Gary Ward Training, Health and Lifestyle

Walking Barefoot: A way to preserve your brain?

via playwithyourmind.com

Walking barefoot is as the article states: simply the best. If you aren't a barefoot walker, you would probably notice the muscles in your feet when youspend a length of time reintroducing your feet to mother nature...

Take a trip to Cornwall, grab  a surf board, lose the shoes and dare yourself to walk over the cobbles, the sand, the rocks and stones, the grass and with a bit of luck the surfboard as well. You will give your feet a work out like never before.

One thing to remember is that when your feet stop providing information to your brain - creating the potential to stumble as the post suggests - two things happen: the communication between the foot and the rest of the body begins to fade... quickly, and the coupling effect from joint to joint also breaks down.

The result is that muscle length tensions change, joint range decreases and our average centre of mass adapts to these physical responses. Is this what makes us stumble as we grow older?

Next realisation is that as soon as these changes are brought about... injury becomes a possibility. In a perfectly functioning human body, with zero tension and optimal joint range.... and good healthy active feet - you are less likely to stumble, lose balance and experience injury.

Find out more about understanding the feet and the role they play in managing the human body by visiting the Courses section of our website. As a practitioner, you'll never look back. So remember "Let the Feet do the Talking"....

posture creating postural change and an environment for

Who's asking for free tips on health??

You want tips? On health? Why? How do you know that I’m going to give you the right answers? Margarine is healthy, polyunsaturated fats save lives, take omega 3 oils for a healthier living, saturated fat kills and cholesterol needs to be lowered, drink Benecol to achieve it. Do a celebrity detox and lose weight over night, buy an ab roller for the ultimate six pack in 6 days. Drink semi skimmed milk and eat like the Mediterranean folk do. Use sweeteners instead of sugar, because sugar is fattening, choose slim line, diet and low fat products so you don’t get fatter. Go to a gym and run, cycle, cross train – you’ve got to get that weight down. Take sleeping tablets, have a cortisone injection and while you’re at it we’ll give you some antibiotics to feed all the fungus in your body and really try to kill you off – early!

All of the above are pointers for better health in a modern society. But where has it got us?

ITVs Men's Health

This morning I tuned into ITV’s daytime programme to try and catch Bean and the Sisterhood who were live on TV discussing their attempts to be the first female squad to row the channel which they plan to do on the 24th/25th August. Several of the girls from the sisterhood have worked with me in the past couple of months and results have been good.

Anyway, I missed the girls and found myself listening to the TV doctor discussing Men’s Health and responding to male ailments from around the country in a phone-in.

It’s not unusual to hear Men complaining of erectile dysfunction, premature ejaculation and off-colour urine and the wives calling in to express concern about their partner refusing to go to the doctor and that she is obviously worried about him!

All normal stuff right? My question is what was the doctor doing on TV as he simply did not answer any of the guys questions! You know this drives me mad. All he did was encourage them to go their GP (unsurprisingly) and get some Viagra or cialis – not from the internet mindst – to help them.

What do I do?

A few people have asked me in recent weeks to describe best what I actually do when I work one on one with clients in a corrective capacity. So I shall endeavour to explain:

I look for limitations in your body when you are moving and can trace this lack of movement back to the source of your pain. By prescribing exercises to help correct the lack of movement at a joint or at several joints, I am able to teach the body to return to the way it is designed to move, thus relieving you of pain and problems.

In many cases the location of discomfort (knee, hip, ankle) is rarely the cause of your discomfort and through movement various compensations reveal how the body adapts to make life as manageable as possible with your pain. It is those compensations that are your problem. So we can either treat the knee (like a therapist) or use movements (my way) to eliminate the compensations and give you back your normal range, comfort and efficiency.

The body works in chain reaction. The efficiency of a joint directly impacts on the efficiency of joints above and below it. If a joint loses it’s capacity to move in a particular way (plane of motion) then it will work harder elsewhere to compensate for the lack of movement. Increased effort at one joint ultimately means decreased effort at another joint. Stiffness and lack of mobility at a joint somewhere in the body is often the cause of somebody’s pain – but the two needn’t share the same site, and often don’t.

Which is how I have previously been able to correct shoulder pain and dysfunction by treating and working on the ankle.

Your nervous system becomes aware of the new movement and discovers it is to it’s liking and that actually, it is more efficient and less burdensome, the likelihood is, that with regular use of the movements we develop for you in your session you can develop strength, stability and co-ordination into the new pattern and it becomes your ‘default’ pattern of movement. Returning natural movement to the joints has a direct knock-on effect to the joints above and below it. Once they are all working right, you will be in a pain free scenario and you will know how to strengthen your body to maintain it’s effectiveness.

All of this can take an hour or two, depending on how much blockage your body is hiding from. I will provide you with photos or videos of bespoke exercises so you can continue them at home until your problem is no more. Principally, this could reduce your physio, osteo and chiro bills in the long run, allowing you to focus on your training, exercise, health and goal achievements.

How much would you pay if you knew your body troubles could be eliminated in as little as one session? That's my question to my target audience. I no longer want clients to rely on me as a training buddy, rather I want to help people restore their function as quickly as possible and give them ownership of the problem themselves. You could say the quick fix is definitely back...

A functional fix?

Do you have pain? Can you do all that you want to do without experiencing pain. If not then are you functional?

In the past few weeks, I have come across clients with hamstring problems, knee problems, shoulder problems and even RSI problems in their wrist and the blockage in the body was the big toe joint - let's call it BTJ...

Because of the immobility in three planes of this joint, ankle, knee, hip and spine have all been affected and the pain has revealed itself at a site on the body distal to the blockage. Years of physio and treatments have been changed in one session by my releasing big toe. As I said earlier, it fascinates me.

My understanding of the body leads me to want to rewrite the anatomy books... I was taught incorrectly and so are thousands of other trainers. The typical fitness industry protocol actually trains dysfunction into the body - but that's cool because I get it to iron it out. I haven't had one client who hasn't noticed an immediate improvement when working with me for only one session. It's powerful stuff.

Michael Owen cost Newcastle United £11million pounds through his injury at the World Cup last summer, and if he had been taught to increase the range available in his glutes and at his ankle to allow his knee to travel further, he may not have had to take a year off - but there we have a world class athlete who was physically unable to withstand his own body weight. What hope have the rest of us got?

My aim is to help you increase joint mobility in three planes of motion, whilst strengthening your muscles at end ranges of motion that are applicable to your sport/daily activities so you may remain active for longer, or simply mobile for longer. The carry over to your health, in particular mind, body and spirit triangulate, is astounding. Pain free - mobile - efficient - motivated - the list goes on...

What is true function of the body?

I have been discovering the meaning of true function throughout my exercise based career and am lucky enough to be working with guys who have truly helped me to advance my self-taught knowledge.

Watch this video and decide whether or not you are truly functional and use your body to it's potential... Wait for the guy in orange: his name is David Elsewhere...

I can guarantee that I don't and if I trained people with achieving that in mind, it would be pointless. True function is simply being able to do what you want to do with comfort and minimal risk of injury. If the function at each joint in your body could be built in so that you never put yourself at risk doing day to day activities then you are functioning optimally for what it is that you want to do... whether it's play golf or football or simply, put your child in the baby seat in the back of the car. Let's make sure you are able to do it safely, functionally and with a small amount of risk as possible. Let's face it.. how many people blow out their backs putting a baby in the car?

If you are looking to create or generate function to improve the way you run, walk, climb or do anything, then look for a trainer who will think out of the box, will get you off the isolated machinery in gyms and teach you to move in a safe and enjoyable environment. improving your functionality simply means being able to do everything you want and need to do in comfort and with minimal risk of injury...

Do you think David Elsewhere has pain in his body during his day to day life? I don't...
I'll post more David Elsewhere as I come across them since he truly shows us what is capable of EVERYBODY's human body... enjoy your body, nourish it, move it, be grateful for it and love it.
It's the only one you've got...

Are you thinking backwards?

A thought is a form just like you are a form, you just can’t touch it – but I bet you can feel it. It is real, it reaches out to other people and it sits on you and others when you let it out… a positive thought touches people in ways you couldn’t imagine, a negative thought is like a curse that we inflict on ourselves and other people. A thought literally becomes a thing once you release it from the mind. If you think you are bad at something. You are bad at something. If you think you’ll never find a parking space or sell your house, you’ll never find a parking space or sell your house. If you constantly think you have an ailment or a condition (let’s call it a label that you simply carry around), then you’ll constantly think that you have an ailment or a condition. What about thinking in reverse: backwards thinking. Backwards thinking might help you change your life. Please read on...

Who says we don't need educating?

Today I saw an overweight young lady looking rather confused and full of indecision as she pondered over her options and struggled to choose which packet of Weight Watchers crisps she should buy!!!!

Two days without what??

The continuation of my detox procedures to show that I would not ask you to do anything that I wouldn’t do myself was put to the test this past weekend. The two day cell cleanse was very tough for me to endure. My metabolic type is not exactly suited to the procedure of the cell cleanse. i.e. it involved using foods that one would not find on my own allowable food list. The cell cleanse consists of a TWO DAY FAST - if I’m honest the thought of two days without food was a helluva lot worse than the thought of doing an enema! No food and no exercise for two days? My life’s been turned upside down!

You put coffee where?

Yes if like me the first time you heard the words coffee and enema strung together in a sentence your mind went foggy and legs began to wobble, then worry not as I believe you are in good company. Any body who has been fortunate enough to engage in conversation with me about this subject has nine times out of ten uttered the words "Coffee?? Enema?? You'll not catch me doing that in a million years!" Well my million years surely ran out as I enrolled on the detox programme for Metabolic Typing Level Two.

Having not had much chance to blog recently, I should let you know that at the time of writing I have carried out three or four of these (admittedly pleasant!) procedures. i am going to report on the first of these which can only be described as both 'the best and worst experience of my life'.

Why coffee enemas? During the first world war, warm water enemas were given to soldiers who were experiencing pain and illness from life in the trenches. One day, a nurse - obviously hyper and wired from drinking too much of the stuff - decided to add coffee to the enemas since if it made her feel better, why wouldn't it benefit the soldiers? So World War One soldiers were administered coffee enemas for the first time - and soldiers reported that their 'ablutions were doing some good and that their pain was much relieved'. So how does it work?