How to Make Sure Your Body is Ready for Exercise
By Sara Butler
Exercise is one of the pillars of good health. Your chiropractor will be happy to tell you how much exercise benefits your health and helps to keep your body balanced and healthy. But if it’s been a while since you got your body moving, going out and attempting to recreate the Rocky montage might just result in injury – and that’s something everyone wants to avoid. Here are the things you need to make sure of in order to ensure your body is prepared for exercise.
Neutral Feet
Your feet provide a foundation for all you do, and a faulty foundation can lead to problems all over! The goal of running, walking and standing should be for your feet to be able to maintain a neutral position. Your foot should not roll inward (pronation) or outward (supination), nor should they point in toward one another or out away from one another. You also don’t want one foot to turn out while the other is neutral. Any of these positions can cause a problem with your ankles, knees, hips and lower back.
Many people think orthotics will cure their feet issues, but you want to correct the problem without depending on a device to do it for you. The answer is to strengthen your feet and your whole body in order to the problem. Your chiropractor can evaluate how you stand, walk, run, and help you determine if your foot is neutral or not. Then the doctor will help you find ways to fix it.
Supple Spine
People today tend to spend a lot of time with their arms out in front of them. From typing at the computer to holding tablets or cell phones, your spine is constantly in a head forward posture that puts a lot of strain on the mid-back and can lead to issues with mobility. You need to find ways to counteract the time you spend in this posture.
Your chiropractor can help you develop an exercise program that can help to reverse the impact of this type of posture on your body and restore mobility and suppleness to your spine.
Hip Flexion
Another byproduct of that entire time spent sitting down is the shortening of a group of muscles in your hips called the hip flexors. In order to be able to exercise appropriately, you need to have at least 120 degrees of hip flexion on each side. This range of motion will help you to stay balanced and also help you to avoid injury. Again, your chiropractor can help you figure out if your hip flexors have enough range of motion and what you can do about it if they don’t.
Before you start any new exercise regimen you should consult a medical professional, such as your chiropractor, in order to make sure you are healthy enough to engage in such activity. So come into The Joint Chiropractic for an assessment today!
