Brain Training, habits part 2

This is not usually a painful or obvious process because your brain adapts to the changes in the soft tissues and the lack of movement and you just keep on going. -Habits, part 1

In the last post I discussed how your body changes in response to repetitive tasks or staying in one position for too long, but the other thing to know is that your brain also changes when you don’t move enough. You know that catchy tagline, “Sitting is the new smoking”? The last post and this one together give you an explanation that is hopefully more helpful than vilifying the necessary act of sitting. A more accurate tagline might be “regularly staying in any position too long and chronic lack of movement create vulnerability to pain and disease.” Not as catchy, I know. But stay with me and I will explain why this is important to you. Basically, to move safely when you want to do something demanding, you have to move regularly to practice the things you want to do in a more controlled environment.

Your brain is your control center for everything, but it needs information from your body to do a good job. Information flows in through specialized nerves in muscles, tendons and joints and helps your brain know where you are in space and how you are moving. As a result, your brain can send instructions to your body to both start and control movement. This is called neuromotor control. Why does this matter? If your brain doesn't get regular input from your body—primarily provided by movement—then you are increasingly vulnerable to poorly coordinated control of your body when you decide to move. And that can cause many day-to-day injuries. For example, a tiny shift in how quickly a muscle is activated to protect a joint during activity could be the difference between a painful lower back episode and going normally about your day.

Here is the good news: To make daily life efficient, the brain works in patterns and shortcuts. The more you practice any activity, mental or physical, the more you increase your brain’s ability to complete the task. Simply put, “the neurons that fire together, wire together.” If you want to move well, you must move often so that brain-to-body connections are fine-tuned. Your brain needs input and practice to be good at neuromotor control (or any other task).

Example: I have seen many clients over the years with “North Beach injuries”. The story usually goes something like this:

“The sun finally came out and I walked for several miles on North Beach (if you’re not from PT, this is a rocky and uneven PNW-style beach). I felt great that day, but I woke up this morning with terrible low back pain.”

This person then explains that they are employed in a sedentary job or retired, and they don’t exercise much or even move on uneven terrain at all in their daily life.

But they were just walking on the beach, how could that cause an injury?

Neuromotor control in that unfamiliar and unpredictable environment was actually pretty hard because their brain and muscles hadn’t been practicing. So that put strain on joints and soft tissues that lead to an injury. (That’s in addition to the messages from muscles that just plain got overworked.)

That’s all the technical stuff - Now let’s talk about application to daily life. How you apply this should be directly related to your goals. What would you like to be able to able to do?

 If you have been sedentary for a while you may want to start with simple balance exercises.

o   Try standing barefoot in a doorway (so that you can use the doorway to catch yourself if you lose balance).

o   Practice standing on one foot or the other for 30s at a time, and then progress to 30s on each foot with your eyes closed.

The nerves that send sensory information to your brain are particularly dense in your feet (cool design feature!). If you are more sedentary than you would like due to job demands, etc. you can take advantage of the sensitivity of your feet with some quick tools to boost the amount of input into your brain:

o   Try using a lacrosse ball to roll under your feet (do this standing so that you can use a fair amount of pressure), or a half foam roll to stand on and stretch your feet and calves.

o   You can also use an exercise called the cowboy sit (it’s easy to Google) to give your feet a good stretch.

o   Another fun way to wake up your feet is to have a small bowl or bucket and some marbles. Use your feet to pick up marbles from the floor and put them in your bowl (good use of your time and attention during those boring Zoom meetings!).

If you have been walking on even surfaces but would like to work on trail hiking:

o   Try regularly walking barefoot in your yard or on an easy trail/beach (oh think of the spring mud between your toes!) or finding a mildly uneven trail to use for some of your walks, and then gradually increase the difficulty of your terrain. The key is to give your brain-body connection graded exposure to the desired demand.

On a more sophisticated level like designing a workout program, you can start to combine the brain training with your mobility and strength training that we touched on in the last post.

There are relatively small things to consider like: training barefoot when you can or using a lacrosse ball to roll your feet between sets.

On a bigger scale, consider designing your strength workouts to include the fundamental human movements (squat, hinge, lunge, push, pull, carry and I like to add anti-rotation) so that you can practice all of those regularly in a relatively controlled environment.

Combined with mobility (or flexibility) work, this becomes your “brain and body training” to go do the things that you really want to do. None of this has to be hard-core gym rat style training (but it can be!). If you need help, please reach out anytime.

You can do this at any level of fitness, and if you are feeling unconditioned or uncoordinated, this is especially for you because you will be able to quickly see changes in your quality of life. You can totally do it, and you can easily do it without going to a gym if that is more comfortable for you.

Let’s talk about the take-home message from this post:  All of us would like to be able to count on our bodies to complete daily activities without fear, pain or limitation.  Many of us have goals that impose even greater demands on our brains and bodies. Modern life is often more sedentary than is healthy for us. We must be mindful of our need for regular movement to attain or maintain health and well-being. A good plan for that has guiding principles but will look different for each person. This is easy for some people who have naturally gravitated toward movement throughout their lives, and much harder for others who have been more sedentary, but training your brain and body can be designed to be fun and beneficial for everyone.