Many times in life people have supported their arguments with the fact that all things revert to disorder. They support this claim with examples, such as: “bedrooms always go from clean to messy” or “dishes never wash themselves.” This statement seems incontestable, because we see examples of it in our everyday life. I believe that a different perspective needs to be taken on this topic. This universal assumption should be substituted with an alternative phrase, like “All things revert from order to NATURAL order. When bridges eventually fall, and tornadoes turn buildings into rubble, we finally see the true order of the universe. The elements of the building that man stole from the ground are going back home, back to the core of the earth to continue its cycle in the universe. Man hasn’t stopped trying to create it’s own order on this earth, but Mother Nature always wins in the end. Natural order seems destructive, but when we work in harmony with Mother Nature, we make the natural order of things work with us.

How does this relate to human movement? An infinite number of individuals live in pain and discomfort for a reason that is beyond their understanding. Sedentary lifestyles have been engrained in their brain since they were children, and they received gold starts for sitting down and shutting up in class. Media and technology become their sole source of excitement, when they go from their sit-down job only to sit on the couch and watch television. With this lifestyle, injuries will undoubtedly occur. That person will go to the doctor to get help, and the doctor will prescribe nothing more than the cause of the injury. REST. Ceasing movement, instead of identifying movement pattern dysfunction, and prescribing movement that will bring the body back to alignment with the universe.

This dysfunction in our lives stem from man made “solutions” that were designed to make life easier. Shoes, chairs, modified foods. These inventions unleash havoc within our bodies, causing unlimited amounts of disorder down the kinetic chain. The answers we give to our declining health are “I’m just getting old” or “bad knees run in my family” like our bodies were meant to self-destruct. The true reason for these problems is that our bodies are trying to communicate the fact that something is seriously wrong with the lifestyle we have undertaken. Our body is attempting to bring itself back into alignment by giving signals that something isn’t right. But we are NOT listening.

The only way to fix these issues is to live like humans were supposed to. Bringing the body peacefully back to alignment is to bring it back to TRUE order, and disrupt the patterns it’s been living in. The body was designed to move, so let it move. Let it play through end ranges of motion that haven’t been reached since school started at age 5. Remove the shoes, and let the 100+ muscles in the feet experience the stretch and squeeze it was designed to endure before humans caged them away. Bring the order in your life to the disorder it was meant to endure.

Achilles heel spurs are common among many athletes and individuals with collapsed arches. Flattened plantar fascia can cause the Achilles tendon to pull off axis under flexion/extension of the posterior compartment of the lower leg. Besides leaking torque and draining efficiency out of the kinetic chain, this imbalance creates inflammation of the tendon, and the body compensates by depositing calcium on the calcaneus near the location of the inflammation. These deposits are the body’s way of creating a bridge to try and support the Achilles tendon under stress. The problem is, however, that these deposits do way more harm than good. These deposits cause degeneration of the tendon, pain, and often a rupture of the Achilles.

This type of “body compensation gone wrong” can be seen in many aspects of life. Golgi tendon receptors in the lower lumbar spine receive a signal from an inhibited erector muscle that has lain dormant for the past week of sitting in the office. This receptor’s job is to attempt to save the “endangered” muscle by contracting uncontrollably to prevent further stretching. These are muscle spasms, and they plague sedentary, non-movement conscious beings for months, even years without being solved. It is just another way that the body attempts to solve the imbalances of the body, but fails.

So how do we combat this? Simple, attack the problem at the source. These muscular imbalances downstream in the body and can explode out of the appendages with problems. For example, the collapsed arches that cause the heel spurs could have been a downstream effect of a tight piriformis, causing external rotation of the femur, valgus forces on the knee, and everted feet, causing the plantar fascia to compress, pulling the Achilles tendon off axis. Fix the piriformis, fix the issues of the entire leg. The same can be applied to the mental aspects of life. Has your life been falling apart lately? Take a fishbowl look at your life and see what you find. One simple fix can be the solution to all of your problems. Whether it’s one bad habit, or a lust for money, fix it, and reap the benefits.

Anger, sadness, anxiety. These are just a few of the emotions that humans experience during their ever-changing path through life. Just like acids and bases, all of these emotions can be placed on a ranking scale, or spectrum. Too much of any emotion can be harmful to us, just like the way carbon dioxide and oxygen work in the body.

Body activity and cellular respiration use up oxygen, and increase production of CO2. CO2 is transported through the blood as carbonic acid, and the increase of carbonic acid changes the PH of the blood, which gives the brain the urge to breathe. On the opposite side of the spectrum, hyperventilation can create a disproportionate amount of O2 in the body, which makes the blood significantly more alkaline. With the significant amount of expelled CO2, the brain doesn’t get a signal from the body when the O2 runs out, and we go unconscious.

This is the same way our lives work. Anger builds up in the body, and the organism starts to shut down from the hyperactivity of the tissues and brain. On the flip side, depression kicks in, and the body slowly freezes into a vegetative state due to the lack of musculoskeletal and mental movement.

These emotional imbalances in the body need prescribed movement plans. When the emotion falls onto the scale of charging up the body, softening exercises are necessary, such as meditation. When the emotion causes a lack of mental and physical movement, emotional charging exercises are necessary; metabolic conditioning/weight lifting could be prescribed. These prescriptions act as buffers to the acids and bases of emotions in our lives. It is with these buffers that musculoskeletal and mental movement is restored to its proper balance of yin and yang. It is with this balance that the human can continue on their path through life as healthy and happy as possible.

The human body was not designed to sit. Whether it was from an intelligent designer or evolution, our bodies are designed to be self-sufficient when it comes to movement, or lack thereof. Squatting is meant to be the human body’s way of resting without lying down, and is also the way our bodies were meant to secrete waste. Our ancestors from long ago used the human body the way it was supposed to be used, until the chair was invented.

The invention of the chair has caused a myriad of problems in our society. In western society, the chair became the new way for humans to relax, eat, build, prepare, defecate, etc. As leisure time increases with the advancements in technology, sitting time increases. The inventions of schools take movement away from childhoods, placing children in chairs for six or more hours a day. This shift in societal norms created a load of musculoskeletal issues in humans. For most people, the chair keeps the human body from experiencing full ranges of motion in the lower extremities throughout the day, which was a requirement when they had to drop into a full squat to sit. The lack of movement in the body creates muscular tensions, imbalances, inhibitions, and many more that cause pain, organ dysfunction, and just a lack in overall health . If conditions were idealistic, chairs would not exist, movement of the body would be a priority in life, and quality of life would improve exponentially. But the fact of the matter is that chairs are here to stay for now. Instead of waiting for them to go away, the best thing us humans can do is learn the best way to sit. Although sitting is never good, there is a way to sit that massively lessens the amount of negative effects on the body. To override the body’s natural motor program that it reverts to every time it sits is going to be difficult, but it is definitely possible. It is said that a person needs 10,000 hours to alter a motor program in the body , and this might be true when it comes to sitting, due to the fact that humans do it so much.

To say that sitting is a skill might seem like a stretch to some people. But the fact of the matter is that sitting involves careful muscle cooperation and coordination of muscles, joints, bone alignments, etc. The proper muscular recruitment and postural alignment of the body while sitting must be practiced and kept proper, or else posture quality will decline and level of pain begin to rise.

The amount of time that one spends sitting does not indicate that they are a good sitter. It is common that the worst sitters are the ones that do it the most, people who have desk jobs, are in school full time, etc. Visual cues given off from a bad sitter are the first signal in identifying their level of skill in the task of sitting. Forward rounding shoulders can be the first giveaway when identifying a bad sitter. This type of posture indicates tight pectoral muscles, scalenes, serratus anterior, and many more postural muscles of the upper body. Forward head position is another identifier when it comes to poor sitters, indicating tight cervical extensors due to breathing issues, or prolonged computer use. Another set of cues that an individual could give someone that indicates sitting skill level can be verbal. “My back hurts,” or “I strained my neck at the office today” are all verbal cues that the teacher can use to asses the motor skills and abilities of someone who needs to be taught to sit correctly. Identifying skill and ability level of the learner is crucial in the approach to teach or reteach the task for the coach.

Learning the side-affects of prolonged incorrect sitting can sometimes motivate a bad sitter to change their habits faster. The problems of incorrect sitting can range from musculoskeletal, to respiratory, to cardiovascular, and many more. Some muscles and ligaments are stretched with bad posture, while some are tightened and some inhibited. The times spent in bad positions build up faulty muscular recruitment patterns, and they don’t go away when they stand up. These muscular imbalances are carried with the individual throughout the day, and affect the lifestyle that these people live outside of the office or classroom, including mood. The muscular imbalances that are created generate pain, and reduce movement even more, worsening the issue. This should definitely work in motivating the learner to making postural changes when they sit.

In order to teach someone to sit correctly, they first need to learn how to stand. There is a specific reason why an individual cannot be taught to sit while already sitting down, and it deals with core stability and the over activation of the hip flexors. When someone is sitting incorrectly and their core is engaged improperly, the common cue that people hear is “sit up straight!” This is incorrect, because proper midline stabilization is almost impossible to create from a seated position.   The body achieves the illusion of a straight spine with good posture, because the of the iliopsoas. The iliopsoas originates at the base of the lumbar spine, and acts to increase the lumbar curve and create flexion at the hip. The iliopsoas forces the spine to straighten and posture to increase, but this process does not tighten up any of the important structures for midline stabilization, including the transverse abdominis, internal obliques, and many more. This process of false stabilization does nothing but create a false sense of security, and more pain for the individual.

Now that it is known that an individual cannot learn to sit while sitting down, we must teach the person how to stand correctly. The best information that I have found on standing correctly has come from Dr. Kelly Starrett’s bracing sequence. His ideas on body stabilization come in handy when teaching someone how to stand correctly. This bracing sequence consists of four steps that teach an individual how to protect their midline, which he calls the chassis of the body (Starrett 105). The steps to midline stabilization are as follows:

1. Squeeze your butt as hard as you can. This consists of feet directly under the pelvis, pointed forward in a neutral position. The easiest way to lock the femur into the pelvis while creating external rotation and torque is by screwing your feet to the ground. This accomplishes the goal of stabilizing the bottom half of the “chassis,” and it sets the position for the rest of the body to follow suit. (Starrett 107).
2. The second step in body stabilization is to pull the ribcage down. This is the step that many people forget when it comes to stabilization. Balancing your ribcage over your pelvis is essential concerning health and strength of the thoracic spine, which is a weakness for many people. This step is often taught incorrectly, when teachers tell students to stick their chest out and head up. This is great for tightening up the upper spinal extensors, but it ultimately inhibits key core muscles like the rectus abdominis. That is why the best way is to teach balancing the ribcage over the pelvis (Starrett 110).
3. The next step in midline stabilization is to get your stomach tight. Now that your pelvis is balanced over your ribcage, it is time to use the abdominals to lock them into place. The best way to feel this tension, is by using an exhale to tighten all of the muscles of the abdominals. When you exhale, think of using your abdominal muscles to shrink-wrap a layer of musculature around your spine. This will protect your midline, using many coordinated muscles of the midline, like the transverse abdominis, internal/external obliques, rectus abdominis, lumbar extensors, and a few others. Locking in these muscles and the pelvic floor also create a smooth environment for good breathing mechanics. (Starrett 113).
4. Head and Shoulders. This step may perhaps be the most crucial step when it comes to relieving pain. Most postural issues and pain arise in the head and neck, so this step is for those people with headaches, and a sore neck from sitting. Setting your head in a neutral position over the shoulders is best set with the eyes. Setting your gaze forward is the first and easiest step to align the neck over the shoulders. The next step is to align the shoulders over the already set ears. Shrug the shoulders up, pull them back, then retract the scapulas down to correctly stabilize the shoulders. Once all of these steps are complete, the correct midline stabilization of the body has been achieved. (Starrett 117).

Teaching someone how to stand correctly is useful in many ways. Once the learner correctly executes a sitting movement, they will know the correct movement pattern to return to when they’re done sitting.

The key when sitting correctly is to keep the spine stabilized in the same way that it was when standing. The neutral position that the spine, shoulders, neck, and head are in need to stay as exact as possible to minimize musculoskeletal stress while sitting. The only joint angle that should change while sitting is in the lower body. The ankles, knees, and hips will inevitably change their angles when sitting, and the maintenance of these angles is necessary in order to sit correctly.

The next step that you break down sitting into is a box squat. The box squat seems like a daunting movement that only top athletes and power lifters complete, but the reality is that it is performed by every able bodied individual thousands of times per week. Even though everybody can execute a box squat, not every person does it correctly. In fact, the majority of the population does not know how to sit down correctly. There are three main steps when it comes to sitting down to a box, chair, toilet, and many more in the correct way. The steps are so simple, that the first step is one that we’ve already gone over. The top position of the movement is the same as the midline stabilization that I went over not too long ago. Squeeze your butt, set your ribcage over your pelvis, squeeze your abs, and set your head and shoulders (Starrett 100-120). Once you’ve been over the stabilization sequence, your body is ready to start lowering.

The lowering section of the box squat has two steps, and these two steps are all dictated by the hip hinge and angle of the spine. It is crucial, however to prioritize midline stabilization throughout the entire movement.

1. The first step to lowering into the squat is initiating the movement, and using the correct coordinate structures of the legs to fire at the right time. The best way to initiate the movement is telling yourself to stick the tops of your hamstrings pack, keep your shins vertical, and start the movement by hinging at the hips (Starrett 335). When you initiate the movement at the hips, you use the posterior chain (hamstrings, gluteus maximus/medius, lumbar extensors, calves, etc) as the dominant recruitment center for executing the movement. These muscles are large and meant to handle repetitive movements like squatting.
2. Once the hip hinge is complete, the next step is to lower your butt to the chair. Keeping the hip hinge in place and your butt back, a bend in the ankles and knees is now necessary to lower yourself towards the chair (Starrett 336). The flexion of these joints will activate the quadriceps portion of the legs (vastus medialis, intermedius, lateralis, rectus femoris, etc), another large source of power for the legs. It is important for the knees to be spread out, in order to activate the abductors of the lower body, like the piriformis to help stabilize the pelvis. Once your butt has reached the chair, you are ready for the next step.
3. The next step once your butt has reached the chair is to align your spine with gravity (Starrett 336). The posture of the spine at the start of the current phase is forward, but still locked in the neutral state like I mentioned earlier. Keeping all other joint angles the same, hinge vertically at the hips until your torso is straight up and down. Once you complete the vertical alignment of your spine and recheck your tension, you have completed the “sitting down” phase.

When the learner and teacher places so much emphasis on the decent into the sit, not much thought will be needed to stay seated. The only thought that needs to go through the learner’s head is tension, and a recheck of joint alignment every so often. If done correctly, all of the coordinated structures of the midline, upper back, and head will remain in the correct spot stress free.

One problem that many people face while sitting is the relaxation of the musculature that should be keeping them upright. When in the process of learning, the learner often forgets to maintain tension in these muscles, and the torso collapses, head moves forward, lower lumbar angle is decreased; and pressure can be placed on all facets of the spine, whether cervical, thoracic, or lumbar. It is necessary for the learner to have an observer monitor his sitting mechanics from time to time, because sitting is one of those motor programs that are so engrained into our movement patterns that they are hard to break. Verbal cues are a great way to help a learner realize their mistakes and correct them. The verbal cues don’t really need to address anything specific. In my opinion, once joint integrity and posture is compromised, then the learner should stand back up, go through the bracing sequence again, and lower into the seat the correct way again, in an attempt to be better than they were before.

Standing up is arguably the easiest part of sitting, because it is just a reverse of the sitting down sequence.

Although these instructions sound a little in-depth for something like sitting, it is necessary when it comes to protecting your body from the stresses it can place on you for prolonged periods of time. These bracing sequences seem like they would end up being a paralysis by over-analysis situation, but going through the bracing sequence and executing sitting correctly will become second nature to you once you engrain it in your brain. Once those 10,000 hours are complete, then it will be second nature to the learner.

Learning how to sit is a skill that is transferrable to all facets of life. Midline stabilization is something that’s applicable to any movement the human body makes, and can help optimize movement efficiency and power output. For example: Force is lost in the Olympic lifting snatch when the spine leaves a neutral position . The more rigid the spine can act, the more it acts as a chassis, using the primary motors of the body (hips and shoulders) to propel it where it needs to go. Another example of this can be seen in sprinters. Sprinters can leak force out of their hips when their feet evert in their drive phase. The eversion of the feet indicate a muscular imbalance/lack of tightness in the hips, and the body loses its optimal force production into the ground. In the sport of sprinting, this can mean a loss to the athlete when they have the potential to win. Learning how to coordinate the correct muscle pathways towards standing can maximize force production in all of these areas. Faulty muscle recruitment is the cause of many instances of underperformance in athletes. Restoring proper movement function, by learning how to sit and stand correctly, will ultimately make you a better athlete and mover. There is no doubt that movement is medicine, and improving movement patterns is what will make the world a better place.

 

You name it.  Place any word or noun in the blank to finish off that statement and it makes sense.  In life, movement dictates quality.  The perfect balance of intellectual, spiritual, and musculoskeletal movement creates the ideal life for any individual.  If this movement ceases in any way, we die.  Reversely, too much movement can create problems as well.  Our ancestors used joint mechanics in the designed way out of necessity, in order to survive.  In modern society, leisure/technological advancements have created sedentary lifestyles for individuals because of the lack of necessary movement.  This has created a myriad of issues for our species, and it is being passed through generations without being resolved.  Only with the reparation of  these movement dysfunctions in the body and mind can the human race stop chronic disease created by a poor lifestyle.