drtbear1967
Musclechemistry Board Certified Member
Do you sit most of the day? This warmup is for you. Belt squat walking is an easy and effective way to prime your lower body to get ready to move.
.
Squats, deadlifts, running, jumping.. anything done with your lower body. This is a good start because of a few reasons.
.
It doesn’t load your spine before your body is warmed up. A lot of back pain you experience doing lower body exercises may be due to other areas of your body that are not conditioned or ready to meet the demand of your exercise.
.
This could be the inability to maintain and achieve full hip extension (2nd point), leaving your hip flexors slightly contracted at all times. The belt squat reinforces full extension of your hips that come from your glute muscles. If you sit all day you’re in the exact opposite of hip extension. You can’t expect to sit all day and then all of the sudden just throw it in reverse and hope you can call upon full extension when you workout.
.
The third reason is it provides extra input to enforce side to side stability. Every step you take your glute medius is required to hold your hips level. When the hips start moving when they shouldn’t they start to directly influence the area right above, yep, your spine. Now your low back that is supposed to be stable is having to transmit forces and try to prevent motion from occurring.
.
Do you see how this could potentially become an issue? It may never cause any issues for you. Research is showing so much negativity towards biomechanics these days and how it’s not the cause of pain. I agree it 100% isn’t the only factor. It’s obvious that a lot of people move very poorly, poor posture, etc. yet have no pain. That’s great for them. It does nothing for the individual experiencing pain. This is beginning to become a rant, I apologize, that’s for another day.
.
Squats, deadlifts, running, jumping.. anything done with your lower body. This is a good start because of a few reasons.
.
It doesn’t load your spine before your body is warmed up. A lot of back pain you experience doing lower body exercises may be due to other areas of your body that are not conditioned or ready to meet the demand of your exercise.
.
This could be the inability to maintain and achieve full hip extension (2nd point), leaving your hip flexors slightly contracted at all times. The belt squat reinforces full extension of your hips that come from your glute muscles. If you sit all day you’re in the exact opposite of hip extension. You can’t expect to sit all day and then all of the sudden just throw it in reverse and hope you can call upon full extension when you workout.
.
The third reason is it provides extra input to enforce side to side stability. Every step you take your glute medius is required to hold your hips level. When the hips start moving when they shouldn’t they start to directly influence the area right above, yep, your spine. Now your low back that is supposed to be stable is having to transmit forces and try to prevent motion from occurring.
.
Do you see how this could potentially become an issue? It may never cause any issues for you. Research is showing so much negativity towards biomechanics these days and how it’s not the cause of pain. I agree it 100% isn’t the only factor. It’s obvious that a lot of people move very poorly, poor posture, etc. yet have no pain. That’s great for them. It does nothing for the individual experiencing pain. This is beginning to become a rant, I apologize, that’s for another day.
