Working in Comfort without breaking the bank

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Most people who work at a computer/desk job have experienced neck or back pain from time to time. Some people are fortunate enough that their company will invest in ergonomic experts and finance purchasing good chairs, standing desks, or elevating monitors… the rest of us mortals have to make do with what we have…many people equate that with “suffering through,” but it doesn’t have to.

Enter your friendly DPT!

There are some things that can be done to help you improve your ergonomics without investing in crazy expensive chairs or desks attached to treadmills. Check out my video and the info below for tips.

(working on the sound quality. Bear with me 🙏)

1) Position the monitor approximately 18-24 inches from your face. You can either move the monitor or the chair to achieve this effect. The center of the screen should be just below the level of the eyes when sitting up straight. You want your ear to be about in line with the point of your shoulder.

–If your monitor is too low, try putting it on either a stand or a couple of those books you haven’t opened in a while.

2) The Key board should be close enough that your arms can remain bent and you can ‘float ‘ your wrists while typing. You can accomplish this again by moving the keyboard or your sitting position.

— If you use a laptop at work try purchasing a separate USB plug-in keyboard. You can then put the screen of the laptop where you need it to be and move the keyboard around.

3) Shoulder position should be just slightly elevated so that the muscle that goes from your neck to your shoulder (trapezius) is relaxed. When your arms are out to type or on your armrests. If your arm rests don’t elevate, try rolling up a small towel and fixing them to the armrests you have. It may not look too pretty but at least it’s not a pain in the neck. (Pun intended 😂😂)

4) Sitting Position should be upright in your chair with the hips tucked under you. I explain in my video above how to find this position. After you find a good posture, then use a towel roll or a ‘lumbar roll’ to fill in the space between your back and the back of the chair.

5) Knee position relates to sitting posture above. You want the back of your knees to be about 2 inches from the front of the chair to make sure you don’t have pressure on the back of the knee. If your seat is too deep, try scooting forward and using a larger towel roll for step 4.

6) Feet should be flat on the floor when you have a 90 degree bend in the knee. If you find yourself unable to touch the floor try putting your feet on a stool or another large book. This helps keep the legs relaxed and the weight of the legs from pulling you forward in your chair.

To review, try sitting like this:

Not this:

You may also like:

Stretching to Fix YOUR posture: correcting for rounded shoulders

Stretches to fix YOUR posture. – correcting ‘forward head’Flexibility Training – Part 1 (why do I care?)

Safe Strength Training – Classic Squat alternatives

Sincerely,
Nicole Mims. PT, DPT.

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How to survive a busy gym AND get a good workout!

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Scenario: You leave work and head towards the gym with all the best intentions… You pull up and the parking lot is PACKED… S#!T.   Immediately your brain starts coming up with reasons to turn your car around “it’s too busy to get in a good lift” “all of the equipment will be taken” “some one always gets on the machine I’m using between sets” “I feel like people are judging me” “I’ll go in a few hours”..etc.   (hint: you probably won’t go back in a few hours. )

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As a person who used to work at a gym 4 am – 7pm I developed a few strategies on how to get in a good workout (or help your client get in a good workout) during the busy times.  So lets review and quiet those demons on your shoulder.

1. Know the muscle groups you are trying to exercise, not just the exercises themselves and learn alternative exercises.  That way if  ‘x’ machine is being used, you have other options.  This reduces stress and waiting around.  So for example say the Bench Press is being used, you can grab a set of dumbbells or even a resistance band and do a press or chest fly. If you’re going heavier try putting some plates on your back and do push-ups, or challenge your stability with kettlebell push-ups or stability ball chest press.
2.  Be flexible with the reps you are willing to do/ weights you’ll accept.  Remember that the most important thing is that you challenge yourself! So…if those 35’s you really would rather use aren’t available, try more reps with the 30’s or fewer with the 40’s.  Who knows, you might surprise yourself and hit a PR (personal record).
3.  Try circuits which require 1 piece of non-movable equipment and bring the other things you need to that spot. People are much more likely to understand that you are using the seated cable row if you also have your dumbbells, towel, resistance band and barbell set up with you…. kinda like nesting but for the gym :’D.  Additional benefits are all those related to circuit training in general. Its faster, you hit more groups, its more efficient, you burn more calories and so on.

   

4. Integrate cardio and stretching into your sets.  Perform any stretching you feel you have to do (see my previous posts on flexibility first) during your warm-up sets. Additionally, try jumping rope, step-ups, wall jumps, or mountain climbers in between your sets if the cardio machines are taken.  This will keep your heart rate going and not leave you frustrated waiting for a machine or a mat.
5. Finally: Don’t be afraid. Nearly everyone at the gym is there because they see something THEY need to improve and they are just trying to brave the crowded gym too.  Unless you are breaking gym etiquette, chances are they aren’t looking at you.  In that vein
   1. Don’t be afraid to ask someone to work in or when their sets will be done. Wait until they’ve finished their set (of course) and make sure you put their weights back how you found them. But otherwise its a completely normal thing to do if there is a type of equipment that you really had your heart set on.
   2. Don’t be afraid to tell someone that you are still using something.  Say you come back from refilling your water bottle and some lunk is taking off with your barbell.  You have the right to tell them that it is still in use and you will flag them when you are done.
   3. Don’t ignore a free bench cause its close to someone who is ‘more fit’ than you.  They were where you were once.  (if you’re the fit person in this scenario, keep the grunting and flexing to a minimum…you’re in public dude)

 

I hope you found this helpful.  If you have other tactics or questions, please feel free to leave them in the comments!

Best,

Nicole Mims. PT, DPT.

Stretching to Fix YOUR posture: correcting for rounded shoulders

Ever wonder why your shoulder or neck hurts when you reach overhead or while you’re lifting weights? Chances are good that posture is a contributing factor. One of the most common postures I see across age groups is where the shoulders (where the upper arm meets the collar bone and shoulder blade) are slightly rotated in. This happens often for 3 main reasons. 1) some muscles are long and weak 2) some muscles are short and/or stiff 3) You habits feeding into the above.

So we know that this can be an issue, the next question is “how can I fix this?”

Check out my video below where I target the flexibility portion of this question.

stretching to fix rounded shoulders

If you think you might have poor posture, you may find a prevous post helpful as well which addresses Forward Head Posture .

I hope this is helpful.

Best,

Nicole Mims. PT, DPT.

Wellness: healthy body + clear mind

Hypertrophy 7/30/18 + bonus review of Planet Fitness

The workout: Hypertrophy. Week 3, day 1.

Focus: vertical push/pull + posterior leg

Total volume: 42 sets

Circuit 1: 4 sets, 8-10 reps

• Neutral grip lat pull down
• Cable shoulder captions
• Weighted hip thrust (back elevated glute bridge)

Circuit 2: 4 sets, 8-10 reps

• Wide grip lat pull down
• Barbell shoulder press
• Hip extension w/eccentric focus (commonly known as back extension, I focus on the movement coming from the hip joint and using my glutes only)

Circuit 3 (Abs): 3 sets, 30-45 seconds

• Traditional crunch (30 sec)
• Oblique crunch left/right (30 sec each)
• Flutter kick (30 sec)
• Bicycle (30 sec)
• Front plank (45 sec)
• Side plank left/right (45 sec each)

I always enjoy the opportunity to workout with friends. The workout feels faster, I have more fun, and having an accountability buddy is great for consistency. I recently have worked out 1-2 times a week with a friend from my PT class who has a membership with Planet Fitness. Like a lot of gym rats (I assume) I had some presuppositions regarding how my experience would be and they were not entirely positive. I’ve got to be honest y’all, I was pretty impressed.

The gym was CLEAN, like spotless clean. The locker rooms were clean. The equipment was clean….it was amazing.

The gym staff were polite and professional.

Not a single person dropped their weights or performed more than their last rep with bodily noises involved (grunting, huffing, etc.)

Weights were where they were supposed to be! There are signs every 5 feet reminding people to re-rack their weights and I got the impression it was something the staff reinforced.

It was temperature controlled. “What gym isn’t?” You might ask. I’ll tell you. Every single Gold’s location which has bought into the crossfit fad with their “Gold’s Fit” has the darn doors open in the evening so their clientele can pretend they train in Sparta or some nonsense.

Exactly zero gym bros tried to hit on me or “help” me.

The only real negative I found was in the variety of equipment. This Planet Fitness had most of your standard gym fare; however, there were no squat racks, or free barbells/plates available. This is probably due to the idea of keeping away the gym bros or “lunks.” Unfortunately for me, it’s also a nonnegotiable component.

In summary, I won’t be giving up my Gold’s membership anytime soon ( I enjoy squats and deadlifts too much), but for most people I think this gym is a great option and is surprisingly affordable.

Best,

Dr. Mims

Stretches to fix YOUR posture. – correcting ‘forward head’

As I discussed in a post a while back, its important to stretch muscles that are short or stiff on you, not just what you learned in high school gym class or what feels “tight.” Often muscles which give the sensation of feeling tight are actually overstretched already.

So how do you decide what to stretch? In PT we often do special tests in order to confirm our suspicions; however, without doing this one can still get a good idea of what they need to do based off of posture.

Here are some common postures and their corresponding muscle groups which tend to be short/stiff.

Next post will be a video specifically on what to stretch to address “forward head” posture.

Forward head

Short/stiff: SCM & Scalenes

Weak/elongated: Deep neck flexors

 

 

Rounded Shoulders

Short/stiff: Pectoralis minor, shoulder external rotators

Weak/elongated: Middle/lower traps. Internal rotators of the shoulder.

 

Rounded Upper Back

Short/stiff: pectoralis major and minor, lats

Weak/elongated: Traps, Rhomboids

 

Increased curve of low back

Short/stiff: spinal extenders (erector spinae), hip flexors

Weak/elongated: abdominals, glutes

 

Anterior Pelvic Tilt:

Short/stiff: hip flexors, hamstrings

Weak/elongated: glutes, abdominals

 

Feet turned out:

Short/stiff: gastrocnemius, soles, posterior tib (muscles that point the toe)

Elongated/weak: anterior tibialis, toe flexors

 

 

Now that we know which muscles we need to target, we’ll dive into HOW to actually do this.

Please check out my next post where I discuss how to stretch the muscles which are short and contribute to bad neck posture.

With love,

Dr. Mims

 

Flexibility Training – Part 1 (why do I care?)

Safe Strength Training – Classic Squat alternatives

Exercise for maintaining function

 

 

Keep Striving, You’ll Get There

At some point everyone has had goals that seemed impossible. Keep moving forward and eventually they will just be milestone in your rearview.

With love,

Dr. Mims

Midnight Wonderings

Laying in bed contemplating, mind wandering through wonderings.

A risky tangle, underbrush in which to stray…lost. Losing the forest in the trees. Or is it the other way around? Do I miss the picture in the details of memories or are the memories lost with the foreknowledge of their ending.

And I wonder if any thoughts like this plague your mind. Do you sleep soundly?

And I wonder if you care enough to wonder, even for a moment.

I wonder why I didn’t compare. And why I couldn’t. And why I give a fuck.

…And I know I’ll never know, and it wouldn’t matter if I did.

But still I lay here, and I wonder.

Flexibility Training – Part 1 (why do I care?)

Flexibility Training – what is it and why do I care?

I used to be highly inflexible, the first year of PT school it became somewhat of a joke where classmates would practice special tests on me to see what the “abmormal” result was. However, it was something that I worked on regularly. Now I’m fairly limber, often having clients and patients frustrated at how “easy” i make things look. Flexibility tends to be an underrated aspect of health and wellness as it can contribute to movement impairments and thus injury.

What is flexibility? Flexibility is the combination of soft tissue extensibility and control of the nervous system. This allows muscular control through a full range of motion for a given joint. What the hell does that mean? It means that if you are suppose to have a 180 degree range of motion for a given limb, you can control that limb from 0 to 180 degrees of movement and back.

Why is flexibility training important? – Flexibility training is important, because most people in our society lead sedentary lives. The resulting poor posture and movement patterns increase risk for injury and at the same time decrease the efficacy of workouts. This means that one who is inflexible is not only wasting time while they are working out (let’s be honest, who has time for that?) but also increasing their risk of injury which is of course the opposite goal of health and fitness.

Please stay tuned for a video post on how to determine what you should stretch and how based on your postures.

Best,

Nicole Mims. PT, DPT

Fitness does not = Wellness

It’s easy to get caught up in trying to lose that last 5 pounds or get that one pose in yoga. Remember that exercise is an investment in your future self.

You’re in it for the long haul!

Best,

Nicole Mims. PT, DPT