 268-277).

Postural Considerations

As flutists, a good many of us suffer from poor posture, made worse by long hours of playing without being in tune with our bodies.  If you are “stuck in your head” and not paying much attention to your body by being so focused on the music, you may notice that when you finally stop playing, you are sore, tight, hurting, and in terrible posture – slouched to the side, front, or otherwise not upright.

Besides understanding your individual body map and taking the time to be aware of your posture WHILE playing, let me propose a postural alteration.  Many of you may do this, but many of you may not:

When playing, take note of your arm position.  Do your elbows “fly” away from your body?  If so, this puts tremendous stress on the little muscles of the rotator cuff, which are not well equipped to deal with this type of endurance activity.  Let your arms hang from the flute, keeping the elbows closer to the body and also making sure the left arm is really under the flute.  When you sit, make sure you are BALANCED on your sit-bones with your feet FLAT on the floor.   This should help keep you in the proper position while leaving your deltoids and biceps to do the hard work of fighting gravity instead of your little rotator cuff muscles.

Dr. Susan Fain has some great information in her dissertation, and I highly recommend you check it out!  You can also hear the both of us at the National Flute Association Convention in Charlotte this August speaking with Lea Pearson and Karen Lonsdale about pain prevention.

Additional Resources and Articles

By the way, there is an EXCELLENT 5 – article series called Neanderthal No More: Fixing Your Caveman Posture by Eric Cressey and Mike Robertson over at T-Nation.   It can be a bit advanced for some, but if you are looking for a lot of information by people who know what they are doing and you wouldn’t mind a full week’s workout laid out for you, I’d check it out.  Not only does it have a full description of anatomy, it delves into body awareness by asking you to check out your own posture in different ways and then testing it to examine your own posture and movement patterns.  In part 3 they give client analysis – see if you can determine what’s “wrong” with these guys.

Please, tell me if this addresses your shoulder pain and if you found this helpful, leave a comment below.  Let us know what pain you are dealing with, what has worked for you and if you have anything to add to the post, let’s hear it!  Look for some guest blog posts dealing more with these issues, soon!

And feel free to link your own articles to this blog, down in the comments section!

About the Author

Angela McCuiston is a classically trained flutist with a Masters in Music Performance from FSU.  She has studied Body Mapping at Barbara Conable’s “What Every Musician Needs to Know About the Body” workshop, studied Alexander Technique with Janeke Resnick, Alexander Murray and at Appalachian State University and is a Certified Personal Trainer through the National Academy of Sports Medicine.  Angela has been involved in weight training since the 1990′s and has been a personal trainer since 2009. You can find out more information about Angela through the “About Me” tab at top or via her websites: http://fluteangel.net and http://www.MusicStrong.com

Related articles

• Stretching ADEQUATELY Before/During/After Playing
• (innovativeperformanceandpedagogy.wordpress.com)
• Balanced Shoulders, Open Heart (musiciansway.com/blog/)
• What Interests You? (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
• Great Fitness Deals (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
• Why I Do Not Like YTWL Shoulder Exercises (mikereinold.com)
• Point-Counterpoint: Mike Reinold (robertsontrainingsystems.com)
• Top Priority for Lower Traps (T-nation.com – Mike Robertson)
• Shoulder Pain Part 1 (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
• Ease Sore Muscles With a Tennis Ball (fitsugar.com)
• Shoulder Pain Secret (fluteangel.wordpress.com)

Most of the pain that flutists complain about (and myself personally experience) comes from what we call the left shoulder.  If we’re to get specific about it, most of the pain usually originates from the rear of the shoulder in the muscles of the rotator cuff and the rhomboid, specifically.

The Culprits

If you look to the left you will see the muscles that lie on top.  If you look to the right, these are the muscles that lie underneath.  Look at this picture, can you identify exactly where your pain is?

The Victims:

Where you probably experience pain the most

Rhomboids

These lovely little muscles can be the source of a LOT of pain for people.  As you can see, the connect the inside of your shoulder blade to your spine, and their job is to cause the blades to retract, or come together.  Pinch your shoulder blades together and that’s the rhomboids doing their job.

When your chest muscles are too tight, these guys can get stretched and weak.  When this happens, you might get a sharp pain that can travel through your shoulder and even down your arm.  You might even have a knot here.

Teres Major/Minor/Infraspinatus/Supraspinatus

With the exception of the Teres Major, these muscles make up the rotator cuff.  I’m sure you’ve heard of it before, but had no idea what it does.  It does a lot of things, but for our purposes here what you need to know is how it works so you can play your instrument.  The rotator cuff muscles main job is to lift and rotate your arm and keep your shoulder stable within its socket.

For flutists, this is why the left shoulder tends to hurt more than the right shoulder, because we bring our left shoulder up and rotate it in front of us to be able to play.  This is the job of the rotator cuff muscles.  As you can see, they are very tiny muscles, and holding up an instrument for a long time, especially when their assisting muscles such as the lower traps and rhomboids are already stretched out and weak puts a great strain on them.  Compound that with overactive traps and chest muscles and you have a recipe for disaster just waiting to happen.

Actually, this will show you exactly how the shoulder blades.  As this video is playing, put your hands on the muscles that are moving and do the movement yourself.  Do you see how your own body works?

The Antagonists:  The ones partially causing the pain!

Pectoralis Major/Minor

These muscles may be less thought-of as contributing to the problem of shoulder pain but may in fact be the main cause.  Most Americans now spend a large part of their day in front of their computers, sitting and driving.  What do all these have in common?  The arms are in front of the body.  What main muscles bring the arms forward?  The pectorals.  Of course we have assistance muscles such as the front deltoids, so do this with me:

• Put one hand on your chest, near your shoulder.
• Bring your other arm in front of your body and feel which muscles move

You probably notice that the front of your shoulder tightens and so do your chest muscles near the shoulder joint.

Now, exaggerate that motion.

• Put both arms in front of you like you are typing
• Squeeze your arms in towards your body
• hunch your shoulders and slouch your upper body

Does this resemble how you might look after spending too long at the computer, or driving?  If you hold this exaggerated position for long, things will start to hurt.  You’ll notice pulling in your rear delts, and your chest will get sore.

What’s going on here is a chronic muslce imbalance between the front of our bodies and the back of our bodies, called the frontal plane (or frontal chain and posterior chain). What happens is that the muscles bringing the arms forward cause the muscles in your rear shoulders/back to get stretched.  Over time, these rear muscles become weakened due to being in a stretched position for so long and not being contracted.  The frontal chain muscles of the chest/front delt get tight because they are contracted for TOO long.

See how this works?

More antagonists:

The “Shrug” Muscles: Trapezius and Levator Scapulae

As you watch these videos, can you see the motions you use to play your instrument, drive, type, eat, fold laundry, etc. and how doing so much of one movement, and not enough of the opposite can cause you pain?

The jobs of the traps and levator scapulae are to shrug the shoulders upward and the job of the lower traps is to bring the shoulder blades downward.  The traps are actually divided into 3 sections of fibers: upper, middle and lower.  Most people have overactive and/or overdeveloped upper traps.  Please don’t do shrugs, there’s no need.  What you NEED to do are get your lower traps firing, because not only are most people not aware that they are there and have a separate job to do, most people’s lower traps do NOT do their job, which is to bring the shoulder blades downward.

Try this:

• Roll your shoulder blades backwards
• Right before they roll forward again, squeeze the bottom of your shoulders together
• if your shoulders come up towards your ears, you’re doing it incorrectly.
• Done correctly, you are performing shoulder blade depression and retraction and activating the lower trap fibers and rhomboids.
• Your chest should stick out and there should be space between your shoulders in front.

Does that feel weird?  If so, good!  You’re probably doing it right!  This position is the first position of good form for all weightlifting exercises.  I’ll cover that in another post, but knowing about it now can save you a world of hurt, just by understanding how these muscles are designed to function.

Now that we know where and why, how do I stop the pain?

There are a couple of things to note.  You have to know is your pain a muscle pain or an actual injury?  If this is something that has been bothering you for awhile, I highly recommend going to see a doctor of some sort first before self-diagnosing.

Who to see

You have a lot of choices, I’m going to name a few for you from which to pick:

General Practitioner

This type of doctor can, of course, tell you if anything else is wrong with you.  Your source of pain could not be what you think it is and it could actually be a nutritional deficiency or other abnormality.  This doctor can also tell you if what you have is an actual injury.  If you have an injury, you may or may not want to take medicines prescribed to you by this type of doctor (such as muscle relaxers) and you may also get prescriptions for further testing such as an MRI or a script for therapy from a Physical Therapist.

Physical Therapist

These people will treat your injury by strengthening the surrounding muscles and rehabbing the injury itself.  (PT’s out there, feel free to chime in here on what else you do!)  They may treat you with various modalities including stretching, light weights, heat, ice, massage or electrical stimulation.  If you have a real injury, this may help.

Massage Therapist/Active Release Technique Therapist

These two are NOT the same, do not get them confused.  A massage therapist also does more than “feel good massage” or Swedish Massage.  Most of the massages I have had in my lifetime were anything but “feel good”!  A massage therapist may provide techniques such as deep tissue massage and trigger point therapy.  They can manipulate the fascia around muscles if it has become stuck, trigger point will release knotted muscles and besides freeing up an injured area of knots, massage will also increase blood flow to the area and increase lymph flow, which takes away waste materials from the muscle.  Trigger points are sometimes thought to be areas of waste materials that have gotten blocked.

ART is different in that you may remain fully clothed and there is a lot more movement.  The practitioner will stretch you and press on different areas while moving your muscles and/or limbs to break down scar tissue. It is particularly helpful in treating overuse injuries.  You can find out more information at http://www.activerelease.com

Personal Trainer

Now, if you have an injury, you must get that rehabbed first, or get a doctor’s note to provide to your personal trainer letting them know exactly what is wrong and what you can and cannot do.  If you are not injured, you may be suffering from either Overuse Syndrome or Muscular Imbalances, either of which can be helped by a personal trainer.

A good trainer will not only educate you in stretches that will help you release the antagonists that may be causing your problems, they will also show you corrective resistance training exercises that will strengthen your weak muscles.  When your rhomboids and rotator cuff muscles (among others) are stronger, not only will you be able to play for a longer time without pain, you can become and stay injury-free!  Add to this the benefits of better body awareness and you have a body that is better prepared to deal with the demands of being an instrumentalist.

As a shameless plug – I have availabilities for in-person and online training so you can get one-on-one training programs designed specifically for you.

See the next post: Shoulder Pain Part 2   for stretches and exercises you can do on your own to alleviate shoulder pain.

(This post was just getting too long!

This post is made with the knowledge that I am not a medical practitioner of any sort, and therefore cannot prescribe anything.

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• How to do Inverted Rows (projectswole.com)
• 1 reviews of Shoulder Girdle Injuries (rateitall.com)
• Stretching Adequately Before/During/After Playing
• Developing Body Awareness and Self-Trust
• Practice Room Warmups?
• Foam Rolling

• I am a NASM certified personal trainer.  This is one of the top rated personal training certifications in the country and, along with the NSCA, is considered the gold standard.  In addition to this, this particular certification agency focuses on addressing the different muscle imbalances that everyone tends to develop – especially those who do repetitive motions like driving, sitting at a desk or computer, practicing an instrument, etc.
• I am a classically trainer professional flutist.  I have studied music performance for a long time, ending (so far) with getting my Masters in Music Performance from FSU.  What does this mean?  It means that I LOVE to play my flute and perform for people.  It means that I am one of those people in the above categories, practicing my instrument for hours, sitting in front of a computer (typing this), and I understand the demands that are placed on a musician’s body.  We are unique in what our discipline requires from us.  I get it, because I’m just like you.

So what the heck is a Musician Health Coach?

Besides  my anatomy/kinesiology knowledge that came along with the personal training certification, I also have studied the Alexander Technique (taking classes/lessons at Interlochen Arts Camp, Appalachian State University and Alexander Murray), Body Mapping (taking the “What Every Musician Needs to Know About the Body” class from Barbara Conable, and several other classes and presentations) and taking 2 years of Dynamic Integration with Eva Amsler at FSU.  All three of these different modalities focus on the body; learning about the actual layout and how the body works, understanding how we move, remapping our idea of what we look like on the inside, learning to move with only the amount of tension that is necessary, UNLEARNING how to move in some ways, and most of all becoming hyper AWARE of my body and how it functions/moves.

As a musician health coach, what I do is to help musicians make that connection between their brains and their bodies.  Huh?  Playing the flute involves more than just your lips, arms, fingers and lungs.  You use your entire body to play the flute, trombone, drums, etc.  Do you ever think about these things while playing?

• When I breathe in my spine compresses and when I breathe out, my spine lengthens
• I am conscious of the space in-between my shoulder blades, and there is no tension there
• I feel my feet while playing
• When a difficult passage comes up, I consciously shift my weight to my right foot to make it easier
• While breathing, I notice whether it is my chest or abdomen moving
• During times of nervousness (either playing or about to play) I notice what my different symptoms are in all areas of my body, I can feel them, and I accept them instead of ignoring them.
• Most times while playing, my attention is on my big toe, the back of my knees or noticing if my shoulders are holding excess tension rather than notes and phrases
• I’m playing, but I’m feeling my feet
• While playing, I check in with my body and notice where I have pain and am able to connect that pain (or not) to how I play my instrument
• I can get up and down out of a chair without tensing my neck
• When I sit to play I’m aware of how my body is balanced between my sit-bones
• I feel strong/weak in certain areas of my body when I play

Ever thought any of those thoughts?  I think of that stuff ALL THE TIME.  Whether playing, practicing, preparing to play, weightlifting, driving, etc.  As a musician health coach I see it as my job to help other musicians get out of their heads and into their bodies.  Meaning that I use several methods to “coach” other  musicians into being the best musicians they can be.  I teach flute lessons but in these lessons the focus isn’t just on notes and phrases.  A lot of the time we focus on body awareness, feeling your feet while playing, understanding how to sit in a chair and get in and out of it, noticing our emotions; how it feels to play with the different emotions and learning how to accept them instead of hide from them (including nervousness!).

If a musician or student complains about playing in pain, I begin to cross into the strength training aspect of my career.  After learning how to “check in” with our bodies, I ask them to pinpoint the pain.  I might show them some stretches to do before, during and after playing to combat the tightness that might be there.

Among musicians, especially those who have not been taught body awareness, there can be some pretty severe cases of muscle imbalances, and most often these imbalances lead to pain when playing.  Most flutists I’ve surveyed complain of pain in and around the shoulder and neck area.   A lot of this has to do with not being strong enough to hold our instruments in their proper positions for long amounts of time without compensation.  Compensation is what happens when a muscle or body part is too tired or weak to be able to perform its intended function so other assistant muscles start taking over.  We call this “synergistic dominance”.  For example, if your shoulder and rotator cuff muscles are weak and other muscles are tight (especially your chest muscles), after awhile of playing you might start noticing pain under, around or between your shoulder blades (left, for flutists).  The muscles you were asking to hold up your flute are not strong enough to continue, so other muscles like your chest and trapezius muscles have started to take over the job.  This pulls on your already weak rhomboids and shoulder girdle which causes you to lean over to take the weight off the shoulder. 

Now you are slouching to the right, your spine is out of alignment and your core muscles are not engaged to keep you upright.  Most likely they were weak too, or else you would be able to hold up your flute.  Now that the core is weak, other muscles of the hips have to take over which can cause your hamstrings to be weak, your hips to hurt, calves to be tight and possibly knees to hurt.

Now you’re a mess.  Do you see how the body works together to play the instrument?  We didn’t even talk about breathing!!!

So, here is my question to you.  In the still relatively uncharted waters of musician health and strength training, what interests you?  As a musician, what would you like to read about?  What are you specific health concerns?  What kinds of articles do you want to read about that you think might help you?  Go outside the box here.  Do you want to read about stretches?  Weight training?  Body Awareness? Travel tips? Overall health and well-being relating to the body and playing?  There are a ton of topics, but I want to write about what interests YOU because I want to help YOU.

What interests you?

Feel free to post a comment on my Facebook page, hit me up on , leave a message below or take the poll below.  Love to hear from you!

Click here to take survey

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• Are You Ready To Change? (innovativeperformanceandpedagogy.wordpress.com)

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How many of us musicians have gone to school for 4, 6 or even 10 years to get those advanced degrees only to graduate into the real world and not be prepared?  Today’s institutions of higher education for musicians are sadly lacking in preparing students for a life outside either performing or teaching.  There’s more to it, folks…

I have gained two degrees, a Bachelor’s and a Master’s, both in music performance.  I was told several times to not do this because I “won’t get a job”.  I beg to differ…and I agree.    I said no way, I will get this degree because this is what I want to do, I want to perform!  I was told over and over again “get your Bachelor’s degree in Music Education so you have something to fall back on.”

Get a degree you can fall back on…

How many of you have heard this?  I think it’s pathetic.  Why offer a degree that the faculty don’t even have faith in it to do the students any good?  If I want to go to school to learn how to play my instrument better than others and be the best flutist and performer I can possibly be, why is that not enough?  I have ZERO desire to be a band director or choral conductor.  If I did, I would have majored in those disciplines and that is EXACTLY what I told the faculty.  I have also told my students interested in going into a performance based degree “do not go to school for music performance unless you can see yourself doing nothing else.”  No offense to band directors and choral conductors (of which I have many friends), I applaud you and support what you do, but God designed us all with different talents and desires and those were not mine.  And I feel it is a HUGE disservice to those who love the teaching profession that others are being told that their profession is a “fall back” which, when they realize they will not be an international solo performing artist, find themselves teaching band to a bunch of kids.  They hate their job, hate what they’re doing, but hey,at least they have a job to fall back on now, right?

I think it is incredibly sad that we relegate a performance degree to a piece of paper that says “I CAN PLAY GOOD!”  I mean, really? There’s more to it than that, and as I am finding out as an entrepreneur, carving my own path through the career jungle, most of what I learned in school did not teach me how to establish my own career.

What graduate schools teach performance majors today  does not prepare you for much outside of performing or professorship

Most of what I learned in graduate school, when it came to preparing me to “get a job” was not how to become an international performing soloist star, it was on how to apply and land a college professorship.  I would be THRILLED to have this job *sadly, since I do not have a Dr. in front of my name, I have been passed over for those who do at every job I have thus applied for*, but there are only so many professorships to go around.  Most of my fellow musicians who get performing or even professorship/teaching jobs have to have “day jobs” on the side because their musical jobs do not support them.

What musicians are desperately in need of today is entrepreneurship training.  Most musicians who go to grad school have a burning desire to play for others, but almost no idea how to market themselves as individuals beyond writing a resume.  In fact, there are many graduate students who just “continue to go to school” earning a doctorate because they haven’t landed any gigs, jobs, had any interviews and don’t know what to do once they get out, so really it’s just a way of procrastinating getting into the real world.

Knowing how to build a great resume, c.v., interview well and of course, play your instrument outstandingly are all great qualities, but if you don’t get an interview and you don’t have a regular performing gig and you’re NOT that international superstar performer, they will only take you so far.

You need SKILLS – the things business majors learn.

Skill 1: Present yourself well:

You have to be more than just a pretty face and a shiny instrument, you have to present yourself well.  That means smiling, being personable, dressing well, shaking every hand you can and learning names.  Treat everyone as your most important prospect, a future friend and a future employer – show them respect and leave your own ego at the door.  No one likes to talk to a person with a sour face and an attitude that says “you should pay me because I play well, but don’t expect me to like you”.  No.  YOU are the one needing the job and therefore, YOU have to be the one they want to hire.  In fact, the best advice I got when I was young was “Be someone YOU would want to hire”.  Be friendly, look professional, speak professionally and start as many relationships as you can with people.  By the way, presenting yourself well applies to social media as well.  Don’t post drinking photos all over your Facebook page and swear on twitter and in general, give anyone the opportunity to have a bad impression of you.  Having a personal Facebook page is fine, but make sure your professional “fan” page stays just that, professional.

Skill 2: Create a niche

Ok, we know you can play, but what else?  There is usually some aspect of your playing or your life about which you are equally fascinated and you hold the key to sharing that with other people.  Maybe you have a knack with kids and see a hole in the market for beginning flute books (hint hint…..there is a hole there).  Well, your niche might be marketing yourself as a pedagogue who focuses on beginners.  My niche is marrying my careers as a personal trainer and a musician into one  – training musicians and teaching musicians the benefits of strength training.  Whatever it is, you have something else you are interested in and an area in which you can contribute to the musical world at large.

Skill 3: Make friends with those in your niche area

This is HUGELY important.  Right now, you are probably a nobody.  No one knows your name and you’re just another one of the 10,000 flutists who graduate every year.  There’s truth to the saying “It’s who you know”.  When you find out what your niche is, go find others who are in a similar pursuit with you and make friends with them.  Start conversations, ask questions, pick their brains.  These are the people you want to know your name because when they mention your name to someone else,  what THEY say carries weight.

Skill 4: Market yourself via social media and the internet

If you don’t have a webpage, get a webpage.  This is the first and most basic rule of promoting yourself.  How do you ever expect people to hire you if they can’t find you?  And don’t just write a bunch of stuff down on a page.  Spend the money to get a nice template somewhere and just plug in the information.  Better yet, if you can afford it, have someone else design your webpage for you.  You want something that catches the eye and makes people want to look around to find out more about you.   On that webpage make sure you put down ways people can contact you – make it easy for them to find.  Remember, people are lazy.  They won’t look for things so don’t make them search for it.  

Get a Facebook FAN page and put up RELEVANT content.  See below.  Also, don’t just put up links you think are interesting.  Make comments, socialize, put up pictures, videos, music clips of yourself – look around at people you admire and look at their fan pages.  Model yours after theirs.

Get a blog and start writing about the things that interest you and write it in such a way that other people will be interested.  The blog puts out good content so that when people want the information you have, they find you first.  Remember, you are writing blogs about stuff that interests you – but it shouldn’t necessarily be about you.  Go find other blogs about stuff that interests you and make comments down below (again, relevent comments).  While on the subject of blogs, I highly recommend you get an RSS reader like Google Reader.  Why?  Well, you really want to read a lot of content and it’s more difficult to read content from lots of blogs taking all day to surf around and find them.  With a reader you just drop the address in the reader (or click on the little orange RSS image on the blog – see mine at the top?) and subscribe.  This way, all you have to do is open the reader and you can check out blogs from all over, see what other people are writing about, get ideas, leave comments, etc.

Get a twitter account and learn how to use it.  No one wants to read about “it’s been a long day and now I’m watching Scrubs in my PJ’s.”  No one cares.  Find something relevant to your niche on the web?  Tweet about it – link it. TALK to people on Twitter who have the same interests you do.  It’s amazing how relationships can spring up that way.

Get a LinkedIN account – not entirely necessary, but why not? There are groups there that you can join and contribute to – these groups are full of other people who share your interests.  Contribute to the groups with relevant content – don’t spam them and just throw links to your stuff around.  No one likes that person.  Link your blog to LinkedIN and everytime you blog, people can see it on your account.

Link EVERYTHING!  Seriously.  Link your twitter account to Facebook and your blog to Twitter and Facebook and put links to your website everywhere you are.  Everything should lead back to your website.  You want to make yourself as visible as possible and when you link things, it shows up multiple places at once – this prevents you from having to copy/paste it 100 times.

Skill 5: Market yourself in real life

Presentation I did this year

Again, this goes back to that niche area, but start giving presentations anywhere and everywhere you can.  Draw up a presentation about something that interests you and then adapt it to fit different age groups.  Give your presentations in every school in the county and then start talking to college professors near you and see if they would let you give it at their school.  More often than not, if you offer a free presentation, they will say yes and you will have made an invaluable contact. Give presentations and recitals in your town, county, at conventions, anywhere you can.  The more people see your name and recognize you for something, the more they’ll remember you when they need your particular service or product.

Skill 6: Put out a newsletter

This is a great way to get people more information about you and what you do.  Every time you go to a presentation, pass around a sign up sheet and have people put down their email address if they would like to receive your newsletter.  On your website and/or blog you should have something that allows people to sign up for your newsletter fairly easily.  Now – you’ve got subscribers, what to write about?  Write about YOU, what you do in the music/business world.  Give them information they want.  For example, in my newsletter, I put out playing/practicing tips, workout tips, answer questions, give links to where they can find me, put up information about what’s going on in my world – where they can find me performing and what performances are coming up in the area (if you have a local newsletter).  Basically, the sky is the limit.  If you need ideas, subscribe to other people’s newsletters and see what content they have that you would like and model after them.  I suggest MailChimp for an easy, free newsletter service.

Hope!  Where to Look!  What to Do!

My friends, I am here to give you hope and show you that there are so many other places from where you can gain knowledge on how to carve out your OWN career!

First of all, if you are going to be an entrepreneur (and this is more geared to those of you who are NOT born with that gene) you are going to have to put in a lot of work on your own and be prepared for nothing to happen for awhile.  It will take a good bit of trial and error before you figure out what works for you, but be patient.  You aren’t just putting your resume out there and hoping for the best.  You have to be proactive and go FIND things, go DO things, contribute.  It’s hard work, but it’s very much so worth it.

Happily, there ARE some schools hoping on the entrepreneurial bandwagon.

The University of Colorado has an Entrepreneurship Center for Music!

Berklee College of Music has a Music Industury Entrepreneurship class

Other schools also offer degrees in Arts Administration – this could be a really good degree to get while also getting your primary degree.

My friend Jonathan Nation has been a wealth of help to me.  His job is to help small businesses and entrepreneurs learn how to navigate the waters of success.  You can visit his webpages at http://www.allynation.com and his business site at http://www.startingcube.com which is also a podcast.  Some of the sites he’s hooked me onto are:

Smart Passive Income.com

Savvy Musician

Angela Beeching - a career consultant for musicians

- 4 Tips to Jumpstart Your Career

The National Flute Association  has put out a great list of sites with their new group: the Career and Artistic Development Committee

Got links to share?  Share below!  Come tell me what you thought of this on my Facebook page, via twitter or make a comment below!

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It sounds a little strange, doesn’t it?  The courage to SUCCEED?  Who would ever be afraid of success?  Well, maybe you.  I know I have been at times.

Take a weakness and turn it into a strength.  If you are dedicated to overcoming failure and achieving lasting success, then you need to be willing to do the same.  Work on the weakness that weakens you, and there’s no telling how far you will go.    – John C Maxwell

I think it takes real courage (on top of talent) to be able to do this:

How many people put down Project Trio and beat boxing before they made it?

But this post is not just about having the courage to persevere in the face of failure to ultimately succeed, this post is more so about having the courage to ALLOW yourself to succeed.  That, can take just as much courage as it takes to fail.

Why would people be afraid to do well?  Honestly, for lots of reasons, and it is more common than you think and I am finding that this is the most difficult blog post I have written, to date.  I found this post to define it better than I:

Fear of success is the following:

* Fear that you will accomplish all that you set out to accomplish, but that you still won’t be happy, content or satisfied once you reach your goal.

* Belief that you are undeserving of all the good things and recognition that come your way as a result of your accomplishments and successes

* Opposite of fear of failure, in that fear of failure is the fear of making mistakes and losing approval–Fear of success is the fear of accomplishment and being recognized and honored.

* Lack of belief in your own ability to sustain your progress, and the accomplishments you have achieved in your life

* Fear that your accomplishments can self-destruct at anytime

* Belief that no matter how much you are able to achieve or accomplish, it will never be enough to sustain success

* Belief that there are others out there who are better than you, who will replace or displace you if you do not maintain your performance record

* Belief that success is an end in itself; yet that end is not enough to sustain your interest and/or commitment

* Fear that once you have achieved the goals you have worked diligently for, the motivation to continue will fade

* Fear that you will find no happiness in your accomplishments–that you will be perpetually dissatisfied with life.

These fears ring true for me in many areas of life -though they were most brought to life as I was finishing grad school.  It had never occured to me that I was afraid of success, I thought I was merely afraid to fail.  It was during a time of intense preparation and I was feeling overwhelmed in life and began to have feelings of not being able to live up to other’s expectations.  I had actually begun putting my validation into what others said of me instead of what I knew of me.  I was becoming a “human doing” instead of a “human being” and it was tearing me apart.

One part of me desperately wanted to succeed, and go into the fear of conquering the unknown, doing well in the future without guidance from a teacher, and one part was deathly terrified.

Please excuse the swear word

What are the negative consequences of the fear of success?

 Fear of success can result in:

* A lack of effort to achieve goals you have set for yourself in school, on the job, at home, in relationships, or in your personal growth

* Self-destructive behavior, such as tripping yourself up to make sure that you do not sustain a certain level of success or achievement you once had in school, on the job, at home, in relationships or in your personal growth.

* Problems making decisions, being unable to solve problems

* Losing the motivation or the desire to grow, achieve and succeed

* Chronic underachievement

* Feeling guilt, confusion and anxiety when you do achieve success–this leads you to falter, waver and eventually lose your momentum.

* Sabotaging any gains that you have made in your personal growth and mental health, because once you become healthier, a better problem solver, and more “together,” you fear that no one will pay attention to you. You are habituated to receiving help, sympathy and compassionate support.

* Your choosing to do just the opposite of what you need to do to be happy, healthy and successful

* Reinforcing your chronic negativity, chronic pessimism and chronic lack of achievement since you cannot, visualize yourself in a contented, successful life

* Denouncing your achievements and accomplishments, or seeking ways in which you can denigrate yourself enough to lose what you’ve gained

Do you do any of these things or have any of these beliefs?  Do you find yourself being very negative towards yourself and putting yourself down regularly – unable to accept compliments?  It could be that truly you are not afraid to fail, you are actually afraid of success and using the mask of considering yourself a failure to prevent yourself from actually succeeding.

What do those who fear success believe?

* I have worked so hard to get this far, yet I need to keep on working hard; I’m not sure the effort is worth it.

* I know people care about me when I am down and out, but will they like me when I am on top and successful?

* I’ve never been happy before, so how can I be sure I’ll be happy once I achieve my goals?

* I am nothing, and I deserve nothing.

* How can people like me if I succeed in reaching my goals in life?

* I can’t sustain the momentum I would need to achieve my goals.

* How can I be sure that my good fortunes won’t go sour and be destroyed?

* There are always more demands and more needs that have to be met in order for me to be successful, no matter what I do it will never be enough.

* They are all better, brighter, smarter, and more talented than I am. I really don’t deserve to be successful.

* It’s hard to be at the top.

* Everyone is out to shoot down the head man.

* No one really likes a winner.

* Everyone goes for the underdog.

* I am happiest when I am under pressure and challenged.

* Hard work, no play and constant effort make me happy. What would I do if it were different?

* I feel so guilty when I realize how much I have been given in my life.

* I’m always afraid I’m going to lose it all.

* Starting over again gives me meaning and a sense of mission and purpose.

* I’m so bored with what I’ve accomplished. What’s left to do?

* Everyone has the right to fail in life, and I have the right to choose to fail if I want to.

I find this happens in a lot of different areas in life: we can be all gung-ho about losing weight, learning our instrument, doing well at our jobs, etc. that when we suddenly realize either how much work it will take and we get discouraged or realize that we are actually good at what we do and if we do allow ourselves to be as good as we can be…

we can end up going a lot further than we’ve ever gone, and not only is that scary, it will grow and change us as a person and you might not be ready for that.  The people around you might not be ready for that.  THAT can give you a fear of success.  If you have a desire to stay in your comfort bubble, be honest with yourself and ask WHY?  Are you afraid to fail, afraid to let others down and fear judgement?  Or are you afraid to succeed, afraid to really fly and let yourself grow, and let the people around you either grow with you or leave?

What new behavior patterns can help in overcoming your fear of success?

* Learning to reinforce yourself for the hard work, effort and sacrifices you have made to achieve success

* Being able to honestly appraise your level of achievement, success and accomplishment

* Accepting yourself as being healthy, “together,” happy, successful, prosperous and accomplished

* Not giving yourself any excuses for being unsuccessful

* Giving others in your life permission to give you honest, open, candid feedback when they see you self-destructing or backsliding

* Monitoring your level of commitment and motivation to reach your goals

* Visualizing your life when you are successful

* Giving others credit, recognition, and support for their personal achievements, successes and accomplishments

* Honest, open, realistic self-talk that encourages you to work your hardest to achieve the goals that you have set for yourself

* Accepting the compliments and recognition of others with an open heart and mind

Read more: http://www.livestrong.com/article/14659-handling-fear-of-success/#ixzz1KfrAnJwj

There is a wonderful book called “The Success Principles:  Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be” by Jack Canfield 

If you are struggling with either allowing yourself to succeed OR fail, I highly recommend this book.  He breaks it down into manageable sections that you can tackle one at a time and these principles will translate to all areas of your life.  If you are struggling with allowing yourself to be the best musician you can be, the best father/mother you can be, the best architect/manager/plumber/writer/etc. you can be, struggling with allowing yourself to believe enough in yourself that you CAN lose weight and it’s really not the impossible obstacle you thought it was, etc. this book will help you learn to accept and achieve success in whatever area of life.

Trust – maybe the reason behind it all

You can see that a lot of these fears of success stem from a fear of trusting yourself.  You could lack trust in yourself to make decisions, follow through, know what’s best for you, whatever.  We all deal with a lack of trust in ourselves at some point, but in order to live life to the fullest, we must learn not only why we distrust ourselves, but learn to overcome it.

Did you dress yourself this morning?  You demonstrated that you know how to take care of yourself.

Did you eat today? You demonstrated taking care of your basic needs – you trusted your hunger signals.

Let me leave you with a quote that I posted on my bathroom door while I was dealing with my own fear of success.  I read it every day and let it sink in.  I hope it gives you the empowerment you need to empower yourself to allow success into your life!

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

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Like most people who learn an instrument in the USA, I learned to play the flute in 6th grade.  I had wanted to start playing much earlier than this as I knew my mother had a flutehidden away under the stairs.  Sometimes I would take it down off the shelf, carefully (like it had magic and I didn’t want to disturb it) and I would open the box to reveal the

the shiny buttons...

gleaming, silver tube inside.  Seeing that shiny instrument, nestled in dark, navy velvet, I would reach out with wonder and touch the keys, thinking to myself “one day, I am going to get to learn to play this!  One day, it will be mine to play and I won’t have to stare at it from a box”.  After a few minutes of staring I’d put it away back on the dusty shelf and sigh with longing that I had to wait till 6th grade to learn.

When the day came to sign up for band, I was first in line, waving my arms and proclaiming to everyone who would listen “I have a flute!  I already have an instrument!  Please, I want to play the flute!”  I would rush down the halls every day at 2nd period with a giddy excitement that I, yes I was going to play that beautiful, shiny instrument and because of ME it was going to make sound!!!

I was one of the first in the band room, when it was time to wait for the bus, I would sneak down there to practice (once actually missing the bus and causing my mother to come get me….something she made known was NOT acceptable) and I always made sure that when I put my flute in the storage room with the other flutes that it was upright and protected.  It wasn’t just that it was my mother’s instrument  and I felt the pull of responsibility to take care of something that I undoubtedly cost a fortune, but I felt it somehow fragile, and extremely special because with it came the ability to express myself and communicate in a new way.

On lesson days I was uber-excited because I knew that I got to stay after school and play to my heart’s content…well, for an hour and a half at least.  Some of my friends were taking lessons that day too and we’d play duets which was thrilling, and then when I was last, I’d have the huge empty room all to myself.  I’d love to listen to my sound bounce off the walls.

As I grew up through high school and even into college, that same excitement followed me – sneaking down to the band room, getting special permission to not have to sit in study halls so I could go practice, playing every chance I got and going to every honor band I possibly could.  I had an in-exhaustible curiosity to learn new things, new music, and lessons were always something I looked forward to because it wasn’t about not being prepared and playing for the teacher it was the thought of “what will she say that’s new to me today?  What will I learn today?  When I leave here, I’ll be better than when I came in!”   

The beginnings of body awareness

In all those years of teaching, very seldom was any emphasis placed on being aware of my body, save hand position being correct and an awful lot of talk about my embouchure.  In fact, it was the teacher in 7th grade who taught me my current (more or less) embouchure and thinking back on it, she put a great deal of emphasis on awareness of my lips.  She had me play in front of a mirror to see what the embouchure looked like, and then step away, play and see if I could feel it without looking.  I would go down the hall to the bathroom and stand on my tippy toes to see in the mirror, enjoying not only the sound of my playing bouncing off the walls of the deserted bathroom and down the hall, but enjoying the thrill of discovery with how my body worked.

Image via Wikipedia

From there, I started to notice that I was becoming increasingly interested in the body, especially mine, with how it worked in regards to playing my special instrument.  I heard about Alexander Technique and took classes in it at Interlochen Arts Camp.

Then, I was told that there was a woman named Barbara Conable giving a workshop at a nearby university and her workshop was an all-day event titled “Everything The Musician Needs to Know About the Body“.  My friend, a music therapy major, and I packed up and spent the day learning things that to this day, I have not forgotten.

Image via Wikipedia

At the time, I was still recovering from tendonitis acquired from my practicing at  Interlochen.  She asked for volunteers who had present or previous health issues. Of course, I volunteered, and she began to give me a body mapping lesson in front of the class. She told me to take my finger and run it all the way down one finger until I felt a mass of bones together: that was my wrist!  Where the finger bone joined the wrist was actually the first joint of the finger!  She told me: move your fingers and feel how they move….not move them from the first joint.  It felt soooo much freer!

The grad school experience

I went on to graduate school where I took a class in Alexander Technique at Appalachian State for a whole year.  It was wonderful to learn how to move and to learn how the body is supposed to move.  But it wasn’t until I got to FSU that I REALLY began to be aware of my body.

Now, all through these years I had had an interest in exercise and weight training.  I had been going to the gym since 7th grade when I was on the tennis team, but I really got into training regularly when I got to college.  I read EVERYTHING I could get my hands on, and while I didn’t really know what I was doing, I was determined to learn and in the process of lifting, I began to develop mind-body awareness.  My programming skills might have been seriously lacking, but I knew that when I did a one-arm row I supposed to feel it in my back, and I tinkered around with it till I did.  I have no doubt this set me up for great body awareness come grad school.

At FSU I began to take Dynamic Integration (Feldenkrais) classes with Eva Amsler.  This class began with all students lying on the floor for an hour every Thursday morning while Prof. Amsler walked around the room, asking us the strangest, easiest, and yet most difficult questions, in her Swiss accent.

“Do you feel your left leg lying on the floor?  Which way are your toes pointing?”

“How much space is there between your ankle and the floor?”

“Do you feel your shoulder blades lying on the floor?  Could you draw your little wings?”

“Think about how to get up, what would you move first?”

The class was incredibly eye-opening and between that class and her lessons I found myself questioning how I played this instrument that was almost a part of me, and questioning was there a better way?  A different way?

While I was at FSU I continued my workouts, getting up about 6 every morning to walk to the gym, do my workout and walk home before preparing for class.  I found  myself asking the same questions in my workouts:

“Is there a better way to do this? ”

Am I moving most efficiently/effectively?”

“Should I feel this here or there?”

“If I increase the weight, does my form change?”

Looking back through my notebook of those two years of grad school, the practice notes in the beginning are peppered with questions to myself.  The lessons revealed all kinds of new thoughts on how to think about my body, how to re-learn playing my instrument in the way that was best suited to me.

Actual Questions from my Notebook

Practice Notes:

I found that when slurring octaves my throat moves.  I am attempting to only use my lips, mainly my upper lip.  I find I can do this but it’s not clean at all. *How do I change octaves?

….the next day I answered this question:

I can change octaves by changing my support which creates faster air – blowing harder?  But it sounds better when just my top lip moves down.

Warm up: long tones while singing – focus only on throat.  Notice that air crept into cheeks. As I go lower, pitch wants to jump up, if I focus on only my aperture, I can feel it barely move to sculpt the air! Can only play very softly.

Played one note feeling upper lip move up and down and upper lip only while upper lip stays relaxed!

Long tones ascending concentrating on 1) Keeping an uninvolved throat 2) smallest possible movement in aperture 3) relaxed corners and/or air in cheeks.

The higher I go the louder I get!  Why am I gripping the keys so tightly???

Flutter tonguing work: If I sing with the vowel “ih” in my mouth while I flutter tongue, the back of the tongue goes down. However, something changes when I take the voice away…I’m getting it but this is going to take WORK!

Pentatonic scales – focusing on feeling in whole body, am I creating unnecessary tension anywhere? Tension -front of shoulders, left rear deltoid.  While I am just observing what’s happening in my body, tension-wise I am noticing more inflation in my cheeks only concentrating on that, not thinking about support and keeping fingers close to the keys.

When I sit on the ball and play, I notice I collapse into myself.

Lesson Notes/Questions:

The tongue is a muscle so we can relax it. When double tonguing, let the air move the tongue.  Tongue is only interrupting the air.

Figure out which way I learn – hearing, visual or muscle memory.  Sing it, write it down, or play it without blowing.

(about support) Just feel that you hold the tension – how it feels to play with and without.

Teaching principle: go where you haven’t been before – unexplored.  You don’t have to say “I change you”

Observe, don’t control.  Allow yourself to make mistakes.  If you make a mistake, don’t stop, it punishes yourself.  Just be aware when you do something wrong or right – was that easy?  Hard?  Instead  of”when I do….then…” that’s controlling.

Trust = risk.  To trust myself: 1) Observe when you control 2) risk 3) start to observe when you DON’T trust

For 3 weeks, every day, do finger work: practicing slowly, fingers slow close to the keys, observing – can also practice slowly pressing/lots of tension and then easy to feel the difference – but be really patient for 3 weeks before working other way.

Work on holding the body open.

There are lots and lots more of those in my notebook, but do you see the theme?  The questions I was asking myself actually took a lot of guts.  That excitement to discover, to learn, to play that I had in 6th grade that followed me all the way till now served me well; it gave me the courage I didn’t know I had to not put so much stock in what old teachers had told me was the “right” way, but it gave me the courage to discover and learn my own way.  Not only did this make me a better player, it made me a much better teacher, I feel.

Exercises in developing self-trust and body awareness

As you can see by now, developing body awareness can go hand in hand with developing a trust of yourself.  Look at te questions I wrote down as I practiced; have you ever asked yourself those questions?  Has your practice session looked something like that?

1) this week, each time you practice, write down your own observations of your practice session.  Notice what you are doing – can you do it without judging?

Look at the questions my professor asked of me and the way she guided me.

2) Take one of these each week and apply it to yourself and your practice session.  Write down your observations

Are you afraid to observe?  Do you find judgements coming up as you observe things? Do you have the courage to change if you observe yourself doing something less effectively than you would like?

3) sometime during the day take time to lie on the floor and make observations of yourself.  Notice every part of your body and where it touches the floor.  If judgements come up about how you are lying on the floor, just let them pass.  Start on one side of your body and work your way up from your feet to your head – then compare each side to the other, and do the other side.  When you get up after this, how do you feel?  When you play after this, how do you feel?

4) while playing, start to feel other parts of your body than your fingers.  You might be surprised to find you don’t even feel your fingers when you play. Take a day and focus on how your lips feel, what do they do?  How do they change notes?  Feel your feet when you play.  Where do they touch the floor?  All these thoughts think WHILE playing – how does it change your playing to concentrate on feeling your body and putting the “doing” on auto-pilot?

Be kind to yourself.  Body awareness takes time and is constantly developing.  Try some of these techniques and tell me below how you feel.  Do you already have good body awareness?  How did you develop it?  If you have taken Alexander, Feldenkrais, Dynamic Integration, or body mapping  lessons, share with others how it helped you.

Related Articles

• NFA Convention Brochure (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
• The Physical Flute – Alexander Technique and more body awareness exercises
• What Interests You? (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
• Spring is Coming, What are you Going to Do? (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
• Interview with Greg Pattillo, YouTube’s “Beatbox Flute” Guy (millenniummsband.wordpress.com)
• De-Mystifying Support and the Diaphragm (fluteangel.wordpress.com)

“What is support?” which is usually followed by this statement

“Make sure you breathe/support from the diaphragm“.

I hate to tell you, but that is absolutely impossible.  The intentions, when this statement is said, are good, but let’s talk about the diaphragm for a minute.

First, what IS the diaphragm?  Well, looks like it’s time for a little body mapping.

The diaphragm is a thin, dome-shaped muscle that  attaches to the bottom of the breast bone, the front of the chest wall, the inside of the cartilage of the bottom 6 ribs, the end of the 12th rib, ligaments and also to the lumbar (lower) spine.  It’s HUGE, as you can see – does it look how you thought it would look.  Think about yourself, touch the parts where it connects, this will correct your own body map.

Why is it impossible to “breathe from the diaphragm”?  The diaphragm is an involuntary muscle – meaning that it cannot (in most circumstances) be consciously controlled.  You breathe in and out and it is regulated by your subconscious.  What is meant when well-meaning teachers tell you to “breathe FROM the diaphragm” is really that you should not breathe shallowly but rather breathe low.  My favorite image being “breathe through the bottom of the chair”.  In any case, I’ll show you more about what support really means and how to breathe well.

Why should I care how I breathe?

Mark, over at Mark’s Daily Apple wrote a great article about breathing properly – and as far as I know, he’s not a musician!

Patrick Ward has written a great series of articles on breathing and the role of the diaphragm in lifting.  He’s a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist AND a Massage Therapist.  I highly recommend checking out his articles if you want more information:

Breathing 101

We are all basically saying the same thing – there is a “correct” and “incorrect” way to breathe.  Whether you are breathing for lifting, for playing an instrument or just in general, correct breathing involves the abdomen extending and the shoulders remaining mostly stable.

Try this: put one hand on your shoulders or upper chest and the other on your abdomen.  Take in a deep breath.  What moves?  If you are breathing correctly, your abdomen should move and your shoulders should not.

Keep your hands there and do it again, this time, concentrating on breathing low and letting your abdomen move.  Notice I said LETTING your abdomen move, not moving your abdomen.  There is a big difference.  Once you’ve done this, and if you were breathing shallowly before (aka: your shoulders were moving before) you should feel a little weird.

Let’s move the experiment further.  Put one hand on your abdomen and the other on your low back.  Take in a deep breath and you should feel expansion all the way around, including your low back!

Here’s Patrick Ward demonstrating the above:

What is happening when I breathe?

When you breathe, the diaphragm moves down, pulling the lungs down so they can suck in air.  When this happens, your guts have to go somewhere and so, the act of inhaling actually causes your internal organs to shift downward, creating internal tension.  When you exhale, the diaphragm moves upward, causing the air to be pushed out of the lungs and the internal organs return to their original position.  What you are feeling in your low back is the same as what you are feeling in the front: your internal organs being shifted all around!

How do I translate this to “support”….and what does that mean, anyway?

I’m glad you asked.

If you can’t “breathe from the diaphragm”, what CAN you do and how is support really achieved?

Amazingly enough, it took me till I was 25 and in graduate school before this was actually explained to me and I really understood it.  It took some change and getting used to it, but once I was able to implement proper support, my sound improved dramatically, and so did the tension levels in my body.

To understand support, let’s go back to the original exercise involving breathing with your hands placed on your abdomen.  This time I want you to place your hand on your lower abdomen, the spot below your belly button, and inhale.  You SHOULD feel this area expand outward.  In fact, if you wear low-rise pants, this is probably where your waistband falls.  Feel the tension that is created there.  It is not a huge thing, and you probably never noticed it till now.

This is the key to support (at least for flutists): while keeping your hand on your lower abdomen, exhale and keep the tension under your hand.  Only when you are almost completely out of air should you let the tension go and your abdomen retract.  Try it again: hold the tension as you breathe out, meaning, hold your abdomen against your hand or the waistband of your pants.

This is very important: DO NOT PUSH against your hand, merely hold the tension that is naturally there.  If you push you run the danger of incurring a hernia!  This should not be harsh or painful, but there will be a good chance of a few things 1) you feeling strange and 2) your stomach making gurgling noises.

To apply this to playing your flute:

Play a G, this allows your right hand to remain on your lower abdomen.  Be very gentle with yourself and notice how you feel all over: throat, tongue, stomach, etc.  As you play your G, make a conscious effort to hold the tension out under your hand.

Pay attention to your sound – do you sound more open?  Louder?  Fuller? Stronger?

Pay attention to your throat – if you were used to playing with an involved throat, it may be at a loss for what to do.  Let it relax and get out of the way.  You do not need your throat to play the flute.   If what you are doing currently causes your throat to hurt and feel tight when you play, this will solve that problem.  What you are doing is shifting the support from your throat to your abdomen, where it belongs.  This creates that elusive and confusing “air column” that we have heard so much about.

Pay attention to your tongue – if you let your throat go, very likely your tongue will want to compensate and try to support. Keep your tongue resting in the bottom of your jaw.  This creates an open cavity in your mouth, through your throat, all the way down.  You very likely will find the back of your tongue rising to try to “support” the air.  When the air is supported from down low, where it should be, the tongue does not need to help.  When the air is unencumbered by a tight throat or tongue, the sound will soar!

Supporting from your lower abdomen is very strange and takes some getting used to.  Don’t be surprised if you find your body resisting and other body parts trying to take over the job.  Most likely your throat will try it, when you let your throat remain uninvolved, your tongue will want to do it.   Be prepared for this and aware of it.

Helpful Exercises for Musicians AND Fitness Enthusiasts

If you find yourself shallow breathing and actually having a difficult time with breathing correctly, you can implement these exercises to help you improve your breathing.  This will make proper support much easier.

These exercises are also good for all you lifters!  Proper breathing technique is essential to help you maintain form and lift more weight.

I should also mention my post awhile back about exercises for the core.  There are a LOT but these are just a few that will help you with a strong core.  When your core (read: muscles of the entire trunk) are strong and working together, learning how to “support” will come much easier to you.  Article: 3 Core Exericses + 1 for Core Strength and Stability

Related Articles

• How to Breathe Correctly (marksdailyapple.com)
• Breathe With Me (plentyonyourplate.com)
• Craig Liebenson – Core Training: The Importance of the Diaphragm (Craigliebenson.com)
• What is the difference between the placenta and the diaphragm (wiki.answers.com)
• The Importance of Breathing From Deep Down in Your Diaphragm (fitsugar.com)

That is a bold statement, “do you have the courage to fail”?  It could almost be seen as a personal challenge, and take it that way if you would like, because I am betting that if you do, you are one of the most courageous people I know.

What does it mean, to have the courage to fail?  Doesn’t failure mean that you didn’t do something right, you didn’t achieve what you set out to achieve, you didn’t do what you wanted to do, you fell short, messed up, let other people down, let yourself down, etc?

Yes.  And is that a bad thing?

Not necessarily.

Quotes about failure

“Mistakes are not to be avoided by embraced.  They are signals that you’re moving into new territory, breaking new ground, making progress.

“The first important step in weathering failure is learning not to personalize it – making sure you know that your failure does not make YOU a failure.”

“Your commitment to continual improvement puts you one step closer to your potential.  And you’ll also find that what you get as the result of your growth is not nearly as important as what you become along the way.”

- John C. Maxwell

How do those quotes make you feel?  I’m guessing a few ways:

“Wow, I feel empowered, right on!”

“That is soooo hokey”

“Yeah, maybe, but that doesn’t really apply to me”

Which one of these is you?  You know what, none of them is wrong.  You are not right or wrong because you feel one way or another.  You just do.  The question is, what will you DO with these feelings and how will you let these quotes affect you?  Quotes are just quotes, they only mean something when you let them affect you.

We all make mistakes and we make them EVERY DAY.  In fact, babies make the cutest mistakes.  When they fall, we laugh and sometimes they giggle back at us.  We don’t think less of them as people, we think it’s adorable that they’re learning.

Now, translate that to a teenager who trips and fall…suddenly no longer adorable because we think “you should have learned to walk by now”.

Judgement.

Failure.

Doom

Translate this into performance and you get the same thing.  You make a mistake and you THINK everyone is thinking “you should have not messed up there, you should know how to play by now”.  This isn’t always the case, a lot of times humans are a lot more sympathetic than you think and even if they know you messed up, THEY don’t want to be where you are and are probably thinking more along the lines of “that’s only natural, I’m sure she’s nervous playing all those notes in front of all these people – you go girl, I’m rooting for you!” while on stage YOU are thinking “oh no, I messed up!  I bet they all noticed and they’re thinking about what a failure I am and how I didn’t play it right and I’m going to hear about it from everyone tomorrow” which leads to a continual mess-up loop and a bad mood the rest of the night.

Pretty unbalanced, huh?

Let me give you a few books that can help free you from your judgemental self.

The Inner Game of Tennis by Tim Gallwey

I have not read The Inner Game of Music but I have heard that the Tennis book is actually much better, and because I play tennis, I “get it”. Even if you don’t play tennis (you should, haha!) you will have an easy time understanding the concepts in this book.  He labels Self 1 and Self 2 and before you freak out that we’re going Schizophrenic, let me ask you, do you ever talk to yourself?  Sure you do, we do it all day long all the time.  Nothing wrong with that.  When we perform, Self 1 goes into overdrive, telling Self 2 what to do.  Self 1 being the voice and Self 2 being your body or your subconscious.  Excerpt from the book

It is interesting to see how the judgemental mind extends itself.  It may begin by complaining “What a lousy serve,” then extend to, “I’m serving badly today”.  After  a few more “bad” serves, the judgement may become further extended to “I have a terrible serve”. Then, “I’m a lousy tennis player,” and finally, “I’m no good”.  First the mind judges the event, then groups events, then identifies with the combined event and finally judges itself.

As a result, what usually happens is that these self-judgements become self-fulfilling prophecies.  That is, they are communications from Self 1 about Self 2 which, after being repeated often enough, become rigidified into expectations or even convictions about Self 2.  Then Self 2 begins to live up to these expectations.  …In short, you start to become what you think.

When asked to give up making judgements about one’s game, the judgemental mind usually protests, “But if I can’t hit a backhand inside the court to save my life, do you expect me to ignore my faults and pretend my game is fine?”  Be clear about this:  letting go of judgements does not mean ignoring errors.  It simply means seeing events as they are and not adding anything to them.

Take out the tennis terms serve and game and insert “notes” and “recital” and does this sound at all familiar?

Another book is The Art of Practicing: A Guide to Making Music From the Heart by Madeline Bruser.

This is another book about letting go of judgement but also giving yourself the permission to make mistakes.  She covers a lot of things: stretching, body awareness, posture, permission and also finding the easiest posture for your instrument.  Beyond all this, she lays out some specific ways to structure your practice session, which I find immensely helpful, especially after one leaves school and it can be easy to get out of the habit.  Sorry, but there are just too many great excerpts to list here, you’ll have to get the book.

Performance Power: Transforming Stress Into Creative Energy  by Dr. Irmtraud Tarr Kruger

This is a great book about the psychology behind what we do and how we perform and how we can release that stress into better, more positive things.  It also helps you question your “role”, and learn how to be a human “being” not a human “doing” comfortable in your own skin and able to truly perform.  If the thought of actually confronting your symptoms of nervousness intrigued you, this book will really show you how.

Confusing success with fulfillment is one of the chief causes of performance anxiety.  If we are motivated by “success at any price” then fears must appear; because when we think in this way we will be expecting something from others, thus becoming dependent on goals which have nothing to do with the task at hand.

If we wish with our activity to arrive at something or to prove something merely in order to prop up our faltering feeling of self-worth, then we will be endangered, and it will not be difficult to make us unsure of ourselves.  Drive on by our “success trip”, we will then be following a mistaken concept fed by foreign, ersatz feelings, which make us dependent.  If we appear in public with the intent to impress, we will be looking for something other than satisfaction or fulfillment.  We Will have much more to fear than if our appearance were dedicated to the goals of seeking satisfaction and fulfillment, and of sharing our knowledge or ability with others in order to enrich our lives.

By the way, if reading that offended you, or poked at you and made you uncomfortable, that’s a sure sign that that is an area needing change and courage.  Might be a good indication to read that one.

Lastly, I have one from Max Lucado.  This was given to me when I was leaving Appalachian State University to transfer to Florida State to do finish my Master’s.  The church I attended there was small but very loving and they let me know how special I was to them by giving me this book before I left.  They were sad to see me go, but wanted me to be courageous as I set out on a new journey.

Let the Journey Begin: God’s Roadmap for New beginnings by Max Lucado

If you believe in God and have faith in His will for your life, this book is a God-send and a veritable relief to read.  From the preface:

Deep in every heart you will find it: A longing for meaning, a quest for purpose.

If you ask the secularists what is the meaning of life they will say “we don’t know”.  At best they might agree that we are developed animals.  At worse, rearranged space dust.

What a contrast to God’s vision for life: “We are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to devote ourselves to the good deeds for which God has designed us”. (Eph 2:10)

God has placed his hand on your shoulder and said “You’re something special.”
Untethered by time, he sees us all.  In fact, he saw us before we were born.  And he loves what he sees.  Flooded by emotion. Overcome by pride, the Starmaker turns to us, one by one, and says, “You are my child, I love you dearly.”

And he loves us forever.  Should you ever turn from him and walk away, he has already provided a way back.  Nothing can separate you from his love.  If you anchor these truths firmly in your heart, you will be ready for whatever you may encounter on the road ahead.

So let the journey begin!   – Max Lucado, January 1998

Ok, Ready to Fail!

If you’re truly ready to take this journey, I applaud you because you are a brave soul and you will be rewarded!  Having the courage to go into the failure takes guts, so if I may, let me give you a bit of advice on the journey ahead:

• Be kind to yourself.  You are going to fail, sometimes ON PURPOSE.  When (not if) this happens, take a moment to notice your reaction.  Do you have an immediate judgement?  Were you surprised?   Whatever your reaction, be kind to yourself and realize you are not your failure.  The mistake was just that, a mistake and how you choose to react to it will make all the difference.
• If you do judge yourself, notice that.  Pretend you are a student – would you judge your student?  No, you’d notice the mistake and figure out how to fx it.  Same with training – treat yourself as your own client.  Realize that judgement is not necessarily about the mistake that just occurred – it represents something else.  When you have that judging moment, ask yourself why?  Have the courage to look beyond the immediate “I can’t believe I messed up, what a failure I am” thought and ask why do I think that?
• In music, this is how I teach my students to correct their mistakes (and I believe this comes from The Art of Practicing)
• Step 1) stop immediately and make note of exactly where the mistake happened.
• Step 2) Look at the mistake objectively.  Identify exactly what happened (if it was a wrong note, which one?  Say it’s an interval of a 3rd and you are playing a 2nd….this might be a pattern and you will notice it happening elsewhere when you can identify it)  
• Step 3) Play the wrong note on purpose  – does that freak you out?   Allow yourself to make the mistake. Notice how it feels and how it sounds.
• Step 4) Play the correct note (and by the way, this should all be done slowly and maybe even out of tempo or rhythm.  This is crucial.  You have to allow yourself to play the wrong note, to fail and notice where it happens, so that when you now play the correct note, you are acutely aware of it).  When you play the correct note, take the passage out of time, perhaps only play the note before and after the erroneous note and make sure that you SIT on the correct note.  This means that when you play the correct note, hold it out for a long time. This puts the sound of it in your ear and when you play it with the preceding and following notes, you hear the correct note pattern instead of the wrong one BUT you HAVE to play the wrong note first!
• If you are learning how to fail in other areas of life, you can apply this same process.  Take out “note” from the passage above and insert your circumstance:  Allow the wrong ” food….exercise….person….statement….etc” to happen – experience the mistake in its entirety and then when you do the correct thing, revel in it.
• The best advice I can give you is to notice this in your journey “If it feels weird, you’re probably right”.  This means that mistakes often feel more correct than the correct thing.  When you are correcting a mistake it feels weird, unnatural – GO WITH THAT feeling.  When you sit on the right note it will sound weird, feel weird, and the more you play it correctly like that the less weird it sounds.  Try it out and tell me what happened for you.  I do this with clients all the time.  In squatting, if a client’s feet point too far outward or their knees cave inwards and I have them correct that, they will tell me “that doesn’t feel right, or that feels weird” and I tell them to make it feel weird, because it means they are doing it right.

For more resources

I found this link of books from the Horn Studio at UI, looks like a great list!

Book list for overcoming fear of failure, stress and performance anxiety

And, if you want to feel better about failing, of course you can check out Fail Blog

Feel free to add any  more resources that have helped you as well.

Stay tuned for part 3 in this blog series: Do You Have The Courage To Succeed?

Fail well, fail often!  Love to hear your thoughts on how failing works for you!

What does change entail?  Why are we afraid?  This goes along with Failure, being Afraid to Fail and its cousin, Afraid of Success.  Which camp do you belong to?

We are all afraid of something, whether we admit it or not.  We all have strengths and weaknesses, whether we admit it or not!  A lot of times these characteristics go hand in hand, and this translates through every aspect of life, be it

1. Going to a new school in a new state
2. Embarking on a new relationship
3. Losing or gaining weight
4. Changing your body in some way
5. Changing your beliefs or questioning your values
6. Learning a new, challenging piece of music
7. Entering the gym, be it the first time or the 100th time
8. Accepting compliments
9. Accepting criticisms
10. Failing
11. Succeeding
12. Embarking on a new workout routine -venturing into the weight room and out of the cardio room

Are you a human being or a human doing?

No matter what, we all have challenges in life and things that can cause us to question our methods of doing things.  Having recently been a student and entering the professional world a few years ago, that was a difficult transition.  I was stuck in being a “human doing” instead of a “human being”.

What does that mean?  How many of you, just like myself, get caught up in doing things to please others, to meet an unwritten quota, to show how busy you are to others just so you can receive validation of your worth as a person?  It’s VERY easy to fall into that trap, especially if, like me, you were the good child, the good student, the one who excelled in something and thrived on doing well and pleasing others.

As long as you are also pleasing yourself, this is fine, but there comes a time when you have to take ahold of your actions and say “I don’t need to do X Y or Z to please Ms. X because I have worth as a person, no matter if I am busy or not.”   That was tough to accept, and it required change, which is a scary place to be.  A “human being” knows he/she has worth because they are alive, a “human doing” is caught in seeking validation from others for their worth as a person. Did you know that it is ok to NOT do?

Change Takes Change (Tangent)

It is ok to NOT do, just as it is ok to do.  We get very caught up in being busy, in appearing busy, making things, doing things, how much of it is done to look good to others, to please others, or, as Dave Ramsey would say “we buy things we don’t want with money we don’t have to impress we don’t like”.

Can you translate that to your exercise life?  Are you on a desperate carousel of weight loss or body transformation to “please people you don’t like”?  How many of you get up at the crack of dawn to spend an hour on the elliptical, prepare meals that are tasteless and don’t satisfy, only to stare into the mirror and think “I’m fat and I don’t like myself”?

If you gave yourself permission to stop right now and change for you what would you do differently? Would you hire a personal trainer to take out off the elliptical and teach you about weights?  Would you listen to your body and eat what you know is healthy, but in ways that TRULY satisfied you?  Would life suddenly take on new joy and excitement in the journey that you suddenly realized you WANTED to take?

Can you translate that to your musical life?  How much practice are you putting in to achieve YOUR OWN goals and not someone else’s?  Would you quit torturing yourself over mistakes and start loving your sound?  Would your attitude towards performance change to one of “Let me share this music with you that I love, so you can love it too” instead of “The audience is out to notice my every mistake and they’re waiting for me to fail”.  Would you still practice 4-6 hours a day?  Would you play more?  Less?  Start a group?  Leave a group?  What would you do FOR YOU?

So the question remains, what would you do if you gave yourself permission to NOT DO?

(Tangent over )

Identify Your Fear

This could be scary for you, but whatever your situation in life (relationships, trusting God, losing weight, learning a new way to practice/learn/play your instrument) you have a challenge.  If it’s not right now, it will be in the future, or you have had one in the past.  Stop and think for a minute, what change are you facing or thinking of facing?  If you choose not to change, is it based on the fear that that change might bring?  What is your fear?  Some quick examples:

• Learning to breathe from a new part of your body when you play, thus changing how you’ve ALWAYS played
• Learning to accept criticism without taking it personally
• Accepting your body as it is right now (which could be change for you) and if you decide to further change your body, what fears do you have about changing?

Body Awareness

Sadly, body awareness is not something that can be taught or adequately covered in a blog post, but I can at least start the thought for you.

1. Do this with me, look away from the computer and list off all the feelings you have in your body.  Are you suddenly aware that you can feel multiple things at the same time?  Close your eyes, does the awareness intensify?  Do you feel pain?  Do you feel comfort?  Do you feel yourself starting to judge yourself for “poor posture”?
2. Lay on the floor and, starting from your feet, notice where your body is in contact with the floor and where there are spaces.  Compare those spaces to each other. Work your way up your body from feet to head to hands.  There is no right or wrong in this, how you lie on the floor is how you lie on the floor.  No judging, just notice.  Does that feel strange to do?  To not berate yourself that your feet are not pointing in the same direction, or you have pain in your hips and know it’s because of your posture, etc?  The first step in change is awareness.  When you become aware, you are no longer judging, and from there, you give yourself the freedom to change or not to change.
   “Awareness is attention that observes what you are doing without pushing you in a particular direction.” – Geneen Roth
3. Now, think about how you are going to get up, without actually doing it.  That should be REALLY weird.  As yo find your way to get up, remember, there is no right or wrong, just notice how you do it because really, when was the last time you noticed how you got up and down from the floor?
4. Try a chair.  This I learned from Alexander Technique.  Sit in a chair and just observe yourself, how you are  sitting, where you are sitting.  Put your hand on the back of your neck and stand up.  Did you feel the muscles in  your neck tense?  Sit down and notice if they tense again.  I will teach you a way to get up with less tension.  Keep  your hand on the back of your neck, but this time, before you stand, I want you to lean forward,  from your hips (not your waist) until you are leaning far over, so far over that it’s almost hard to NOT stand up.  Lean forward from your hips until the momentum carries you out of the chair and you stand up.  If you did this “correctly”  (haha) you will have noticed that the muscles under your hand in your neck barely tensed at all.

Amazing what you just learned about yourself!

So, you have just learned to observe yourself without judging.  Was that scary?  Do you have the courage to change now?  Think about it, can you go throughout your day NOT judging yourself (or others) just observing?  It can be a real challenge to do that and maybe even scary…but it can also be the first step to beautiful change.

As this applies to your instrument, the next time you pick it up to play, or sing, can you be very aware of the rest of your body?  Can you think about the backs of your knees while you play?  What about the outsides of your elbows?  Do you feel the insides of your toes?  Notice how you feel before playing, how the instrument feels in your hands, how your body reacts or doesn’t react and then when you begin to play, what changes?  How do you feel?

When you are in tune with your body you will be able to pick up on pain and other strange things much more quickly.  As my Professor at FSU is famous for saying “Do you feel your feet while you play?”

Have the Courage to Go Into The Fear

In Music or performing: like I said, fear and change can go hand in hand.  My teacher at Florida State University, Eva Amsler is an absolute master at helping you learn to not only judge yourself, but learn to observe, have the courage to change and face your fears of failure AND success (mine was somehow the latter!).

One of the things she is big on is performance anxiety.  This is HUGE.  How many of us get nervous before we perform?  Some of us get so nervous we get physical symptoms that prevent us from playing well: shaking hands, shaking lips, queasy stomach, weak knees, etc.  She said that one day before she was about to perform, she noticed that her hands were cold.  And she thought to herself “I wonder if I can make my hands colder?”  She actually TRIED to make her hands colder! And do you know what happened?  They got warmer!

Think how much courage that takes.  Imagine your symptom is that you get butterflies in your stomach and I asked you, a few minutes before you were to take the stage, to notice those butterflies, acknowledge them….and make them WORSE!  It takes immense courage to change, but I can vouch for the fact that every time I have had the courage to make my symptoms worse the end result is that they have lessened.  Now, sometimes there is nothing you can do, especially if you are unprepared, but this technique is the result of the assumption that you are as prepared as you can be and all you are doing is acknowledging the part of you that is frightened and unsure and basically giving yourself reassurance.

As this relates to fitness: fitness can be a very scary place and it is easy to become overwhelmed by what we don’t know.  We pick what is safe (machines) because it’s what everyone does and we’re less likely to “screw up”.  Believe it or not, by those who understand fitness, we see a lot more people “screwing up” on machines than not.

Do you have the courage to  REALLY change your body?  This will be covered more in the “Are You Afraid of Success” post, but think about it.  You desperately want to change.  You want visible abs, tight legs,  to be rid of the bat wings…what is holding you back?  If you are not exercising or eating well, there’s part of your answer, but sometimes what we’re doing isn’t working, but we stick with it because we don’t know what else to do.

This is where it makes sense to hire a trainer – even if only for a few sessions, maybe a week or two, to show you around, help you understand how do lift weight safely, and progress properly.  Let me tell you right now – lifting weights (strength training) can be very scary.  It will take EVERYONE out of their comfort zone at some point, which is the goal, because you cannot grow stronger, you cannot change your body without challenging your comfort zone.  A personal trainer will be there right by your side to guide you so that you do not hurt yourself and that you do not back down into your fear, but that you bust through it.

Now that you know what it takes, are you really ready to change your body? For those who have the  courage to embark on the path, they will all tell you it was hard, it was scary, but it was worth it and they are glad they did.

Quotes about Change

“Change happens the way a plant grows: slowly, without force, and with the essential nutrients of love and patience and a willingness to remain constant through periods of stress” – Geneen Roth

“If nothing ever changed, there’d be no butterflies.”  ~Author Unknown

“Change is inevitable.  Everybody has to deal with it.  On the other hand, growth is optional.  You can choose to grow or to fight it.” – -John C. Maxwell

“There is no improvement except through change.  To improve continually we must change continually.”

“You can’t avoid fear.  No magic potion will take it away.  And you can’t wait for motivation to get you going.  To conquer fear, you have to feel the fear and take action anyway” – John C. Maxwell

Change does not happen overnight, no matter how much  we want it to.  No matter how badly we want to memorize a scale, lost 20 pounds or have a significant other, it simply does not happen with wanting it badly enough.  However, when you do want something badly enough, that can give you the courage you need to change your circumstances and make those things happen.

Pretty empowering, huh?

But with desire and change also comes failure.  This is the second part…do you have the courage to fail?  And the third part, which might actually be more difficult…do you have the courage to succeed?

Don’t eat THAT!

Avoid these foods at all costs!

Eat this and you will *insert choice verb here: boost your metabolism, loose weight, tone up, have more energy, trim fat, end world hunger, grow super powers….*

You must eat 5-8 times a day!
You only need to eat within an 8 hour window!
Actually, twice a week, don’t eat at all!

Eat Clean!
Eat Paleo!
Carbs are bad!
Fat will make you fat!
Meat is evil!
Too much protein will kill your kidneys!
Stay away from gluten!
Go anti-inflammatory!
Eat for your blood type!

This video says just how ridiculous life has gotten (censor watch – I apologize for the swear word in the beginning):

The list goes on and on and on.  Are you as tired as I am of seeing these things?  I am sick and tired of being told what I can and cannot, should and should not eat.  Life is too short to have other people dictate your meals.

On the one hand, the majority of the American population has a general idea of what healthy foods are, and what are “unhealthy” foods in the sense that we know that broccoli has more health benefits for us than an Oreo cookie, and it’s much harder to “overdone” on broccoli than it is on Oreos.  On the other hand, will eating and oreo in and of itself make you fat, kill your kidneys, make you healthy, wealthy and wise?  No.  Nor will broccoli.  It’s just food.

I am not a nutritionist, but I have been up and down the nutritional scale starting with wanting to just “eat healthy” and then learning how certain foods can “affect my body”, eating 5-6 times via Tosca’s “Eat Clean” mantra, turning to figure competing and eating nothing but fish and asparagus with the stray bowl of oats of boiled chicken breast thrown in for “variety”, to binging on peanut butter in rebellion, to studying nutrition through my various certifications, to Intermittant Fasting to where I am now.  Where is that?

I am re-learning to trust my body.  I have ignored it for so long in the hopes of changing it for the better, that I have ignored it.  Your body, if you really listen will not hurt you, not lie to you, not lead you down the path of shame, deprivation or overindulgence on a daily basis.  Infants and children, even into adolescence  have no problem listening to their bodies, well, most of them.  Look at an infant: it cries when it’s hungry, it pushes away the bottle when it’s had enough.  It doesn’t care that you want it to “clean its plate” or that the milk will “go to waste”.  And do we punish the infant for trusting its body?  Good heavens, no.  So why do we do it to ourselves?  Why do we feel we need to overindulge at the buffet because otherwise it will go to waste?  Really?  Look, if the restaurant wastes food, that’s their problem NOT YOURS.  If you didn’t clean your plate, what bad things will happen?  Absolutely nothing.  You can save it for later, give it away, throw it away.

What about what to eat?  If I trust my body, won’t I just eat ice cream, chocolate and sweets all day everyday?

If you have been on one of the bandwagons named above, you might go through a rebellious stage and do that for awhile, yes.  But eventually, you lose some of the cravings for it as you become more in tune with what your body really wants.  You find out that you didn’t really want sweets, you just wanted them because they were “forbidden” and when you listen you find out that really, you just want a nice juicy steak, with a potato and some steamed broccoli.  No, really, you want it this time!    I speak from experience, here.

If you do not fit into that category above, you have not been “actively dieting” for the better part of half of your life, then you already know that more than likely, you won’t eat junk because you crave it, but you will probably eat it if it’s around your house because it’s THERE and it’s convenient.  That’s the point of pre-packaged food, it makes it easier to eat, so we do, which makes it easier to eat too much, which means we do.  See how this works?

Do this with me:

Notice the storm in the background, ever feel this way?

Close your eyes.  Tune in to how your body feels.  Are you hot, cold, just right?  Do you have pain anywhere?  What doo you hear around you?  Right now I hear birds chirping and some street noise.  It’s lovely.  Listen to your body, notice your stomach.  Are you hungry?  This is where it gets tricky.  A lot of people say “I don’t know” because you have ignored your hunger signals for so long, you truly don’t know.  That’s ok.  The more you do this, the easier it will be to know.  If you ARE hungry, think, what do you want?  If you could eat anything right now, what would FEEL good to you?  Smoked salmon? Steak? Eggs?  A Cadbury egg? Ice cream? Carrots?  Anything and everything is ok.  When you give yourself the freedom to want and the freedom to choose, initially you might have things come up that are really “rebellion foods”  You don’t want to eat them because you’re hungry for them, you want to eat them because you weren’t allowed to before.  After awhile of tuning in, that signal fades and you start to realize what your body wants, and what AMOUNT it wants.

I have been doing Intermittant Fasting since October.  I thought I liked it because I like to eat big.  Really, I had been on too many plans of a d5 meals ay, tiny amounts of food and the thought of eating big till I was satisfied and getting to eat big before bedtime (when that is a no-no in stupid bodybuilding circles….sigh…another topic for another day) was appealing to me.  That’s not to say that IF isn’t a good plan.  I think it really is.  However, in my current state, it wasn’t helpful.  Let me explain.  Last month I quit dieting.  I have gained a ridiculous amount of weight….and now I have stopped gaining.  What happened?

As you can see from my cycle of eating behavior, I have been letting others tell me what to eat for too long.  Couple that with a lot of nutritional knowledge and my own rules and you have a strict eat clean/count calories/binge in rebellion cycle that leads to nowhere but mental and physical anguish. I got tired of it.  Tired of the rules.  Tired of only being allowed to eat at certain times, certain foods…..enough.  I KNOW what I need to eat to get lean, I know what better choices are for me than others, I know how to eat, etc.  It’s not the knowledge that is the reason I am sitting here at 35+ pounds over weight, it’s that mentally, I had ambushed myself into a corner.  Like the video above, I felt like there was nothing safe to eat, and any amount was too much, and no matter what, eating food I began to feel guilty.  We need food to live, who wants to feel guilty about food?

I have been reading this book and it has been helping me immensely.  If you don’t know who Geneen Roth is, I HIGHLY recommend getting some of her books.  I’m also reading “Appetites”, “Feeding the Hungry Heart” (if you are a binger or want to know what it really feels like inside of a binge, you can relate to this) and will be reading “When Food is Love” and “Women, Food and God“. Don’t the titles feel good to say and do they ring true with some of you on things you were afraid to admit?  See, what I found out through all of this stuff about wanting to change my body is that while it started innocently enough, I did lose 20+ lbs, reach my goal weight on my wedding day and keep it off for over a year…the behaviors I learned set me up for some terrible cyclical behavior that far too many of us are in together.  I had started out changing my eating to eating healthier things, but along the way felt like I had to have continual guidance and that if I ate anything processed or “off plan” that I was a failure, I was holding myself back, etc.  And then I felt like certain foods would always be “off limits” which made me want them.

Friends, let me give you hope and guidance in as succinct a way as I can (which will be hard, look at the length of this post!).  Knowing what, when and how to eat is very simple.  Doing it to lose weight is also simple, and it CAN be easier than we make it.  Guidelines that your common sense probably already knows:

• No food is off limits (unless you have a medical reason, allergies, etc.)
• Food with less ingredients is healthier for you and should make up a majority of your diet for health and weight loss reasons
• Pre-packaged food is ok to eat (did you hear that?) but remember how easy it is to eat lots of it, and it’s more calorically dense.  So when you eat it, do so on purpose, enjoy it, if you don’t enjoy it, don’t eat it.
• If you don’t enjoy it, don’t eat it. No,really.  I think I should repeat this 100 times.
• As much as you can, center your meals around protein first.  This will be easier for some, harder for others, but doable for everyone.  You feel better, look better, and work better with more protein in your diet.  It builds muscle, tissue, cells, practically everything in your body and and your body has to work harder to digest it.  There’s really no downside to protein and almost everyone should eat more of it.  No idea how much?  A serving size is generally 4 oz. the size of your palm.  Start there.
• Neither carbs nor fat are bad for you- you need both.  Eat the ones you like.  Eat it with protein more often.
• Take fish oil, preferably cod liver oil – it has the highest concentration of Omega-3′s which we are pitifully shot on here in America.
• Eat veggies, if you like them.  There are a ton, surely there are a couple out there you like?  Brightly colored, especially green, are great for you.  You knew that though, didn’t you?

When it comes to weight loss, here are the basics:

• eat less than you need to maintain your weight.
• Eat less, move more, the weight comes off.  Simple as that.
• What to eat to do that?  Stuff that is one ingredient or less has less calories.
• Go for thing that are higher in one macronutrient than the other two.  Aka: chicken breast, boneless skinless is mostly protein, very low in fat or carbs.  Pair that with a potato (mostly starchy carbs) and green beans (fibrous carb) and add a little butter on your potato (fat) and you’re good to go.  Almost all of those foods are one-ingredient.
• Fat is not bad, and eating fat will not make you fat.  Eating too much fat will make you fat, but eating too much of ANYTHING will make you fat.  Period.  Fat is easiest to cut back on and lose weight simply because it has more calories per gram.  That butter on your potato?  Make it a teaspoon instead of a tablespoon.  You’ve got less calories and you’re still satisfied because you ate butter.
• The simpler your meals, the less ingredients, the less calories.  I hate this but it’s true.  I like to cook and make complicated dishes, but here’s the truth of it, when you do that (think casserole) a single serving gets packed with a lot of calories on all three macro levels, and usually, protein isn’t the star.  Casseroles are good, home cooked is good, multi-ingredient is good, just remember how easy it is to overdo it on calories.
• That whole “everything in moderation” thing?  Yeah, it really works.

But what about all those rules?

Hogwash, most of them.  Most of them are simply a means to an end.  Will you lose weight on Atkins, Paleo, the Zone, etc.?  Sure.  But is it a lifestyle change you’re making or is it a plan you’re going to follow till the weight comes off and go right back to eating nothing but nachos and pizza?  All those methods basically trick you into eating less.  At some point, no matter what plan you’re on, you can’t eat any less, and you’ll be maintaining from then on.  Do you want to eat Atkins the rest of your life?  Heck no, not for me.  I will say that IF makes it VERY easy to lose weight if you are following the guidelines above (eating less calorically dense and higher protein).  It’s just tough to overeat in 8 hours if you are eating high protein, less calorically dense stuff.  You’re fuller faster and longer and you just can’t eat that much.  It’s an easy lifestyle to maintain, too.  I don’t think it’s the end-all-be-all, but it can work.  And for people who like to eat a good amount instead of tiny amounts, it works best for you.  Eating “clean” is a good one too, because it teaches people who otherwise don’t have a clue about nutrition, what are good choices.  However, the 5-6 meals a day to “boost your metabolism” is NOT TRUE ON ANY LEVEL.  Too many studies have shown it.  You get something called the Thermic Effect of Food when you eat, and yes it goes up, but not to any degree that will boost your overall metabolism.  I really wish Tosca would get the hint on that because I’m sick of hearing that nonsense.

This might spark some controversy, and I hope so because this isn’t an issue going away anytime soon, but I wanted to let you all know where I’m coming from and what I’m dealing with.  Right now, I’ve found that after a month of forbidden foods “buffets, nachos, pizza, endless sweets and ice cream” really, I just want massive amounts of protein and veggies and I’m not interested in much else anymore.  And I’m only eating when I’m hungry, and I stop when I’m satisfied.  If I eat out of emotion, I do it on purpose, knowledgefully, and move on.  Eating from emotion isn’t a bad thing, we all do it, but to live your life eating from emotion is no way to live.  I subbed food for my marriage, friendships, jobs, God, everything else, and now that I’m learning to put food back in its place, everything else is going back where it belongs; I have a better, closer relationship with my husband, I’m more focused on my job, I’m getting closer friendships, etc.

If you want to read some more on the subject without the nonsense, these are sources that I trust:

Leigh Peele (an article about food she wrote includes the video above)

Martin Berhkam and Leangains.  Want to see diet myths de-bunked in action?

Lyle McDonald – if you want to know anything about food, nutrition, lifting, etc. that is the TRUTH and is backed by research, this man can dish it out to you in a way you understand, with some humor.  Check out the articles link

Nia Shanks Blog – talks a good bit about lifting and some about food

Brad Pilon – Eat Stop Eat – the aforementioned 24 hour fasting a couple days a week, not as hard as it sounds

I’m sure there are more, but these are the people I trust off the top of my head, and I hope they help you dig through the diet nonsense out there.

Related articles

• The Art of Mindful Eating (stopandbreathe.com)
• Healthy Eating: What Did You Expect? (PrecisionNutrition.com)
• Clean Eating is a Scam and Why You Should Abandon It (JCDFitness.com)
• Clean Eating: Why I Still Call It A Scam (JCDFitness.com)

Every musician needs a strong core, and by strong core I don’t mean rock hard abs and a visible six-pack.  The core is made up of several muscles, the diaphragm, transverse and rectus abdominals, obliques, and back muscles: mutifidus, erector spinae and QL and your pelvic floor muscles, among others.  These muscles serve to keep your internal organs in place, your body upright and in balance and if you play a wind instrument, like flute, your core has to be strong to support all that internal pressure you are creating.

Side note:

Let’s talk about support for a minute.  What does that vague word “support” really mean?  Can my diaphragm do the work?  To clear things up, your diaphragm is a dome-shaped muscles that cuts across the entire middle of your body and serves most basically to facilitate breathing.  More on that later.  It is an involuntary muscle, meaning, it cannot be consciously controlled (under most circumstances).  Support, therefore, does not come from the diaphragm.  What is meant by “breathe from the diaphragm” is to breathe low, your belly should move outward, instead of “shallow breathing” where your shoulders move upwards.
Support is basically where you take in a deep breath, and notice how the waistband of your bands moves outward.  When you breathe out (through your flute embochure) you need to keep the waistband of your pants out.  You are not pushing out, rather you are keeping the natural tension that is there from breathing in.  THIS is support and keeps your throat, lips and face muscles free from tension.

So, now that we understand support and can see why a strong core is beneficial, what are these exercises?  Well, let me show you.  I have done all of these myself and actually love them.  They are a lot more difficult than they look, but give them a shot and see if you don’t enjoy them, too!

Vertical Pallof  Press

You may have heard of the Pallof Press, which consists of pressing outward, this version presses upward.  Nick Tuminello shows his version.

Band Hip Rotations

The goal here is to not twist too much, and to brace your abs against flinging to either side and using your core muscles to contract to twist you.

Standing Cable Anti-Rotation  Chop

This is similar to the exercise above, but you twist even less.  You use your arms to move and your abs to brace against movement.

Just because I’m a rebel, I thought I’d add one more and show you the Palloff Press. You’ve seen the vertical, now see the original!  Notice how the body is not moving?  The more weight you add, the more difficult this becomes.  You are using your abdominal muscles to brace you and keep you from moving.

You do not need a “core workout” or a dedicated “core day”.  Just put 1-2 core exercises of 1-2 sets  in your workout each day that you lift and you will be doing just fine.  You can also do these at home if you have bands, you do not even need a cable station.  Just get a selection of bands and tie them to a door knob or put them in the door frame.  The JC travel bands are fantastic for this!

Let me hear your thoughts…have you tried these?

Related articles

• De-Mystifying Support and the Diaphragm (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
• Fitness: Increasing Core Stability (trainwithjess.wordpress.com)
• What Interests You? (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
• 3 Exercises + 1 for Core Strength and Stability (innovativeperformanceandpedagogy.wordpress.com)
• Ask the Trainer – TRX Suspension Training to Improve Running and Walking (metrorunwalkspringfield.wordpress.com)
• The Importance of Breathing From Deep Down in Your Diaphragm (fitsugar.com)
• Craig Liebenson – Core Training: The Importance of the Diaphragm (CraigLiebenson.com)

The NFA Brochure:

2011 NFA Brochure

I hope to see a good many of you there at the convention!  Let me know you’re coming and then come introduce yourself!

Want more information on the two presentations?

Lift, Play, Love: Basic Weight Lifting for Efficient Flute Playing

Practical Steps Toward Injury Prevention and Management

Several major surveys since the early nineties have indicated a significant rate of flute playing-related injuries, typically in the neck, shoulder, back, and hand/wrist areas. Yet leading performing arts medicine specialists suggest that many of these injuries are preventable. Simple modifications to practice routines, instruments, and lifestyle, as well as increased awareness of positioning can lead to healthier playing con…ditions. Our expert panel will discuss practical ways in which teachers and performers can reduce the risk of playing-related injuries occurring, and therefore, be able to sustain happy and healthy playing lives. Some of the topics to be discussed will be fitness, awareness (including Body Mapping), rehabilitative and preventative exercise, as well as ergonomic solutions in the teaching studio and rehearsal environments.

Panel Members:

Karen Lonsdale is a freelance flutist, based in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. She teaches flute at the Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith University, where she is also in the completion stage of a Doctor of Musical Arts.

Lea Pearson has a DMA in flute from Ohio State and authored the acclaimed pedagogy tool “Body Mapping for Flutists: What Every Flute Teacher Needs to Know About the Body.” Lea is an Andover Educator, coaching musicians on body use privately and in workshops & master classes. See web.mac.com/flutibia

Susan Fain received her DMA in flute from the University of Oklahoma. Dr. Fain’s dissertation on the physical aspects of flute playing recently won the NFA PhD/DMA Competition. She is working part-time as a PT and is developing health promotions for musicians.

Angela McCuiston holds a MM from FSU in flute performance is a NASM certified personal trainer. Winner of the 2007 NFA Piccolo Masterclass Competition, she plays with the 129th Army Band, Nashville, TN & Sinfonia Gulf Coast of Destin while maintaining an active teaching & personal training career. fluteangel.net, musicstrong.com

You may access more information including registration information at www.nfaonline.org/convention

Related Articles

• NFA Convention Brochure (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
• End of Year Goodies (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
• Spring is Coming, What are you Going to Do? (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
• Developing Body Awareness and Self-Trust (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
• Upcoming November Activities!! (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
• Instruments: Flute Fever (time.com)

Spring and Summer are the times of year when we see a huge influx of camps and workshops, all geared towards immersing ourselves in what we love.

First up,

Interlochen Arts Academy is holding a special performance by their theatre and jazz students on Thursday, March 3 at 7:00pm in Naples, Florida.

Andover Educators Fifth Biennial Conference

June 18-22, 2011
John J. Cali School of Music
Montclair State University
Montclair, NJ

Advance planning information:
Fri, June 17 – travel day & check-in starting 12 pm
Conference starts early Saturday & concludes 1 pm Wednesday
Closest airport is Newark Liberty
More information coming soon!

There will be sessions not only on Body Mapping, but also on Feldenkrais, Focal Dystonia, Neuroscience for Musicians and INDIVIDUAL LESSONS!  About lessons:

There will be pre-conference training opportunities on Thursday, June 16 and Friday, June 17th for Andover Educator trainees only. All four sponsoring teachers [Janet Alcorn, Jennifer Johnson, Amy Likar and Lisa Marsh] will be available for private lessons on Thursday and group lessons and private lessons on Friday. The private lesson fee is $80 per lesson and the group lesson fee is $100 for the day on Friday. Housing is available on campus, but you’ll be on your own for meals before the conference. If you are a trainee and want to take advantage of this opportunity, the first thing you need to do is go to the Google Calendar and check what spots are open.  If there are remaining open lesson times after May 1st, then anybody can sign up.

Some of the class descriptions

What Every Musician Needs to Know About the Body, Hours 2-5
Presenters: Janet Alcorn, Professor Emeritus of Voice, Iowa State University;  Jennifer Johnson, Author of “What Every Violinist Needs to Know about the Body”;  Amy Likar, President and Director of Training Andover Educators; Lisa Marsh, Director of Coordinate Movement Program, Portland State University

These sessions are a continuation of the “Introduction to Body Mapping” session presented by Barbara Conable. Hours 2-5 of the course will be presented by each of the Andover Educator Supervising Teachers.  Each will be teaching at the same time, in different locations.  Learn how accessing your body map can lead to freer, easier movement for music making.

Common Upper Extremity Diagnoses Affecting Musicians: The Therapists’ Treatment Process
Presenter: Ruth Lekander, Andover Educator Trainee and Certified Hand Therapist

A clear and concise description of the anatomy and pathophysiology of common upper extremity diagnoses affecting musicians, typical compensation patterns and how they are treated in a therapy setting.

Recovering from Dystonia: One Musician’s Journey
Presenter:  David Vining, Professor of Trombone at Northern Arizona University.

Information about what dystonia is, what the treatment options are, retraining after diagnosis, and how to avoid trouble will be discussed.

Body Mapping with Kids in Mind
Presenter:  Connie Barrett, Acclaimed string educator

The session will cover the use various toys, books, and models used for teaching anatomy and biology to children in grades 3-8. An appropriate curriculum will be demonstrated using Body Mapping and its practical application in teaching beginning and intermediate string players.

The Relationship between Interpretation and Movement
Presenter:  Anita King, Professor of Piano at Willamette University

This presentation will clarify the connection between analysis and actual performance.  Connect the complex organization of movement to musical structure, emphasizing approaches to music analysis that clarify the relationship between the details of the melodic/rhythmic “surface” and the deeper levels revealed by the harmonic rhythm and phrase structure. See how performance and teaching can be more integrated and holistic when movement choices and responses are in direct relation to the musical text.

The Impact of Body Mapping on Student Musicians’ Perceptions of their Performance and Development
Presenter:  Heather Buchanan, Professor of Choral Studies at Montclair State University

Practical information gleaned from the Body Mapping research done at Montclair State University will be presented.  Parameters and key points from the study will be summarized as well as examples from case studies including trajectory of learning experience, aspects that contributed positively and negatively and how the research made the presenter a better teacher.

Performance Area Orientation Sessions (Sunday, Monday and Tuesday)
Presenters:  Cynthia McGladrey, female voice, Instructor of Body Mapping at George Fox University;  David Nesmith, high brass, Professor of Horn, Denison University;  Sherill Roberts, low strings, Member Portland Opera Orchestra;  Kerry Travers, high strings, Suzuki Violin Teacher;  David Vining, low brass, Licensed Andover Educator, Professor of Trombone, Northern Arizona University;  Kelly Mollnow Wilson, flute, Instrumental Music teacher, grades 5-12;  Kurt-Alexander Zeller, male voice, Professor of Voice at Clayton State University

These will be participatory sessions for people to physically experience working with instruments they don’t play.  Attendees can become familiar with common mismappings for each instrument and have a resident expert available to ask questions.

Presenting a Successful Workshop
Presenter:  Lea Pearson, Author of “Body Mapping for Flutists”

Based on best practices for training teaching artists as defined by artist trainers at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, this workshop will offer tools to help Body Mapping presenters develop the process of planning and leading workshops.

How to Read a Room, Field Difficult Questions, Manage Your Time, and Survive to Talk About It
Presenter:  Michelle Kunz, Certified Professional Coach, and Member of the Washington National Opera Chorus.

This session will help those seeking advice on how to keep a workshop flowing within the level and context of those who are present, read your classroom for understanding, and intelligently deal with difficult questions that may come up. We’ll also address how to tame that presentation performance anxiety beast.

All Things Technical
Presenter:  Meerenai Shim, Andover Educator Trainee, Flutist, Webmaster for bodymap.org

This will be a Question and Answer session on using the new website, working with Yahoo Groups and other Techology Questions.

Special Guest Sessions

More on the Mind-Body Dichotomy
Presenter: T. Richard Nichols, Professor and Chair of Applied Physiology at Georgia Tech University and Science Advisor to Andover Educators

In the last few decades, many investigations of the control of skilled movements such as musical performance have been focused on the role of the cerebral cortex and the associated anatomical and functional maps.  As a result of this work, progress has been made in the understanding not only of how we move, but also of the basis of occupational disorders such as the focal dystonias.  However, the focus on the cerebral cortex has perhaps led to a new version of the mind-body dichotomy, in which the connections between the cortex and body are not sufficiently emphasized.  In this session, we will discuss research supporting that the dimensions of musical performance (consciousness, motor skill, emotion memory, etc.) result from an integration of processes distributed throughout the central nervous system and body.  We will also review manifestations of occupational motor disorders in subcortical structures to further illustrate the unity of body and mind.

Neuroscience for Musicians
Presenter:  Lois Svard, professor of piano and chair of the department of music at Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA

Over the past thirty years, neuroscientists have studied the brain basis of almost every aspect of music, from discrete elements such as pitch, rhythm, and melody, to more complex issues such as sight-reading, performance anxiety, emotion, improvisation, and memory. Other areas of neuroscience research, not originally studied in relationship to musicians, have also been found to have relevance for how we learn music and how we perform.  Some of these areas include plasticity, mirror neurons, motor imagery, and one of the newest and most exciting areas, error detection and monitoring.  There is a wealth of scientific information that has been gathered about the processing of music in the brain; yet most musicians remain unaware of these astonishing findings and how we can use them to supplement more traditional ideas about pedagogy.  This presentation will discuss some of these exciting research areas and their practical applications in the teaching studio, the practice room, and on the concert stage.

Lois Svard is well known for her performances and recordings of contemporary American piano music.  Her recent DVD of Annea Lockwood’s prepared-piano work, Ear-Walking Woman, has been met with critical acclaim in the US, Canada, Europe and Australia. Svard also does research into the applications of recent discoveries in brain science for the study and performance of music.  Results of her work have been presented at national music conferences such as Music Teachers National Association and the World Piano Pedagogy Conference, at national neuroscience conferences such as the Society for Music Perception and Cognition, and Neuroscience 2006, and most recently at the International Society for Music Education in Beijing, China.  She holds a doctorate in piano performance from The Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University.

If you have any kind of interest in the body, musician’s injuries, therapy, etc. I highly suggest attending this conference, even if just for a day.  So often we don’t understand how our own bodies work and opperate and changing our erroneouos perceptions can make all the difference in the world to our performing, playing and auditioning!  This conference is for all musicians, not just flutists.

Flute Festivals and Fairs

There are a myriad of different festivals going on this Spring, here are just a few:

• The Mid-Atlantic Flute Fair hosted by the Flute Society of Washington, February 19-20, 2011 at the Sheraton Reston Hotel in Reston, VA. Guest Artists include Marina Piccinini and Jim Walker.

• The New York Flute Fair hosted by the New York Flute Club, March 13, 2011 at the Lighthouse in New York City. Guest Artist is Paula Robison.

• The Portland Flute Fair hosted by the Greater Portland Flute Society, April 2, 2011 at Aloha High School in Aloha, OR. Guest Artist is Marianne Gedigian.

• The Seattle Flute Festival hosted by the Seattle Flute Society, April 3, 2011 at Town Hall in Seattle, WA. Guest Artist is Denis Bouriakov.

There is a really nice sale going on at Perform Better.  For only another couple of days they are offering FREE SHIPPING!  Why should you care?  Well, besides big stuff (which, if you are interested in purchasing some dumbbells, kettlebells or other things similar in nature – this would save you a TON of money) if you are short on funds and have been waiting for an excuse to buy that foam roller, those travel bands, mini bands or other similar items, this is the perfect time! A lot of us travel frequently and a lot of us also do not have the room for a home gym.  A couple of fantastic alternatives to buying bulky dumbbells and cable stations are resistance bands.   If you are looking for a cheap way to have a home gym, the items I recommend are:

JC Travel Bands

Superbands

Mini Bands

JC Predator Bands

JC All-Purpose Exercise Bands

and a must-have, a PB Elite Foam Roller.  

You could also invest in a Gymnic Stability Ball Plus something we’ve all seen that is invaluable in building a home gym.  Almost all of these items are small, portable, lightweight and take up very little room.  The mini bands are about $2 each, so why not get three of different strengths to keep with you in your flute bag?  Fantastic to use to warm up and stretch.  And $6 plus free shipping for all three?  Not a bad deal at all. The great thing about Perform Better is that they have a lot of free resources for you to use – so if you are clueless about how to use a mini band or why it would benefit you, they have videos and instruction manuals on great exercises you can do, all for free!  Not sure how to use a foam roller?  You can see my very first post about foam rolling, or you can also click on the link above to the foam roller and it has an instructional video there as well. I think I’ve just come up with another idea for a blog post: exercises to do with bands and portable workout equipment, and why musicians should care!  Stay tuned for that later. But don’t let this sale get away – free shipping doesn’t happen very often and these items are invaluable to your heath.

One of the good things about the year-end are the SALES though, and I wanted to share a few music and fitness related ones with you.  If you are in need of some sheet music, check out sheetmusic.com.  They’re having a huge sale right now and visitors to their site will now be able to upgrade from Expedited Standard Delivery to 2-day Delivery for only $0.01 on orders over $25 shipped within the continental USA. This promotion will run from December 18th until Noon PST on December 22nd.  Click on the banner for more information, but you can get all kinds of music here, not just flute music!

Fluteworld

If you are looking for flute related items, two places that are having big sales right now are www.fluteworld.com and www.flute4u.com (Carolyn Nussbaum). I highly recommend both places. In fact, I just ordered some things from Fluteworld last week and saved about $20! I wasn’t sure what I was looking for (don’t you hate ordering music blind?) so I called at least twice and the people I talked to were VERY helpful and knowledgeable. You can do the same! Right now they’re having a big sale on instruments, sheet music, recordings and accessories and are actually having a Professional Piccolo Sale as well.

Carolyn Nussbaum

Carolyn Nussbaum’s music company is a fabulous place not only for music and instruments like Fluteworld, but also repairs. I bought my Hammig Piccolo from her at the NFA convention last year and am sending it to her for its yearly COA tomorrow. I HIGHLY recommend them not only for music, but especially for repairs. They will have your instrument back to you in top shape in no time. Right now they’re having a 10% off sale on sheet music and they are also having a Miyazawa headjoint sale: 10% off all Miyazawa headjoints. Check them out at www.flute4u.com

JL Smith

Another fabulous vendor that I have had great experience with is J.L. Smith. I bought my first upgraded Miyazawa headjoint from them and also my alto flute for an amazing price. They are very into educating people about the instrument and pleasant to talk to; you can even follow them on twitter! They not only sell new instruments and do repair, they have a great consignment program and a long list of used flutes. Another cool thing is that they are VERY into repair and you can learn to repair your instrument through them! Check them out at www.flutesmith.com

Now, onto the fitness front!

One organization about which I cannot speak highly enough about is Perform Better. This place services people from all walks of life: whether you’re a seasoned gym-goer or personal trainer or you don’t know a dumbbell from a barbell. These people sell EVERYTHING! If you are into portable workout equipment, I highly recommend their travel bands, super bands, mini bands, foam rollers and a TRX if you can afford it! Right now they’re having a major sale with free shipping through the end of the year. This only happens maybe once a year, so don’t miss out! Another great aspect of this company is that they sell tons of books, videos and even have a summit held a couple of times a year! You can go to these summits and hear world-renown fitness experts talk about everything from rehabbing your shoulder to correcting your movement patterns to improving your squat.

Check them out through my affiliate link






Body Mapping

Of course, this post would not be complete without mentioning Andover Educators and Body Mapping. For anyone who doesn’t know what that is, well, just hop on over to their website at www.bodymap.org and learn how understanding what your body REALLY looks like on the inside and how it functions can escalate your playing to new levels through body awareness.

My Shameless Plug

Speaking of catapulting your playing to new heights, January is right around the corner, and it’s the perfect time to schedule your private lessons, personal training, consultation, masterclass or workshop with me! If you live in the Panama City, FL area, I’ve got a few private flute lessons slots available as well as a few slots for personal training. Mention my blog post and get a free consultation! Not in the area? I train clients online AND I teach flute lessons via Skype! Don’t let distance be your deterrent! I will be presenting at the FFA Convention in Orlando at the end of January and at FSU on January 24th – I’d love to see you there. All attendees will be eligible for a free consultation with me and a 10% discount on any training package they purchase. You can hop on over to my website www.fluteangel.net or my training site (still in the works) www.musicstrong.com for more information.

Let’s make 2011 your strongest, best, most musical year yet!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone!

The two big things happening this month are the 2nd Semi-Annual Mini Flute Camp happening November 20th and the formation of the Emerald Coast Flute Choir.

I’m solidifying details with where the flute choir can meet to practice, but I have lots of people who are interested. If you would like to join the flute choir, it is open to all high school and adults (and talented middle schoolers) in the Panama City area.  Information will be coming soon on my website at www.fluteangel.net, but in the meantime, feel free to leave a comment or drop me an email if you are interested or have any ideas for the group.  Keep a lookout because the flute choir will be starting rehearsals this month!

The Panama City Mini Flute Camp will be on November 20th at the Arnold High School band room from 9AM-12 PM.  Kind of like a session of “everything you wanted to know about the flute/piccolo but were afraid to ask”.  We will cover all kinds of topics, whatever interests or concerns you at the moment.   We’ll talk about ways to deal with performance anxiety, stretching, body awareness and on the playing end of things we’ll cover all kinds of topics: how to play high notes easily and cleanly, articulation and double tonguing, how to do vibrato, how to efficiently practice, etc.  We’ll have a masterclass setting during one hour where anyone who has music they would to play in front of the group will come up and get a lesson and everyone can learn from it!  We will end the session by playing some music together in a flute choir setting.  This happens only semi-annually so don’t miss it!  If you cannot afford lessons, this is the perfect opportunity for you to take advantage of getting your noggin crammed full of flute knowledge and leave excited and inspired to play!  Cost is $5.  RSVP by emailing me at angela@fluteangel.net   Look for details in the newsletter.

In other news, I will be giving the presentation “Lift, Play, Love: Basic Weightlifting for Efficient Flute Playing” at my alma matter: Tennessee Technological University on November 12th at 2 PM.  I will be presenting this same topic at the Florida Flute Association Annual Convention on January 30th in Orlando; if you cannot be there, this is a wonderful opportunity for you to come experience it.  All are welcome.

I will also be playing with the 129th  Army National Guard Band twice next week: on November 9th at Nashville’s Memorial Plaza around 1 PM and in Knoxville for the Veteran’s Day Parade on November 11th.  I’d love to see you there and you can RSVP on Facebook!
Two majorly exciting events coming up in Panama City this month are concerts by the Army Field Band and Keith Lockhart and the BBC orchestra.

The US Army Field Band will be playing at 7PM at Mosley High School on the 6th of November.  Tickets are free.  Contact Jamie Birdwell for tickets.    You can also check out their website at: www.armyfieldband.com

Keith Lockhart brings the BBC Orchestra to PC on Novmber 16th at 7:30 PM at the Marina Civic Center.  Keith Lockhart is the conductor for the Boston Pops Orchestra – this is a concert you do not want to miss!!!  You can buy tickets here

Soooo much going on!  I’m truly blessed to have this life and I look forward to sharing more of my knowledge with you as we go.  If you would like to take lessons, I teach in the Panama City area, and if you are not anywhere near me, we can still have lessons via Skype!  Visit my website fluteangel.net/teaching.htm for details.  You can find me on Facebook as well – I’d love for you to “like” my music.

I will be giving the presentation, “Lift, Play, Love: Basic Weight Lifting for Efficient Flute Playing” on January 30th, 2011 at 9 AM at the Orlando Marriott.

”
In the moment, you want to focus on making music … not on how much your shoulder hurts. Many musicians run and do yoga, but few seriously resistance train. In this session Angela will help you improve your endurance, combat muscle weakness and overcome any fears of injury by walking you through how to lift, what exercises to do, and how to warm up before you play. Leave the session with the knowledge that you can walk into any weight room with confidence and purpose! Play Longer & Stronger by preparing your whole body with the information in this session.”

So many musicians avoid the weight room out of fear – fear of the unknown. I’m going to dispel that fear and embolden you with knowledge! You will learn the benefits of weight training in regards to how it affects your flute playing and learn the basics of form and exercise. We will also cover a bit of body mapping and body awareness, because it does not make sense to train your body when you are not fully aware of it.

If you are going to the Florida Flute Association Convention January 28-30 I would love to see you there! If you are coming to the presentation, bring a towel and wear comfortable clothes and in the meantime, I’d love to hear your comments and questions – I can always work them into the presentation, or even address them on this blog.

You can find more information about the convention at www.floridaflute.org

You can find more information about me at www.fluteangel.net and more information about my training services at www.musicstrong.com

In addition, I’ve been busy performing with the Panama City Pops orchestra and I also just played host to Dr. Paula Van Goes from Nicholls State in LA. She came to the Emerald Coast and gave a fantastic recital, on which I was honored to play some duets with her.

Also in news, I have founded a flute choir! If you have interest in the Emerald Coast Flute Choir, drop me a line. We are taking auditions and hope to begin rehearsals soon.

I’ve also been busy putting together a newsletter. If you are interested in keeping up with me (what’s going on in my life, playing tips, health tips, where I will be performing/teaching next) and/or what is going on musically in Panama City, drop me an email at angela@fluteangel.net and I will add you to the list to get my newsletter!  You can also sign up by popping on over to my website at www.fluteangel.net and leaving a comment telling me you’d like to be added to the newsletter.

Related articles

• Upcoming November Activities!! (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
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• What Interests You? (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
• End of Year Goodies (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
• You need Skills! (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
• The Skills You Didn’t Learn in Grad School (innovativeperformanceandpedagogy.wordpress.com)
• Vision Airlines’ Sensational Spring Break Seat Sale Ends Saturday (prnewswire.com)
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In some ways, that attitude is justified because it’s on our “list of things I knwow I should do because it will make me healthier”, just like eating brussel sprouts (but not like wearing purple socks).  In any case, there are some products that help take away some of the more popular excuses for not exercising like “I don’t have space”, “I don’t feel comfortable at a gym and cant’ afford membership” or “I don’t have money for equipment” (use your bodyweight to get rid of that one!).

Behold the list:

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/excercise-home-workout-equipment-products/story?id=11539964

Some of these are great for working out at home.  Some of these, like the Valsides, resistance bands and TRX are EXCELLENT for travelling.  They take up very little room and can offer great workout options in small spaces.

Another option is the P90X craze.  If you want to hire a personal trainer, but don’t have the money, why not give these videos a try and make it your goal not to quit them until you’ve finished?  Much cheaper and you can do it at home.

If you would love to have a home gym  but really don’t have the space, Bowflex makes a great dumbbell product.  It’s one set of dumbbells that can be adjusted from 5 lbs all the way to 50 and can sit in the corner of your room.  I have used these and I will say, that though compact, they are a little bulky and akward as you go up in weight and the plates increase in size.  If you don’t have space for a room full of dumbbells though, this is a great option.

Here’s are some questions to consider: where do you prefer to exercise?  How often do you exercise?  What are your favorite products and which ones have given you the most results?

Related articles

• Weekend Workout: Get on the Ball (fitsugar.com)
• Great Fitness Deals (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
• Beginner Exercises that Fit in a Studio Apartment (diet-blog.com)

When you’re trying to figure out what are some good healthy options for you, besides thinking “portable”?   Instead of thinking in terms of specific foods and getting confused, you can simplify your options by thinking in terms of macronutrients: Proteins, Carbohydrates and Fats.  Instead of thinking “well, a banana is healthy….” sure it is, but if you eat nothing but bananas you’ll get burned out quickly.  Besides that, a banana is only a carbohydrate – it doesn’t constitute a balanced meal or snack.   When picking your snack options think of things this way:

1) What protein do I want?
2) Do I want to eat a carb or a fat with that?

You do not have to subscribe to the 6-8 small meals a day philosophy.  Ignore the hype and myths, it does nothing to your metabolism.  It may help to stabilize your blood sugar levels, but mainly, the small meal approach makes it simpler to get in more nutrients and proper macro ratios (i.e. enough protein, more fruits and veggies, more Vit C) into your diet.  So, if you are going to be having 2-3 snacks a day, you obviously do not have to pick the same foods each time.   Ahhhh, variety!  In fact, this order doesn’t have to relate to just snacks, I do this for every meal I eat: center my meal around protein and then figure out what I want to go with it.

So what DO I eat??

Well, let’s look at a couple different things that are great to eat on the run.  By the way, a small lunch bag/box with an ice pack is indespensible – you will be eating REAL food this way, not processed candy junk.  So, pick a protein and then pick one carb and/or one fat and you’ve got yourself a great snack!

Pick a Protein

0% Greek Yogurt
Low-fat string cheese
Low-fat Deli meat
Turkey Jerky
Low-fat Cottage Cheese
Protein Powder
Hardboiled eggs

Pick a Carbohydrate

Bananas, berries,peaches
Plums, all fruit
Raw veggies
Sprouted Bread or wraps
Low-fat popcorn
Multi-grain crackers (no HFCS)
Hummus
Rice Cakes (low sugar)

Pick a fat

Peanuts, walnuts, almonds, pistachios
Peanut butter
Full-fat cheese (goat cheese is great with fruit and easy to digest)
Sunflower seeds, other seeds

Some of my favorites?

• half of a turkey sandwich with lettuce, tomatoes and mustard, maybe some low-fat cheese
• Greek yogurt parfait with fruit and almond butter or walnuts
• Apple and Peanut butter with string cheese
• Protein powder mixed with Greek yogurt and topped with peanut butter (or nuts)

There are also some other ready made options that aren’t too bad when looking for on-the-go snacks.  Your best bet for healthy is 1) be as natural as possible (the less processed the better – did it grow in that form?) 2) pick protein first

Some of my go-to ready-made snacks:
Ostrim ostrich jerkey

I’m sure you’ve seen these around.  As jerkey goes, these are a better choice than most.  Why?  Well, they aren’t just made with beef, they’re also made with ostrich – an extremely lean meat.  They also do not have hydrolyzed soy protein, like a lot of jerkys do.  They’re high in protein (10g) low in fat (1-2g) and low in carbs.  Carbs?  Yes, carbs.  All jerkey is not made equal.  Lots of them have added sugars and are made with soy, not meat.  When picking your protein, you’ll notice I mention low fat a lot.  It’s not that there is something wrong with the higher fat proteins, but when you are picking a protein, you want it to be primarily that: protein.  If there are a lot of added carbs and fats, it suddenly takes on a lot more calories and then you have less volume to play with.  These jerkey sticks are about 80 calories each and make a great snack on the go.  Throw some fruit in there to balance it out and you’ve got a great snack.  A word of caution:  I’m not wild about the nitrates used to preserve these, so they aren’t perfect, but good in a pinch.  I wouldn’t make these a daily nosh.  I’m pretty sure Trader Joe’s has some nitrate-free choices, so you can check those out too for options.  Another note: make sure to drink lots of water to balance out that sodium intake!

You can buy these at lots of places: Vitamin Shoppe, GNC, Smoothie King, even some gas stations.

Power Crunch Bars

These have got to be my favorite snack.  They’re a protein/fat combo and taste like cookies so they not only keep my sweet tooth satisfied, they keep my tummy satisfied and I can keep them in my purse.  Each bar has roughly the same amount of calories as a Larabar (200) and fat (12) but these have about 13-14g protein per bar and taste just like those wafer cookies you know you should stay away from (Nutter Butter anyone???).  The protein they are made with is broken down into much smaller particles so (according to BNRG) you absorb more of the protein than you might from other sources. they are also only made with whey, not soy or other proteins, which has been shown to be better absorbed.  In any case, they are TASTY!  I know you can get them from Vitamin Shoppe, Vitamin World, GNC and I’ve even seen them in CVS and will soon be in Trader Joe’s, but you can also check out their website at www.bnrg.com or order them online.  Favorite flavors are the cookies and cream and the peanut butter ones.  Chocolate and Vanilla are either too sweet or bland for me.

Lara bars

These are wonderful little snack bars that come in all kinds of flavors and it really doesn’t get more natural than this.  They combine dates with nuts and you get a bar!  Seriously.    My current favorite is the Peanut Butter and Jelly flavor.  Ingredients?  Dates, peanuts, unsweetened cherries, salt.  That’s it! 

As you can see they’ve also got a few new flavors out.  They don’t do just fruit either.  They’ve got a Jocolat line, which are chocolate flavored ones and as I surf their site, they’ve come out with cookie flavors!  I’m going to have to try these: Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip, Carrot Cake,  Chocolate Chip Brownie.  How can you go wrong?  It’s a good natural source of carbs and fat and fits easily into your purse or bag.  As I said before, you should base your meals around protein, but it’s all right to have a mostly carb/fat snack, too, as long as it’s slow digesting.  Larabars fit the bill – they’re healthy, give you lots of good vitamins and minerals and give you a serving of fruit, to boot!

Check them out at www.larabar.com

Sources of inspiration

I’ve got to give props to Clean Eating Magazine for helping me with snack ideas.  They’ve got great recipes every couple of months and each issue comes with a two week menu – each day have 2 snacks.  It’s super helpful, especially if you’re clueless and overwhelmed with where to start.

Related articles

• High-Protein Snacks (foxnews.com)

While hiking, my comrades and I got to talking about their knee injuries and I mentioned to them, the possible reason for their knees hurting after awhile is that their glutes area asleep.  After they got over the confusion of what I just said, they asked what I meant.  Only too happy to explain, I told them that we live in a sitting society.  The body is meant to move, not sit, and when you sit for so long, your hip flexors get shortened and tight, same with your quads, and then your hamstrings get stretched and your glutes do not fire properly.  Thus, your glutes are asleep and need to be activated so they can do their job properly.  If the glutes are not doing their job properly, your quads will take over.  This can present a problem because when you climb stairs, for example, your hamstrings and glutes should be doing a lot of the work to pull you up the stairs.  If they are asleep and your quads are pushing you up the stairs, this could lead to injury very easily.
For suggestions on how to fix this and some great videos, check out this link:

How to Optimize Posterior Chain Power: Glute Activation | StrongLifts.com.

This is one of those great things to practice after sitting on a bus/car travelling all day!  Or, for that matter, sitting in rehearsal or in front of a computer, typing.

Related articles

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Stretching is underrated and underdone and people, especially musicans, are paying the price for it.  The body was designed to move and it was not meant to hold static positions for long lengths of time, be that sitting in a car, typing, playing an instrument, etc.  If one is confined to a rather static position for a long length of time, the body will become stiff and tight in certain areas.  If, after that, you try to move suddenly, or for example, spend a long day at work in front of your computer (or several hours in a practice room) and decide then to go lift weights, if you do not stretch and warm up properly, you are literally begging for an injury.  You are asking muscles that are tight/weak/stretched to do things that they are not ready nor capable to do.

Let me give you an example.  For my bodyweight workout this past week I did not take the time to adequately stretch and warmup before hand and for the last two days, my hips have been paying for it.  They have been so incredibly tight that I was almost limping.  This led me to stretching ever opportunity I got yesterday, almost to no avail.  Today before my workout, I spent the better part of 20 minutes, if not more, stretching and warming up, making sure my body was ready to meet the demands I was about to put on it.

How did I know I was ready?  Well, let me tell you.  After sitting for a long time, the hip flexors get shortened, the hamstrings and lower back can get stretch and the glutes fall alseep and fail to fire.  What is the first thing I did when I got in the gym today?  Dynamically and statically stretched my lower body and did plenty of glute activation exercises.  It took awhile, but when I finally felt like my glutes were working (there was a burn starting to happen, I could feel them working) and my hips no longer felt like they were going to snap, but instead started to feel loose, and move more freely, I knew I was ready to go.

Let’s  apply this to woodwind  players and the upper body.  What can you do?  Make sure you warm up your upper body before you practice, during and after.

Next time you are about to practice, try this little warm up sequence and tell me how it went for you:

Arm circles 2 sets of 10

Doorway chest stretch 2×30 sec.

Scapular Wall slides 2×10

Do all three once before repeating.

What is happening?  Well, if you play an instrument, more than likely you will have your arms in front of you.  These stretches will warm up the chest, upper back and shoulder girdle allowing the muscles to move better and fire more accurately.  If you have extra time,  (and ideally, an exercise ball) do a couple sets of prone lower trap raises and/or YTLW’s.  These will really fire up your lower traps and upper back.

What about if you are going to be sitting?

One thing that you can do is to do the standing warrior lunge stretch.  Stand tall. Take a long step forward and descend into a lunge.  Stretch your pelvis back, you should feel a deep stretch in your hip on the trailing/semi-straight leg.  For added glute activation/hip stretching, squeeze your buttock on the trailing leg, let the arm on the trailing leg side drop towards your leg and raise you opposite arm high until you feel a longer stretch up into your abs on the trailing leg side.  Hold this for 30 seconds.  repeat on the other side.  Do twice on each side.
If you have some time before a rehearsal, you can do some glute bridges, but if you have no where to lie on the floor, an easy way to get your glutes firing (so your hips and quads are doing less work) is to take long strides as you are walking to rehearsal/concert/ the bus/around, etc. and squeeze your butt with each step.

Anything I can do while I’m playing or even walking around?

Yes!  If you recall the neutral position you are to take whenever you begin weight training (chest out, back arched, stick your butt out, shoulder blades back and down), you can modify this stance to be useful during the day.  Basically, if you will depress and retract your shoulder blades while you are playing/practicing/rehearsing and even just walking around throughout the day, you will accomplish several different things:

1. Your chest will open up, stretch out and be less tight.
2. You will have taller, easier posture with less effort.
3. Your upper back will hurt less, and be less stretched and weak.
4. You will automatically have more confidence as when you depress and retract your shoulder blades you have to stick out your chest, which is a subconsciously vulnerable area and to do so signifies confidence, whether real or imagined, eventually it will become real.

Try this for a week and tell me how it worked for you!

Moral of the story?  Get in as much activity and as much motion as you can during the day when traveling.  See your situation as an opportunity and a blessing to move more, rather than a hindrance because you don’t have a car and things are farther away.  Look for opportunities to move!  Take the stairs.  Walk to the store.  Explore the town if you can.

As for my workouts, I did one of the great bodyweight workouts by Craig Ballyntine of Turbulence Training.  Since I had to buy his stuff and it’s copyrighted, I cannot reproduce it all for you here, but I can tell you most of what I did, and I’m still sore two days later.  All you need is about 5-10 feet of space in your room and a stationary chair.

Pushups
Split Squats/Bulgarian Split Squats
Wall-slides
1-legged squats (these are killer!)
Planks
Burpees
Do those in your room and tell me if you aren’t out of breath!

Today my workout was a full body workout availing myself of the great gym.  We’re going to Gatlinburg tomorrow and I will not have a gym to use, but you can bet I’ll workout again in the room  and run the hills!

Today’s workout:
Narrow Leg Press 3×8
superset with Hack Squat 3×8

TRI-SET
Lying Leg curl 2×15
leg extension 2×15
Seated calf raise 2×15

Shoulder Press 3×8
superset with straight arm pushdown 3×8

Cable woodchop 2×15
superset with close grip row 2×10

If you’ll notice, there’s a conspicuous lack of arm motions and single joint exercises.  This is because mulit-joint exercises (otherwise known as compoud exercises) include these muscles, so they do not need to be addressed.  For example, when I did a shoulder press, I also hit my tricpes, and when I did a close grip row, that also hit my biceps.  If I had wanted to make this a quicker workout, I could have left out the single joint leg exercises and I could have left out the abs/close grip row.   However, I noticed that during the concert last night, my uniform does not allow me to properly raise my left arm and my back/rhomboids/lats were hurting because of it, so I wanted to make sure I hit them in the gym today.

So, don’t let traveling prevent you from moving.  Look for excuses!

Our schedule is such that we are on the road almost every single day for more than two weeks.  We get to a place, play the gig, stay at a hotel and leave the next day, save three cities where we are staying for more than one night.  This rigorous schedule poses its challenges and also its opportunities when it comes to fitness and how to take care of yourself to play your instrument to the best of your ability.  To meet the demands of this schedule, it takes more than good health, you have to know how to take care of yourself, and through the next few days, I hope to have a couple of blog posts about the different stretches, workout routines and exercises that can be done to not only counterbalance the effects of being confined to a hotel, but confined to the road/bus/car for long times.

A few things that have come up as I’ve been playing:

After riding in a bus for several hours, your whole body is going to be somewhat stiff.  Couple that with then having to go sit in a chair for a few hours and play a concert and you’ve got a possible injury coming your way.
A few stretches to be done when you get off the bus:

Dynamic: calf stretches, high-knees, leg swings

Static: Psoas stretch, Calf Stretch, Hamstring Stretch, Quad Stretch

Upper body stretches: SCM stretch, doorway stretch, lat stretch
Dynamic upper body: arm circles, neck circles

Stay tuned for more descriptions and exercises.

In the meantime, you can find our schedule on our Facebook page!

http://www.facebook.com/search/?post_form_id=e54fec336f4a35b6d336af91a714d147&q=129th+army+band&init=quick&ref=search_preload#!/group.php?gid=50386808169&v=app_2344061033&ref=search

Friday: Friday Night Lights Concert, Dickson, TN 7:00 PM

Saturday: Harpeth Hills church of Christ concert 6:30 PM, Nashville TN

Sunday June 27: Dogwood Park – 7:00 PM concert in Cookeville, TN

Tuesday June 29: Concert Crossville First Baptist Church

Thursday July 1: Public Performances on Market St. Square, Knoxville

Friday and Saturday July 2-3: Various performances in Gatlinburg, TN

Sunday July 4: Midnight Parade in Gatlinburg!  Concert at Gatlinburg Aquarium 7:00 PM

See?  Foam rolling can be fun…

These students were such great sports.  We had a lot of fun learning and trying together.  As I stated in an earlier blog post, I got invited to Nicholls University to do a presentation on Workouts for Musicians.  We went through some basic anatomy and physiology and then we all did some dynamic integration and body mapping followed by some dynamic warmups, static stretching, lower body activation work and we went through some exercises that are helpful to musicians to make them stronger.

I had some brave students as you can see.  Foam rolling can feel good afterwards, but not only can it be awkward but it sure can be painful!  These students were definitely up for the challenge.

We also tried to learn how to squat and do a deep squat hold.  These kids are college age and it was remarkable how inflexible some of us are, even at a young age.  It just goes to show that you’re not to young or too old to exercise and learn how to stretch properly.

When you do these things on a regular basis, your body is stronger and when your body is strong, YOU are strong.  You can hold your instrument for a long time without getting tired, you can breathe more deeply, you have a better awareness of your body and certain muscles don’t get underused while other muscles get overused.

Musicians, please, don’t neglect your first instrument!

I’m here to help.

Related articles

• What Interests You? (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
• Great Fitness Deals (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
• Top 10Fitness Myths (foxnews.com)
• Shoulder Pain Part 1 (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
• More Adventures in Foam Rolling and Yoga (collegecarrot.wordpress.com)
• Formidable Foam Rollers (gymratconfessions.wordpress.com)
• Feldenkrais and Strength Training (malepatternfitness.com)

This past Wednesday I flew up to Boston for a second round audition with the Air Force Band of Liberty.  It was a challenge from the start.  I barely got on the last possible flight out of Atlanta, which was overbooked and barely made it.  Why was it a problem?  Well, my mother in law works for the Airline and was able to get me a standby ticket for considerably less money.  This has worked wonderfully for me in the past with no problem, but this time, apparently Boston is tough to get in and out of, so I have learned a lesson.

I made it to the hotel and had a really good audition.  Unfortunately, I did not win the job, but as always, the audition reinforced in me what I need to do to improve my auditioning and preparation skills.  Always good experience.  I was scheduled to fly out the next day: Friday AM.  Turns out that ALL of Fridays flights were overbooked.  So, I decided to stay until Saturday, at least I get an extra day to explore Boston right?

Original expenses:
Airport parking + gas
Airline ticket
Meals
Hotel
Mass transit fare

Additional expenses incurred:
extra hotel night stay
additional meals
additional mass transit fare
Shuttle service to airport

So I have a great day exploring Boston: seeing Paul Revere’s House, exploring Little Italy (and eating gelato!), seeing the harbor, eating dinner at Legal Seafood, seeing all the historic sights of downtown Boston and Harvard, Quincy Market, etc.

It was a tiring day.  I prepared to go to bed, knowing I’d have to get up in about 4 hours to get to my 6:45 AM flight.  I call the airlines to make sure…

Bad news.

All flights for Saturday are now overbooked due to weather cancellations in Atlanta on Friday.
Ok……

So, now, instead of flying out Friday, instead of flying out Saturday, I’m here another day, flying out Sunday…HOPEFULLY!  Thank goodness for a family friend who lives in the area and is sweet enough to drive out here (Lexington is kind of inaccessible) pick me up and let me stay at her house.  Things wouldn’t be a problem except that I have no way to get out of here: the bus doesn’t run on Saturdays here so I can’t get to the train station to even go back to Boston.

There is no guarantee I’ll catch a flight tomorrow and the extra sad news?  I had a concert to play with Sinfonia Gulf Coast tonight, that I had to cancel.  So not only am I spending extra money here that I had not intended to spend, now I’m not MAKING extra money.

There are worse places and times to be stranded but let this be a lesson to anyone wanting to take auditions:
1) take only the auditions you really want
2) OVER prepare for them
3) bring extra money, snacks and changes of clothes, just in case

Total tally?

Extra days parking at airport
2 extra nights at hotel
Extra meals
Extra fare for mass transport

+ original airfare, meals, transportation

Related articles

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Panama City flute Camp

Another goal that I have been striving for for the last three years is also coming to fruition next week: The Panama City Mini Flute Camp!  This will (hopefully) not be the last of these, as I hope to do at least one every fall and spring.  This first camp will be held Saturday morning at Arnold High School in PCB from 9AM – 12 PM and is open to all flutists in the area of any age.  For three hours we will talk about things that matter to YOU!  It’ll be like a giant extended private group lesson.  We’ll talk about tone quality, embochure, tonguing and articuation, breathing and breath control, nerves and how to cope with performance anxiety and we’ll even do a little dynamic integration – helping us all become more aware of ourselves.  As a teacher, I am continuously surprised at how few of my students have any clue about what they’re doing: they cannot separate their lips from their jaw or their fingers from their air, etc.  We’ll go over ways to be conscious of your whole self!  We’ll end with roughly an hour or so masterclass where anyone who wants to play something in front of the group and get pointers is welcome to do so; and we can all learn!

Cost is $5 a piece.  Come on, a 3 hour group lesson for $5?  I dare you to beat that anywhere!  This is a fantastic opportunity for you if you want lessons and can’t afford them.

Panama City Flute Studio

This is something I am really excited about starting.  After having a conversation with my college student, about how she feels isolated and so alone in PC with no other flutists to compete against or even listen to, it has occured to me that PC flutists live in bubbles!  Each school is kind of like their own bubble with the various orchestras/community bands in the areas being a separate bubble.  There really isn’t a lot of communication or fraternization between any of the flutists around town and I think that has got to change.

So, very soon, I will be starting the Panama City Flute Studio.  It will probably be an hour or so group lesson held at a central place and any flutist who is serious about their instrument is welcome.  Age does not matter here!   We’ll have a group lesson, we’ll play for and with each other and even have discussions about flute things that are important to us.   Flutists, realize that you are not alone in your school or band.  There are others in this area better than you and you are better than some others.  When we get to know each other and play in front of each other, a standard is set, friendly competition ensues and we all strive to be just a little bit better.  And it’s fun!  We’ll even do a bit of flute choir reading and maybe play around town.  You know what, there’s no telling where this thing might go: we might give recitals, give competitions, we could even hold our own flute day and invite flutists from all over the country to come visit!

Flutists of Panama City, this is YOUR town and YOUR instrument: let’s raise the expectations to a higher standard!  Again, if you want private lessons, but maybe can’t afford them, this group lesson would be a great opportunity for you, and I will offer anyone who joins a reduced rate.

So, if you’re serious about learning, if you love your instrument but don’t have an outlet, here are two great opportunities for you.  Contact me ASAP: I’d love to hear your ideas, what’s important to you, what you want/need and when and where you think the flute studio should be held.

Very little, so I’m discovering.

Warming up your body is as important, if not MORE important than warming up our instruments, but it’s something we all to easily neglect.   When you practice, especially for long amounts of time, you are holding your body in a somewhat rigid, unnatural posture, that, unless corrected, can actually lead to various muscular imbalances.  For flutists, holding a flute up in front of you and turning your head to the side can create all kinds of problems, problems I have rarely seen addressed.  Your traps and rhomboids can get stretched and weak and your pecs are in a constant state of tension…what to do?

Let me propose some warmups to help you have a better practice session and a better more well-responding, healthier body.

Arm Circles

You probably did these as a kid in gym class and guess what?  They still work!  Stand up with your hands out to the side like a “T”.  Rotate your arms forward in little circles moving to big circles.  When you get into really big circles, you will feel a nice stretch in your chest.  Pay attention to that.  Stop and do reverse circles, being careful not to swing to hard.  A gentle stretch is good – a hard stretch is not.

Wall Slides

Stand up against a wall with your arms raised and hands at a 90 degree angle, almost like you’re surrendering to the police.  Retract and depress your shoulder blades (roll your shoulders back and down and bring your blades down) and then, leading the movement with your elbows, push against the wall and bring your arms down, still keeping your hands raised.
Do this 10-12 times.

Those are just a couple of exercises, but hopefully, they will help you be a more productive player with less pain.  Pay attention to how your shoulders feel, how your body feels and notice the areas that are moving.  Creating that muscle awareness will help you not to injure yourself as you practice.

And take breaks!  You are not a hero for playing for 4 hours without a break.

Related articles

• What Interests You? (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
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• Shoulder Pain Part 1 (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
• What Interests You? (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
• Rethinking the Breath (innovativeperformanceandpedagogy.wordpress.com)

I’m still ironing out details, but my hope is to be able to utilize a local gym to give introductory private training sessions or form lessons.   Feel free to contact me in advance if you’d like to have a private session in Orlando!

Cardio can be really boring.  I mean, really, who wants to spend the better part of an hour on a machine staring at a screen?  Even if you’re on a bike outside, or walking or running, if the scenery isn’t great, it’s easy to get bored.  And if you’re like me and you like to try new things, well, meet my new thing…

bodyweight circuits.

These are in no way new to the world.  Heck, I did them at Basic Training for the Army and didn’t realize it.  We would go outside and set ourselves up in stations: jumping jacks, mountain climbers, skiiers, full situps, crunches, pushups, diamond pushups, squats, military presses, and anything else the drill sergeants could think of.

Well, bodyweight circuits make a great substitute for cardio, and a good sub for HIIT, or High Intensity Interval Training.  If you don’t know what that is, basically, you run all out for a brief period of time, recover, repeat, puke.    HIIT has been proven time and time again to be a better cardio choice than steady state cardio for upping caloric expenditure, especially, post exercise calorie burn, meaning your body will be burning calories at a higher rate for hours later.  What’s not to like about it?

You can do it in about 5 feet of space, with no equipment, anywhere and anytime you want and in 10 minutes you’ll be sufficiently huffing and puffing and dripping, if you really give it your all.  What’s not to like?

It’s really hard!
Here’s the Crazy 8 Bodyweight Circuit I did twice this week by Craig Ballyntine.  You can see the original here: http://fitnessblackbook.com/workout-routines/body-weight-circuits-are-kickin-my-butt/

In fact, he has a ton of bodyweight videos on his Turbulence Training website here: http://fitnessblackbook.com/recommends/turbulence-training-videos

So here was my circuit today:

1. 60 Jumping Jacks: Done as fast as possible, but make sure you do full jumping jacks.
2. 15-20 Spiderman Pushups: I’m just doing normal pushups until they become too easy. Typically it is a breeze for me to do 40+ pushups, but it is much tougher when you do these with zero rest in between jumping jacks.
3. Walking Lunges: I take 20 steps total. This is the easiest part of the workout in my opinion.
4. Spiderman Climb: I do a total of 20 of these (10 per side) I really feel these in my abs and obliques.
5. Wall Squat: Do for 45-60 seconds. This hurts! Don’t rest your hands upon your legs, since it makes it easier.
6. Planks: Do for 60 seconds. Tough after doing all these other exercises without rest.
7. 5 Burpees: Make sure and do a full pushup at the bottom and explode as high as pssible at the top into a jump. I’m still kind of uncoordinated with these…probably because I’m “smoked” at this point!
8. High Knees: Done as fast as possible. Do 50 total. I just count when my right leg hits the ground for 25. It is hard to count both legs for 50 since you are going fast. You will be dying about 1/2 way through.

Notes: Each exercise is done back-to-back with zero rest in between. You will want to rest, but immediately hit the next exercise. After this 8 exercise circuit is done, rest exactly 60 seconds. I usually run over to the microwave and set the timer. Those 60 seconds will feel like 15-20 seconds. Do this circuit 1 more time. Don’t add in the 3rd one until you are ready.

I Felt Like a Chain-Smoker After My 2nd Circuit!

I simply was not in good enough shape to complete the 3rd circuit my first 2 times doing this routine. I was breathing hard and my body was zapped. My skin was hot to the touch. These are all great signs of a great interval workout, but I just couldn’t push myself to do this circuit a 3rd time. Again…I have pride when it comes to being fit. I can max out a treadmill for 60 seconds followed by 30 seconds of walking and continue this pace for 15-20 minutes. This is after lifting heavy weights. That being said, these body weight circuits are a humbling deal.

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Have you ever heard of the term “virtual fitness coach”? Just like a personal trainer in the gym who will closely monitor your workout sessions, this type of coach will serve as your personal coach. The only difference is that you will not have a face-to-face interaction? it will all be done through consultations and communications online.

Amp Up Your Personal Fitness Training with a Virtual Fitness Coach

First up, let us take a look at the role that a virtual fitness coach plays on your personal physical training so that you can have a head start with meeting your workout goals.

These days, a lot of people find it difficult to squeeze in some serious workout time to have serious workout sessions, what with all the things that they have to do at work at home. Let’s take a working mother as an example.

Rather than spending her time on personal fitness training sessions in the gym, she would rather work out at home so that she can watch over the kids while doing it. If she does it this way, there is a big possibility that she will not meet her weight loss goals because she does not have the benefit of having a personal trainer or instructor working beside her.

This is where a virtual coach for your workout sessions comes in. By hiring one, she can enjoy all the benefits of having a personal trainer in the gym ? while having the freedom to workout at home.

Enumerating the Top 5 Reasons Why It Pays to Hire a Virtual Fitness Coach

So what are the top 5 reasons why it pays to hire a coach for your workout sessions? Take a look at the following list:

1. A virtual fitness coach will help you evaluate your current level of being fit on the onset of the training program.

2. Once your initial strength level is determined, an instructor will be able to help you create a personalized fitness training program so that you can reach your weight loss goals.

3. This type of coach can double up as a morale booster, to give you the encouragement you need when you are lagging in your personal training program.

4. A virtual fitness coach is the best motivator for you to pursue your weight loss goals.

5. Unlike hiring a personal trainer in the gym, seeking the help of this type of a coach is usually more cost-effective.

http://www.theherbalpills.com/mens-health/fitness-lifestyle/5-top-reasons-why-people-hire-virtual-fitness-coach.html

Related articles

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Image via Wikipedia

I got this in my email box from IFBB Pro Nancy Georges and thought it was wonderful enough to share.  Whether your goal is fitness or musical excellence or anything else, this applies.

THE ATTITUDE OF EXCELLENCE What does it mean to be excellent? How do you define it? For me, how I define excellence, is when I am personally lined up with my own values, goals and vision as an athlete and in all areas.  When I am doing whatever I can to achieve my goals and I am not slacking off “according to me” then I know that I am being excellent. This is challenging to do, especially around the holidays when we are around more people who have their own ideas of what is good for you.  In addition to that there is an extreme slacker mentality during the holidays. Now I am not against relaxing. And I have to admit, it is not always easy. I get recharged pretty quick, so taking off an entire week to lounge around the house and eat, really doesn’t work for me.  But, like I said, that is just me. The trick with the holidays is to have a plan. If you plan on gaining 10 pounds, then go for it, but don’t put on 20. If you plan on staying in contest shape, then you are not going to be able to sit around drinking wine and eating cheese doodles all week with the gang. Decide what you are going to do this holiday season. Write it out. Are you going to actually lean out, maintain, put on a few pounds, put on a lot of pounds? How many, how much. Are you going to improve weak body parts, get those glutes to sit up higher, build a little muscle? Write our your plan for the next 6 weeks.  Once you know what you are planning on doing, then you will know what needs to be done to get there. Being excellent, has to do with listening to your own internal monitoring system.  Even when people around you are encouraging you to eat.   Maybe they are even badgering you to eat.  Now this goes both ways, just because you have decided to be excellent, don’t expect them to remove that tray of goodies, because you can’t control yourself.  They have the right to eat whatever they choose to, but it is their choice.  Here is your Thanksgiving and December plan. 1. Decide what you are going to do this holiday, in regard to your goals.  Push yourself in a way that works for you. If you don’t have a show in December, I certainly think that a Thanksgiving feast is warranted. But you know your body, and you know your mind.  Push yourself a bit, don’t be fooled by the “it’s just one bit” decide what you are going to look like on January 1st. Write out that plan. 2. Be willing to do what it takes to achieve that. Period! That is all, it is that simple. Being excellent is a choice, don’t worry if others aren’t coming along, but don’t stop going just because they have taken a break. Whatever your goals, whatever your vision, whatever your dream, do what it takes to have it.  You will feel so proud of yourself, and that is the ultimate feeling of satisfaction. Gobble Gobble, it’s turkey time.

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Websites:

www.mrbreakfast.com

Mr. Breakfast is THE place to go for figuring out what to eat when you have no idea what to cook.  There is a HUGE database of ideas, recipes and even reviews of breakfasts restaurants!

Some of my favorite ideas to look up:

Omlettes, scrambles, French Toast and pancakes.

Hungry Girl

If you don’t get this woman’s newsletter, you should!  She is on board the Weight Watcher’s Train, and while I don’t care about WW, I love getting healthified recipes in my inbox all the time.  The woman has even come up with an idea of how to make chocolate fudge from pumpkin!  I don’t agree with all of her swaps (she uses lots of un-natural things, like fat free items, etc. flavored with artificial flavors and colors) however, for the ocassional craving that arises but you can’t bring yourself to succumb, she offers some great swaps!

Here’s one for a Blizzard that looks yummy, great idea for PWO meal!

http://www.hungry-girl.com/chew/chewdetails.php?isid=1439

New Favorite Foods:

Like I said, I’m getting tired of having oatmeal and eggs every morning, even though I LOVE both of them, especially oatmeal.  I’ve been eating  a lot of breakfast sandwiches lately, fritattas and scrambles.  Let me introduce you to some of the ingredients I’m really digging, that help me get my protein in at breakfast without resorting to a dozen egg whites or protein powder.

Applegate Farms Natural Turkey Bacon

THIS is some fabulous stuff!  I used to go for the Jennie-O turkey bacon, until I found this wonderful stuff.  It has a deep, smokey flavor, and ZERO nitrates or fillers.  If you can pronounce all the ingredients, you know you have good stuff.  They’ve also got an organic version and lots of other products including deli meats, sausages and hotdogs.

Visit their website for ideas and recipes: www.applegatefarms.com

Chicken Sausage