Treat Your Body Right

"When challenged, your body will default to what it’s used to doing. Make your combat stance your everyday stance!" Kelly Starrett

In the past week I’ve had two CrossFit athlete patients here in Atlanta that have been dealing with chronic lower back related pain. Both of these patients had injures that started with high volume squatting. One of them was doing high volume loaded squats and the other was doing high volume body weight squats. 

Both of these guys have jobs where they sit for a living, meaning they are what we call executive athletes. This position typically keeps the hip at around 90* for a long period of time and can drive the hip slightly forward compared to the optimal position. It’s hard to expect that you can keep your hip at 90* for 8 hours everyday and then magically have that extra range be there when you head to the gym to workout. 

The human body is the greatest cheater in the world. We will get from point A to point B with good or bad movement. As long as we complete the task our body thinks it's successful. The truth is we can only buffer bad movement for a while and then it turns into an injury.

Here’s a general rule of thumb. For every hour you sit you should be putting in 4 minutes of mobility work to your hips, ankles and/or upper back to help offset that time in a sitting position. So if you sit 8 hours, you owe yourself 32 minutes of mobility work! Damn, that’s a long time right. True it is, but our body adjusts to the positions we put ourself in the most. You have to offset some of the damage you are doing from prolonged periods of sitting.

Lets put this 32 minutes of mobility into perspective. Most of us love Game of Thrones, it’s an awesome show. It runs about an hour and we have no problem making time in our busy schedule to see who’s going to be killed off this week or if the dwarf will ever catch a break. Why is it so hard for us to dedicate half of the amount of time of watching Game of Thrones to improving and helping our only body with recovery?

You have to prioritize your own body. You can buy a lot of nice cars over your lifetime and swamp them out whenever you want the newer model. You never get a chance to swap your body out for the new model. You might as well take care of your only vehicle in life, your body!


-Dr. Danny, PT, DPT