Making Exercise Healthy Medicine
Making Exercise Healthy Medicine
Fitness as a Lifestyle -
Functional Fitness and Exercise
Copyright © Jolie Bookspan, MEd, PhD, FAWM
Copyright Legal and Reprint - Use in health, don't steal
Dr. Bookspan's methods to improve and physical ability and function
while reducing injury are used by military and top spine centers around the world.
Hello, You're on the web site of Dr. Jolie Bookspan. This is a free, no-ad site dedicated to getting you back to your life - healthy, mobile, and happy. This is evidence-based primary source sports medicine. There are hundreds of articles here for you. On this page is an important group of articles of an important practice pioneered by Dr. Bookspan - fitness as a (real) lifestyle.
Fitness as a Lifestyle does not come from going to a gym or doing reps of exercises. It is how you move in all your regular daily activities at home, at work, and everywhere. Moving, sitting, living, and working in tight injurious positions that reinforce bad posture and injurious joint positions all day is why most exercises and rehab don't fix injuries and why people don't get all the strength and ability they could - they are missing the most important time to use healthy movement - real life. Fitness as a Lifestyle is moving in healthy patterns all the time - getting strength, stretch and injury prevention built in to your day.
These articles appeared over several years with my other Fitness Fixer work on the Healthline Health Expert Column until it discontinued April 2010. More work from continues here and throughout my web site. Check back.
- These skills are basics for healthy fit daily life - built in to all you do. No gym or gimmicks or trainers or devices needed.
Readers - send in your stories of how you use these training skills in your life and your exercise to:Success@DrBookspan.com.
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Why Fitness as a Lifestyle?
by Jolie Bookspan, MEd, PhD, FAWM
An injury survey by US military revealed that 62% of American injuries in Iraq are occurring in the gym. The same is happening at home. How can this be? Several things are happening. Just as not every medicine is healthy, not all exercises and stretches are healthy.
Just as smoking "works" for weight loss, but is not a smart or healthy way to do it, many exercises "work" for cosmetic results, but result in long-term injury, and promote bad movement habits. Other common exercises don't work your body the way you need to move in real life, resulting in strains and injuries when going about daily activities.
1. My work shows you hundreds of simple ways to change your exercises, stretches, and daily movement, to make them fun, healthy, and the way you really need to move for healthier daily life.
2. Instead of repeating what others claim about health, I do original research. In my laboratory research in human physiology, and my sports medicine clinical practice,
3. I see patients every day who are hurting and unhappy, despite all the exercise and fitness they do. Many of my patients are yoga teachers, physical therapists, and Pilates teachers with back pain, hip pain, and neck pain. I see personal trainers with herniated discs and knee pain. I see body builders with back pain, despite all the abdominal exercises they do. I see patients, including fitness instructors, who aren't getting more flexible no matter how much stretching they do. I see people who are stressed, tired, achy, and not in shape, even though they spend hundreds of dollars a month on supplements and pills, gizmos, equipment, trainers, and classes.
The answers are simple, and my work and articles cover many easy changes you can make so that your fitness becomes not only more effective, but fun and healthy.
Get started now with the next in this series - What is "Fitness as a Lifestyle?"
Photo © copyright Dr. Bookspan of of Paul Plevakas, contractor
What is Fitness as a Lifestyle?
by Jolie Bookspan, MEd, PhD, FAWM
To many people, fitness means stopping your "real life," changing clothes, driving somewhere else, and doing uncomfortable things without similarity to movement in daily life. Then they go back to "real life" - slouching, bending wrong, walking heavily, sitting rounded, leaning back to carry packages, taking elevators, and avoiding movement.
1. At the gym, people do squats with a trainer, paying to learn proper form and upright back, then bend over wrong to put the weight down when they’re finished.
2. They do proper lunges for their legs in exercise class, then bend over wrong without using their legs to pick up their things when they leave. They work with weights to isolate arms but never learn how their entire body stabilizes a weight, then hurt their back opening a window at home.
3. They work on a treadmill or elliptical trainer but sprain their ankle when out walking because they haven't trained balance and stabilization. They sit hunched in bad posture waiting for exercise class to start. In modern life, exercise is something you go and specially "do," then destroy and ignore your health the other 23 hours a day. Fitness has become “fast food” – stripped of value, sweetened up, and mass produced, even when unhealthy.
Changing your real life into healthy movement is a big and inspiring area of rethinking and retraining.
Instead of sitting slouched then stopping to stretch because your back hurts, sit and stand well so that you do not get stiff and sore in the first place. Instead of lifting packages, babies, groceries, laundry, and everything else wrong all day, then stopping to do back exercises because your back hurts, lift properly.You get built-in exercise, strengthen your knees, and save your back.
You don’t need to go to a gym; move, balance, and reach in healthy ways in order to do your real life. Instead of thinking you must stop your life to get health and exercise, fill your life with built-in healthy movement.
Thank you for photo: National Cancer Institute, Linda Bartlett (photographer)
Bending Right is Fitness as a LIfestyle
by Jolie Bookspan, MEd, PhD, FAWM
Readers asked for more pictures of healthy bending around the house and workplace during daily life. They've been getting excited about the idea that daily life is the way to physical ability and health, instead of stopping life to do a bunch of exercises. People spend time and money for endless treatments and gadgets for back and knee pain and tight Achilles tendon. Healthy bending prevents the commonest sources of all of these.
- A major predisposing factor of knee and hip arthritis is weak thighs.
- A major risk factor of hip osteoporosis is lack of weight bearing exercise.
- A major risk factor of falls is weak legs and poor balance.
If you would like to reduce risk of falls, osteoporosis, bad discs, sciatica, achy upper back, and arthritis, get a built-in Achilles tendon stretch, and get strong shapely legs all at the same time, just use your legs with good body position for daily healthy bending.
Why go to the gym or to physical therapy to do knee bends to strengthen your legs, then spend your "real life" weakening your legs and degenerating your lower back discs with bad bending, and say, "I don't have time to exercise."
You will get free built-in exercise just moving in life. My friends and family in Asia are astonished when I tell them I teach Americans how to bend to look in the refrigerator, and that Americans tell me it is too much work to bend right to load dishes in a machine that washes for them. Then they pay money to go to a gym or buy equipment to exercise their legs.
Here is a fun way to change mind set to exercise as a lifestyle:
Count how many times a day you bend and how many times you can choose to harm yourself or help yourself.
If you would like to try "fitness as a lifestyle," this is the best place to start. Think of it:
- when bending to make the bed,
- to pick up laundry,
- look in the refrigerator,
- load and unload the dishwasher,
- to pick up your shoes,
- open a lower cabinet,
- lift a child or pet,
- feed a child or pet,
- pick up things from the floor,
- pick up hand weights to do exercise,
- put down weights after exercising,
- many daily activities.
Drawing of BackMan! (tm) copyright © Dr. Bookspan
How Often Should You Be Healthy? - When Do You Do Lifestyle Exercise?
by Jolie Bookspan, MEd, PhD, FAWM
A reader sent in the photos below to help others recognize unhealthy bending. She asked, "What is your advice when someone is having to bend to put dishes in the dishwasher? It just seems so uncommon to think to squat while loading the dishes."
1. There is no better time to bend in healthy ways than your real life.2. The whole point of fitness as a lifestyle is that your daily life is healthy movement - not to change clothes to do squats at a gym three times a week, then change clothes again, go home, and bend wrong all day.
3. Healthy bending is for every time you bend. How often is that? My article "How Good Would You Look From 400 Squats a Day - Just Stop Unhealthy Bending" showed how we estimated that active people wind up bending up to 400 times every day for ordinary activities. Even sedentary people are over 100 bends a day if they do things around the house like pick up the paper, feed pets, and reach in dishwashers and refrigerators. Why harm your back and miss free exercise for your legs hundreds of times a day?.
Most people know and repeat, "bend your knees" if you quiz them on healthy bending. Bending knees slightly, as in the above photos, does not make bad bending healthy. Bending over forward pressures your lower back discs, whether your back is rounded (photo above left) or straighter (above right). You are still bending over and the leverage point is your lower spine. Bending right is simple:
- With feet side-by-side, comfortably apart, bend knees, keeping your torso fairly upright - as if not wanting something to fall from a shirt pocket (right drawing)..
- Keep both heels down and shift your weight back to your heels.
- Pull your knees back over your heels. Don't let them droop forward under your body weight. When you shift your knees back, you will feel the effort shift away from your knee joint to your thigh muscles.
- Don't stick your backside out or exaggerate the lower back arch.
Unless you are moving in healthy ways for your real life, it is not a lifestyle and it is not healthy. Healthy bending is easy and life changing. It is free exercise and injury prevention. When should you do it? Each time you want your daily life to be healthy.
Drawing of BackMan! (tm) copyright © Dr. Bookspan
Are You Making Your Exercise Unhealthy?
by Jolie Bookspan, MEd, PhD, FAWM
Most people know that sitting badly at your desk, as in the left-hand photo below, is unhealthy:
1. It is easy to see that he is rounding his back forward.
2. His ear is far forward of his shoulder (even with his shoulders so rounded that the shoulders are forward too).
3 He is jutting his head and chin forward - The weight of his head is straining on the muscles and joints of his upper back.
The bad body ergonomics of rounding forward is a common cause of upper back and neck pain, often mistaken for "stress," even contributing to pain down the arm as you slump the weight of your upper body on nerves that go down the arm, compressing them. The forward bend to the spine squeezes your discs of your neck and lower back, gradually degenerating them and forcing them outward, which is called herniation.
Now look at the right hand photo of the bicyclist. The rounded forward positioning is the same. It does not magically become healthy because you are calling it an exercise. It is just as unhealthy whether you are at your desk, on a stationary or real bicycle, on an exercise ball, motorcycle, or in the car.
What to do instead is simple. Sit up. Don't round your back. Are you rounding forward reading this right now? How to start fixing it - get the concepts, not rigid rules of angles and placement:
Don't tighten and strain to sit straight. It is common to be so tight from a lifestyle of forward rounding that sitting straight is not comfortable. Do the pectoral stretch in Fixing Upper Back and Neck Pain, then use the wall test in the same article to check if the stretch worked. On a bike, unless you are in a high level race, straighten up. It is simple. Healthy.
Why exercise in unhealthy ways? Watch people at the gym and in life. Notice how often fitness publications ask you to practice being bent over forward. Instead, get free built-in back muscle exercise and prevent strain and pain just by sitting with healthy positioning.
Thank you clipart.com and creative commons for photos- they own the copyright
my copyright is for the photo composite of the two together only
Fitness and Health as a Lifestyle for the Holidays
by Jolie Bookspan, MEd, PhD, FAWM
If you think you won't have time to exercise over the holidays, here is good news. This post will show you how to move in healthy ways so that you have healthy exercise built-in to all the cooking, shopping, furniture moving, and social interactions. Here is more good news. You don't have to go to a gym to work off the stress and eating too much from the holiday. Life is not supposed to be a poison that you deliberately take, then need an antidote to offset.
Here are four of the healthiest, quickest ways to make your Thanksgiving into fitness and health as a lifestyle:
1. To pick up chairs, babies, and grocery bags, to move furniture, and for lifting things from the floor, bend your knees, keeping your weight back toward your heels, and your body upright.
2. To carry chairs, babies, grocery bags, furniture, and any loads in front of you, don't lean back. It is a common bad habit to lean the upper body backward, increasing the lower back arch. Leaning backward shifts the weight of the load off your core and arm muscles and onto your lower spine. Get free, built-in exercise for your abs and arms and save your back by standing straight. Don't lean and arch backward to carry things.
3. Notice all the times you round and hang forward over things that you can easily reach by standing upright. Check your upper back positioning when standing over counters, sinks, grocery bins, vacuum cleaners, cribs and baby-changing tables, and when setting food tables. Don't let your body weight hang over and forward. Stand upright, chin in, and just tilt your head downward in relaxed manner to see what you are doing. Relax shoulders downward. Smile. Breathe.
4. Preparations and family interactions are no excuse to do unhealthy behaviors out of habit like smoking, overeating, and arguing, then blame it on stress. The bad habits are even more stress on body and mind. If something is wrong, see about fixing it in a good way. Don't suffer in silence with people telling you that you have to be happy just because of a holiday. Make your home healthy for yourself. There is no place it matters more
Get exercise cleaning the house of junk and clutter. Take the extra clothing, toys, and household items to a shelter. Carry the bags with healthy positioning to the people who need it.
Make a healthy meal with family or alone, without television or phone. Carry the meals to shut-ins and isolated elderly in your neighborhood, and the homeless on the street.
Volunteer at a soup kitchen. Do grocery shopping, cooking, and vacuuming for those who are too sick or disabled or alone to do it for themselves. If you think you don't have time because you have young children, take them with you to help carry things and to teach them healthy ideals, and how thankful they can be for the home you provide.
Don't smoke, drink soda (diet soda is just as unhealthy) eat junk food (even if it has marketing words like "organic" on the label), or undo the health benefits of fruit and vegetables by junking them with cream, sugar, and cornstarch. Add up all you spend on cigarettes and junk food that take a healthy body and give it health problems. Take the money and give to the poor. With what you save on prescriptions and treatments for all the pain and jitters you cause yourself, you can feed a village and still take a vacation.
When you eat the holiday meal, say thankful things. Taste your food. Turn down seconds. Breathe. Smile. Help clean up. Shoulders back. Enjoy the roof over your head. That is health as a lifestyle
Drawing of BackMan! (tm) copyright © Dr. Bookspan
Lifestyle Balance, Hip Stretch, Upper Back Positioning Awareness - Ancient Shoe Exercise
by Jolie Bookspan, MEd, PhD, FAWM
In the yoga classes I teach, students learn that the poses themselves are not what gives good posture and focus. We learn what healthy positioning is, then apply it to how to move for daily life after walking out of the class.
In my sports medicine practice, I regularly see yoga teachers as patients for back, knee, and neck pain. That is because several yoga moves are not good for anyone - just as not all food is healthful. Many moves are fine, but other traditional poses injure joints, even when done "right" (or especially when done right), like bending over from a stand or a sitting position, whether the back is rounded or straight, as shown in the above articles on this page. We omit those moves and use others that are better stretches without the degenerating forces on the lower back and neck discs, for example, healthier hamstring Stretching in my healthier stretching article on this site. You don't have to injure yourself to get exercise. Fitness is supposed to be healthy.
In my yoga class, I use a fun, effective hip stretch. We stand on one foot and reached for the other ankle crossed over the bent standing knee (drawing at right). When we do this, we practice the daily healthy position of keeping the upper body upright and straight, with the chin in, not craned forward. One new student was not happy with my class. She was used to sitting on the floor in classes she ordinarily took. She was peeved that we did so much standing. Although people call yoga "mind and body," she didn't like that we used the body. Although people frequently say that yoga is about understanding and light, she whined and complained and cursed me under her breath for most of the class. She wanted to know why I was making everyone do an extreme and bizarre movement.
I told the class it was healthy and happy to do this move every day. I pointed to my crossed foot and spoke the name of this ancient move - "Putting on shoe."
I hope you will try this too, to get a normal and healthy hip stretch and better balance everyday. Remember that most of the world stands to dress - the ones lucky enough to have shoes. Stand up now and try it. You will get free balance, healthy hip stretch, and leg strengthening every day from daily life. When you get good at this fun move, keep your ankle crossed and bend the standing leg enough for you to reach to the floor to retrieve your other shoe or sock. Keep your chest up and your back straight to prevent practicing unhealthful rounded position. Even though this one bends over, it does not transfer the pivot force to the lower discs for several reasons.
Have fun adding new healthy movement to your New Year. Write your stories and take photos of how you make your life better by fixing your fitness to be functional and healthy. Send link to your photo sharing site of your examples, and I can put you up in lights as a role model for healthier life.
Drawing of BackMan! (tm) copyright © Dr. Bookspan
Household Fitness as a Lifestyle
by Jolie Bookspan, MEd, PhD, FAWM
Fitness as a lifestyle at home is using healthy movement and body positioning as you go about all your daily activities:
Ivy from New Zealand uses a half squat to functionally strengthen her legs
and prevent back pain from bad bending over while making the bed.
Feeding the dog.
How often do you bend around the house in a day? Do you bend over wrong putting weight and leverage on your discs, or bend with legs, getting built in strength and stretch. The more you use it, the more you get the practice, strength, and stretch you need to do it.
Vacuuming with a good half-squat.
and full squat.
For more on knee strength and injury prevention squatting see my knee pain article
Good lunge with front knee over foot. Gives stretch and strength for legs and is good for knees.
Good bending helps fix knees. Avoiding good bending does not get your knees the built in movement and strength they need for doing and enjoying daily life activities.
full squat for chores with feet facing the same direction as knees, and both heels down.
Good full squats, done right, can be healthy for both back and knees. Lower back gets a wonderful stretch without bending over, and then knees can go through range of motion without harm when you use good mechanics, as above - feet facing the same direction as knees, and both heels down.
A Thai villager sits straight, getting nice hip stretch, and keeps ankles straight
It is common to bend up the ankles when the hips are tight. Keeping ankles straight shifts the stretch to the hip where it is needed and stops overstretching the outside of the ankles, where is is not needed or healthy.
Our friend MomPon is relative to the Abbot of the Muay Thai Monks on Horseback near the border of Myanmar (Burma). We stayed with her during the time we spent at the monastery. She sits straight and comfortably in full squat to get things for dinner from her garden, then to wash dishes in her kitchen. We do the same when we help. She stands straight with chin in to reach overhead to get tamarind fruit from her tree
Our friends, the elder Thai ladies, sit straight while they watch a parade
A hill tribe mother stands straight without rounding forward or leaning backward from the weight of her baby -
Healthier Carrying gives you Free Ab Exercise and Stops Pain
A villager takes his children for a fun ride, while sitting straight.
Sitting straight to wash the kids.
I gave these villagers soap bubbles for their baby. They played for hours.
Enjoy life, laugh, and share good times.
Thank you for photos - David from Belgium, Ivy from New Zealand, and Dr. Bookspan
Don't Confuse Exercise With Real Fitness
by Jolie Bookspan, MEd, PhD, FAWM
One of my readers, Dr. Zoe Eppley, e-mailed, "I have been trying to apply your "bending right" approach to my daily activities. I find my tight leg and hip muscles seriously limit my ability to squat. Could you please recommend some stretches that will help?"
I receive this inquiry often. People are realizing that they are too tight to move in healthy ways for normal everyday life. I hear it from instructors of aerobics, yoga, Plates, personal trainers, and many others. This is an important epiphany. If you are too tight to move in healthy ways, then it is likely that you spend every day of your life moving in tight ways that create pain and perpetuate tightness.
The good news is you do not need to "do" stretches and exercises. Keep bending right and you will get exactly the stretch and strengthening you need. My most important message that I stress in all my work about exercise is not to "do exercises" but get crucial, functional, effective exercise by moving in healthy ways during normal everyday life.
People spend fortunes on treatments for pain, gadgets, potions, pills, prescriptions, adjustments, and ongoing medical scans and tests. Tightness and body pain is often made to be a mystery because it persists even after surgery and exercise programs. The reason is that they don't stop the cause. My successful techniques for fixing pain, even the most resistant back, neck, knee, and other musculoskeletal pain, emphasizes that you don't "do exercises" but simply stop the source of the injury by stopping unhealthy injurious movement patterns, and using healthy ones. Many people do ten repetitions of an exercise and hold each stretch for 30 seconds, then go back to unhealthy moving, sitting, bending, walking, exercising, and everything else that caused their pain and tightness in the first place.
If you are too tight to use your legs to bend down and get back up without using your hands or getting help, you need the hard realization that you lack normal function. It may be common in Western society to not be able to lift your own body, but it is dangerously unhealthy weakness.
Dr. Zoe e-mailed me a second time and mentioned watching an Indi-pop movie. She noticed the healthy posture and flexibility of the actors and how easily they squatted. She wisely reflected that she had probably lost much flexibility by not using normal bending and from "spending my life in chairs." Keep bending right with your heels down, knees back, and your body upright. You will stretch your Achilles tendon and hip, and strengthen your thighs and knees hundreds of times a day - every time you bend.
One fun way to greatly help your bending is not a specific stretch or exercise but another normal daily activity: apply the same healthy positioning to ascending any set of stairs. I will post more about stairs, as it is interesting and enlightening. Until then, any time you go up stairs, notice if you tilt forward and let your heels lift. Instead:
1. keep your heel down as you step up,2. keep your knee back over your ankle as you step up, instead of sliding your knee forward,
3. keep your body upright.
Use healthy positioning for both bending and stairs and you will quickly gain functional and healthy strength and flexibility.
How To Start Healthy Functional Movement Programs
by Jolie Bookspan, MEd, PhD, FAWM
Reader Stuart Wood knew that the way to healthier communities is getting up and teaching it. He wrote me several impressive notes of using my work to fix his own injuries, then for his Boss, then requesting if he could use it formally to teach community projects. I awarded him an Academy Appointment for Making Community Projects Healthy.
Stuart writes this update:"After months of reading your Fitness Fixer blog, I have become inspired to teach some of your information to whoever is willing to listen. I think the health and fitness situation in our country can benefit from your work and after trying it out and seeing results, as well as helping my friend to fix his bulging disc, I thought that the information you provide on your web sites and in your books needs to reach more people. I read your blog regularly and have always loved the inspirational stories that your readers have supplied. The writings between you and "Inspirational Ivy" really helped to make me realize that I could be healthy and strong for many years to come as well as the posts of the Thai women in their 80's going strong! I think it is so unfortunate that aging and weakness are commonly believed to go hand in hand. I think the problem needs to be addressed when children are young and before they ingrain bad health and movement habits.
"My co-workers have been receptive to your ideas and they have helped me greatly in thinking about and learning how to effectively explain your technique.
Today I taught for the first time in a semi-formal setting. I had a friend who had helped fix his own back pain (bulged disc) take pictures for me. The first thing I learned is that I have much improvement to make in my own movement, I suggest (like you have said) that everyone have a friend take candid pictures of them to test their progress. The group of kids I'm teaching are at the Archer Center in Tucson, AZ. They are part of the CATCH after school program and I wanted to teach them some good movement habits to benefit them in their daily lives as well as in sports and play-time.
"I was not sure how to start or what to teach exactly and time was limited for each group (only about 20 minutes) so I went to the Functional Fitness Friday posts and the (main) stretches like the side-stretch (done well at right, using wall for straight placement) and chest stretch and lunge. It was quite the learning experience! The first group of children were between 8-10 or so and their attention spans were short and I couldn't achieve much with them in the short time. I think the best thing would be big exercises like push-ups with neutral spine and lunge and activities full of movement because they seemed most interested in those things. The second group of kids were older and they were very focused and interested. I taught them the side and chest stretches, emphasizing relaxation and making it feel good. I had them do the wall test and then stretch and see if they found a difference. Some did and some didn't. I realized that teaching these age groups would require multiple sessions broken down into different sessions and incorporated into games.
"What I realized most was how interested the instructor was, he felt the difference at once between improper and proper techniques. I think in addition to teaching children I would like to teach the instructors because they are the primary source of information for the children. I am also very inspired to keep at it myself because I want to be effective in my demonstrations and be a model student myself." "My teaching from today is listed under "Teaching to CATCH program" which is an after school health and wellness program.
See the first photos of Stuart's Stewards projects at http://www.flickr.com/photos/stuartw.
Stuart is working on two other community programs so far, including a wellness Pilot program and a water harvesting project for his dry city of Tucson, with stories to come.
He summarizes:
I went to the Parks and Rec Aquatics Supervisor and asked if I could teach and take some pics. The city of Tucson is starting a wellness pilot program in early January because of the high rate of strain related injuries. Because my friend (the one who I helped fix back pain) talked about the good your work had done for him with the aquatics supervisor at a recent wellness meeting for city employees, he already knew a little about what I was up to and is going to work with me to incorporate your method into the wellness program to teach employees at district meetings city wide!
"I just graduated from the University of Arizona with a bachelors in anthropology. I would like to pursue graduate school but not sure in what field.
"Thanks for the graduation present, couldn't have asked for better!" ;)
Happy Graduation Mr. Wood!
Photos © copyright Stuart Wood, Academy of Functional Exercise Medicine Community Projects Director
Natural Hard Exercise - Stuart's Community Health Stewardship Continues
by Jolie Bookspan, MEd, PhD, FAWM
Reader Stuart Wood did a magnificent thing. He took charge and started teaching my work to reduce the high rate of strain-related injuries in his community for projects ranging from school health to senior health to water harvesting in his arid city of Tucson.
Stuart writes:
"The second group of pictures in the set (previous article) are from a water harvesting project run by the Water Management Group here in Tucson. We spent 5 hours digging and bending and planting. The structures make use of street run-off in a way that reduces road and water pollution while at the same time "greening" the street by providing the plants with water which will eventually shade the side-walk and street and reduce the "heat-island" created by all the asphalt and concrete that attracts and absorbs sunlight/heat.
"This was my first time volunteering with them and I didn't get a chance to teach but I did figure out how to dig and bend correctly myself. It was a work-out and felt really good. I have dug in the past for long hours with improper bending and what it a difference it makes! Soon I hope to teach the other volunteers so that in addition to being good stewards of the community they can also be good stewards of their health.
"The watershed admin is thinking the best thing for me to do would be to teach the various instructors so that they could then oversee the volunteers throughout the city.
"I was looking at your web site (DrBookspan.com/Academy) and seeing the part about scholarships for Native Americans and the elderly, that intrigued me a lot. There is a large reservation just south of town for the Tohono O'odahm Indians, I have been thinking about how neat it would be to teach some of them.
"Recently there has been a wellness program implemented by the City of Tucson to reduce work-related strains and injuries. They have not been exposed to your work yet but they have been exposed to stretches that are potentially damaging at worst and ineffective at best! My friend spoke kindly of me and how your blog and my advice had helped him so, when I talked to his supervisor, he was more than helpful in suggesting ways in which I might be able to teach city workers in various settings and occupations."
More work is in progress. Reports to come. Join us. You can create your own projects through my Academy of Functional Exercise Medicine. Here is my Academy Web Site of This and Related Work: www.DrBookspan.com/AcademyStudents
Photos © copyright Stuart Wood, Academy of Functional Exercise Medicine Community Projects Director
Employment Programs for Developmentally Disabled Using LIfestyle Exercise
by Jolie Bookspan, MEd, PhD, FAWM
Another reader has Fixed the Fitness for a community program so beneficial and potentially far-reaching that I have given her an Academy Appointment.
Peggy Santamaria is bringing my healthy daily life techniques to developmentally disabled adults. She has made a new program to transition developmental disability to Developmental Ability.
She had previously written me a success story of her own using good bending for shoveling snow all day without pain. I put her success story up on my Fitness Fixer blog with step by step instructions so others could do it too.
Peggy wrote:
"Thanks. Cool to find that this morning on Fitness Fixer. I would like to work with job coaches at a local agency that trains and finds employment for developmentally disabled adults. Snow removal is one of their big programs. I hope I would have your permission to use Fitness Fixer techniques to help prevent injuries for these trainees. I am on the board of directors for the agency and really support the program.
Thanks again.
you rock!!!"
peggyI wrote back asking if she could start before the snow season ends, which was soon, and that when the snow season ends, what activities and healthy movement retraining could she bring to them?
Peggy replied:
"Just spoke with program director at Appalachian Crossroads. I will meet with his job coaches and staff on Monday afternoon to talk about healthier movements while on the job shoveling snow, landscaping, vacuuming, etc. This is their web site if you want to check them out, www.appalachiancrossroads.com/"
I am pleased to announce her appointment through the Academy of Functional Exercise Medicine (AFEM) as Director of Developmental Ability. We are working on better names - write in your ideas in the comments for a good title for this program for the disabled to develop their abilities. Peggy has been working hard developing the program. She drew the shovels for me for the Backman!™ illustration, and has been drawing and developing more teaching tools.
Our plan is for participants to gain skills and healthy work, reduce injury and pain risk, and be proud role models. The community gains important improvements in ways that are healthy for all. We hope our program with Appalachian Crossroads becomes a model for programs all over the nation like it.
Peggy wrote back:
WOW!!! That's all I can say. Off to teach a class. I have read a gazillion of your fitness fixers (they are like peanuts, you know). I just don't get any housework done. But I will be well-armed to begin this task
"My daughters and grandchildren are very proud. (They) said it was "awesome" and "Go Grandma Peggy!""
Join The Fun - Join in this work, and do the same for your own local world. Send in your own ideas and stories. See my Academy page - www.DrBookspan.com/Academy.
Next - the results
Functional Fitness as a Lifestyle By Mail Room Workers
by Jolie Bookspan, MEd, PhD, FAWM
Peggy Santamaria wrote me that she was using my work, and my illustration Backman!™ to teach healthy movement to workers for a good day's work without injury and repetitive strain:.
"Hi Dr. Bookspan,
"Very excited to report that I met with the Appalachian Crossroads staff and the trainees of the Mail Room Service Unit. The goal is to connect developmentally disabled adults with a paycheck for good work done well.
"I had created some Backman!™ flash cards illustrating some of the daily work in the mail room. These were distributed to the trainees with explanations for the staff about our new program. Then I met with the trainees and talked more about functional fitness.
"We then practiced some of the healthy movements needed for their work day. We took pictures to document their great understanding of what we are working toward. I will make these photos into small posters that can hang in their workspace.
"They are all excited about what we are doing and are proud to be part of the Academy.
"Peggy"Here is Ms. Santamaria's update with the successful outcome plus great photos. I personally congratulate and thank each participant:
Hi Dr. Bookspan:
"Here is an update on Academy activity. As you know, I am working with staff and trainees at Appalachian Crossroads, a private nonprofit human service agency that primarily serves developmentally disabled adults in Garrett County, Maryland.
"One of the Appalachian Crossroads work units provides a "mail room" service to local businesses. The trainees in the mailroom provide support, expertise, and manpower to process everything from daily statements to sales catalogs to monthly newsletters. More than 1.2 million pieces of mail go through the hands of 18 employees each year.
"As the Academy’s director of Developmental Abilities I set about creating a program using your work and Fitness Fixer to help the trainees work in a healthy way and be functionally fit. I met with staff and trainees of the unit to hand out instructional flash cards featuring Backman!™ going through the daily functions required in the mail room.
"The Appalachian Crossroads folks were super. They got right to it. With the help of staff they were ready to work and demonstrate their functional fitness skills. I took pictures that I am making into small posters for their work area.
"I will continue to work with these men and women as well as others in the custodial service unit, the grounds crew, supported employment, and the day program. It is a privilege to be working for the Academy and sharing your fitness message.
"Peggy Santamaria"
This is a shining example of getting things done well, simply, and intelligently. Thank you Peggy! Thank you Appalachian Crossroads staff and mail room!
Readers, The Mail Room is teaching us how to keep things healthy and smart. They are role models and generous guides for all of us. Use what they have done, and send your stories of using this work for Good. Here is my Academy Web Site of This and Related Work: www.DrBookspan.com/AcademyStudents
Photos © copyright AFEM - Thank you Peggy Santamriast Academy of Functional Exercise Medicine Developmental Abilities Director
and the Appalachian Crossroads Mail room team
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