Health and wellness blog - Form Fit

take a deeper breath

6/16/2022

Breathing is something we don't often think about, it comes naturally to us and most of us don't believe we are doing anything wrong when we are breathing

but,

what if I told you that you may not be breathing correctly?

Due to how we move through life in our modern world, we are not taking deep breaths often enough which is causing us to fall into a shallow breathing pattern which can create pressure in our core and can lead to back pain, incontinence, and even pelvic floor prolapse.

If you are trying to figure out where to start with your breathing I would recommend practicing 360 breathing to start getting those ribs to move more effectively.

You may notice that when you practice this breathing pattern you are not getting a full breath into your back. Here are two things you can do to start getting that back rib expansion and further rib mobility.

Once you begin practicing this type of breathing you should feel some release in your low back and also feel a bit more mobile in your thoracic (rib) area.

If you would like to practice more breathing exercises take a look at our Mini-Course

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Pain from driving

6/12/2022

pain while driving

Have you ever noticed that you get more pains from driving? As a mom we spend so much time in our car and this can definitely lead to pain in our knee, hips, low back, and even ankles. And as much as our cars are stating they are ergonomically made for us, they are designed for comfort which in turn can cause us to get in this rounded forward position that we are in for hours on hours per day.

Here I will provide you with a few tips to help you sit up straighter in your car to help ease some of these minor and nagging aches and pains.

And since so many of us spend a lot of extra time in the car, we need to use this time wisely. Here are a few things you can practice while you are driving or sitting and waiting in your car that will help with those nagging aches and pains.

Make sure to focus on these things while you drive:

Make sure your feet are equal distance-right foot on the gas, left foot on the foot rest
Doing the above will help the hips to remain in neutral (ensure that you are reaching forward with one hip to reach the pedal), if you are bring the seat closer to the pedals
Try to create a neutral pelvis, adding just a bit of lumbar support to create the small S curve in the lower back
While slightly tucking your chin, let your head rest back on the head rest
Adjust your mirror as soon as you get in the car, so that as you begin driving and relaxing you will notice that you no longer see the mirror; this will be your reminder to lengthen back up again.

If you are looking for more posture tips and ways to stack movement into your daily life than I would recommend checking out our Membership where we provide you with posture tips and exercises, workout for the busy mom, and delicious family meal plans.

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Helping you identify and understand the reasons why you are leaking urine

6/3/2022

If you are leaking urine (incontinence) you may have heard this is just normal as you get older, or after having kids; but this definitely doesn't make you feel any better. You may have heard that only surgery will keep this from happening and you are feeling discouraged.

I want to let you know that it doesn't have to be this way!

I want to share with you the two types of incontinence and some things you can do to help.

Stress Incontinence is leaking urine when you laugh, sneeze, or cough or when you jump, walk, or run. This type of incontinence has to do with how you manage pressure within your core and how your posture plays a role.
Urge Incontinence is leaking urine when you get close to the bathroom or when you feel the need to go to the bathroom. This is a disconnect between the bladder and the brain and can be fixed with a little bit of retraining.

Urge incontinence is one of the easier fixes as you are working on retraining the brain to help delay the sensation of going to the bathroom.

Make sure you aren't drinking things that stimulate the bladder like caffeine and soda.
Do not dehydrate yourself because you think if you have less to drink you will leak less. In studies there was no decrease in leaking for those hydrated or on the verge of dehydration.
Do not practice going to the bathroom before you leave (to empty out), this confuses the bladder as a signal should occur when the bladder is full.
It is normal to go the bathroom every 2-3 hours, if you are drinking a normal amount of liquids. If you are going every hour, than you will want to practice delaying your bathroom use by only about 5 minutes until that becomes comfortable and then add on another 5 minutes until you are able to get back to every 2-3 hours.
If you feel like you are going to pee your pants if you don't get to the toilet quick enough, I want you to think about doing 3 quick kegels to break the bladder signals and this should delay leaking while you have time to get to the bathroom; or if you know its to early to have to go, delay it by doing something else before heading to the bathroom.

Stress Incontinence is going to take a bit more work as we need to look at how your whole body is moving, how you are sitting, and how you are breathing.

Breathing is where I usually begin because your diaphragm and your pelvic floor work together and if you are not breathing down into your ribs than your pelvic floor is not being worked naturally which isn't providing it it's normal movement (exercise) each and every breath.

The next thing we will need to work on is your posture as how you may be sitting, standing, and moving may be creating pressure down which in turn puts a lot of pressure down on the pelvic floor and organs.

All of this can take some time and practice to get it right and if you feel like you still need help with this than grab our quick course on Incontinence to help you through different exercises and tips to help.

In the meantime when you go out for your next jog or workout, practice these few things to keep from leaking until you strengthen the pelvic floor and work on your posture.

Don't allow your chin to jut out, think slight tuck down to keep the fascial core line engaged
Take a deep breath in and short quick breaths out to help engage the core while jumping
Land soft on the balls of your feet so that you aren't using your joints to absorb the impact

Feel free to reach out to me with any questions you may have as I'm happy to help provide you with tips to help you to start feeling better in your own body. Although leaking is common, it is not normal and there are things you can do to help.

Should You Wear a Waist Trainer after Having a Baby?

3/30/2022

I often receive the question of what do I think about waist trainers or do you recommend I wear an ab splint after having a baby and the short answer is it depends and if you do chose to wear one, please don't wear it for an extended period of time.

Here's the thing, our body is amazing and it has everything we need inside of us. You have muscles deep within your core that go around your body like a corset,

they are your Transverse Abdominis Muscles

and if they are working properly they will hold your organs in like a corset would. They also are natural bracers to protect the low back from pain, if they are working properly.

Unfortunately, after pregnancy these muscles can get stretched out and don't work as effectively as they used to but this doesn't mean that they can't. It just means you need to take a little bit of extra time to get them firing on and working for you again.

So if you need to wear a waist trainer for the first couple of weeks than that is ok, but do not continue much beyond that and here is why.

If you have ever had a cast on, or worn a sling you will know the effects of not using a muscle. It starts to get smaller, weakens, and stops working effectively. This is the same with the muscles around your core. If you are wearing a waist trainer, than it is what is supporting your mid-section all day, rather than allowing the muscles to do that for themselves. I once had a client who wore a corset for years; needless to say she ended up with Diastasis Recti (DR), and very little core strength. We had to work on strengthening her core muscles so that her DR would heal and bring back normal function to her core.

How do we do this?

You will want to start with making sure you are focusing on your posture and breathing to begin with as these are foundational movements that you need to control first before you start doing crunches, sit ups, and planks. If you do not start there, than you may cause more harm than good.

Here are a few breathing exercises that you can try:

Make sure to grab our FREE Posture Guide to help you get started with better posture as well.

FREE Posture Guide

Relieve upper back pain at the shoulder blades

1/13/2022

It is all too common to deal with upper back pain right at the shoulder blades in our daily life. Whether you are lugging a child around all day, carrying heavy bags, sitting at a desk for extended periods of time, or even for those sleeping on their side.

One of the most common things I hear from my clients is they are dealing with pain between the shoulder blades and are asking me what they can do to relieve it.

With the way we are moving in today's life, we are definitely helping to create this upper back tension along with the things we are not doing as well, so here I want to be able to provide you with a few things you can do in your everyday life to help alleviate the pain, and some things you can do to help moving your body more so that you don't continue to have the pain.

It is always my goal to help you find ways to do these exercises in your day to day life because who truly has time to spend an hour working on corrective exercises in addition to everything else you have going on. So we will start with things you can do in your car to help alleviate the pain.

First, we are going to work on relieving some of the pain you have while driving in your car, as this is a place where we can really focus on our posture.

Practice tucking chin slightly down towards chest and think about straightening your back (like someone is pulling a string connected to the spine and the back of your head) until the back of your head touches the head rest. This will help with text neck (forward head posture) which helps to create tension in the upper back and shoulders.
Alleviate and release the tension spots near your shoulder blades by keeping a tennis ball in the car. Place the tennis ball in between your back and the seat and gently press into it until you find the tension spots (you may have to move the tennis ball around a bit to find those tight spots). Once you find a tight spot, just press into the area and breathe to relax and release the tension. Do note that if you feel numbing or tingling down the arm or in the hand you have hit a nerve, so just move the ball as nerves don't like be pressed on like that.
Lastly, practice back breathing which will help to alleviate some of the tension that occurs from breathing high up in our chest. Just rest back into your seat and take a deep breath, thinking about expanding the back ribs into the seat.

The next thing I will recommend you do is while you are sitting at your desk or sitting for extended periods of time. The goal is to start finding ways to move throughout your day as the more we are able to move the less tension we will deal with.

First make sure to practice some extension throughout your day, since when we sit we tend to round our shoulders forward creating a lot of tension in our chest. So take your hands and place them behind your head, and then bring your elbows out to the side and lean back, extending your chest up towards the ceiling. If you are able to lean back into the back of the chair to allow for some gravity to pull your upper body back, even better.
Second, make sure to take a couple of minutes throughout your day to reach from side to side, rotationally reaching back behind you, and even stretching your neck from side to side. Honestly, any type of stretching you can do is great and if you are able to stand up and stretch moving around through different positions even better!
Lastly, try to move through different positions while you are sitting at your desk. Try bringing a knee up towards your chest and rest your foot on the chair if you are flexible enough, or even grab something like a stool to place under your desk so that you are changing the position of your legs if you aren't as flexible. Also think about standing for a bit, sitting for a bit, grab a stability ball and use that, or if you have a laptop-take it down to a short stool or table and sit on the floor so that your body is moving through different positions.

There are a ton of other things you can do to help with that upper back pain that includes specific stretches, foam rolling, and just bringing your arms up over your head more but I would also recommend working on strengthening your back.

Now here is the thing. IF you have been a rounded forward posture, I DO NOT recommend going and grabbing heavy weights to start lugging around as that will probably create more problems than good; but if you go slow and work with someone to help you to start working on adding weight slowly while also ensuring you are doing this without compromising form than you will begin to see a drastic difference.

and if you are interested in working on your posture so that you can start to ease the aches and pains then feel free to follow me on YouTube or join our Posture Fix Program.

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Avoid waking up in pain

10/25/2021

avoid waking up in pain

It happens all to often, you feel like you get a great night's sleep but once you jump out of bed, your shoulder or hip begins to ache. We all just end up saying, I slept on it wrong last night and then hope that the next evening it will just fix itself. Unfortunately this tends to be a cycle that we continue over and over again. So what can you do to avoid waking up in pain?

You are going to need to look at how you sleep and try to access what may be causing the problem. In this video I will share with you a few things you can do to hopefully ease the pain if you are a belly or side sleeper.

If you are looking for help with your posture or want to work on getting a better night's sleep, than you will want to grab our Free Posture Guide where we provide you with 3 steps to fix your posture.

Grab the FREE Guide

Check out these other blog's to learn more:

hanging is not just for kids

9/22/2021

Hanging is a very important movement pattern for us as humans. Our shoulders are designed to move in many different directions, they are a very mobile joint, yet, most of the time in our everyday life, they are down at our sides. And we are surprised when they become injured when we start to push heavy things over our heads, like shoulder presses and picking up our children and bringing them up to our hip or something; yet most of us haven't been doing these movements and now we think we can with 10-15 pound weights!

And unfortunately, what happens is for many of us, once we hurt ourselves, we think it's the workout that we've done, or we start to question that we've pushed ourselves too hard. But really, it's not the workout design, that's usually the problem, the problem is more about the lack of movement in your own body. So if you are not moving your arms over your head, often, then please don't go out and start lifting heavy weights over your head. It's just it's they're not ready for it.

Instead take some time to prepare yourself.

One way you can do this, is by putting yourself into a position where your arms are over your head and load that position. You can do this by practicing hanging from a bar. We have a pull up bar in our house, and we use it for our children and for ourselves. And I'm gonna be honest with you, I can't do one single pull up, my upper body strength is not there. So what I use it for instead is just for hanging from, it helps to open up my shoulders, it helps to kind of reset my positioning from being in that rounded forward posture most of the day.

It helps to reset everything, it opens up the shoulder complex, and stretches the muscles in our chest. This is truly one of the best things that you can do for your shoulders. If you deal with impingement, if you deal with mid back rounded shoulder or you've got this forward head posture, that's another thing that just getting into that hanging position can help.

So either grab the kids and head to a park or buy a pull up bar through Amazon and begin using it now. Also make sure your kids are practicing it, as most of them will be able to hold themselves up from a young age, and the adage is true, if you don't use it you lose it. So give them an opportunity to be one up in life by starting them out early with this.

If you are dealing with aches and pains from life as a mom than I would encourage you to grab my FREE E-book on the 3 steps to fix your posture along with 5 quick exercises you can do daily to help you start to feel better.

Grab the free E-book

want to sit on the floor with your kids?

3/22/2021

As a mom we find ourselves on the floor A LOT! Whether it's playing a puzzle or reading a book with them, cleaning up after them, finding something that fell under the couch, or just getting down to their level more we are sitting on the floor quite often and we may start to feel the aches and pains of this. So I wanted to share a few tips with you on how you can sit on the floor more comfortably, how to know when to move, and what is the best way to sit on the floor.

Join our Facebook community for more tips and tricks to help get you moving more and moving more of you!

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Are You Ready to Run?

1/14/2021

4 things you need to be able to do prior to going out for your run

Feet need to be strong enough and you should be able to balance on one foot for 30 seconds (both feet)
Can you keep your hips level or do you sink into your hip
Be able to squat without your knees falling in
Control the pressure in your core, if you have a bread loaf in your belly you should not run

Relieve your Jaw as a jaw clencher

1/7/2021

Massage your jaw by pressing down firmly (not to hard) and allow the fingers to slide down to the jaw line from where the jaw connects to help relieve tension. From there you can place your thumb underneath your jaw and gently press up and and in a circle to massage that area as well.

If you drink smoothies in the morning, grab a hand full of nuts to eat along side of the smoothie to help work the muscles in your jaw as this will help to relieve any tension headaches.

owner:

Courtney is a Mom and movement specialist, who wants to help you move more while raising healthy humans.

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