Using the Feet & Legs Efficiently for Improving Posture and Enhancing Exercise & Sports
by Herald,
a NYC Pilates professional & Backbone and Wingspan posture expert
This new enhanced-with-interactive-illustrations-and-videos e-book is now available on the iTunes Store and viewed on iBooks.
Click Here for the preview page of the book where you can see screenshots as well as view a full preview of the book or download the preview as well as purchase your copy of this comprehensive e-book.
Below is a video showing snippets from several of the videos which teach how to walk more gracefully in high heels, how to take work and weight out of the toes and the metatarsal or ball parts of the foot by using the heel more efficiently. However, the book isn't "sole"-ly for women - or even just for women who wear high heels. There are many stretches for calves and hamstrings and the ITB or IlioTibialBand which men will get great benefit from.
As well, there is information on relieving painful plantar fasciitis:
and guidance for using the hamstrings strength efficiently for such simple but sometimes challenging pedestrian activities as climbing stairs:
and of course, creating an elongated spinal line for improved posture - which comes from well-aligning the heels with the paired points along the back body.
Our High Heel Recovery Clinic has received an amazing rave from an attendee from our very first clinic around this time last year in our studio in NYC.
Our approach combines elements of Pilates and other movement-oriented exercise.
If you are interested in future clinics,
please comment on this post, or email herald@backboneandwingspan.com
I took the How to Walk in High Heels Clinic with my Aunt Sue this past spring. I have always loved high heels, but could never manage to walk on them for more than an hour before taking this clinic.
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This clinic really helped me to be able to walk in heels, and I could feel the difference immediately while still in the clinic!
The clinic was not only extremely beneficial, but fun as well! Since the clinic I have been able to finally take the city by storm and walk around in my heels without wanting to switch to flats.
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The way I learned to carry myself in the clinic has allowed me to wear high heels all day and not even feel them.
Just this past Thanksgiving my Aunt Sue was so impressed that I was able to wear 6 inch high heeled boots the entire day, and even managed to go on a hike in the woods in them! Although I don't recommend going hiking in heels normally, I was actually able to do it and not kill myself!
"I would highly recommend this clinic to anyone woman who wants to be able to buy great heels and actually be able to walk in them."
- MeganForlines
Thanks so much Megan!
Hope you still are pain-free in any height of heels you choose! - Herald
Read an article in which Megan is interviewed and quoted by CNN.com Health reporter Madison Park. Here's what she said about her the successful experience in using what she learned in the clinic:
The approach to Pilates exercise using the methodology of
Backbone and Wingspan in Manhattan
whether on the trapeze table or the reformer includes using imagery to forge the kind of mind-body connection that:
enhances free spinal movement, accesses deep core strength,
and
encourages the person studying here to be able to use the imagery for
sports, stretching, exercise, and posture performed outside of the studio.
Imagery is what creates
the most instantaneous and most sustainable changes in the body despite our tendencies to doubt or even dispel subtlety.
In a previous post I wrote about one type of wave
and it's potential effect on the feet and spine:
ocean waves that roll on to the shore are immediately
drawn back into the sea where they emerged from.
There is a great informative force in this element of surf.
The retreating surf can be used either actually or imaginatively to help you to better understand how you connect to the supportive power of the heels in the back body by releasing the tendons in the front of the ankle.
You can see with your eyes as well as feel with your feet the waves of the sea,
but there are countless unseen waves
that affect our lives in every moment:
thought waves, brain waves, cellular waves.
If only we could trust that the thought waves we send from our minds into the universe and from our minds into our bodies have the unquestionable ability to be helpful to understanding and empowering ourselves.
The way that we unquestionably trust that when we press send on our cell phones that the signal goes through and gets us connected can get us connected in our own physical bodies as well.
Learn to trust that your imagination is key to your everyday postural support:
If your back and feet are killing you while standing in stilettos at a party, or while you're waiting for the bus, or while you're jogging along the sidewalk, it is awkward to have to remove your shoes, and implausible to be able to lay down on the dance floor or your host's carpeted foyer or on a street corner to perform some stretching exercises.
But you can, in any social scene, sport or exercise endeavor, send thoughts of softening to the toes, top of the foot, and front of the ankle as if the gentle rushing of the ocean's retreating surf were washing back over the tops of the feet.
This softening of the entire front of the foot (everything extending in front of the ankle) gives you the wave energy forward in order to be able to advance in your steps
But the body works in balance:
It is most efficient, and you will find the most ease, freedom, and power to your steps:
if you can imaginatively extend a wave energy also with your heel,
even with your feet still in your heels..........................
This imagery would be appropriate for partying all night,
for marathon running,
for performing the challenging chair pose in yoga,
as well as for practicing roll up exercises
on the Pilates trapeze table here at Backbone and Wingspan.
At this time in the course of human development, it seems that people really wish to believe that their thoughts can change their life circumstances. Hence, the enormous mainstream popularity of The Secret, but also Law Of Attraction by Esther and Jerry Hicks
I thought of the image of my upright spine as being a wave that extended out from above my head and also extended down from below my feet, as opposed to a rod that was constrained in my body.
The emotional wave that washed through my body from imaging this thought of my spine as a wave in two directions led me into a transformational experience.
You can read about it if you like by clicking on to the link above for Everyday Sacred.
Even though I had not been to the ocean in months when I read Elizabeth's writing and commented on it during the month of March, I could recall the sense of oceanic waves that I had experienced in times before at the beach, and I could re-imagine the ocean waves' effect on my spine.
This is a key element of what I would like to put forth to you:
your thought of sensory feelings that you have experienced previously or that you can imagine experiencing are empowering to your body now in this moment.
Thanks so much for reading !
Comments and questions always welcome !
- Herald
Backbone and Wingspan®
Founder and owner and author of Pilates Iconoclast
Healthy joints, elastic muscle tone and more powerful movement become ingrained in the body by performing Pilates exercises or yoga or any movement-oriented exercise regime or sports while using mindful imagery. This can include imagining a sensory experience you haven't yet had that someone else describes to you or by re-imagining an experience you've had in the past. Whatever the seasonal weather happens to be in the city you reside in, you can re-call a beach experience with the elements of sun and very particular way packed sand feels under your feet -or softer sand behind your heels.
Creating elasticity in the ankle tendons in the front of the foot leads to being able to access the muscular tone attached to the back of the leg and the stable hip bone structure that helps to support your spine. Because these ankle tendons are so small and because we tend to stand up by pulling these tendons tight rather than allowing them to fold in, we lose the ability to access the strength of the larger muscles higher up.
Elasticity in these tendons, because they are small, is accomplished primarily through mindful imagery - by what you envision in your mind while you are having to use those tendons. People don't realize that not locking the knees has more to do with accessing the leverage of the powerful part of the foot behind the ankle: the heel - but that levering the heel has to do partly with releasing the tight ankle tendons. There is a letting-go involved, but sometimes sensing softening insn't enough to release a part of the body that is tense and gripping. You have to make subtle space in the ankle - thinking of what's both in front of the ankle and behind the ankle. You have to think of your foot as being more of what you can't directly see - the whole substantial area of bone and cartilege of the heel.
Try this: in a sitting position, cross one ankle over the other knee. Using the fingers of both hands, move the front of the foot back and forth without pulling the tendons back to flex as you may be used to doing when you perform certain exercises. Using the hands to help you move the front of the foot, now look at all of what comprises the part of the foot behind the ankle: the heel.
Now continue to use one hand to help you release the tendons in front of the ankle that actually extend all the way into the toes. Think that these tendons can always flow out the toes and never do they have to pull back tight over the front of the ankle joint. With your other hand, use your fingers to draw the heel back away from the flowing-forward front foot and down away from the ankle joint. Realize you are creating spaciousness in this ankle by letting go of what is tense and overworked - the tiny tendons in the front; while at the same time you are accessing a levering force - a leverage in what is underused and less familiar to you because it's the part of the foot you can't see on yourself usually.
Realize that the heel has movement capacity to draw back - not just pull up into the achilles tendon and the calf or push down away from the calf - but that the heel can softly but definitely draw back behind the ankle as long as the tendon in front of the ankle are flowing forward out the toes. You can think that the heel can hinge away or hinge back from all of the rest of the foot and lower leg.
Start to sense this whole heel as substantial - not thinking of the heel as just the tiny part that is under the achilles tendon, but an entire sphere or ball shape that has the capacity to lever. This is a crucial capacity or quality of subtle movement to develop and enhance so that you are able to call upon it when you are in a standing position or when your foot is encased in any kind of shoe, be it a sports sneaker or a high heel - the heel must become a force of leverage for you to connect to the power of the hamstrings up to the sits bones, because then the weight of the pelvis can drop softly down on to those sits bones. This is pelvic stabilization: not just strengthening a supportive muscular connection, but developing relationship between a tiny part of your body granting access to a more-supportive part.
So now when you stand, you won't be standing up overusing the tiny tendons in front of the ankle. So now when you have to bend the knees to perform a lunging exercise or squats at the gym or chair pose in yoga class, you can initiate from the substantial force of the drawing-back heel or the heel leverage or the "heeling."
This is what a mind-body connection is: using and trusting your imagination and mindfulness as an asset to your body that trumps muscular exertion to affect the wayyou stand, walk, and exercise in ways that are not possible by trying.
Using imagery is the way in which you will make the most profound, sustainable, and long-lasting changes to your body...
If you tense and overuse the tendons in the front of the
ankle because your high heels push you forward into the balls of your feet and toes,
or
if you run by overusing the tightened tops of your feet because you are thinking of lifting and lowering the foot to get you where you are going,
or
you pull the toes back into a hard flex when exercising because you think you have a "no pain - no gain" attitude towards getting stronger.
you will needlessly deprive yourself of the hugely supportive power of the
heel
which connects to the powerful back body muscles:
hamstrings, glutes, and lats.
With Backbone and Wingspan Foot Function for Spinal Support principles, mind-body connections are forged using the back-body posture connections that employ the use of the heel.
In order for the heel to come into play to direct the entire line of backside connections which support the spine, the tendons on the front of the ankle must be released.
Use sea, surf and sand imagery to help release these tendons while performing bending movements of the ankle, knee, and hip or even when you have to sit at your desk for long periods of time. These sensory images from the beach experience are often very vivid sensory experiences that everyone has had and can recall.
The images are helpful because as the tendons are released in the front, you can expand the heel in the back and begin to avail the body of the skeletal stability of the sits bones and the muscular support of the powerful hamstrings along the back of the leg and the lat muscles on either side of the spine which will allow you to feel the empowerment of being "laid back" even when you believe you have to "sit up straight."
Now as to notions of the ocean that can help you to soften those tendons, and assuage those tendon's "tendency" to grab and grip.......
I spent ten days this summer on an island in which my intentions were to rest, write, and study how the sea related to my feet.
I thought that I would take pictures of my soles above the undulation of gentle waves coming to shore on a day when the surf was not so rough.
I found that it was the retreating surf that helped me better under-stand my feet.
Can You Dig It?
Try the following, whether you are lucky enough to be going to the beach on a winter's vacation or
even if you have to imagine the last time you had the waves lapping at your ankles.
When you bend the knees, rather than the bend coming from a forward movement of your knee-caps,
feel that the knee bend comes from expanding through the back of the heel.
The deeper you bend, the more you have to soften the tendons so that you can create a fold in the front of the ankle.
The retreating surf helps with this softening and folding:
the water rushing back to the sea creates a flowing force in the front of the ankle that can help to ease and crease those tendons, and the water will dig out the sand underneath the back of the heel.
So then the next time you are riding your bike,
and your hip flexors get tight,
see if you are also grabbing the tendons
in the front of the ankle.
Next time you take yoga, and you are performing a lunge with a deep-knee bend,
and your muscles on the tops of your thighs are screaming,
or
the next time you have your feet on the
Pilates Reformer Footbar
try releasing the tendon in the front of the ankle by
envisioning the retreating surf flowing over your feet, and
being drawn forcefully back to the sea.
In releasing the tendons in the front of the foot, you will be availed of the expansion of the heel, which will connect to the hamstrings, sits bones, and the backs of the hips. All of these forces: hamstrings, sits bones, and the backs of the hips are the paired places in the back body area which are on either side of the line of the spine.
In this way, the Heels, Hamstrings, and Hips provide support for the spine.
Of course this imagery can also work for you whether you are wearing
sneakers, stilettos, or any kind of shoe and
whether you are dancing, jogging, or waiting for the bus.
Speaking of sea and wave imagery, my practice and teaching have been greatly influenced by my teacher, Elizabeth Andes-Bell,
who uses many nature-oriented images in her class and her other teachings.
For my next post, I will write about another way to discover notions of the ocean in relating how Elizabeth's weblog
He explains that the back of the heel is a part of our bodies that needs some... um, healing..."
September 15th, 2009
So wrote reporter and photographer Andrea Silenzi of WNYC Radio in her blog posting on the Culture page of their website.
"Putting the Heel in Healing..."
Here are some great photographs taken by Andrea showing the different stages of the clinic:
leveraging the heels
exploring buoyancy using exercises on stability balls
Also check out this great quote about the supportive potential of the
top-of-the-hamstring-tethering and core-strengthening principles experienced
in the clinic by Kendall Farr, fashion stylist and author.
Andrea Silenzi; "After the workshop, participants put their heels back on and took a walk around the room. Kendall Farr of Brooklyn felt that with the stretches, she could now consider wearing her red, patent leather pumps to an upcoming wedding instead of her old faithfuls."
Kendall Farr: "I’m a stylist and I saw these shoes on a shoot, and I said to my client, Yeah, I could just about crack my head open over those. And he said, well, alright, then take them. But here’s the thing. Because they’re the red patent leather, I feel a little like Dorothy, but I also feel like I am on my way to drinks at Trevi fountain or something, or meeting someone on the Spanish Steps. Now they won’t make me cry and sob and beg for mercy."
Kendall's Red Strappy Heels
Kendall has her own great blog which at the moment is featuring shoes and boots of the fall season. Her website as well has a section "Ask Kendall" in which she answers style questions with savvy.
Click below to read her blog post about this High Heel Recovery Clinic
Because Tim is writing a book about High Heel Healing, he's getting feedback from people who could not attend the clinic, but whohe could send a detailed description of an exercise and see what the response is:
His friend and fellow blogger,
Deb Markanton
who lives in L.A. has this to say about the Suspension Bridge exercise:
"Oooh Tim, this is very good! I love the imagery. It makes perfect sense and I was able to read it once and do it myself. Wow, that is some stretch. And it really makes a difference in how you stand."
Here: try it for yourself, the way Deb did!
If you don't have a stability ball, you can just put your heels on an upholstered surface that is not too squishy, like a chair or an ottoman.
Lie down on your back on a mat or soft flooring,
and place the backside of the heels of your feet on a stability ball.
Position your body so that the knees are bent with the thigh bones perpendicular to the floor. Establish what would be a sitting position, only you are laying down on your back
Don't flatten your lower back - instead, lengthen the tail.
Don't flex the feet, instead, find the contact of the heels into the ball
Place the feet together and allow the top sides of the feet and the toes to soften and drape into a forward curve
Press gently but definitely with the backsides of the heels into the ball in a way in which your body senses the buoyancy of the ball, and you sense your body's own potential to be buoyant
Place your fingers on your sit bones to discover how the hamstrings on each leg connect on to each sit bone, as if the sit bones are little anchors for the hamstrings to tether down on to, like the way cords on a tent tether down to the spikes in the ground
Perform the bridge by using the gentle force of the heels down into the ball to initiate the tethering of the hamstrings down on to the sit bones. It is like a pulley system that would suspend a piano off the ground for it to be moved to a higher floor: the cords pull down for the piano to rise. In this case, the cords of the hamstrings tether down to the sit bones for the pelvis to rise.
Once your body is in the bridge, sense the suspension. The hamstrings are like the swooping cables on a suspension bridge. The cables are tethered to anchors that are fastened down toward the ground. The cables don't lift or hike the bridge up. The cables suspend the bridge so that it is buoyant and has resilience.
These are the sensations you develop in the heels-to-hamstrings-to-sit bones connection: buoyancy in the backsides of the heels and resilience in the giving full length of the hamstrings in order to give your spine suspension.
These sensations along the backside of the body (which begins with the backs of the heels) takes the weight off of the toes and also supports the spine, so you can frolic in your footwear all evening.
To read more about tethering, buoyancy, and suspension and how developing these sensations actually tones and strengthens, check out my previous posts in this High Heel Healing category or other blog postings in Heel & Sole for Foot Pain - my alternate blog.
The principles related through exercises taught on a stability ball give practical application, such as how to wear heels (or really any shoes) in a way that you can not only avoid injury, but actually start a muscular toning process.
I invite you now to read about what other participants of our previous
High Heel Recovery Clinics have raved:
"The HighHeel class provided a nice combination of theory and exercises with some knock out visuals such as a juice cartoon with one corner smashed in to represent a heel (in a highheel) that had collapsed.
Another unforgettable visual was a plastic sacrum that was held over a person's real sacrum and was then compared to a picture of a stone arch. The topmost stone of the arch enables it to hold its structure
The clinic instructors pointed out that in a similar fashion the sacrum functions to provide stability to the pelvis and upper and lower body.
The level of instruction by all the instructors was excellent." - Sue Rothwell
"We learned the ins and outs of the backbone, the tail bone, why they effect your posture, and why your balance and stability are what makes your feet ache. It’s cause you’re not walkin’ right. We’ll be there again on June 24th to double check our techniques. I have worn heels a couple of times since our private class, and have consciously noticed less pain in my footsies, while using Tim's advice."
Backbone and Wingspanis dedicated to presenting posturally-supportive movement-oriented exercises with Universal Principles of Movement as the underpinnings. In this way, the workout you receive can be sustained in subtle ways more efficiently through the rest of your day, and the simultaneous release-of-tension-while-toning process becomes more second nature.
Backbone and Wingspan features exercises and stretches that are movement and posture oriented, but you certainly can still receive great muscle toning benefits! The truth is that efficient use of the muscles to support the skeleton brings an elastic toning of those muscles because the part of the muscle that attaches to the bone is most often the part of the muscle that needs the most tone!
People's perceptions of Pilates and yoga often don't include mention of the bones - most people think of Pilates as having to do with long and lean muscle tone and core strengthening.
Because Backbone and Wingspan is movement and posture oriented, I approach the people I teach primarily from the bones - the spine, the pelvis, the shoulder girdle.
In our upcoming High Heel Recovery Clinic, we will hone our knowledge and utilization of two often-overlooked bones. They're not elusive just because you can't see these bones of your own. These are bones at the bottom of the pelvis:
the sits bones.
The anatomical term for sits bones is ischial tuberosity, so that signifies that they are tuberous points attached to the ischium - which forms the lower and back part of each half of the pelvis.
The phrase 'bone up' relates to studying aspects of a thing that you wish to pursue - becoming familiar with the elements of some experience you wish to embark upon. You might 'bone up' on a company which has called you in for an interview or you might 'bone up' on an artist who has a show coming up at your favorite museum.
How did that phrase originate?
Why did someone use 'bone' to imply the acquiring of knowledge? Maybe because there is intelligence in your bones. Feeling it in your bones implies a sensing of something - beyond understanding it intellectually.
The bones are obviously deeper than the muscles, so it makes sense that to have a deeper understanding of your body, you'd explore facets of deeper parts of your body than muscles - you'd explore your skeletal system and spine.
However, going deep to the bone takes more imagination and sensitivity than exertion. You learn to sense the weight of the bones and how they respond to gravity.
But with the sits bones you can actually use surface to sense them and direct them down for pelvic stability and to be able to tone the hamstrings.
Truly working deeply from a physical standpoint means that you are conscious of the bones that are the structural framework beneath the muscles, and you know that you can direct parts of the skeleton and the spine using very subtle forces. You can learn to initiate movement from the bones in your body.
If you learn how to use the surface that you're sitting on to direct the sits bones down and a little bit behind you, then the stability of the entire pelvic structure will follow because these sits bones are not separate from the pelvic structure, but simply kind-of knobby points at the bottom of the larger pelvic bones.
or you can think that for the single central spine to be supported,
there are a set of sits bones to stabilize the lower spine
as well as a set of scapula to help suspend the upper spine
but is important to note and to even emphasize that
the way the bones work to help either to stabilize or suspend
is with subtlety
One of Herald's oft-used and favorite 's' word phrases:
"subtlety is sustainable"
In our clinic, we hope to present
an informative experience that
will knock your nylons off !
But just know that if you want to 'bone up' - that the most important bones to become informed of are the bones that you can use your seat to find - because the sits bones will inform your body of a grounded stability that can eventually be transferred into standing and walking and running and cycling movements.
So 'bone up' by learning how the sits bones go down!
Backbone and Wingspan Universal Principles of Movement studio in NYC in our High Heel Recovery Clinic focus on postural support mechanisms that are active and imaginative.
This spring serves to give the sense of uncoiling potential in the Achilles tendon necessary especially in high heels
It is not just in that our teachers employ imaginative methods towards exercise and fitness, health and healing that is movement oriented, but that the client's own imagination is called forth within each Pilates or Feldenkrais or CranioSacral or Physical Therapy session.
Stability balls impart to the body a sense of buoyancy inherent within our spine and joints
Because the changes that the body is able to sustain come from subtle adjustments that the mind and imagination engender, your mind and imagination must be engaged when you are being led through exercises and movements.
For the kind of postural support necessary in getting around without pain in a sidewalk city with a focus towards fashion, the qualities you imagine are potentials within your body are essential.
To get past that frontally-loaded feeling that tends to unavoidably happen in high heels, by first making a few subtle physical and mental adjustments, you can then call upon aspects of your imagination to become buoyantly balanced instead of teetering.
When I think of the term buoyant I think of a buoy softly bouncing up and down in the bay - I can see the top half of buoy above the water, obviously, but I know without being able to see it that there is another half of the buoy below the water line -
that is what a buoy is - half in and half out of the water - and it bounces.
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That is what we wish to impart to your bodies - that in order to achieve buoyancy in your body there must be an interplay between what is above and what is below - in this case what is above is your sit bone-hamstring connection and it must resonate with what is below which is your heel - that way you access your own buoyancy.
Backbone and Wingspan presents it's next High Heel Recovery Clinic featuring stability ball exercises to simultaneously tone the legs and give more support for the feet and spine.
Also featured will be balance point movements, in which the connection of the heels to the spine - experienced in the exercises while lying down - will be translated into upright posture.
Then your body will understand how to take the same information you have learned with the ball while not having to support the upright weight of the body -
and use that body information to being able to stand upright - despite gravity - and still be able to feel the ease and buoyancy you felt while lying with your back on a mat and with the feet on the ball.
I designed these exercises with the same basic idea of a ballet plié and with similar underlying functionality of the Pilates Reformer. A ballet plié seems like deep knee bend, but it is actually the way you set up the heels-to-hamstrings and heels-to-femur-heads relationships, which are how you access the central spine and core.
The Pilates Reformer is a way to perform plié-type movements, but while lying on the back. This is one reason why Pilates became so popular with dancers is that an injured dancer can still perform some of "the barre" that is an everyday practice without vertical demands of gravity and balance in having to stand at the barre.
So with the High Heel Recovery Clinic stability ball exercise of leg extensions, you are performing a ballet plié-type movement as well as a Pilates Reformer-type movement. But these movements are very different than calisthenic-type knee-bends or squats the way most people do them at the gym.
These heel-on-stability-ball exercises are designed to integrate the heels-to-hamstrings connection using the resilient surface of the ball behind the heel.
When the backsides of the heels feel the ball behind them, it informs the sensations of buoyancy that can come when the muscles and the skeleton - especially each big femur bone and the force of the three hamstrings in the backside of the leg - directly related to each femur bone - are working in sync.
Then you take this ease and bounce and buoyancy into improving the way that you walk - especially the way that you walk in high heels. You are not walking with stronger hamstrings or tighter hamstrings or looser hamstrings.
You're walking with hamstrings that - in the way they tether to the sits bones from the heel leverage - have integrated the power of the entire foot, leg and hip structure into the core.
This is one of the essences of integration
- you incorporate elements from exercise - the stability ball leg extensions for instance -
into something more of a practice -
such as the balance point movements - into understanding the actual posture improvement.
It's different than thinking - "I just worked on my hamstrings strength and got better posture."
It's that you take sensations and images that arise during moments the body is working better in the exercises and then you are able to use the same good-feeling sensations in your posture and walking.
It's very important that you don't feel that you have to struggle in exercise in order to strengthen muscular support for the skeleton.
When you use the muscles in relationship to the skeleton, which has to do with directing muscle length towards and on to specific points of skeletal stability - you are becoming more efficient simply because you are utilizing entire lengths of muscle rather than building up bunches of muscle. In the case of the leg extensions, which here we perform here with a ball, but the same principle helps squats, leg presses, and chair pose in yoga, you become familiar with sits bones as stable points that you can use all the time.
Sits bones are for sitting, of course - some people call them sitting bones - but also you use sits bones to exercise, to stand and to walk. Your perception of your legs changes from thinking you have these thighs hanging off the hip flexors that just lift and lower or bend and straighten - to realizing that there's an initiating from with the gentle force of the heel going back that activates the lengthening of another backside force - the hamstrings - on to the backside point of stability - the sits bone.
The integration of this backside system of an anchoring foot point and anchoring pelvic point with a long and elastic force between the skeletal points is stronger working in sync than it is when muscles hold the legs bones in place or the muscles hike the legs up and down to walk or shove the legs back to extend or stand.
In order to organize the information for this next High Heel Recovery Clinic, I decided to focus especially on one image and one word.
The image I wished to incorporate into the clinic was that of a suspension bridge.
And I also wished to introduce a word I had been using already with my one-on-one students - a word that occurred to me trying to describe the body mechanics of how the hamstrings attach to sit bones.
That word is tether -
or as is maybe more functional:
tethering of the hamstrings.
I endeavor almost always to incorporate in my daily one-on-one teaching words that relay the essences of physical sensations. Telling people to engage the hamstrings, athough technically truthful, does not relay a direction or a quality or degree of muscular action. There is not much essence to the word engage, and most people pull or squeeze muscles they are told to engage.
So I am using suspension bridge as an image when we teach the bridge exercise on the stability ball because of how the cables swoop from one point to another to create the stability of the structure..... and I am employing the sensory word tethering to describe the quality of body mechanics in what the hamstrings do and how the hamstrings feel in order to stretch on to
the sit bones in a similar way as these cables are tethered from one part of the bridge to another in the photo below.
Think of having hamstrings that serve the same function as the suspension cables on a
bridge, and that in extending allowing for resilience and buoyancy - desirable
sensations to have when walking in high heels.
Since I began to use the
term "tethering" in my teaching, one teacher questioned me as to what exactly the term tethering means.
A tether is a cord, fixture, or signal that anchors something movable to a reference point which may be fixed or moving.
So you could tether balloons or a boat or a bridge or a bull dog. In a different sense you can tether an internet connection.
I have found in my teaching that
all images and verbal cues have the potential to deepen someone' s
experience the more that the images are expanded upon and not just repeated. Depending on someone's personal experience, thinking of a balloon tether for the sense of their hamstrings may work better than boat tether. But the important thing is that we're working the muscle-to-skeleton or hamstring-to-sits-bone connection with a word that conveys a sense of something stable or anchored which is very different than just saying engage your hamstrings.
Another
thing that uses tethering for suspension is a tent. When you pitch a
tent there are cords which must be tethered by extending them down from
the top of the tent and staking them into the ground.
The tethering
stabilizes the tent so that the sides and top can be suspended.
The
opposite of tether is slack. In our clinic I hope to relate to each
participant how to literally - as well as physically - "take up the
slack."
The part of the hamstrings that tends to slacken is where the muscles attach on to the sit bone.
The sits bone relates directly to the
hamstrings because although different parts of the knee are the lower attachments for the hamstrings, all three hamstrings on each leg attach on to
the sit bone.
So what worked for one person in terms of the term tether was to think about having three balloons with three strings attached and gathering the strings together in her hand.
The
hamstrings also relate to the heel in that in the same way the hamstrings need
to be drawn back or tethered on to the sit bone, the heel bone also needs
to be drawn back away from the ankle with the same subtle but powerful
force as the hamstrings tethering back to the sits bone.
The drawing back force of the
heels back away from the ankle and the hamstrings back on to the sits bone is with the same direction but to a different
degree.
This is just one way the body is designed so well and built so
brilliantly: to be in balance through these complementary forces.
To feel the full supportive force of the back of the leg it
is vital to connect what needs support - the heel - with what is
sizable enough to give the suspended force necessary to take the body's weight off of the feet - which is the three hamstrings
attached up on to the sit bone.
These three hamstrings can only be brought together into their fullest potential
supportive force when they are taken out their slacking tendency and
gathered together to tether.
The three hamstrings tend to be over-toned and tight in the belly part of the muscle - which is more towards the knee. This is part of the reason for lack of tone in the area around the butt and hips commonly referred to as saddlebags.
When the hamstrings are tight towards the knee, they will be slack and untoned near the sits bones, which as discussed above is part of the reason why getting strong support in high heels is so challenging. But when the top part of the hamstrings is toned because it is being tethered actively up on to the stability of the sits bone, then the glutes and other muscles around the hamstrings-sits-bones connection will be able to come into play and tone better as well.
As well, the connective tissue or fascia will be less tight and bunched up when the hamstrings are stabilized to the sits bones. And although there is little medical proof of any procedure being effective in reducing cellulite, because cellulite is caused by the fat pushing up through the connective tissue, if the connective tissue itself is less tight and bunched-up, you'll have alot more smoothing-out of that area in terms of muscle tightness and cellulite-causing restricted fascia.
But what must happen first is the strength of the hamstrings tethering up to the stability of the sits bones. Then you can start working on saddlebag tone.
In the future, I will write a post more-focused on how fascia plays a role in cellulite, and how to stretch deep muscles in the hips to help tight fascia release and thus potentially smooth-out fascia as well as cellulite.
Thanks for reading. Please comment or send me a question at
In Backbone and Wingspan's approach to helping women understand more supportive places in the body to access when wearing high heels, the perfect balance between tone, efficient movement support, and release of tightness or pain is what we shoot for in each exercise.
There are several ways of performing a bridging movement to access strength, resilience, balance and weight distribution to grant relief of pain in high heels.
Because we tend to overuse the knees to bend and extend the legs, hamstrings become overtoned and tight in the middle part - or belly - of the muscles.
A way to think about bridging that will keep you from overworking the belly part of the hamstring is to visualize the quality of a suspension bridge.
I discuss tethering to a greater degree in the post entitled:
Here I discuss more about mooring and its relationship to tethering, but in my teaching I most often use tether in reference to the hamstrings-to-sits bones. However, understanding a mooring can also help with visualizations.
A mooring is defined as:
any device used to hold secure an object by means of cables, anchors, or lines
Any bridge has a mooring which would be where the cables would be tethered down onto a stable point.
The sitbones can be utilized like moorings for the hamstrings to be tethered to.
What gives the actual bridge suspension are the coiled cables that reach down into the moorings.
What gives the
bridging movement suspension
is tethering the hamstrings
to the sits bones and
uncoiling the calves
into the Achilles and heels.
The sits bones are the moorings which the hamstrings tether to for stability.
For a free printable PDF of the Suspension Bridge Exercise, please
go to my website for Foot Function for Spinal Support and Pain Relief
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