It’s well-known that brittle bones are prone to break. To maintain or regain strength, we must stress them. Weight training has long since been considered the golden standard for increasing bone density. The problem with free-weights and machines, is that they force the bones into a specific range of motion. need to engage all 210 bones for optimal functioning.
Thankfully we don’t need a lot of equipment to get the job done. Our body comes fully equipped with weights and levers! Elongating our arms, legs and torso is all we need to strengthen bones and realign the joints. When joints get misaligned, it leads to chronic pain and arthritis. Poor alignment is so common that osteopaths and chiropractors spend their entire careers mostly aligning joints.
The Feet
What most people don’t realize is that good posture begins with the feet. Think about the ankles. Those little things are incredible, bearing the weight of our body crashing down on them all hours of the day. The feet are like the foundation of a building. If the base is crooked, the entire structure will be off-balance. That’s why clean foot alignment is essential for good posture.
The way to improve stamina and prevent injury is to reintroduce mobility into the ankle. As the ankle bends, it permits the knee to bend. This is how flexibility is introduced into the dried-up, atrophied muscle chain. The amazing thing is that muscles respond extremely rapidly to stretching. The pulling is relieved by newfound flexibility of the muscles, which in turn leads to the chronic injuries disappearing.
Miranda Esmonde-White
Full Body
The simplest and most effective way to recruit all the bones is by doing large, full-body movements using the weight of your body as the load on the bones. Using our own body removes the risk of compression. Additionally, large, sweeping movements drive blood into the bones delivering rich calcium while strengthening and lengthening.
If your bones are out of whack (like mine), it will feel awkward at first. Along with your bones and posture, proprioception is going to be off. The body will try to pull back into misalignment with false cues. This is where it good to know the difference between sharp, shooting (bad) pain and pain that comes from tugging on connection tissue and stretching out compression.
Give it time. We didn’t get here overnight. It may take days, weeks or months. Rest assured that your patience will pay dividends by rewarding you with sleek body lines, increased mobility and gorgeous posture.
