Winchester Sports Therapy Blog

The liquid body 17/3/2017

 

When working with clients, I have often remarked that it’s useful to think of the body not as a solid, but as a liquid. A liquid takes the shape of what ever you pour it into. If you pour it into a test tube, it takes the shape of the test tube. If you pour it into a cup, it takes the shape of the cup. In the same way, your body is constantly changing according to what you are doing with it.

If you are reading this sat at a desk, you know that you will be getting up from your chair in a few hours, but your body doesn’t. It’s in it for the long haul, and is beginning to alter your body to fit. To the body, this adaptation is necessary and important. However, for our health it can be negative, as adaptation may alter your posture or the functioning of your body, causing injury and disease.

The good news is that this adaptation (or flowing if you like) is constant, and negative effects can be warded off by the simple act of movement.

Imagine trying to hold a ball of soft dough without letting it ooze out of your hands to the floor. It’s a useful picture, although with your body it’s sort of the opposite. You have to keep moving to stop it solidifying.

Here’s a quick list for you to think about. I trust you’re sitting comfortably, so I’ll begin, by tell you why you shouldn’t be.

· Muscles – Your body is, at this moment, laying down or stripping away connective tissue, shortening or lengthening muscles, and weakening or strengthening muscles, all according to the stresses being placed upon them. As I’m spending a lot of time sitting at my laptop writing this piece, it means my hip flexors are shortening, my trunk muscles are lengthening and weakening, and my neck extensors are becoming strained and stiff. These adaptations can lead to pain. However, you can avoid this happening simply by moving around more, because that tells your body how your muscles need to be.

· Bones – Your body spends time working out whether it needs all that calcium locked up in bone, or whether it could be best used else where. So it might decide that, due to you spending many hours a day sitting at your desk, that you don’t need strong leg bones, and that you actually need your vertebrae remodelling to better fit the increased curvature of your spine. However, if you move around, the pulling of muscles on their bony attachments, and the stresses of gravity and impact, let the body know not to do that.

· Nerves – Muscles are innervated by nerves, and your body will concentrate signals to muscles that are used, and ‘shut off’ muscles that aren’t. This can lead to muscle imbalances and movement issues, including joint pain and poor balance. However, with regular and varied movement, your body will know that you need to be able to innervate all your muscles when needed.

· Joints – Joints are lubricated by movement. Your major joints act like suction pumps, and your job is to do the pumping. Pressure on a joint (in the case of your knee joints this can be from standing on one leg whilst walking) squeezes old juices out of the joint, and then the release of pressure (when you shift your weight to the other leg) sucks fresh juices in, nourishing and lubricating the joint. If you don’t move about, joints eventually dry out and become arthritic. Also, if you haven’t done your part by moving about, you haven’t told your body how long/strong the muscles surrounding a joint need to be. This can lead to muscular imbalances, which can pull unevenly on a joint and make proper functioning impossible.

· Cardiovascular system – The hearts job is to pump blood out into the body. Getting that blood back to the heart was meant to be your job. Every time you use a major muscle, a vein gets squeezed, which pushes blood along the vein back to the heart. However, if you don’t do this, your heart will have to do both parts of the job, which it will, for a while, until the body decides this is too much hard work for the heart. At this point the body makes the clever decision to shrink your cardio vascular system out of your extremities, so that there isn’t so much distance to have to push blood. Brilliant, until you have to run for the bus, at which point the inability to get oxygen to your legs will be very apparent. We call it being unfit, but it’s just a sign that your body has adjusted to a lack of movement. By moving around, you are reminding your body that you need blood in your extremities.

So, the above are some of the reasons that your body needs you to engage in large, varied, and sometimes vigorous movements. I could go on, but I’ve sat here for far too long.