What muscles are targeted by using your knuckles instead of palms?
I would guess wrist. If you do push ups resting on your palms, your weight is basically on the long bones of your arms; on your knuckles you're holding your arms up by the wrist and moving how your weight is distributed through them as you push up and down.
Not just wrist, hands and forearms too. Also sinews as well as muscles. What any of that is supposed to do for your neck I've no idea.
My guess is that doing it on your fists is also easier on your wrists in general because it lines up all the bones rather than putting weight on your wrist when it's at a roughly ninety degree angle, and that's the main advantage of it. I know that a minor sprain on one of my wrists made it impossible for me to do flat palmed pushups but ones on my knuckles were still ok.
As far as additional difficulty I don't know, but it does put you an inch or two higher which means that you could just be going down an inch or two lower. And right at the bottom of the pushup is where it's most difficult generally.
It's certainly far more difficult. I think taekwondo people do it for strength training to.
He was claiming it would strengthen my scaps. I just don't get how that would help.
ongoing neck pain and stiffness problems
Play on your phone a lot? Where are you holding it? Very common to hold a phone or other device down towards your lap and then drop your chin towards your chest and have your neck all crancked over to look at it. That position puts a lot of stress on your neck.
0.02: see a sports doctor and go for PT.
Downward dog + any kind of chest opener will help, too, especially if you're spending a lot of time hunched (rocking baby, texting)
Regular push-ups make my hands go numb (cubical tunnel issues). Knuckle push-ups do not. Maybe it's a nerve impingement thing?
10: I didn't think she knew/had a diagnosis. Helpful to have one for spine-related thingies.
I've been encouraged to commence medical use of tumeric, for lower back/leg pain. Will report.
Anecdotal, but I have been using turmeric for a couple of months. It hasn't cured my various forms of chronic pain, and i still have episodes where things are worse, but I do have the sense that my background level of pain has improved. I've noticed a few times that I have no pain at all, which is very unusual.
re: 6
I think knuckle push-ups tend to involve a narrow hand position and put the elbows closer to the body. So I could believe it would target slightly different muscles.
I have chronic neck pain, which I'm fairly sure is a combination of driving and mouse use. I should investigate more physical therapy and postural work.
10: They gave me a diagnosis of sorts - compression of various muscles and fascia from sleeping weirdly and caving in forwards from the mastectomy. The exercises are all various chest-opening stretches, which the doc tells the assistant to teach me, and then the assistant is surprised that I seem to be very flexible in those ways, because I'm pretty sure they're not the problem.
The doc thinks that it's due to sleeping on my stomach and the mastectomy. I have tried to tell him that:
- it precedes the mastectomy by months
- I start on my back, sleeping, and was only shifting onto my stomach when my neck hurt too much from sleeping on my back.
These do not seem to affect his diagnosis.
The underlying problem is that everything seems to make my neck incredibly stiff and full of cricks, and I'm sick of whittling away activities that are available to me. It seems like a bad approach to the next 50 years. I'm happy to cease one or two triggering activities but not an endless parade of ordinary activities.
Yoga's for hippies, bro, he typed from a yoga mat.
I have neck tightness that is a result of scars from a neck infection 3 years ago. PT has helped, but the scars still pull hard sometimes. We have to be patient, I guess.
Have you tried Captain Pike's chair from the original Star Trek?
I suppose you've already tried some of the various therapeutic neck pillows without luck?
13: I mentioned the anti-inflammatory effects of turmeric here on this blog, and you said at the time that you ate a fair amount of the stuff.
Does their management team seem heavier on business development than on medical expertise?
http://www.airrosti.com/get-to-know-us/kelly-green-ceo/
Hope you keep getting better!
I'm glad it's working for you. I don't agree with any of their theories either. Usually things that show up after you sleep were developed by stress during the day, and flexibility needs to be accompanied by stabilizing strength.
Do you have what Mike Reinold calls "The classic Upper Body Cross Syndrome of forward head, rounded shoulders."? Usually for that pushups are kind of the opposite of what you need, since you have tight chest muscles pulling your shoulders forward: http://i0.wp.com/www.mikereinold.com/wp-content/uploads/upper-body-cross-syndrome.jpeg?zoom=1.5&resize=276%2C300 Perhaps the muscles are overtight because they're too weak to perform well, and that's why the pushups are helping. Usually "scapular" pushups are more appropriate, because they get your serratus stronger. Lower trapezius exercises are good for developing the strength to straighten up, since you already have the flexibility.
If the upper body is taken care of, then all you have to do is balance your head over your shoulders, which is easier when it's not way forward of your center of gravity. Did they suggest the chin tuck exercise? That seems pretty standard. I think it helps strengthen the deep neck muscles even better if after doing the chin tuck, you nod your head up and down as though there were a dowel rod passing through your ears.
I think your therapy and body knowledge approach is much more likely to work than an X-ray, pills, and avoidance approach. Even though their theories are kind of wooey, the fact they're getting you to notice your body and move all the different muscles is waking up nerves that your brain had forgotten how to use. Eventually it will be able to stabilize you with the proper set of muscles again instead of relying on inappropriate ones.
That stiffness in your neck is what the brain does when it feels a joint is about to move out of a safe range -- tightens everything up to prevent hyperextension. Show the brain that the joint's actually fine and the muscles that can stabilize it aren't inadequate and weak, and everything will relax. At least I hope that's what's going on with you.
Eating turmeric and using it topically might work out differently. Turmeric needs piperine to get into the body effectively if you're eating it, but the same isn't necessarily true when it's used as an ointment. (I mean, maybe it is. I don't know that it is, though, and the problem seems to be digestive enzymes that are blocked by piperine so just rubbing it on the skin wouldn't need that.)
24: You could get the best of both worlds and just plant a big quid of it in your lower lip for most of the day.
I thought that said "squid of it" the first four times I read it. I'm 100% behind this idea, Heebie. Let's get you a Neck Cephalopod stat.
You should put it on your neck though, at least until your lower lip starts hurting.
Or just eat it straight. Piperine isn't hard to get ahold of or anything, and you only need a little.
I just ate a bunch of cheese. What did I cure?
Depends on the cheese. Raclette? That's what I want right now.
I have neck and shoulder problems too. My non quack doctor said I strained my trapezius muscles, and needed to avoid shrugging-type activities. He told me to stop (attempting to do) chin-ups and pull-ups, and do yoga. Cat-cow is especially good as a neck/shoulder exercise. I bought a special memory foam/gel pillow at costco, which helped but isn't the magical cure-all I hoped it would be.
and needed to avoid shrugging-type activities
If somebody asks you a question you don't know the answer to, you just need to pick a response and delivery it assertively.
"TAKE THAT WEAK SHIT OUT OF HERE."
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What was the recent post Heebie put up about urgent vs important? My boss treats all important issues as urgent, consequently if I raise an important issue he says it must be done in a week or it must not be important consequently I am swamped and I now find myself hesitating to raise issues I deem important that I have no time for.
(I'll call it "learned goldbricking")
|>
12/13. Do you have to take the turmeric raw, or can you just eat a lot of curries?
39: Eating curry with turmeric and ginger probably wouldn't be bad. You can also buy pills in health food shops.
To get back to ME, I think this may be right:
Play on your phone a lot? Where are you holding it? Very common to hold a phone or other device down towards your lap and then drop your chin towards your chest and have your neck all crancked over to look at it. That position puts a lot of stress on your neck.
But how are you supposed to, ergonomically, hold your phone when you're killing time standing around? Lift it up to eye level?
I think it's the mouse, too, but over the summer I'm already on a different computer set up.
re: 39
I take a curcumin extract (BCM-95).
But how are you supposed to, ergonomically, hold your phone when you're killing time standing around? Lift it up to eye level?
There's a pretty big difference between holding it so that your wrist is basically against your chest, which requires a completely dropped neck, and holding it so that your upper forearm (almost your elbow) is against your ribcage. Not only is the base angle better, but you can also straighten up your posture some in a way that feels better.
I mean, it may be that awkward eye-level is ergonomically ideal/correct, but I think the critical thing is to not hold the phone tight against your chest. Which maybe you already don't, but if you do, try the other way.
