The Impact of Sitting and Why You May Have Been Unsuccessful in the Gym in the Past:
Published via Gript
It is the beginning of the New Year and, (I'm gonna risk pissing off Helen McEntee with some light-hearted hate speech here;) one community is about to become very loud and obnoxious; the fitness community.
From endless social media posts rehashing the New Year, New Me dribble, to Dr. Muiris Houston's article in The Irish Times suggesting your New Year’s resolutions are so futile that you might as well not even begin, you can be excused if you too find the entire fitness community and everything pertaining to it particularly obnoxious at this time of year....(or in general).
Some, (I admit not all) of this exasperation with the fitness community stems from a number of root issues;
1. The fitness community consistently puts its worst foot forward despite its inherent value and importance in society. With a rising national health care bill annually, rising insurance costs and soaring levels of obesity and inactivity, there is little doubt that the gym industry has a role to play in combating these issues. However, a cursory glance would have you believe that they are more concerned with having their fragile egos stroked and validated online by complete strangers than actually aiding the public.
2. Like most communities these days, a large amount of interactions between fitness community members takes place online, and like everything online, these communities fall victim to algorithms that promote controversy, sensationalism and obnoxiousness. I have said in the past that most fitness accounts are more akin to an Onlyfans soft porn account than a go-to resource to promote or disseminate health-related information.
3. The gym industry is primarily staffed by young adults, and although some might argue it is a young man or woman’s game, it results in massive misunderstandings regarding how to effectively treat almost anybody over the age of 35, let alone senior aged individuals with typical age related physical issues such as declining mobility levels, joint replacements, osteoporosis or herniated disks.
4. But one undoubtable reason for exasperation with the gym and the gym community is that for so many people, joining a gym and even regularly attending a gym does not by any stretch of the imagination guarantee any substantial results. Dr. Houston is correct on that note, I concede.
Many people, (and I daresay most) can regularly attend a gym or fitness class for even multiple years and see no substantial results in terms of weight, mobility, posture, or pain management.
Why is this?
Well, in the 21st century humans live a shockingly sedentary lifestyle. And I mean shockingly. Statistics from the HSE suggest that only 32% of the population is sufficiently active. And I’ll be honest with you; the definition, and therefore the standard of ‘sufficiently active’ isn’t exactly the clearest or the highest. The HSE suggests that 2 and a half hours per week is ‘sufficiently active to maintain your health’. I cannot speak for you, but I am sceptical of that figure.
Because of our incredibly inactive lifestyles, we are spending far too much time sitting. Now, sitting is considered a physiological stress as it is not a ‘natural bio-mechanical movement or non-movement’, and as we are sitting too much, our exposure to this stress increases over time.
However, the human body is resourceful and will adapt according to lines of physiological stress (for better or worse). When we have this repetitive movement (or non-movement in this case) such as sitting, this adaptation causes muscles and other soft tissues to remodel to become stronger in the direction of stress.
This typically causes an imbalance of strength to weakness in the body’s joints, resulting in the loss of both joint mobility and joint stability, alongside pain in one of these 3 areas of the body: the lower back, the knees and shoulder/neck pain.
While the body is undergoing its forced remodelling due to an over exposure to sitting, typically the hip, thoracic spine (mid-spine) and gleno-humeral (shoulder) joints begin to gradually lose their mobility, and therefore, their functionality.
Simultaneously, the knee joint, lumbar spine (lower spine) and scapula joint will slowly begin to lose their inherent stability, and therefore their intended functionality.
When the aforementioned joints lose their mobility and stability, an individual will experience not only the pain mentioned above in the lower back, knees or shoulders/neck, but also will begin to find it difficult to move their body and their body’s joints through their joints full Range of Motion (R.o.M.). Basically a physical impingement or mobility restriction will act as a blockade preventing a limb or a joint from moving fully, fluidly and stably from Point A to Point B.
And if a limb or joint cannot move through its full Range of Motion (from A to B), then the muscles attached to that joint cannot be utilised to their full capacity, as proven by Kubo et. al and Francois Billaut of the Victory University. This means that when an immobile person goes to the gym and does any given exercise, the likelihood is that they will use a fraction of the muscle mass as a sufficiently mobile person would use to perform the same exercise, as an immobile person cannot actually access the motion required to complete the exercise. This results in an hour in the gym of half completed repetitions and, of course, half the results.
What does immobility actually look like in the body and how to spot it?
Well, to name a few easy and clear-cut examples;
· a loss of hip mobility will result in both of the big toes flaring out sideways when you walk forward (a bit like Charlie Chaplin!). Walking gait is a huge signifier of hip mobility, or lack thereof.
· a loss of hip mobility will also be evident if you cannot sit comfortably in a deep squatting position while maintaining your heels fully on the floor.
· a loss of shoulder mobility will result in hunched shoulders and poor posture.
· a loss of shoulder mobility will also result in the inability to extend your arms vertically to the ceiling without bending (or wanting to bend!) your elbow.
· a loss of hip mobility results in the overuse of the knee joint, which causes regular pain in the knees and the breakdown of the knees menisci. Menisci are fibrocartilage rings that are designed to act as shock absorbers while the body is in motion. Due to overuse of the knee and under use of the hip, these cartilage rings break down over time, causing extreme pain and discomfort as the joint is less insulated from external shocks.
So, perhaps some of the above issues describe you and your body at the moment. Now, what to do about it? Well, that’s a long answer for just one article, so perhaps I will briefly outline an answer today, and save my elaboration for another day and article; address your mobility restrictions first and foremost before futilely flying in blind to your local gym and proving Dr Muiris Houston right.
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