124 | 5 tips to Help Ease the Common Aches and Pains

Are you feeling those niggling aches and pains more often as you journey through midlife? Brace yourself for some relief! In this enlightening episode, we’ll share five life-changing tips to keep discomfort at bay. Discover the potent role fascia plays in our bodies, and the simple tactics to keep it healthy. Learn just how much power small movements can hold - from adjusting your sitting position to the unconscious tapping of your foot. 

But just as we need to keep our physical bodies moving, we need to keep our mental spirits engaged too. That’s where the magic of community shines! Staying active and mobile as we age can be a daunting challenge when tackled alone. This episode shines a spotlight on the profound benefits of being part of a supportive community. You’ll hear about the power of shared experiences, and the impact they can have in shaping our journey through midlife. So, whether you're strolling in the park or seated at your desk, let's journey through midlife together, with buoyancy and serenity. Tune in!

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:05

Welcome to Moving Through Midlife. I am your host, courtney, a personal trainer and movement specialist who wants to help you move through midlife with more grace. Each week, we will discuss ways we can show up better for ourselves and our children without the burnout. We will focus on overall health through habit stacking to help increase energy, provide movement snacks to help you move more throughout the day, while also moving your body more, and learn from professionals on moving through midlife with ease so that you can feel confident with aging. Gracefully, grab your earbuds and join me on a leisurely walk. While we discuss moving through midlife Today, I want to share with you five tips to ease pain and prevent injury. So, as we get older, one thing that I hear a lot of moms saying is how they're starting to deal with more and more aches and pains, and this has a lot more to do with not the fact that we're getting older, but more about the lack of movement. As we get older, we tend to move less, so it is really important to make sure that we are finding ways to move in our everyday throughout the day and then also supporting our fascia. So our fascia is that it's this thin layer in between the muscle and the skin. That has a lot of, the more they're learning about fascia. It's very interesting. There is a lot of information that is going through our fascia. What they're learning about fascia is that it has nerves that are almost as sensitive as what skin is and there's a lot of communication occurring. It's almost like the lymphatic system with the nerves. So the way that information is passed throughout our body, a lot of that is happening within our fascia. So it is really important to make sure that we keep our fascia healthy.

Speaker 1: 2:31

And when you sit for hours on end, you are kind of pressing. Your fascia is pressing into that muscle and if you think about the way pressure is being pushed into a certain area so say you're sitting in a chair and pressure is being pressed into your hamstring, and also imagine that you're one who may be slightly dehydrated, so that fascia is not moving over back and forth over the muscle Well, it's kind of right and has gotten what I like to say sticky, and this can create adhesions or tension spots within the. What we think of when we think of muscle, but it's more, it's the, that restrictive feeling. It's your fascia that's usually connected to the muscle that's creating that restriction. You haven't got like a muscle tear there's nothing like that but that's usually that fascia is heightening up and getting sticky and creating a slight adhesion to an area of the body. So we have to start to work to release that. So things that we can do to work on releasing that the first one is to move every 30 minutes to an hour.

Speaker 1: 3:56

It really is important to find different ways to move throughout your day, and this doesn't even mean for those of you who are like, well, I'm at work and I don't have a lot of opportunities to move, that is fine. We've got to start thinking differently about movement. You will hear me say this over and over and over again. If you are one who always crosses your right leg over top of your left leg, that's a movement. That is. Imagine how the stickiness, how your skin and fascia is pressing into the muscle on one side and then when you change your position and you go opposite which, for some of you who always put the same leg over, you're going to be like this. I don't like the way this feels. It feels different because muscle tension has changed. You may have tightened it up on one side so that other side is also tight and creating more tension than the other side. So just make sure to work on moving in different ways while you're sitting. That is all great ways to make sure that you're moving every 30 minutes and if you're paying attention to listening to your body, you will get these signs naturally throughout the day. Our body wants to be moving in different ways. So when you start to feel that sensation of something's getting tight, then move.

Speaker 1: 5:32

Work on trying to find a different position where you can kind of stretch. That which leads me to the second one, which is practice stretching at your desk where you're standing or even during different movements. So if you are sitting and say you're cross-legged but you're starting to feel like you need to change up the position, just bring that ankle onto the knee in more of a figure four stance, get a little stretch. At the same time you can kind of bend your body forward and you'll feel that stretch in the low back and hip area A great way to create movement, changing the tension within the different parts of the body. That creates a different stretch, different pulling on those muscles. The other thing is standing up. You can, when you're standing up at your desk, you can work on flexing the feet. So you're going to think about lifting the forefoot up the ball of the foot. So if you imagine yourself like tapping your foot, that works on lengthening the calf muscle, it works on ankle mobility. Those little movements help as well. You can even do this while you're sitting, just tapping your feet and moving your feet and ankles in circles. That can help with movement. And these little movements yes, they don't feel like much. Are you getting your heart rate up? Are you strengthening muscles? No, but we're talking about preventing injuries and easing these aches and pains, and a lot of the aches and pains come from this lack of movement that we have in our life.

Speaker 1: 7:23

Exercise or go for a walk would be number three getting out and get moving, move your body, get that blood flowing, get all of the fascia, the thorn. So you have on the back of your body your thorn columbar fascia and it runs all the way up from the upper back neck area down through the hips and we need to work on creating more movement within that area. And a basic walk if you think about walking, your shoulders kind of rotate as you walk. It's your arms moving. I'm trying to explain this to you. So if you were to go for a walk, if you think, if you allow your arms to naturally relax down at your side and just swing, naturally, you'll find that your shoulder kind of tilts forward and you're stretching that shoulder to opposite hip. You're kind of stretching and lengthening that, which is a great way to work on moving that fascia along the back.

Speaker 1: 8:37

The fourth one is practice posture and moving through different positions. So this is where, like yoga, is great because you're moving through these different positions within the body. One thing that I tend to see a lot with people is they tend to like to work out in the same positions that they're in much of the day. So for those that sit at a desk all day and then they're going to spin class, if you think about how the body is positioned in both spin and sitting at a desk, you can see how that body is still in a very similar position. And then you're going and sitting, all of that kind of you know, sitting in a car, sitting at a desk all of that is a very similar position. So, yes, you're getting the cardio, you're getting some of that strength, but you're not changing the position of your body. So be cognizant of that when you choose exercise, does that mean you can't do spin? No, but I would look at varying your exercises, not only for changing the way that your body responds to different exercises, but also to change the position of the body as well to help prevent injuries.

Speaker 1: 10:11

It's just like when we talk about sports. There's a lot of information coming out about how kids that grow up only playing one sport deal with more injuries than kids that are multi sports. So because they're moving their body in different ways. If you're only moving your body in one way over and over and over again, you get a lot more overuse injuries from that person who is working in different fields. Maybe they're doing some basketball, maybe they're doing some baseball, maybe they're doing some football. You know they're moving through different positions, so they're not really ever getting an overuse because they're moving their body in different ways. So hopefully that helps explain that and making sure that you're moving through different positions when you are working on your posture and people always tend to also hear posture and think that means, oh, I need to sit up straight. That's great, but posture is really the next position your body is in. So don't worry so much about sitting up straight all day. Let's look at how can we move our posture from one position to the next.

Speaker 1: 11:35

And then the last one is myofascial release, and this is foam rolling, which also helps to stimulate the lymphatic system, which is great to ensure that the your basically like, you're hydrating your fascia, you're getting the fluids moving and pumping through the body, getting rid of some of the toxins. It kind of moves the toxins out and then also helps to undo some of the stickiness that is happening within the body and where the fascia is. So foam rolling any type of self myofascial release where you know there's cupping, there's massage, there's small like tennis ball type movements that you can do all of these things will help to release that fascia and create less adhesions with your fascia to your muscle, which helps to keep things more pliable and moving. And then I'm going to give you a bonus one, because it's one thing that I also think is very important and often overlooked, because we're thinking of movement as a whole is your nutrition. So, depending on what you are eating will depend on your inflammation, and if you are eating healthy fruits and vegetables and things like that, you're less likely to deal with inflammation or it can help to calm some of the inflammation.

Speaker 1: 13:16

If you are dealing with lots of aches and pains, I would encourage you to look at your. You can go see a doctor Usually it's functional medicine, but there's some, I believe, like hormone doctors that can also help you with this to see your inflammatory markers and if those are high, then you may need to work on well, you will probably need to work on your nutrition to bring those levels down and to try to figure out what may be causing some of this. So pain is a really interesting thing and actually there's a lot of new research coming out about how pain runs deeper than just this feeling that we have that it could be due to more psychological things as well. So I just when I'm talking to you about this, it's really more about just working to ease some of these minor aches and pains that you may deal with pay attention to how you're using your body.

Speaker 1: 14:30

Are you always going into the same positions? Maybe work on trying to find ways to change that position, like I had said with the spin class, and if you're sitting at a desk all day, maybe you go to some yoga classes where you work on extension, more of this, opening the body up rather than Pilates, because here again, I love Pilates. I'm not saying anything bad about Pilates, but you know, sometimes that is that more curled position as well, because you're working into the core. So it just kind of depends on how you're moving throughout your day and then working to counterbalance that. Whether it's through different forms of exercise, trying to do different things don't get stuck on one thing and then also moving your body in different ways, you can still do those things you love, because I think it is most important to do something you enjoy doing because that's going to help keep you doing it. But if you can find different ways to so say, you do enjoy going to spend after working all day, that's fine, continue that.

Speaker 1: 15:44

But then how can you incorporate some extension into your day? Maybe you don't have time to do yoga, but maybe you can do a yoga pose that brings you into extension. Or maybe you can do a tabletop stretch on a desk where you bring your arms down I'm sorry your head down through your arms to create that natural extension of the back, so that you're not in this rounded position forward as much. So hopefully that provides you some information on things that you can do to work on easing those common aches and pains that you're dealing with and help prevent injuries from occurring, and then always feel free to reach out to me with questions.

Speaker 1: 16:29

You can join our community. I will put a link below for you, and I hope you have a wonderful day and make sure to keep moving. I hope you enjoyed this episode and found something to take away to help you practice healthier habits, move more or handle the midlife in aging with grace. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend or leave us a review to help us reach more moms just like you. Head to movingthroughmidlifecom to join the free community or learn how you can move more and feel better in your daily life.