Balance: It Does a Body Good

On days between cardio and weight sessions, as long as my body feels up to it, I like to go to the gym and work on balance, not just in terms of being able to stand upright in tricky situations but in terms of making sure all the planes of the body are getting the necessary push and pull they need. I want all the muscles, tendons, ligaments, and other functioning parts to work as a complete unit with each and every individual element "carrying it's own water" and not having to make up for others that might have been ignored during previous workouts. This may seem like an obvious concept to many but I know that for years I didn't vary from a routine that covered most of my body and got me in pretty good shape...or so I thought. The muscles I ignored eventually made me pay dearly for bypassing them.

I like the way anatomy books break down the body dynamic into three planes: the median, horizontal, and coronal. (A good anatomy for dummies is: Anatomy of the Moving Body: A Basic Course in Bones, Muscles, and Joints; Second Edition by Theodore Dimon, Jr.) Simply put, your body is broken down into left and right sides, top and bottom sections, and front and back sections. All sections and halves need an equal distribution of work to maintain balance. Think of things this way: if you work your right arm make sure you work your left arm, if you work your legs make sure you work your torso and if you work your biceps make sure you work your triceps. I immediately thought of the cliched gym talk of "look at that guy who's got broad shoulders and deep chest but chicken legs." Being out of balance not only makes muscles work harder to make up for the weaker elements but its grounds for malicious gym gossip as well!

For most of my life I feel like I was pretty good at maintaining a proper balance of exertion and exercise  on an equal level across all three planes. Sometimes in our daily lives this becomes difficult. On movie sets my job was to lug heavy gear around. I always attempted to never have to carry heavy gear only on one side of my body. If I was directed to grab one item I carried it with both hands in order to spread the weight around as equally as possible. Watching my brothers and sisters all hunched over to their weaker side as they carried gear in their dominant hand looked painful and harmful. (To those still in the business: stop carrying a 1200amp box in one hand!!) Because balance is hard to maintain during the daily grind it is important to make sure that, when we can, we put out a conscious effort distribute healthy and beneficial exercise across the whole body.

Working the left side if you work right and working the top half if you work bottom is fairly self explanatory. The coronal plane, what divides us into front and back halves (think biceps and triceps) is where my focus has lacked over the years. This has been especially true when it comes to abs and back. If you work the abs work the lower back muscles as well. If you work the chest, work the shoulders. If you work the hamstrings work the quads as well. Hit the front; hit the back. This seems obvious but, for me, it has often been easy to lose track. For those who live life constantly on the go maintaining a balance when it comes to exercise can be extremely difficult. Working the whole body correctly can take up some minutes in the day. Time management is an important factor when planning a schedule for exercise so balance, even if it is over a series of workouts over several days is maintained.

Over the last three years I have not focused on the muscles in my lower back because I have been scared to since experiencing back trauma. Even thought it has been some time, fear still creeps in when I start doing exercises that target my lower back. However, I cannot, once again, build up everything around the lower back and expect to continue an active lifestyle with any kind of confidence. Do you realize how many muscles are in the lower back? Recently, little tinge of pain in the lower right side of my back and occasionally the left side has informed me I have not been doing things correctly. With everything else around the lower back being worked how could there not be some screams for attention from the ignored muscles? Yesterday I made sure I found the right machine with the lower back muscles highlighted. I worked out with very light weight and did high reps. This morning was the first morning in a while that I did not wake up and feel a ping of some sort in my back. This morning I have been able to sit in the chair at my desk and get up without thinking uh-oh. I listened to my body and made adjustments. Already, I am feeling the benefits.

Balance across the whole of the body is so important. These days I am making sure that I take that one day at the gym to make sure that nothing gets ignored over the course of a few workouts. I call this the Makeup Day. Here is a chart of how I like to incorporate the Makeup Day into my schedule.

Workout 1: Power Circuit
Workout 2: Cardio
Workout 3: Makeup Day
Workout 4: Cardio
Workout 5: Power Circuit
(then repeat process)
(I don't workout five days in a row. I incorporate days of rest and active rest in between these workouts as necessary.)

My workouts will change as the weather gets warmer and I can get back out on the water. I think I have fallen so in love with Stand Up Paddling because it is the low-impact, total-body workout. Everything from the toes to the brain is put to work when you are out on the board. And everything FEELS GOOD because of the balance across the whole system! It's funny because I feel the only muscle lacking in attention while paddling is the bicep. Maybe that is due to my technique, which still needs attention, or the fact that for all of my life my biceps received most of the focus during workouts (ah, vanity) and everything else is catching up! The rest of my body feels completely worked after a paddle session except for my biceps, which is just strange to me...

Reading up on anatomy has truly opened my eyes up to not only the beautiful construction of the human body but some of the intricacies that allow us to do what we do day in and day out. My spiritual side has always made me think of the body as a temple for the Holy Spirit, even when I was filling that temple with insane amounts of garbage. Looking back, I had no idea what a temple the body is! Reading up on things like synovial fluid, which lubricates bones sliding against each other at the joints and how our head seemingly stays upright on our spine without a conscious effort due to a complex system of muscles, vertebrae, and other insane stuff I cannot recall blows me away when it comes to realizing what a gift we have available to us. (Our top two vertebrae are awesome pieces of machinery and quite different from the other 31!!)

Acquiring a basic knowledge of how the body is put together has only reinforced my desire to treat myself with respect and care. I had an idea but I had no idea! I want to be thorough, deliberate, and vigilant when I exercise so fitness and health are both focused upon equally. A major step in achieving wellness is to think of the whole body, where all three planes are getting balanced out, when setting fitness goals. Plan smart, be thorough, and adjust accordingly and you will reap many rewards.