Now weight just a minute…

Leave a comment

I’ve noticed more and more weight belts popping up in the gym.  This concerns me.  A lot.  Hear me out.

Our abdominal core muscles are the protectors of our spine.  It’s the core muscles that we want doing the work while we lift, rather than loading the joints of our lower backs.  Core muscles can be thought of as two cylinders, one within the other:

d0113727_5333d2d983c90

The inner core muscles, which are directly attached to the spine, look kind of like the diagram below.  They are the stabilizers of the spine, and the protective, anticipatory muscles that help prevent injury.

inner-core-muscles

It is the outer core muscles, including the six-pack-ab muscles (rectus abdominis), that are the global movers of the lower back and abdomen, and the muscles that help us to push big weight.

rectus-abdominis

Here’s the problem with weight belts.  They allow your inner core muscles to cheat a little bit and still get the same work output.  When you activate your abdominal muscles against a weight belt, you increase your intra-abdominal pressure (IAP) and de-load the spine.  Which is wonderful when you’re going for a new 1-rep max.  It’s not so wonderful when you’re reaching down to put on your sock and your inner core muscles are used to relying on that artificial IAP, and therefore are under-trained and deactivated.  This is where injury happens.

And that’s the problem.  Weight belts help to train your big movers (your outer core), while ignoring your smaller stabilizers (your inner core).

This is the perfect storm for injury; muscular imbalances and stabilizer weakness.  Believe it or not, far more significant lower back injuries are reported in my practice due to everyday activities (picking up a load of laundry, getting out of the car, shovelling snow, brushing teeth, sneezing) than due to injuries in the gym.  In every one of these cases, I can find inner core weakness.  “But I can squat 300lbs, how can I possibly have a weak core?”  Because your outer core has been able to overcome that, often with the help of a weight belt.

Let me be clear: a weight belt can help you in the gym and it can be very useful during max efforts.  But it can definitely hurt you in the long run if used improperly.  It should absolutely NOT be used during a high-rep workout (as in, a typical WOD or met-con).  My stance on this one is black and white.  If you need your weight belt in a WOD, you are doing something wrong.  Scale the weight back.

I’m talking to you, my fellow CrossFitters.  Let’s be smart about this.  Let’s think about long-term spinal health instead of short-term gains.  Take off a plate, take off the weight belt, focus on form.

You’ll thank me later, I promise.

belt_1_1024x1024

I Ran a Race. I Won.

4 Comments

Yesterday I posted a status on my ‘Dr. Ashley Worobec Facebook Page‘ that showed a couple of pictures from my 10k race the day before.

My words were:

“These pictures sum up my weekend, and why I LOVE to run- this is happiness in its truest form. I raced in the 10k Hannukah Hustle in Hamilton on Sunday morning and I won! It wasn’t a big race, and my 43 minutes wasn’t record-breaking, but as 1st female, I even got a bike escort into the finishing chute and got to break through the finish line tape with my daughter in my arms. This first picture shows me stopping to grab her from the wagon (my 5-yr-old son wanted to stay put!) and the second picture shows the post-race bliss (and exhaustion!). Find something you love and throw yourself into it. The benefits will reach far and wide.”

And then I reconsidered, regretted, and thought-twice for a bit.  Should I have put this accomplishment out there, so bravado and look-at-me and I’m-so-great?  That’s not typically my style, not what I’m about, not who I am.  And yet, I really wanted to share this moment with my patients.  That’s the exact purpose for my Dr. Ashley page; a place where my patients can get to know me and what makes me unique in my time outside of the clinic.  It’s where I can share my opinions on topics that I think would be of interest to them- be it fitness, parenting, or healthcare.  I deliberately keep this Page separate from my personal Facebook profile, and that’s the part I’ve been reconsidering; why was I okay with posting this under my professional persona and not my personal?  Answer: because somehow, it seems less show-offy, less girls-shouldn’t-brag, less boastful, and more polite.  Somehow, I’m a degree removed.

All day, I’ve had people congratulating me on the race.  The feedback has been wonderfully huge, and Facebook tells me that almost 2500 people have viewed those pictures.  And yet, I keep downplaying my run, skirting around the compliments, trying to exercise humility after a showy post.  I’ve “aw, shucks”-ed a lot.  “It was just a small race,” I tell people, “I only won because no one fast showed up,” or “I was dying out there.”

Wanna know the truth?

I felt great.  I felt effortless.  I felt invincible.

And it was a small race and none of the super-fasts came to play, but it was still my first win in years, my first bike escort, my first finish-line tape, and the first time my kids saw their mama WIN.  An outright, unequivocal, black-and-white win that they can understand.  They’ve seen me head out into the pre-dawn cold Sunday after Sunday while they stayed in their cozy pj’s.  They’ve heard me huffing and puffing as I pushed all 80lbs of them in the double stroller on my last training run.  They’ve watched me cross off numbers on my training plan and cross off days on the calendar.  And then they saw me win.

I hope they learned that fitness is fun.  I pray they learned to seek out a passion.  I know they learned that if you work hard you get rewarded.

I recently read ‘Carry On, Warrior‘, in which the author, also a blogger, talks about how she has no shame.  She writes, “I’m shameless.  I’m almost ashamed at how little shame I have.”  I can see where she’s going with this.  As my own blog grows, I can feel my filter loosening.  My take-it-or-leave-it growing.  My this-is-me flourishing.

This is me.  I ran a race.  I won.  And I’m damn proud that my kids saw it happen.

Ashley019

The Disease of Being Busy: A Blog Share

Leave a comment

I read a post circulating online last week and I can’t get it out of my head.  “The Disease of Being Busy“, written by Omid Safi (@ostadjaan), perfectly, perfectly describes what I’ve been thinking about for months.  And since I cannot express myself any more wonderfully than he already has, I thought I’d skip over reinventing the wheel, and pass along his words to you verbatim.  This post sums up my philosophy on parenting, on friendship, on living.

This is his essay.  Think.  Reflect.  Enjoy:

purzen_clock_face_clip_art_24896

~~~

I saw a dear friend a few days ago. I stopped by to ask her how she was doing, how her family was. She looked up, voice lowered, and just whimpered: “I’m so busy… I am so busy… have so much going on.”

Almost immediately after, I ran into another friend and asked him how he was. Again, same tone, same response: “I’m just so busy… got so much to do.”

The tone was exacerbated, tired, even overwhelmed.

And it’s not just adults. When we moved to North Carolina about ten years ago, we were thrilled to be moving to a city with a great school system. We found a diverse neighborhood, filled with families. Everything felt good, felt right.

After we settled in, we went to one of the friendly neighbors, asking if their daughter and our daughter could get together and play. The mother, a really lovely person, reached for her phone and pulled out the calendar function. She scrolled… and scrolled… and scrolled. She finally said: “She has a 45-minute opening two and half weeks from now. The rest of the time it’s gymnastics, piano, and voice lessons. She’s just…. so busy.”

Horribly destructive habits start early, really early.

How did we end up living like this? Why do we do this to ourselves? Why do we do this to our children? When did we forget that we are human beings, not human doings?

Whatever happened to a world in which kids get muddy, get dirty, get messy, and heavens, get bored? Do we have to love our children so much that we overschedule them, making them stressed and busy — just like us?

What happened to a world in which we can sit with the people we love so much and have slow conversations about the state of our heart and soul, conversations that slowly unfold, conversations with pregnant pauses and silences that we are in no rush to fill?

How did we create a world in which we have more and more and more to do with less time for leisure, less time for reflection, less time for community, less time to just… be?

Somewhere we read, “The unexamined life is not worth living… for a human.” How are we supposed to live, to examine, to be, to become, to be fully human when we are so busy?

This disease of being “busy” (and let’s call it what it is, the dis-ease of being busy, when we are never at ease) is spiritually destructive to our health and wellbeing. It saps our ability to be fully present with those we love the most in our families, and keeps us from forming the kind of community that we all so desperately crave.

Since the 1950s, we have had so many new technological innovations that we thought (or were promised) would make our lives easier, faster, simpler. Yet, we have no more “free” or leisurely time today than we did decades ago.

For some of us, the “privileged” ones, the lines between work and home have become blurred. We are on our devices. All. The. Freaking. Time.

Smart phones and laptops mean that there is no division between the office and home. When the kids are in bed, we are back online.

One of my own daily struggles is the avalanche of email. I often refer to it as my jihad against email. I am constantly buried under hundreds and hundreds of emails, and I have absolutely no idea how to make it stop. I’ve tried different techniques: only responding in the evenings, not responding over weekends, asking people to schedule more face-to-face time. They keep on coming, in volumes that are unfathomable: personal emails, business emails, hybrid emails. And people expect a response — right now. I, too, it turns out… am so busy.

The reality looks very different for others. For many, working two jobs in low-paying sectors is the only way to keep the family afloat. Twenty percent of our children are living in poverty, and too many of our parents are working minimum wage jobs just to put a roof over their head and something resembling food on the table. We are so busy.

The old models, including that of a nuclear family with one parent working outside the home (if it ever existed), have passed away for most of us. We now have a majority of families being single families, or where both parents are working outside the home. It is not working.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

In many Muslim cultures, when you want to ask them how they’re doing, you ask: in Arabic, Kayf haal-ik? or, in Persian, Haal-e shomaa chetoreh? How is your haal?

What is this haal that you inquire about? It is the transient state of one’s heart. In reality, we ask, “How is your heart doing at this very moment, at this breath?” When I ask, “How are you?” that is really what I want to know.

I am not asking how many items are on your to-do list, nor asking how many items are in your inbox. I want to know how your heart is doing, at this very moment. Tell me. Tell me your heart is joyous, tell me your heart is aching, tell me your heart is sad, tell me your heart craves a human touch. Examine your own heart, explore your soul, and then tell me something about your heart and your soul.

Tell me you remember you are still a human being, not just a human doing. Tell me you’re more than just a machine, checking off items from your to-do list. Have that conversation, that glance, that touch. Be a healing conversation, one filled with grace and presence.

Put your hand on my arm, look me in the eye, and connect with me for one second. Tell me something about your heart, and awaken my heart. Help me remember that I too am a full and complete human being, a human being who also craves a human touch.

I teach at a university where many students pride themselves on the “study hard, party hard” lifestyle. This might be a reflection of many of our lifestyles and our busy-ness — that even our means of relaxation is itself a reflection of that same world of overstimulation. Our relaxation often takes the form of action-filled (yet mindless) films, or violent and face-paced sports.

I don’t have any magical solutions. All I know is that we are losing the ability to live a truly human life.

We need a different relationship to work, to technology. We know what we want: a meaningful life, a sense of community, a balanced existence. It’s not just about “leaning in” or faster iPhones. We want to be truly human.

W. B. Yeats once wrote:

“It takes more courage to examine the dark corners of your own soul than it does for a soldier to fight on a battlefield.”

How exactly are we supposed to examine the dark corners of our soul when we are so busy? How are we supposed to live the examined life?

I am always a prisoner of hope, but I wonder if we are willing to have the structural conversation necessary about how to do that, how to live like that. Somehow we need a different model of organizing our lives, our societies, our families, our communities.

I want my kids to be dirty, messy, even bored — learning to become human. I want us to have a kind of existence where we can pause, look each other in the eye, touch one another, and inquire together: Here is how my heart is doing? I am taking the time to reflect on my own existence; I am in touch enough with my own heart and soul to know how I fare, and I know how to express the state of my heart.

How is the state of your heart today?

Let us insist on a type of human-to-human connection where when one of us responds by saying, “I am just so busy,” we can follow up by saying, “I know, love. We all are. But I want to know how your heart is doing.”

~~~

Let me go on record to say that I will chose trips to the playground, afternoons playing Lego, meandering nature walks, early-morning runs, and catching up with friends over chronic, over-scheduled chaos.  Every. Single. Time.

92dc5906073a385e12e48c2ceb1cf032