One of my favorite things about my dear friend and rehab fitness guru Laura Coleman is that she doesn’t believe in “I can’t”. Anytime any of her clients say “I can’t” she adds on “…yet”. You see, she’s a firm believer that so much of what ails us physically is not the inevitable outcome of an aging or tired body, but simply muscles that haven’t been used fully or that are out of balance.
This week’s installment of Friday Fitness is an excellent example of that. How many times do I hear clients complain of hip problems and then attribute it all to aging, with little hope of ever regaining their former strength and flexibility. As Laura teaches, so often hip problems are the result of a combination of overuse and underuse – overuse going in one direction: forward, and underuse going in the other directions: sideways and around.
You see the hip joints are what we call ball and socket joints. This means they can move in lots of directions (just like your shoulder joints), not just backwards and forwards like, say, your elbow. The problem is, especially with our hips, we tend to move them like we do our elbows – backwards and forwards, without a lot of sideways or around. Think about it: unless you’re intentionally going out of your way to go sideways or you play a sport that has you moving in all different directions (basketball, tennis, soccer, yoga, etc), most of your day you move that joint forwards and backwards.
So today’s exercise is a fun and creative way of getting the full mobility back into your hips: stair crabs. As an added bonus, you will never look at a set of stairs the same way again!
Laura Coleman rocked my world a few years back when she helped me get to the root of all the knee and lower-back issues I’d had since my teens. In just a couple of sessions, Laura put me on a simple program of rehab exercises (unlike any I’d ever seen before) that brought my body back into alignment and actually fixed the problem that no physiotherapist, massage therapist, or chiropractor had ever been able to solve. I was hooked! We’ve been terrific friends and shared many clients since, and I’m delighted that she has offered to share her wisdom with all of you via this Fitness Friday video series. Laura lives in Portland, OR with her two gorgeous daughters. She works her magic at Club Sport and with clients all over the continent via the magic of technology (aka Skype). Check out her blog and website here.
