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From the FasterSkier archive — posts syndicated from athletes’ and coaches’ own blogs between 2004 and 2012, kept online as published. Current coverage is at fasterskier.com.

Tag: Posture

  • Building a Better Skier Part 2: The Spine, When to Move it, and When to Keep it Still

    Building a Better Skier Part 2: The Spine, When to Move it, and When to Keep it Still

    Finland’s Krista Pärmäkoski racing during the 2021 Tour de Ski. (Photo: NordicFocus)

    This is Part 2 of a series delving into how biomechanics and movement patterns affect skiing technique. If you haven’t already, start with the introduction and Part 1, which introduces the concept of a neutral spine posture.

    There are many ways to conceptualize biomechanics, but they all need a starting place. If we think about ski technique, where do we want to start? On the glide leg? With the poles? At the hips? For this series, I have opted to start with the core and work outward. I could have started with the foot and moved upward; however, I see posture as an integral part of any movement. If the posture is compromised to begin with, then that deficit permeates the activity. 

    As was emphasized in Part 1, posture exists on a bandwidth of acceptability–everyone is a little different. But postures that fall outside of the bandwidth, especially when occurring within a dynamic activity like cross-country skiing, compounds load on the body. In the best case scenario, this increased load is inefficient and bleeds power. Worst case scenario, the additional load can exceed the body’s tolerance and lead to musculoskeletal injury.

    And yet the spine does move. Perhaps one of the best examples is the thoracic rotation that occurs with running. The shoulders do not stay pointed straight ahead. As the right leg and left arm swing forward (with the left foot on the ground) the shoulders are going to rotate to the right. This should be a product of rotation in the thoracic spine. If the thoracic spine has limited mobility, the motion will occur elsewhere, most often in the lumbar spine which has less motion available and will likely be less tolerant of this load. A case in point may be this recent study which found that the addition of thoracic mobility exercises decreased the incidence of low back pain in cross country skiers. 

    If you’re not already, sit with a neutral spine posture. Cross your arms with hands-on opposite shoulders. Rotate your body to the left and to the right. Make a mental note of how these movements felt. Now let your back flex forward in a slumping position. Try the same rotation to the left and right. I suspect they felt different. When the thoracic spine is flexed, its ability to rotate is decreased.

    Use it or lose it. Our bodies are use it or lose it machines. If we do not stretch a muscle to its full length, it will tend to shorten. If we do not move a joint to its end range of motion, it will tend to stiffen. As we get older, this becomes even more pronounced. If you are of Masters age, you should probably think of stretching and mobility exercises as more about maintaining what you have versus expecting to gain flexibility. The older we get, the less pliable our bodies become. But there’s a lot to be said for maintenance.

    Here are my three favorite thoracic mobility exercises – (aim to do these daily–1 or 2 minutes on the foam roll, 10x to each side with the rotation).

     

    Foam roll thoracic extension: lie on your back with a foam roll perpendicular to your spine. Support your head with your hands. Drop your shoulders towards the floor. Pause here for a few seconds then return to your starting/neutral position. Scoot on the floor so the foam roll moves up your spine. Repeat the extension motion dropping the shoulders towards the floor. Continue this process until you have worked the length of your thoracic spine. Avoid going into the lumbar spine as the fulcrum of the foam roll tends to be too sharp. On the upper end, once the foam roll is under the shoulder blades, it’ll be tough to get much motion. This exercise can also be done with an exercise ball.

     

    Book openings: Begin lying on your side with your knees bent and hands behind your head. Rotate your trunk like you are trying to get the top shoulder down to the floor. Pause here for a second or two and return to the starting position. This should be done on both sides.

     

    Lower Trunk Rotation: Lie on your back with both knees bent. Cross one leg over the other. Let the legs drop towards the floor to the side of the top leg. Pause here for a few seconds and return to the starting position. Do this on both sides.

     

    Stability could be defined as the opposite of mobility. If we are striving to maintain available mobility of the thoracic spine, perhaps it makes sense that we are striving to maintain stability at the lumbar spine. Anatomically, the body is well equipped to stabilize the lumbar spine. We have multiple layers of abdominal and back muscles that create a stable platform for the arms and legs. While the lumbar spine is lacking in rotary motion, it has quite a large range of available motion for bending forward, backward, and to the sides. Depending on the activity, this available motion needs to be either locked out like keeping a rigid trunk with skating V1 or well-controlled while bending over to put on your socks.

    If we are working under the assumption that neutral spine is the ideal, then it makes sense that our core strengthening or stability work should be done in neutral spine. Traditional sit-ups that involve considerable lumbar flexion are great for building those six-pack abs that look good on Instagram, but the exercise itself only contributes to a greater tendency to over-flex the spine during activity. “Flatten your back into the floor” is a frequent cue with core exercises. While this cue, and the associated posterior pelvic tilt, is effective at recruiting abdominal muscles, it also has the effect of training the body to rely on a flexed position for muscle activation. 

    Lie down on the floor with your knees bent and feet on the floor. Your lumbar spine will now be in its neutral position. If you slide a hand under your low back, your hand will likely have a bit of wiggle room between the floor and your back. This is the natural lordotic curve, and we want to maintain this during exercise (and activity). It’s easy to feel the increase in pressure on your hand when you tighten your abs and flatten your back. Conversely, if you tilt your pelvis in the other direction, arching your low back, you will have much more wiggle room. This excessive lordosis tends to be less stable since the abdominal muscles are in a lengthened, disadvantaged position for dynamic stability with much of the burden placed on the static stability of the joints.

    If you had a hard time controlling movement or differentiating between the flat, neutral, and arched positions, the following exercises can be helpful to train your awareness and coordination.

     

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    Lumbar spine proprioception

     

    Pelvic tilts: Lie on your back with both knees bent. Start by trying to tilt your pelvis towards you. Think of trying to flatten your low back into the floor or of shortening the distance between your ribcage and pelvis. Now tilt the pelvis in the other direction like arching your back away from the floor. These motions should be isolated at the pelvis and lumbar spine–your legs shouldn’t feel like they are doing any work.

     

    Cat/Cow: This involves the same pelvic tilt motions but without the feedback of the floor. Again, the idea is to isolate the motion at the lumbar spine not by arching the upper back.

     

    A quick Google search for “core exercise videos” brings up over 66 million results. Clearly, we are not lacking in the number of possible exercises. But what about quality? In the treatment of chronic low back pain, there is no best exercise. From the perspectives of performance enhancement and injury prevention, while there is an argument for simply being strong, there is perhaps a better argument for incorporating exercises that help the body meet the specific demands of the activity or sport. If good ski technique demands maintenance of a relatively neutral spine, then exercises should be performed in a neutral spine. If the sport includes load through the upper extremities, like poling with skiing or weighting the handlebars with cycling, then core exercises that include weight-bearing through the arms should be included. Skate skiing places a large rotational force through the core; thus we ought to have exercises that train the body to counter-rotation. Conversely, running and classic diagonal stride involves thoracic rotation so it makes sense to train the body to perform lumbar stability and thoracic rotation simultaneously. 

    Here are my Top 3, best-bang-for-the-buck-exercises in each category. Remember, the goal is to maintain neutral spine. If you are unable to control the motion, then the exercise represents too much resistance/load and needs to be regressed. These are quality-intensive exercises. A reasonable program would include 2 or 3 sets of 5 to 10 repetitions (depending on fatigue) of each exercise. Doing the routine twice a week should be adequate.

     

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    Stability exercises: these will challenge your ability to maintain a neutral lumbar spine

     

    Femur arc progression: Begin by lying on your back with knees and hips bent at 90°. Your back will be in its neutral position, which you are striving to maintain (there will be a little wiggle room between your low back and the floor–the amount will vary by the individual but the goal is the same). The basic femur arc is performed by lowering one foot to the floor while keeping the knee bent at 90°. The motion is isolated at the hip. There should be no motion in the low back–it will have a tendency to want to arch away from the floor as the leg goes down. Return to the starting position and repeat on the other side. Continue alternating legs. Progressions include straightening the knee as the leg lowers, lowering both legs together with bent knees, lowering both legs together with straight knees. 

     

    Mountain Climbers: These can be done with frisbees on carpet, socks on hardwood or tile, or with a TRX. The goal is to move alternating legs back and forth with no motion in the low back. There will be a tendency to flex as you pull a leg underneath you. This should be controlled by the core but also recognize that if you are trying to pull the leg through too far, you will run out of hip range of motion and be forced to flex the spine.

     

    Roll Out: Start on hands and knees with your hands on frisbees or a laminated placemat on the carpet, a towel on hardwood, TRX, or an old-school ab roller. The roll/slide-out motion will be a combination of shoulders and hips, but the spine stays in its neutral position.

     

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    Anti-rotation exercises — as the title would imply, the resistance will try to twist your spine and your goal is to fight it

     

    Plank with Shoulder Tap: From a straight arm plank with shoulders, hips, and knees in line, tap a hand to the opposite shoulder. There will be a bit of a weight shift that needs to happen to maintain stability, but this should be in the form of a side-to-side movement of the pelvis, not a rotation. This can be made easier by doing from your knees. Make it harder by substituting the shoulder tap with a dumbbell row. 

     

    Paloff Press: The Paloff Press is a great lesson in the physics of levers. Stand using both hands to hold a resistance band or handle from the cable column weight machine. Push your hands straight out in front of you. As your arms straighten, the length of the lever increases and the resistance will exert more rotational force. Fight the twist. For more of a challenge, other than just increasing the resistance, stand with your feet together or in a lunge (with the band coming from the opposite side of the front leg).

     

    Lunge with unilateral shoulder extension: Go into a static lunge with a resistance band in the opposite hand of the lead leg. Keeping the elbow straight, pull on the band until your hand is just past your hip. This can also be done with a cable column weight machine.

     

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    Combination lumbar stability with thoracic rotation: simply put, the lumbar spine stays still while the thoracic spine rotates 

     

    Seated Unilateral Row: This is a twist (sorry, bad pun) on a standard one-arm row. Sit on an exercise ball or chair facing the resistance band’s anchor. As you pull on the band, bend your elbow so your hand aims for the side of your ribcage, and rotate your chest and shoulders towards the band. Your butt should stay firmly planted and not rotate.

     

    Lunge Rotation with Band: Stand with the resistance band coming from one side. Go into a lunge with the opposite foot forward (band from the right = left foot forward). Keep your hips pointed forward while your upper body rotates against the resistance. 

     

    Seated Rotation (aka Russian Twist): This exercise gets a bad reputation because it’s very easy to do incorrectly, potentially placing a lot of load on the lumbar spine. It is often done in a V-sit position (like the photo but with the feet off of the floor), which is very difficult to maintain without collapsing into lumbar flexion. Add the potential to rotate through the lumbar spine and the combined motions create high loads. But we’re going to keep the lumbar spine neutral and isolate the rotation to the thoracic spine. The key points are attaining and maintaining a neutral spine while sitting with your knees bent and feet on the floor. Think about the rotation coming from the shoulders. Your belly button should stay pointed straight ahead. You can start without weight and progress to a medicine ball, dumbbell, or resistance band coming from the side. 

    Notably absent in this list are exercises that target the glutes. As the primary stabilizers of the hip joint, the gluteal muscles should not be ignored in any “core” routine. However, for the sake of organizing this series, the glutes will be addressed in Part 3 on single-limb stability. If you want a head start, this Faster Skier article includes some excellent exercises. 

     

  • Building a Better Skier Part 1: Posture

    Building a Better Skier Part 1: Posture

    Posture matters. Norway’s Therese Johaug racing last season in Lahti, Finland. (Photo: NordicFocus)

    Building a Better Skier is a multi-part series born from the inquisitive mind of a physical therapist and late-blooming Nordic skier. (You can find the intro to the series here.) The objective is to explore how biomechanics and movement patterns affect skiing technique, and more importantly how you can apply these concepts to improve your skiing. To cover this topic thoroughly would likely require a hefty book, so apologies in advance if these articles lack depth or specificity. Please feel free to email the author with any questions: ned.dowling@hsc.utah.edu.

     

    Posture is loosely defined as our body’s position or the way we hold ourselves. We tend to think of posture only in a static form like sitting or standing. But posture can be observed with dynamic activities like running, cycling, or skiing. Truly, we can talk about posture with anything the human body encounters. 

    The primary influencers of posture are mobility and awareness. (It could be argued that strength plays a role in posture, and that is true for many sedentary people, but the readers of FasterSkier are far from sedentary.) 

    The mobility or range of motion that is readily available through joints and soft tissue (muscle, tendon, ligament, and fascia) will affect our posture simply because we will always default to moving through the path of least resistance. If a joint is stiff, we will find a way to move around it. If a muscle is tight, it changes the position and efficiency of its associated joint. But also, if the ligaments around a joint have become loose like with recurrent ankle sprains, the muscles and associated tendons will have to work harder to maintain stability. Like with skiing technique, and posture in general, mobility occurs along a bandwidth. There is no single optimal measure, but there is a range that if exceeded on either end will lead to inefficiency. The old saying that everything in the body is connected is not an understatement, but it is a bit of an oversimplification. That everything in the body has the potential to affect everything else in the body might be more appropriate. 

    The awareness of our body’s position in space is called proprioception. This is a broad concept that simply relates to the incoming signals the brain receives from the body so it knows how to move the body—how far, how fast, how powerfully—across multiple joints, muscles, and tendons. The brain receives this information via nerve receptors in our muscles, tendons, joints, and arguably even skin and fascia. It is what allows you to close your eyes and touch your nose without poking out your eye. Also without looking, you know that as you read this your left elbow is not fully straight and could tell us the angle of the joint with pretty good accuracy. 

    So if we put the two concepts of mobility and awareness together, the former will dictate what shapes the body is capable of making and the latter will determine how accurately those shapes are made. If you are trying to make a hypothetical circle but a joint is restricted, you’ve only made an oval. If your mobility is good, but you are lacking in awareness, then you’ll be making squares or pentagons because you can’t smooth out the motion required for a circle.

    While I’ve just made the case that posture is a product of the whole body, it is commonly thought of as related to the spine. As the foundation of our movements and literally the center of the body, the spine is an ideal place to start. 

    The human spine itself consists of 24 vertebrae with a skull on top and ending with the sacrum and coccyx. That stack of bones is held together by countless ligaments. Between each vertebra is a disc that acts as a spacer, a shock absorber, and as a pivot point for motion. The vertebrae articulate with each other through small sliding joints located bilaterally. The orientation of these joints, which changes with the region of the spine, will determine the available motion and optimal movement pattern. Running through the center of the spine is the very precious spinal cord. Simplistically, the spinal cord is a superhighway with on and off-ramps between every vertebra. It carries information both to and from the brain. Movement and dynamic stability are provided by numerous muscles, which we will get to in more detail shortly. 

    Anatomy of the spine or spinal curves infographic illustration. (Photo: www.freepik.com)

    Basic anatomy having been covered, perhaps the more important implication for posture is the architecture of the spine. Contrary to the instructions to “sit up straight,” the spine, when looked at from the side, is not straight. (It’s not always straight from the front either, but the functional implications of scoliosis are beyond the scope of this article.) The spine, in fact, curves in a bit of an S from the head down in what is referred to as neutral spine. The cervical portion, comprising the 1st seven vertebrae, makes a concave curve. The next twelve vertebrae in the thoracic region have a convex curve. The last five in the lumbar are again concave. 

    The appropriate amount of curve in each region is also on a bandwidth; however, the curve in one region can have profound effects on another such that they cannot be looked at in isolation. Stop reading for a moment and “sit up straight.” Now tilt your head and look up at the ceiling. Make a note of what that felt like or what you saw on the ceiling. Next slump down like a texting teenager. Look up at the ceiling again. Any difference? You probably noticed that it was much harder to look up from the slumpy position. This is because the increased flexion or convex curve of the thoracic spine changes the starting point for the extension (looking up) motion that occurs in the cervical spine. Think about how this might affect your neck when sitting on a bike. You can do the same experiment with your arms. Sit up tall and raise your arms overhead. Then repeat in a slumped position. Much easier when done in a neutral spine. 

    A functional application here is how easily (and quickly) you can get your poles up to begin the next stride.

    So what exactly does “good posture” or a neutral spine look like? Remember that a neutral spine occurs along a bandwidth of variability. Just as we all share the same basic anatomy, we all come in different shapes and sizes. However, the ears, shoulders, hips, knees, and ankles should generally line up while standing. Sitting is the same with a straight line connecting ears, shoulders, and hips. Again, there should be an inward curve at the low back and an outward curve through the mid to upper back. The neck will also tend to have an inward curve. 

    In clinical practice, the majority of postural deviations appearing outside of bandwidth tend to fall into two categories: excessive thoracic kyphosis (to much flexion or outward curve in the upper back) or too much lumbar lordosis (excessive extension or inward curve at the low back). It is also worth noting that in clinical practice, the research would tell us that there is no evidence of “poor” posture causing musculoskeletal pain and is merely correlated with pain—not everyone who slumps all day has neck pain; not everyone with “sway back” has back pain. 

    But posture that falls outside of the bandwidth creates an increased load on the body. The majority of nontraumatic musculoskeletal injuries arise as a result of an imbalance between load that is placed on the body and the body’s ability to tolerate load. So from a clinical perspective, improving posture is unlikely to be the Holy Grail, but it may be part of the solution, especially when a change in posture creates a change in pain levels.

    Thoracic kyphosis tends to be an issue of mobility and/or awareness, at least in static postures. With dynamic movements, the complexity of the task may outweigh either the neuromuscular coordination or simply the requisite strength to maintain a neutral spine. Both of these scenarios will be discussed further in the next article. 

    Thoracic kyphosis

    Excessive lumbar lordosis that is observed in standing, but decreases in sitting, tends to be much more complex. A simple explanation may be that the knees are hyperextending while standing. This has a simple solution: Stop hyperextending your knees! But this is way easier said than done. 

    Lumbar lordosis

    This is a pattern that has developed over years and is a tough habit to break. A much more complex pattern is one of relatively tight hip flexors along with relatively weak glutes and hamstrings. This effectively tilts the pelvis forward thereby increasing the curve in the lumbar spine. Again, this scenario might not be an issue with static posture but will be exacerbated by activities requiring hip extension such as running and skiing. This will also be covered further in the next section. 

    Sitting is the new smoking. If you spend long hours sitting in front of a computer, STOP! Not your job, but the prolonged sitting. Height adjustable desks have become much less expensive and allow you to move frequently between sitting and standing. My typical advice is to change positions every 20-30 minutes. Standing is likely better, but put in one position too long and we’ll still get lazy with posture. If you don’t have this option, getting up and moving every hour can help. 

    With both sitting and standing at the computer, keep your elbows at your sides and bent 90 degrees or a little less. When sitting, keep your pelvis vertical and all the way back in the chair. You should be on your sit bones. If you roll back onto your tailbone, it’s all over. The pelvis needs to remain vertical (or horizontal from front to back) in order to maintain a neutral spine. A lumbar support, or even a folded towel, placed in the small of the back will make it easier to maintain this position.

    Maintenance of neutral spine with dynamic activities is no different, just harder. Again, posture falling outside of bandwidth equates to increased load which equates to inefficiency. Cycling is the easiest, at least conceptually, to transfer the ideals of sitting posture. It just requires tilting the pelvis forward on the saddle. “Bellybutton to the top tube.” Bike fit and hip mobility will both have a significant impact on how comfortably this can be accomplished. 

    Neutral spine

    Running, swimming, and classic skiing get more complex due to the inherent rotation involved; however, a neutral spine as observed from the side remains ideal. A full discussion of form and technique for these sports, excepting Nordic skiing, is well outside the scope of these articles. It should also be noted that the human spine is fully capable of motion in all planes. It should not be inferred that the spine should be forever fixed in neutral. 

    Stay tuned for the next part of this series which will dig deeper into spine mobility, stability, and proprioception.