The Most Underrated Hip Mobility Exercise (Not Stretching)
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Cori Lefkowith, of “Redefining Strength” and “Strong At Every Age” fame, is back to help us keep our hips in good order:
These tips don’t lie
It’s less about stretching, and more about range of motion and “use it or lose it”:
- Full range of motion in lifting exercises enhances joint mobility and stability, whereas strengthening muscles through a limited range of motion (e.g., half squats) can cause tightness.
- Lifting through a larger range of motion may result in faster strength gains too, so that’s a bonus.
- Customize your range of motion based on your body type and capability, but do try for what you reasonably can—don’t give up!
- Lower weights and focus on deeper movements like split squats or single-leg squats, but work up slowly if you have any difficulties to start with.
- Using exercises like the Bulgarian split squat and deficit split squat can improve hip mobility and strength (you’ll really need to see the video for this one)
- Fully controlling the range of motion is key to progress, even if it means going lighter; prioritize mobility over brute strength. Strength is good, but mobility is even more critical.
- Adding instability, such as raising the front foot in lunges, challenges muscles and increases mobility. Obviously, please be safe while doing so, and slowly increase the range of motion while maintaining control, avoiding reliance on momentum.
- Final tip that most don’t consider: try starting exercises from the bottom position to ensure proper form and muscle engagement!
For more on each of these plus visual demonstrations, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
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Head Over Hips
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We’ve written before about managing osteoarthritis (or ideally: avoiding it, but that’s not always an option on the table, of course), so here’s a primer/refresher before we get into the meat of today’s article:
Avoiding/Managing Osteoarthritis
When the head gets in the way
Research shows that the problem with recovery in cases of osteoarthritis of the hip is in fact often not the hip itself, but rather, the head:
❝In fact, the stronger your muscles are, the more protected your joint is, and the less pain you will experience.
Our research has shown that people with hip osteoarthritis were unable to activate their muscles as efficiently, irrespective of strength.
Basically, people with hip arthritis are unable to activate their muscles properly because the brain is actively putting on the brake to stop them from using the muscle.❞
This is a case of a short-term protective response being unhelpful in the long-term. If you injure yourself, your brain will try to inhibit you from exacerbating that injury, such as by (for example) disobliging you from putting weight on an injured joint.
This is great if you merely twisted an ankle and just need to sit back and relax while your body works its healing magic, but it’s counterproductive if it’s a chronic issue like osteoarthritis. In such (i.e. chronic) cases, avoidance of use of the joint will simply cause atrophy of the surrounding muscle and other tissues, leading to more of the very wear-and-tear that led to the osteoarthritis in the first place.
So… How to deal with that?
You probably can exercise
It’s easy to get caught between the dichotomy of “exercise and inflame your joints” vs “rest and your joints seize up”, which is not pleasant.
However, the trick lies in how you exercise, per joint type:
When Bad Joints Stop You From Exercising (5 Things To Change)
…which to be clear, isn’t a case of “avoid using the joint that’s bad”, but is rather “use it in this specific way, so that it gets stronger without doing it more damage in the process”.
Which is exactly what is needed!
Further resources
For those who like learning from short videos, here’s a trio of helpers (along with our own text-based overview for each):
- The Most Underrated Hip Mobility Exercise (Not Stretching)
- Overcome Front-Of-Hip Pain
- 10 Tips To Reduce Morning Pain & Stiffness With Arthritis
And for those who prefer just reading, here’s a book we reviewed on the topic:
11 Minutes to Pain-Free Hips – by Melinda Wright
Take care!
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Invigorating Sabzi Khordan
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Have you ever looked at the nutritional values and phytochemical properties of herbs, and thought “well that’s all well and good, but we only use a tiny amount”? Sabzi khordan is a herb-centric traditional Levantine sharing platter served most commonly as an appetizer, and it is indeed appetizing! Never again will “start your meal with a green salad to ensure a gentle blood sugar curve” seem like a chore:
You will need
- Large bunch of parsley
- Small bunch of tarragon leaves
- Small bunch of basil leaves
- Small bunch of mint
- Small bunch of sorrel leaves
- 7 oz block of feta cheese (if vegan, a plant-based substitution is fine in culinary terms, but won’t have the same gut-healthy benefits, as plant-based cheeses are not fermented)
- 9 oz labneh-stuffed vine leaves in olive oil (if vegan, same deal as the above, except it’s harder to find plant-based substitutes for labneh (strained yogurt cheese), so you might want to use our Plant-Based Healthy Cream Cheese recipe instead and make your own)
- 2 tbsp za’atar (you can make your own by blending dried hyssop, dried sumac berries, sesame seeds, dried thyme, and salt—but if you haven’t had za’atar before, we recommend first buying some like the one that we linked, so that next time you know what you’re aiming for)
- 3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- 10 radishes
- 6 scallions
- 9 oz walnuts, soaked in water overnight and drained
- 1 cucumber, cut into batons
- Warm flatbreads (you can use our Healthy Homemade Flatbreads recipe)
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Arrange the feta, labneh, za’atar, and olive oil in separate little serving dishes.
2) Arrange everything else around them on a platter.
3) Serve! You may be thinking: did we really need a recipe to tell us “put the things on a plate”? The answer here is that this one today was shared mostly as a matter of inspiration, because when was the last time you thought to serve herbs as the star of the dish? Plus, it’s an excuse to try za’atar, not something so commonly seen outside of the Levant.
An alternative presentation
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- Herbs for Evidence-Based Health & Healing
- Making Friends With Your Gut (You Can Thank Us Later)
- 10 Ways To Balance Blood Sugars
Take care!
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Treat Your Own Back – by Robin McKenzie
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A quick note about the author first: he’s a physiotherapist and not a doctor, but with over 40 years of practice to his name and 33 letters after his name (CNZM OBE FCSP (Hon) FNZSP (Hon) Dip MDT Dip MT), he seems to know his stuff. And certainly, if you visit any physiotherapist, they will probably have some of his books on their own shelves.
This book is intended for the layperson, and as such, explains everything that you need to know, in order to diagnose and treat your back. To this end, he includes assorted tests to perform, a lot of details about various possible back conditions, and then exercises to fix it, i.e. fix whatever you have now learned that the problem is, in your case (if indeed you didn’t know for sure already).
Of course, not everything can be treated by exercises, and he does point to what other things may be necessary in those cases, but for the majority, a significant improvement (if not outright symptom-free status) can be enjoyed by applying the techniques described in this book.
Bottom line: for most people, this book gives you the tools required to do exactly what the title says.
Click here to check out Treat Your Own Back, and treat your own back!
PS: if your issue is not with your back, we recommend you check out his other books in the series (neck, shoulder, hip, knee, ankle) 😎
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Thinner Leaner Stronger – by Michael Matthews
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First, the elephant in the training room: this book does assume that you want to be thinner, leaner, and stronger. This is the companion book, written for women, to “Bigger, Stronger, Leaner”, which was written for men. Statistically, these assumptions are reasonable, even if the generalizations are imperfect. Also, this reviewer has a gripe with anything selling “thinner”. Leaner was already sufficient, and “stronger” is the key element here, so “thinner” is just marketing, and marketing something that’s often not unhealthy, to sell a book that’s actually full of good advice for building a healthy body.
In other words: don’t judge a book by the cover, however eyeroll-worthy it may be.
The book is broadly aimed at middle-aged readers, but boasts equal worth for young and old alike. If there’s something Matthews knows how to do well in his writing, it’s hedging his bets.
As for what’s in the book: it’s diet and exercise advice, aimed at long-term implementation (i.e. not a crash course, but a lifestyle change), for maximum body composition change results while not doing anything silly (like many extreme short-term courses do) and not compromising other aspects of one’s health, while also not taking up an inordinate amount of time.
The dietary advice is sensible, broadly consistent with what we’d advise here, and/but if you want to maximise your body composition change results, you’re going to need a pocket calculator (or be better than this writer is at mental arithmetic).
The exercise advice is detailed, and a lot more specific than “lift things”; there are programs of specifically how many sets and reps and so forth, and when to increase the weights and when not to.
A strength of this book is that it explains why all those numbers are what they are, instead of just expecting the reader to take on faith that the best for a given exercise is (for example) 3 sets of 8–10 reps of 70–75% of one’s single-rep max for that exercise. Because without the explanation, those numbers would seem very arbitrary indeed, and that wouldn’t help anyone stick with the program. And so on, for any advice he gives.
The style is… A little flashy for this reader’s taste, a little salesy (and yes he does try to upsell to his personal coaching, but really, anything you need is in the book already), but when it comes down to it, all that gym-boy bravado doesn’t take away from the fact his advice is sound and helpful.
Bottom line: if you would like your body to be the three things mentioned in the title, this book can certainly help you get there.
Click here to check out Thinner Leaner Stronger, and become thinner, leaner, stronger!
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Sarah Raven’s Garden Cookbook – by Sarah Raven
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Note: the US Amazon site currently (incorrectly) lists the author as “Jonathan Buckley”. The Canadian, British, and Australian sites all list the author correctly as Sarah Raven, and some (correctly) credit Jonathan Buckley as the photographer she used.
First, what it’s not: a gardening book. Beyond a few helpful tips, pointers, and “plant here, harvest here” instructions, this book assumes you are already capable of growing your own vegetables.
She does assume you are in a temperate climate, so if you are not, this might not be the book for you. Although! The recipes are still great; it’s just you’d have to shop for the ingredients and they probably won’t be fresh local produce for the exact same reason that you didn’t grow them.
If you are in a temperate climate though, this will take you through the year of seasonal produce (if you’re in a temperate climate but it’s in for example Australia, you’ll need to make a six-month adjustment for being in the S. Hemisphere), with many recipes to use not just one ingredient from your garden at a time, but a whole assortment, consistent with the season.
About the recipes: they (which are 450 in number) are (as you might imagine) very plant-forward, but they’re generally not vegan and often not vegetarian. So, don’t expect that you’ll produce everything yourself—just most of the ingredients!
Bottom line: if you like cooking, and are excited by the idea of growing your own food but are unsure how regularly you can integrate that, this book will keep you happily busy for a very long time.
Click here to check out Sarah Raven’s Garden Cookbook, and level-up your home cooking!
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10almonds Tells The Tea…
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Let’s Bust Some Myths!
It’s too late after puberty, hormones won’t change xyz
While yes, many adult trans people dearly wish they’d been able to medically transition before going through the “wrong” puberty, the truth is that a lot of changes will still occur later… even to “unchangeable” things like the skeleton.
The body is remaking itself throughout life, and hormones tell it how to do that. Some parts are just quicker or slower than others. Also: the skeleton is pulled-on constantly by our muscles, and in a battle of muscle vs bone, muscle will always win over time.
Examples of this include:
- trans men building bigger bones to support their bigger muscles
- trans women getting smaller, with wider hips and a pelvic tilt
Trans people have sporting advantages
Assuming at least a year’s cross-sex hormonal treatment, there is no useful advantage to being trans when engaging in a sport. There are small advantages and disadvantages (which goes for any person’s body, really). For example:
- Trans women will tend to be taller than cis women on average…
- …but that larger frame is now being powered by smaller muscles, because they shrink much quicker than the skeleton.
- Trans men taking T are the only athletes allowed to take testosterone…
- …but they will still often be smaller than their fellow male competitors, for example.
Read: Do Trans Women Athletes Have Advantages? (A rather balanced expert overview, which does also cover trans men)
There’s a trans population explosion; it’s a social contagion epidemic!
Source for figures: The Overall Rate Of Left-Handedness (Researchgate)
Left-handed people used to make up around 3% of the population… Until the 1920s, when that figure jumped sharply upwards, before plateauing at around 12% in around 1960, where it’s stayed since. What happened?! Simple, schools stopped forcing children to use their right hand.
Today, people ask for trans healthcare because they know it exists! Decades ago, it wasn’t such common knowledge.
The same explanation can be applied to other “population explosions” such as for autism and ADHD.
Fun fact: Mt. Everest was “discovered” in 1852, but scientists suspect it probably existed long before then! People whose ancestors were living on it long before 1852 also agree. Sometimes something exists for a long time, and only comes to wider public awareness later.
Transgender healthcare is too readily available, especially to children!
To believe some press outlets, you’d think:
- HRT is available from school vending machines,
- kids can get a walk-in top surgery at recess,
- and there’s an after-school sterilization club.
In reality, while availability varies from place to place, trans healthcare is heavily gatekept. Even adults have trouble getting it, often having to wait years and/or pay large sums of money… and get permission from a flock of doctors, psychologists, and the like. For those under the age of 18, it’s almost impossible in many places, even with parental support.
Puberty-blockers shouldn’t be given to teenagers, as the effects are irreversible
Quick question: who do you think should be given puberty-blockers? For whom do you think they were developed? Not adults, for sure! They were not developed for trans teens either, but for cis pre-teens with precocious puberty, to keep puberty at bay, to do it correctly later. Nobody argues they’re unsafe for much younger cis children, and only object when it’s trans teens.
They’re not only safe and reversible, but also self-reversing. Stop taking them, and the normally scheduled puberty promptly ensues by itself. For trans kids, the desired effect is to buy the kid time to make an informed and well-considered decision. After all, the effects of the wrong puberty are really difficult to undo!
A lot of people rush medical transition and regret it!
Trans people wish it could be rushed! It’s a lot harder to get gender-affirming care as a trans person, than it is to get the same (or comparable) care as a cis person. Yes, cis people get gender-affirming care, from hormones to surgeries, and have done for a long time.
As for regret… Medical transition has around a 1% regret rate. For comparison, hip replacement has a 4.8% regret rate and knee replacement has a 17.1% regret rate.
A medical procedure with a 99% success rate would generally be considered a miracle cure!
Don’t Forget…
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