Bulging belly despite a healthy weight

[kaizen]

I took pictures of myself - both my normal posture and what I consider to be my erect posture when I consciously try to correct my posture. Link to the picasa album is : https://picasaweb.google.com/live.music8...directlink

Let me know what you guys think. I'm seeing an Alexander Technique teacher today. I'll update on that after the meeting.

[kaizen]

During my session with the Alexander Technique teacher, she asked me whether I feel any pain in the body. I told her about the pain I feel between my left shoulder blade and the spine on the back side, and on the left shoulder itself, if I carry a backpack (I don't carry one now, but if I do I'm sure I'll feel the pain after a while. It's most likely a result of an injury from childhood while playing). About six months ago I noticed that when I bend forward, I feel a sharp tinge of pain on my lower back on the right side. Sometimes the area around my rib cage on the right side feels slightly sore. Once in a while, my neck feels stiff - I have trouble turning my head to the left.

She had me do one exercise where I lied down on my back on a hard bed, with feet planted on the bed while knees where facing the roof. She tried to relax my body so that my back had the maximum contact/support from below and similarly positioned my head to be level. Apparently, Alexander Technique is mainly a mental/thinking process where I was supposed to imagine a few things, like feeling relaxation move from my toes to the head, relax the muscles and elongate the body, and stuff like that. She also told me that posture has nothing to do with controlling certain muscles to maintain a good posture. In fact the key is to NOT control anything and just relax the body parts in their natural position, etc.

While the exercise felt good, I don't know how much it will actually improve my posture as such. I kept asking her what should I do everyday while I'm standing, or sitting on my desk, to know that I am holding the head, neck, etc. in the right position. When I'm standing tomorrow, without a second person looking at me, how can I tell that I'm standing correctly with my head nicely balanced on the spine? Or that I'm sitting properly in the chair in my office? A few sessions every week or two weeks will hardly have any effect if I'm doing it wrong every single day. What do I do daily and how do I know that I'm doing it correctly? Besides recommending that I do the "lying down" exercise daily, the teacher didn't have much to say about all these questions I have written above.

I have not decided whether I'll go for a second session or not. If you have any experience with the Alexander Technique sessions or attempted to correct the "craning neck" and lordosis issues, please please throw some light here. Any recommendation for an Alexander Technique book? I'm willing to spend money on the sessions (it's expensive!), but I am quite skeptical about the ability of the sessions to improve my posture. I'm leaning more towards doing the exercises mentioned at http://postmasculine.com/posture.

[Mind]

Yeah, do the exercises Dan outlined.

From you pics you probably have weak:
- abs
- glutes
- lower traps & rear delts
Train them

Foam roll:
- chest (pec minor, major, lat!!)
- hip flexors
(- try lower back with 2 tennisballs > google)

Google the muscles + look on exrx.net to understand their functions.

For posture just think of "being proud" or "being pulled up by a rope/ballon through the spine". In general it is way more important to change it up every few minutes than staying in the same position all of the time. (Hack: drink water > you have to get up)

Alexander technique/feldenkreis practitioners do focus more on health then your "posture" (aka "looking good").
Posture is surprisingly unrelated to injury risk/pain.

[Divorco]

(05-28-2012 03:16 AM)kaizen Wrote:  Because of my height and slender frame, I don't want to look too big. I know a few people who are short and have huge upper body muscles, and to me that looks really odd.

You weigh 135, your lean mass is around 110, you bench 100, posted waif pictures, and you are worried about looking too muscular? If that is remotely true then you need to find a pro-anorexia forum instead.

(06-02-2012 01:30 AM)kaizen Wrote:  I'm a little ambivalent about cardio, don't wanna burn the little muscle I got.

You are confused. You don't want to get bigger, and you don't want to get smaller. It's okay; god loves you just as you are.

Here is a way to clear your confusion. Get strong and fast and athletic. Then your appearance and body image will be fine. FWIW, the average college male bodyfat is 15%, and you will get abs and look lean and athletic at 10%. Bodybuilders get down to 6% precompetition, but they start to rapidly lose muscle at that level.

[kaizen]

Divorco, appreciate your comments man. I'm doing less thinking and more doing now. Added 20 lb to squat and 15 lb to bench since then. Doing 30 min cardio AFTER my weight training 3x/week to get rid of body fat faster (for god's sake, I've 28% fat in abs!). Added abs and glutes exercises to improve posture. I also tried running for 30 min on non-training days, but that seems to be a bit too much right now.

Nutrition wise, I've reduced carb intake to close to zero. Considerably increased my eggs, chicken and veggie intake. Throw some olive oil on veggies and munch almonds & walnuts to get the necessary fat. I find it really cumbersome to count calories of different macro-nutrients, so I'm just eating the right stuff as much as I can. Lemme know if I'm missing anything big here.

[Zelazny]

Just to add to Mind's tip: the following exercise helps me when trying to get a good posture:

1. Place feet about shoulder width apart.
2. Try to feel the entire ground under your feet. Become aware of where your foot presses on the ground ("grounding")
3. Imagine that I'm pushing something up with the top of my head. Could be a balloon, or imagine a piece of string pulling it upwards. Make sure your face remains level.
4. Close eyes, keep posture, breathe in deeply.
5. Open eyes, look in mirror. Be amazed.
(6. Lose posture within minutes, but it's a start)

[Drewid]

(06-13-2012 04:23 AM)Divorco Wrote:  You weigh 135, your lean mass is around 110, you bench 100, posted waif pictures, and you are worried about looking too muscular? If that is remotely true then you need to find a pro-anorexia forum instead.

Right? I used to lift hard, and every time I heard that nonsense from someone I would tell them they should try and get "too big" and let me know when they get there.

[CHB2]

@Kaizen In my experience with close to zero carb dieting, you tend to have a lot less energy for hard workouts. Maybe you will react differently, but I would at least have carbs right before and right after a workout so you have some fuel to push yourself. You should consider keeping a food log for the first few weeks - it takes a long time to learn how to judge how many calories you are eating without one, and you may be overeating without knowing it.

@Drewid Definitely true. My senior year of high school I bulked up a lot, going from a skinny 140 to muscular 160 (I imagine a growth spurt helped, but I was eating an obscene amount of food). Some younger guys saw that I was getting bigger and would ask me for advice and then they wouldn't follow it, saying they were only trying to "get toned" not "get big". After a while I just stopped giving people advice.

[kaizen]

Body weight = 136.5 lb
Squat = 225 lb (four plates, yay!)
Deadlift = 255 lb (squat is catching up with DL. I think I can push more on DL, will try next time).

Bench press = 120 lb, Press = 80 lb

1. I'm not able to add even 5 lb in a week to upper body exercises. What do I do?

2. One of my friends gave me this pre-workout supplement (jack3d.com). The first time I took it, I sweated for a good 45 mins and I was feeling very energetic. I added 15 lb to Squat that day. Is it safe to take such supplements on a regular basis? Any side effects?

3. When I squat at my max capacity, while coming up from the parallel position, my middle body (knees and torso) buckle to the left slightly. All the soreness (and sometimes, pain) after the squat/DL are on the right side of my body - right glutes, right side of the neck, right shoulder, and lower right side of the Latissimus dorsi. When I bend over, I feel a sharp tinge of pain in the lower right side of the Latissimus dorsi, and the first time I noticed this pain was about six months ago when I was not even lifting weights. I am a right-handed person, and my left limbs are weaker. My friend said that buckling to the left during squat may be due to flexibility, and not necessarily strength. I started doing lunges, but haven't noticed any significant difference yet. Anybody has more insights into this?

Thanks!