The Cheating Body

Why would anyone make life difficult for themselves if there is an obvious easy option? That’s pretty much the way the body thinks when you ask it to do a particular activity.  If you’ve always done something in a certain way the body learns that activity so the easy option is to simply repeat the movement it’s used to.

Take something straight forward like bending forward to pick something up from the floor.  If you were to perform this task ideally the spine would bend uniformly along its length, the pelvis would tilt with the movement and the hips would flex in to position.  Everything would do its job properly and your hands would reach the floor with no problem. Of course, whilst the movement was happening, all the supportive muscles would be working nicely to stabilise the body as it went in to its forward bend.  Abdominal muscles and pelvic floor muscles engaged and the big muscles along the back doing their bit to support the weight of the body as it rolls down to the floor.  That’s the most energy efficient way to do it.

So how many folk do I see that can actually do that? Probably nobody, even those that have invested years in to perfecting their Pilates or Yoga techniques will not be doing it perfectly.  Admittedly the people I see have generally come to me because the system has broken down in some way so they aren’t going to be moving at their best.  However, even when I get someone back to ‘normal’ I’m still not going to see perfection.

The body is designed to cheat which will mean that it will tend to opt for doing movements in the same way it has always done them.  If you’re the sort of person who has very flexible hips and can simply fold from the hips to put your hands flat on the floor without even bending the back why would you want to do it any other way? You can still do the movement, the hips and the muscles supporting the hips will do all the work and the back can pretty much not get involved. However, do that enough and the hips might start to complain about all the work they’re doing.  That’s the time to rethink your technique and get the spine woken up again . . . . if you can remember how to do that. 

As much as you try to get the whole thing working properly and more efficiently the default setting will be for the body to cheat again and over work the hips.  Breaking habits is hard work. An osteopaths work here is firstly to assess what’s gone wrong so that you know how you’ve been cheating.  Then, with hands on work, we can help you to prepare the body so that there’s a chance that you might be able to work the right areas and engage the correct muscles through work on the soft tissues and mobilisation of the affected joints.  However, that’s when the patient has to do some work by introducing the right exercises to effectively retrain the body to move more efficiently.  Not only the right exercises but also the right technique. That means hard work to get the exercise right because the body will still want to cheat and do it the old way.

However, it’s not all doom and gloom.  The good news is that the body is incredibly good at adapting. If one area isn’t working particularly well something else will work a bit harder to compensate.  Osteopaths are here to lend a helping hand if the compensatory mechanisms fall apart.