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If you want to improve your golf or racket swing or feel better walking often, you need to improve the efficiency of how your body rotates. 

When we lack rotation through our spine and pelvis, we move through other areas like the shoulders, hips, and knees. There are three keys to improving rotation and, simultaneously, improving the health of your spine and joints.  They are:

1. Maintain alignment. When you repeatedly move or shear out of alignment, it starts to wear down the discs in the spine and the structure of your joints.  This goes beyond normal wear and tear due to getting older.  Think of a golfer that hits a ball a hundred times a day at full strength.  Without optimal rotation through the spine and hips, the golfer will find the force from other areas in the body.

2. Maintain optimal three-dimensional breathing.  Your deepest core muscle, the diaphragm, is also the primary muscle of respiration. When this muscle does not work...

You have heard the old saying,  "You must learn to walk before you can run."  In life, this saying is never old.  Before we can do something faster, we will do it slower until we have more confidence, or like a child trying to go too fast, they may fall because they can't control all the parts of their body.

How does this apply to this month's topic on rotation?

Before we can rotate well, we must first learn to control rotation.  

When you can learn to control rotation, you will increase your chances of rotating through a swing more efficiently.  

What does it mean or entail to control rotation?

When we rotate 'optimally,' we rotate on an invisible access. In other words, the body stays centered, and joints remain aligned. When you don't stay centered, you shear through some part of your body.  

For a sports activity, you may have excess motion or shear through some ribs and feel tightness or discomfort through your ribs or mid-back due...

In this webinar discover:

How your posture can affect your lower back discomfort

What changes you can easily make to ease the pressure

Implement a simple exercise several time a day

In our last installment, we shared a way to change how you sit to decrease the pressure on your lower back a.k.a., your lumbar spine, specifically the pressure on the discs between your vertebrae.  The cervical spine and the lumbar spine are the areas where disc herniations occur most often.  

In this installment, we will look at three things that you do each day that can contribute to pressure and nonoptimal alignment of your lower spine.

How you sit or stand. 

Depending on what you do for work or how you spend your time you likely sit, stand, or a combination of both throughout your day.  We touched lightly on sitting optimally last time.  As a reminder, you want to sit on your SITS bones.  These bones are located at the bottom of your glutes.  (see picture below)

How you stand matters as well. 

If you tend to stand with your weight mostly in your heels and your knees locked you likely also stand with your glutes slightly...

Try these simple exercises to relieve neck and shoulder discomfort.

Do you ever feel like your lower back tighten up while you are sitting or standing for any length of time?

This is unfortunately too common and as it turns out quite costly.  According to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation between 1996-2016 treatments for lower back and neck pain cost nearly $77 billion by private insurance, $45 billion by public insurance, and $12 billion out of pocket by patients themselves in the U.S.

Those numbers likely don't include over-the-counter medications and some non-medical treatments for pain.

While injury, surgery, and other physical trauma can be sources of back discomfort there are many lifestyle or habit-driven activities that over time can be the main driver of back pain, tightness, and discomfort.

Let's start with an easy not-so-easy....posture.

1. Easy, because for many of us, it is something we can readily fix.  Not so easy because
2. You have to wade through the plethora of conflicting information.
3. The information may...

Do you struggle with neck tightness.?  Is turning your head sometimes nearly impossible or at least quite uncomfortable?

Do you need to constantly stretch your neck or move it around, looking for a comfortable position?

We have been talking this month about your rib cage connections to your head, neck, arms, core, and spine.

In this installment, we are going to:

1. Have you checked four muscles in your neck that are attached to your rib cage that, when ‘tight’ can restrict how your head and neck move
2. Discuss what may be driving the tightness 
3. Give you some strategies for you to try

Let's get started:

• Stand in front of a mirror.
• Turn your head to the right. Return to center.  Turn to the left. Return to center.
• Repeat three times. 
•  Do you feel a difference side-to-side?
•  When you do this, do you notice your torso moving as well?

Now check:

• Bring your right ear down towards your right shoulder.
• Return to center.  ...

The ribcage has three major roles in the health of our body, how it moves and more.  Watch this fun, interactive webinar and discover the major roles of the ribcage and why it important for you to know when it comes to the health of your body and how it moves.

We left off our last newsletter about the rib cage with some questions for you to think about.

1. Does your rib cage feel mobile or stiff?  Do you breathe easily?
2. When you turn or move your head, can you do so easily?
3. Is your rib cage flared at the bottom?

How did you answer these?  

If you answered, your rib cage feels pretty stiff: You are likely not receiving all the benefits of breathing well. When we breathe well or three-dimensionally, it helps create mobility in our rib cage.  The opposite is true when we don't breathe well. It can make our rib cage stiffer by overusing the muscles that are attached to it for the simple task of breathing.

If you answered you don't breathe well:  Your rib cage may also be it stiff or rigid.  Perhaps you feel like you cannot get a breath fully in or out.  

If you answered you do not turn your head well or easily to one side or the other:  The muscles that are attached from your neck to your...