bodies_in_motion

Fuck yeah Quinn Brett

Sat, 03 Oct 2020 08:48:05 GMT

Posted by: rydra_wong

Outside Online: Quinn Brett Shares Her Adaptive Yoga Routine

Former big-wall climbing badass Quinn Brett is a wheelchair user after a horrendous 120-foot fall on El Cap in 2017. She's a lifelong yoga practitioner and now teaches yoga group classes including both wheelchair users and able-bodied people, and also runs online Yoga For Paralysis classes.

The short routine in the article looks like it could be useful for anyone who spends a lot of time sitting (whether in a wheelchair or other chair) and wants to work on hip and spine mobility.

Quinn's ep on the Enormocast climbing podcast:

Episode 169: Quinn Brett – Forward from the Fall

comments

contortion podcast

Sat, 25 Jul 2020 15:54:20 GMT

Posted by: tei

It occurred to me this comm might be interested in this podcast episode, an interview with Ess Hodelmoser. Ess is a contortionist I've been vaguely following for a while, and this interview was a frank discussion of so many of the things that drew me into their work. They're a nonbinary artist who started contortion as an adult, following a career in competitive Muay Thai and subsequently a serious traumatic brain injury. They also have a degree in disability studies, and in this discussion have a lot of fascinating things to say about the art of contortion as an exploration of what it means to present bodies organized in acceptable vs. unacceptable ways.

Here's one of the pieces that they talk about a lot in the interview:

comments

lockdown movements

Sat, 25 Apr 2020 22:19:23 GMT

Posted by: tei

I'm curious what everyone's physical practices are looking like if you're mostly on lockdown due to COVID? here, it's finally gotten warm enough to be outside comfortably for activities other than running, so I've been trying to do some gymnastics-type training in the park and am considering ordering a slackline and some rings that I could hang from a tree branch.

The downside is that I really don't like people watching me. :P

comments

Link-dumping

Sun, 26 May 2019 09:30:47 GMT

Posted by: rydra_wong

I seem to have accumulated a bunch of links on gender, trans-ness, embodiment and fitness/movement:

GFW Clothing: Overcoming Barriers to Trans and Queer fitness (brief promotional mention of GFW underwear, as the author's one of their models)

NY Times: Fitness for Bodies That Don’t Fit the Mainstream

My fight to be a man: the story of a life-changing boxing match: Thomas Page McBee on transitioning, sexuality and the fight that altered his life

comments

How do you do recovery?

Sun, 28 Apr 2019 20:52:58 GMT

Posted by: abyssinia

*waves* This comm has been pretty quiet but hopefully there's still some people around.

In my early 30s I was very active in a variety of ways (multiple recreational sports, crossfit, bike commuting, etc) but then I spent several years going through a tailspin of moving/illness/etc. which saw me spending significant periods sedentary or getting minimal exercise.

I'm now in my late 30's and working on getting back to being active and trying to be slow/methodical about it through a mixture of recreational sports, running, and getting back into Crossfit. I've been working hard to build slowly and incorporate rest days. But I'm still finding post-workout recovery to be much harder than it used to be. I seem to be tired/sore after exercise for a much longer time or much more intensely than I feel like I should be.

I don't know if this is just the price I'm paying for being older and trying to get back into shape, or if I'm doing recovery work poorly. So I was curious what other people do for recovery - things they find helps or hurts? I'm interested in things like activity level/type, possibly food/nutrition, or other things I can do.

comments

Shoulder and upper back stretches

Thu, 28 Mar 2019 07:38:42 GMT

Posted by: seasonoftowers

What sort of upper back stretches have you tried and liked? I've been giving cow face pose a try lately, but it doesn't quite compute yet.

comments

Suggestions needed

Tue, 26 Mar 2019 08:47:09 GMT

Posted by: rydra_wong

rachelmanija has broken her foot and is looking for:

Core and back exercises that don't require feet

comments

Illopsoas stretches

Sat, 23 Mar 2019 08:10:14 GMT

Posted by: seasonoftowers

As I've mentioned in my journal, I've found that attempting pigeon pose helps with a hell of a lot of highly annoying physical issues I've had the past year. Note that I say attempting, and not succeeding - I can maybe get 8 inches above the floor on my bad side before my hips start turning. I wonder how best to proceed from here - do I keep doing as much of the stretch as I can do correctly, or are there other things I should try first?

comments

Stretching

Thu, 14 Feb 2019 09:53:10 GMT

Posted by: rydra_wong

Linking with permission -- kaberett and others discuss research on the benefits (or not) of stretching:

kaberett: On stretching

comments

Advice for treadmill use?

Mon, 21 Jan 2019 06:24:54 GMT

Posted by: starwatcher

.
*waves* Hi. I forgot about this comm until I saw Rydra's post, then realized maybe someone here can help me.

Long story short -- I'm spending week-on week-off between my dad's town and my town. My dad's town has a good indoor community pool, which is reserved for lap-swimming 3 evenings per week. Since June, I've improved my time for 50 laps (.77 mile) from 66 minutes to 54 minutes, 10 seconds. \o/ So I do an extra 5 laps, for a total time of 59 minutes 50 seconds. (I'm slow, but I keep going and going and going...)

I don't have that opportunity in my town, so this week I finally decided to start making use of my treadmill that's been gathering dust for lo, these many years. I managed a decent pace -- 2 miles per hour -- for 35 minutes.

BUT!

( Details inside. )

comments

I finally wrote up the results of my Lattice climbing assessment

Sun, 20 Jan 2019 17:52:03 GMT

Posted by: rydra_wong

Intensive nerdery here.

comments

Help with exercise plan for my daughter

Tue, 15 Jan 2019 01:06:08 GMT

Posted by: lunabee34

My 16 year old daughter is a runner who has been having tendon issues that interfere with her running. She hasn't been able to run since the first week of December. She is sad, frustrated, sleeping poorly, and managing her anxiety poorly as a result. The issue is currently with her foot.

Does anyone have any suggestions for exercise that might not exacerbate the injury? Once the inflammation calms down, walking seems to be okay, but she really wants to be doing something that gets her heart rate up and is more of a workout. We tried the stationary bike, and after about 16 minutes, her foot started hurting. Swimming is out because there's no indoor pool in our town.

I'm just at a loss. I feel so helpless and bad for her. She tested positive on an autoimmune scan, but we can't get into the pediatric rheumatologist until March. I tried to get her GP to call them and expedite the appointment but he won't do it because he doesn't see enough evidence that it's a rheumatology problem instead of a musculoskeletal one. He is referring us to PT, so hopefully that will happen soon, but in the meantime, I don't know what to do to help her get the exercise she needs.

Help!

comments

niqaeli has more thoughts on the disability/athleticism intersection

Thu, 03 Jan 2019 07:56:46 GMT

Posted by: rydra_wong

Relevant to comm interests:

niqaeli: have some more blather about disability and athletics

comments

Question for body nerds

Sun, 02 Dec 2018 09:14:29 GMT

Posted by: rydra_wong

Upper trapezius muscles: ~~can I kill them?~~ how do I get them to shut off, or at least stop trying to do all the work?

I am doing a lot of shoulder exercises to try to get my scapula behaving properly, and yesterday I realized that the multi-day headache was very likely due to my upper traps trying even harder than usual to get in on the action and do the work when they are not needed or wanted to, and thus my neck locking up even tighter than usual.

I will take any suggestions anyone's got on how to get them to disengage while engaging middle/lower traps and rhomboids.

comments

Knee strengthening exercise suggestions?

Wed, 10 Oct 2018 22:16:42 GMT

Posted by: havocthecat

Before I go all out and hire a personal trainer (which, uh, I cannot afford given the dance costs in my life), does anyone have any links to suggested knee and leg strength training exercises for someone who a) does not have much in the way of equipment and b) has knees which are moderately fucked? (Ligament and/or tendon strain, plus arthritis.) Also I have balance issues due to various reasons that are too complicated to get into here.

Please keep in mind that I am not looking for medical or insurance advice and can gauge and manage my own needs in respect to that.

Thank you!

comments

Tips on exercise for hypermobile people

Thu, 04 Oct 2018 09:14:47 GMT

Posted by: rydra_wong

Because I know a lot of y'all are, I thought this might be of interest:

GMB: Hypermobility Exercises: Keeping Yourself Injury-Free while Training

The article is appropriately clear that they're not qualified to give advice for people with EDS and other full-on connective tissue conditions, but it's got tips and some interesting exercises for building strength and stability at the point just before your end range of motion.

As always, I pass it on under Bruce Lee rules: take what works for you and discard the rest.

ETA: I'm not hypermobile myself so can't evaluate directly; if you are and this seems obviously off-base, please comment!

comments

Exercising patience

Thu, 23 Aug 2018 07:57:53 GMT

Posted by: kaberett

Earlier this week, in my own space I wrote a lengthy post about pacing, bracing and exercise with hypermobility-type EDS. This talks (somewhat frustratedly) about the Many Physiotherapists I saw who had no idea what to do with me, followed by a specialist hypermobility clinic who did. Have not had the brain to link sooner, did not have the brain to cross-post, but please go play if you're interested and I'll do my best to engage over there! :-)

comments

Trying out ice skating

Thu, 12 Jul 2018 01:28:33 GMT

Posted by: chalcedony_starlings

^β(The bulk of this is cross-posted from our personal journal, but a few minor details are access-locked.)

Today, at the urging of a good friend, we wound up trying ice skating for the first time! “first” meaning that the zeroth/first of us had taken some basic classes about… fifteen years ago? We weren't sure whether there was any motor memory of it left. This is also part of more general Adventurousness Training, of which “retraining the visceral, body-facing side wrt things like risk tolerance” is a major part.

Illum was fronting most of the time today; at some point I want to try it more thoroughly myself, but I still caught a lot of it.

Results so far:

No reliable memory of how to brake properly.
Error recovery is still pretty wonky in general.
How to balance on the ice seems mostly workable.
These reflexes work for falling, sort of.
It's an interesting sort of exercise… I assume this involves core muscles quite a bit?
These foot arches complain a lot, and it's not clear what to do about this.
They don't have half-sizes of skates, but a 13 “wide” worked better than a raw 13.
No reliable memory of how to properly lace the things either, 403 had to show us. c..c
Definitely noticing a lot of flickery signaling waking up on the other side of the system↔body rubble while trying out motion in that environment.

I'm a little stymied by the foot arch issue, since that seems the most significant. These feet have gotten pretty wonky over the years in general, and I feel like there might both be some arch issues and some circulation problems. Same for the sizing… I don't know if any of this is common enough that any of y'all might be able to give quick answers to it.

Thinking of going back for some basic classes, resources permitting. Would appreciate sharing of other experiences, or feedback on ways to get more out of this kind of practice. :-)

(ETA: oh, for those of you who might not be aware, since I'm not sure we've posted here before: we're the in-same-body successors of the one behind this comment thread, and the “get the somatic link working properly” matter has surfaced in its own way in our era, having undergone interesting twists and turns. Just in case the context is useful.)

comments

Body learning

Fri, 06 Jul 2018 09:25:00 GMT

Posted by: rydra_wong

marina has an interesting post about movement skill and learning:

the one where it's obvious I've never done gymnastics

comments

Highly relevant to the comm's interests

Sun, 01 Jul 2018 18:56:50 GMT

Posted by: rydra_wong

truelove talks disability, athleticism, and existing across categories that ableist society has "conceived of as mutually exclusive binaries":

disability and ability are non-linear functions or possibly non-euclidean physics

comments

Relevant to comm interests

Sat, 09 Jun 2018 13:38:28 GMT

Posted by: rydra_wong

There've been a cluster of Dreamwidth posts lately with interesting comment discussions, about movement practices that are useful for everyday life and long-term functional ability, particularly to do with balance, falling, and getting up and down (whether from a chair or the floor).

It started when I posted:

Falldowngetup

So I "invented" an exercise thing?

(On this topic, lizvogel linked to Everybody Falls at Book View Cafe.)

jesse_the_k linked to my post and got further interesting comments, including some from people who found it didn't work/wasn't suitable for them: Fabulous Exercise for Many People

Then they suggested an alternative:

A More Appropriate Exercise for Those of Us With Cripped Bodies

Then I added a third practice and a book rec:

... and a third thing

comments

Linking with permission

Mon, 07 Aug 2017 17:50:16 GMT

Posted by: rydra_wong

monanotlisa wrote a thought-provoking post about her experiences with what she summarizes in the cut tag as "[a]ble bodies and disability, genetics and appearances":

monanotlisa: This is not the long post I've been meaning to make

comments

Taking care of the body

Wed, 26 Apr 2017 16:05:47 GMT

Posted by: mad_m

Hello fellow Bodies in Motion! Wondering about your stories of healing and recovery. I'm on the road back from a long layoff from running related to overtraining and muscle imbalance, and a major rock fall last September. Without getting into the details of the problems (long, boring, trust me), I finally owned that I'm getting older and simply taking a few months off with stretching just won't cut it anymore. That was a long road of getting past depression of not being able to move the way I wanted, at the speed and with the power I used to.

I hate it when I get the advice from medical professionals or massage therapists to not run, not push it, perhaps take it easier - I found the right mix of body work with an acupuncturist. After a few months of work with her, and on my own (stretching, rolling muscles, and pushing tennis balls into my trigger points at home), I'm now able to do some walk-running, body weight exercises, and the occasional short dyno at the rock gym. I also got outside to lead a few easy sport routes over Easter weekend. I used to be too proud to mix running into my walking, wouldn't climb routes I thought were beneath me, and didn't think strength training had a place in improving my climbing (totally bought into "if you want to climb, then climb!") In short, I was holding myself back with standards that my injured self couldn't meet, standards that were arbitrarily set. After letting them slack a bit, I realized how much I really can do after all, and that I'm on the road back to where I want to be.

What are your stories of breaking and rebuilding? What personal myths did you need to overcome?

comments

Sat, 22 Apr 2017 01:25:03 GMT

Posted by: alexseanchai

okay so like

exercise that

* won't fuck with any of my disabilities
* won't feel impossible to start or maintain
* won't get blockaded by my executive function or wtfever before I get started
* won't cost money
* won't make me feel like a fail on the grounds of continuing to not meet the 150 min/wk moderate exercise guideline
* won't tempt me into excessive ambition
* will help me learn patience
* will help me increase some number of my strength, flexibility, endurance, and cardiovascular health
* will start where I am wrt all four such
* will be enjoyable, not chorelike

am I chasing a unicorn here?

(I really appreciate the effort you all put in last time I posted here! just none of your suggestions stuck. /o\ and it's incredibly frustrating.)

(also I don't understand why I chose today to start caring again? I have been complaining all week about through-the-roof pain! this is maybe not the week to reinstate a practice of physicality?)

comments

Bodies not in motion: "The Beauty of Anatomy"

Sat, 15 Apr 2017 15:23:00 GMT

Posted by: rydra_wong

If you're in the UK ~~or can use proxies to convince BBC iPlayer that you are~~, you can currently watch all five episodes of the BBC series The Beauty of Anatomy from 2014 on iPlayer.

(It's also available to buy online.)

It traces the development of knowledge in human anatomy through the use of art to illustrate and communicate anatomical knowledge, and to represent the work of anatomists.

Episodes cover Galen and Leonardo, Vesalius, Rembrandt and Ruysch, the Hunter brothers (the surgeon/anatomists behind the two Hunterian Museums in the UK), and Gray's Anatomy (the book, not the TV series ...).

So, very relevant to those of us who are anatomy geeks, and/or interested in how art represents human bodies (insides in particular).

I'm partway through watching, so can't provide content notes for the whole thing, but (predictably enough) there's footage of dissections during medical training and preserved human remains, and (in ep 3) a painting of a dissected dead baby.

comments