My highest philosophy and desire is to want to bring out the best in myself and others, and develop/share useful techniques, information, or other tools toward that end. My goal as it pertains to this website is to help people improve any aspect of their health, which includes diet, developing better body awareness, and reducing physical pain. I have had probably over 500 chiropractic visits in my life, addressing a variety of problems starting with a torn rotator cuff when I was like 16, a serious low back issue starting in my mid 20’s, a frozen shoulder in my 40’s, and some neck and shoulder issues that have been somewhat chronic. My interest and knowledge about the body stemmed largely from wanting to address my own body and pain issues. But with the insights I have gained I believe I will be successful in helping others.
I became intensely interested in weightlifting as a teenager, and wound up working out with a high degree of devotion for more than 20 years. When I was in my 20’s and even into my late 30’s I was in the gym 5-6 days per week, doing a lot of intense strength training. I did exercises slowly and with care, without violent, bouncy type movements, along with plenty of cardio, and a relatively healthy diet. Cosmetically I looked very fit. But I wound up with a ton of physical issues in my lower back, neck, and shoulders, especially as I got older. This is because despite my devotion and what I thought I knew, I had a very low level of what I would call “body intelligence”, which is using the body and muscles the right way. I have heard it put this way: it is a mistake to train like an athlete without being one. The result of all that time at the gym was a lot of strong external muscles, and without realizing it, a lot of subtle weaknesses in deeper, smaller muscles – that I had very little ability to feel. So I wound up with a body that was only strong in very limited ways, excessively tight with a lot of pain, and injuries that were never addressed properly because conventional advice and expertise were not sufficient tools to truly understand or address the issues. And it is worth mentioning that body/muscular issues are not completely mechanical and separate from our minds and emotions, or personality.
I became certified through NASM as a personal trainer several years ago. I did not immediately begin working with people in this capacity for a number of reasons. First, I tried working with a diligent personal trainer for over a year to try and address some of my issues and weaknesses, using lighter weights and higher reps trying to target things like my rotator cuff muscles which I knew were weak, and the end result was a worse body condition with more tension than I started with. I wound up with a frozen shoulder, which took a couple of years to overcome, among other things. The trainer knew what he had been taught and was diligent, but through no fault of his own missed a fundamental insight that I have learned: an exercise aimed at targeting a specific muscle does not guarantee that it will strengthen it, even if the exercise looks like it is being performed correctly to an external observer. Even if the observer is certified as a trainer, or even physical therapist. So having experienced making my own condition worse, I knew that I did not want to start to tell people to do exercises that might seem appropriate to their issues, when the potential result could be what my experience was.
Many fitness or physical therapy professionals can tell someone that a movement is incorrect, and not using the right muscles – if the flaws in the movement are gross and obvious. It is far more difficult and in my opinion impossible for an external observer to be able to tell when flaws in exercise mechanics are SUBTLE. The correction of a subtle flaw can lead to drastic changes and improvement in both feeling and energy flow.
Although I am certified as a personal trainer, I feel better qualified to help people with their diet or doing gentler movements intended to encourage better body awareness, rather than create fitness regimens to help people get in shape. My goal in working with people is that I want to help people get healthier, free of pain, and move better, with a philosophy based on first improving their level of body intelligence, so that work toward strength and overall fitness will be smooth, productive, efficient, and enjoyable. First learning to “get to know their own body” through some anatomical study/learning, and practices aimed at improving body awareness to help them truly strengthen their body weaknesses, rather than compensation patterns. A more intelligent body is about improving skill and discovering/refining/honing an ability to feel and move using slightly different muscles and new patterns. Body development is not about improving an ability to exert resistance in a certain way, but bringing understanding (and most importantly, feeling) to a movement. The problem for many people with issues like I have had is not just weakness per se, but more that they are using much less of their body than they are capable of. Improving body awareness is about gaining new ability to initiate movements (or stabilization) from different muscles than they are accustomed to using, which is aimed at overcoming the futility of exercises aimed at strengthening weak muscles that people don’t even have the ability to properly engage.
Asymmetrical Awareness 