Health and wellness blog

Pain from driving

6/12/2022

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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Should You Wear a Waist Trainer after Having a Baby?

3/30/2022

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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

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Good Standing POsture

11/10/2021

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Standing posture

Whether you are carrying your little one now or you have had to in the past, you may notice that you now fall into a similar posture when standing. This is very common but can lead to aches and tension in muscles over time. So we need to pay attention to where our body is when holding our children and what standing posture we are in.

Do you notice that you slide your torso to one side?

Do you jut your hip out and sink into it while holding your child or even just standing in line at the grocery store?

Do you turn one foot out while standing?

These are all common positions when standing but it is important that we are moving through different positions throughout the day rather than staying stuck in any one position.

No one position is BAD but over time if that is your "go to" standing posture it can start to tighten and weaken muscles which could cause aches and tension over time. So make sure you are moving in different positions. Hold your child on the other side as often; and if it feels awkward doing this, then even more reason to continue doing it.

If you are interested in more specific information in regards to posture make sure to grab our FREE guide below.

FREE Posture Guide

Other blogs that may interest you:

What is the best sitting posture

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Avoid waking up in pain

10/25/2021

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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:

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hanging is not just for kids

9/22/2021

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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

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Align in your car

11/9/2016

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Do anywhere exercise for rounded shoulders

7/19/2016

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Stack your hips

6/3/2016

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Rounded Shoulder Exercise

8/25/2015

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Rounded shoulders have become a common posture for many of us, due to how much we sit and how much we are looking at screens. Everyone that I work with, in this day and age, seems to have internally rotated shoulders. Some have a more extreme issue which will require self-myofascial release techniques to help bring the shoulders back to neutral, but I feel that most of us just start to round our shoulders due to sitting for long periods of time and dealing with the stressors of life and the environment.

Therefore, this exercise is a basic exercise to help you become more aware of your shoulders and a quick and effective way to stand a little taller. Not only are you now standing taller, but it allows you to get up out of your seat to move. Once you stand up and complete this exercise, take a minute to walk around so that you are activating your core and back muscles to help awaken them and allow them to work through natural movement and proper alignment. The more you get up and just move, the less your shoulders will round naturally.

On a side note-I find it funny that I didn't even know that my kiddos were wrestling in the background :) I knew they were carrying on, but I had no idea. This is my life :)

Here is another thing to practice when it comes to carrying things like grocery bags or a purse along with some exercises to help with rounded shoulders.