#meanwhile in czech it just feels neutral

[nalver]

sick and angry

edit: fuck you tumblr for the tag limit

[cincinnatusvirtue]

Unification of Germany, pt.1 An overview of European nationalism-stirred and suppressed (1803-1848)

-Romantic nationalism was in full swing within 19th century Europe.  An outgrowth of the French Revolution and largely spurred on in the wake of initial French successes during the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815).  One of the places this sense of nationalism was felt most was in the German speaking states of Central Europe.  At the time, this was a collection of multiple states of varying sizes, an outgrowth of the ancient Holy Roman Empire with the two largest states of the time being the Kingdom of Prussia and the Hapsburg Austria.  

-Traditionally since the Middle Ages, the Archduchy of Austria run by the Hapsburg dynasty had wielded the most power and authority becoming identified with the nominal title of Holy Roman Emperor.  in 1806, following Austria’s defeat at the hands of Napoleon’s First French Empire and creation of the Confederation of the Rhine, a rump collection of French satellite states in the western region of German speaking territory.  The Holy Roman Emperor, Francis II dissolved the Holy Roman Empire officially.  Instead he created officially the Austrian Empire, out of the Archduchy of Austria and its territory elsewhere in Central Europe.  Francis II became Francis I, Emperor of Austria.

-Prussia had long sought to supplant Austria as the leading state in German lands and in the 18th century under Frederick the Great had attempted to do just that.  Despite its hard earned military reputation by the Napoleonic era, Prussia was outdated and overtly bureaucratic in its structure and tactics.  It also hadn’t fought war continuously for some time and was lead by old generations of generals.  1806 saw them taking on France largely by itself, following its resentment of French influence in German speaking territory.  It proved to be an eye opening experience, within a month Napoleon defeated the bulk of Prussia’s army and occupied its capital, Berlin.  In 1807, it finally surrendered and gave away a lot of territory in the process.  Prussia was also forced to suffer an occupation by French troops.  In the interim it began to reform its armies.  Along with Austria, both nations rose up against Napoleon following the French retreat from Russia in 1812.  By 1813, uniting with other Allied nations, they drove Napoleon from Germany following the October 1813 Battle of Leipzig, a key moment in the cultural memory of 19th century German peoples.  1814 saw Napoleon’s abdication and 1815 his brief return where he was finally defeated by a combined Anglo-Dutch-Prussian force at Waterloo.

-From that point on, the Congress of Vienna, orchestrated by Austrian Foreign Minister and later Chancellor, Klemens von Metternich sought to redraw Europe’s map to maintain a balance of power.  Which weakened France and increased Austrian, Russian and Prussian power as a counterweight on the continent.  German national feelings were stirred by the revolutionary ideas of the French Revolution which had shaken the monarchies of old, this coupled with resentment of French interference in their territory, signaled nationalism in its first throes.

  -Metternich was convinced that expressions of nationalism would inevitably lead to the disorder of the French Revolution and to an inversion of the “natural order” of monarchical rule, this became the de-facto conservative position in Europe of the time, pro-monarchy where as a liberal position was to take the nationalist cause.  One in which peoples united by ethnic and cultural ties of language, religion, tradition and geography would unite into a modern nation state, given to self-determination and possibly one that promoted the people en masse having a say in their governance rather coming from a monarch.  Metternich was keenly aware in the multi-ethnic Austrian Empire of just how delicate a balance needed to be maintained, Germans, Hungarians, Italians, Croats, Serbs, Slovenes, Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Ukrainians and Romanians all were under the Hapsburg umbrella and all had some level of nationalist stirring as a result of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars.

-The response of Metternich and other conservative reactionaries was to suppress the development of free press, closing newspaper and magazine publications that promoted ideas of nationalism, be they German or any other.  Metternich himself was German and the the Germans de-facto ran much of Austria’s bureaucracy, but the notion of a united Germany, possibly bereft of a monarch, was abhorrent to his sensibilities.  He proposed also maintained a robust domestic spying apparatus to jail any potential liberal or nationalist ideas that could oppose the monarchy.  Which in turn fueled more anti-monarchical sentiment.  

-Metternich had also orchestrated the Austrian dominated German Confederation to succeed the Confederation of the Rhine & Holy Roman Empire.  The idea was that the 39 German states that were members would be unified in association against foreign attack, mainly aimed against France but all the states would retain their autonomy with Austria largely dictating events.  Though an expanded Prussia also commanded influence which with France out of the way for now, saw the old Austro-Prussian rivalry again simmer underneath the veneer of unity.  No member state could leave the association and its laws were ultimately limiting to its member states, again for the sake of unity.  

-Metternich proposed the Congress system in which the major powers of Europe would work in the so called Concert of Europe to suppress nationalist and liberal ideas that undermined the status quo.  This involved a series of diplomatic summits from 1814 in Vienna until 1826 in St. Petersburg.  The included the Holy Alliance of the Austria, Prussia & Russia maintaining their imperial partitions of Poland, suppressing a revolt in Spain in 1820 as well as Italian revolts during this era.  The Quintuple Alliance of Austria, Prussia, Russia, Britain and a “reformed” Bourbon France also sought to maintain this balance of power through consultation.  

-However, in the Ottoman Empire, nationalism was afoot in the Balkan states, first manifest in Serbia which got de-facto independence following a series of revolts (1804-1813) & (1815).  Then in the Greek War of Independence (1821-1829), the success of these movements which included Russian and later Franco-British support weakened both the Ottoman Empire and inspired the nationalist movements of Europe, despite Metternich’s hopes to suppress the very flames his supposed partners has fanned.

-The divergent foreign policy ambitions of the major European powers began to undermine Metternich’s Congress system.  Russia in particular sought to expand its territory and influence into the Balkans at the expense of the Ottomans, namely with control over Constantinople itself.  This coupled with the religious solidarity of their Balkan coreligionists of the Eastern Orthodox Christian faith showed the cracks in the Metternich’s plans.  Britain and France likewise began to somewhat temper their old animosity with increased opposition to Russian expansion into the Balkans and in Central Asia. 

-Another blow came in 1830 with the Belgian Revolution which separated Belgium from the United Kingdom of the Netherlands.  Austria, Prussia and Russia remained unified in their opposition to the partition of the Netherlands fearful of any further revolution.  Meanwhile, France which faced its own revolution that year had a new more liberal monarchy installed, sought to support it, since the revolution was largely made of the Catholic and Francophone Walloon people of the southern Netherlands.  Britain was wary of French intentions to annex Belgium, but realized none of the other Great Powers were willing to intervene following French support to the Belgians and supported the establishment of a neutral Belgium.  This lead to the 1830 London Conference, in which ultimately all five Great Powers agreed to recognize and independent and neutral Belgium which was to be respected by and guaranteed by the signatories of the agreement.  The Netherlands wouldn’t agree to the protocol until 1839 which saw the recognize Belgian independence.

-Meanwhile, Muhammad Ali Pasha, Wali (governor) of Ottoman Egypt had been in effect independent from the Turks since the Napoleonic Wars and in the 1830′s with resentment over his losses in supporting the Turks against the Greeks, he sought compensation with control over the Levant, leading to military victories over the Ottomans proper, who saw Ali as further destabilizing the status quo, he was creating an Egyptian nationalism at the expense of Turkish rule and stability.  The 1840 Oriental Crisis saw Austria, Prussia, Russia & Britain support the Ottomans and negotiate an arbitration.  Only France, then in the throes of conquering the Regency of Algiers (Algeria) sought to support Egypt and Ali because it weakened Ottoman influence and expanded French colonialism in North Africa.  This lead to yet another split in the rival ambitions and cooperation of the Great Powers.  Eventually a London conference settled the matter for Egypt and the Ottomans.  Ali and his descendants would be hereditary rulers of Egypt & Sudan, in exchange for him withdrawing his armies from the Levant and Crete.  The Ottomans agreed to this position.  However, this gave way to the Rhine Crisis involving tension over French claims to territory against the German Confederation, ultimately it was resolved diplomatically but underpinned the ongoing precarious situation in Europe.

-In Europe, including the German Confederation many rapid social and technological changes were occurring.  Political ideologies like socialism and later communism were gaining some level of popularity among the industrial and rural working classes.  While an increasing middle class bourgeoisie with capitalist aspirations also took hold with increased economic power and independence.  While these classes were in philosophical competition with each other, the desire for increased constitutional rights for many if not all the populace were raising their collective voices.  Universities throughout German territories were becoming hotbeds of discussion for German nationalism or at the very least calls for constitutional and political reform, the suppression of Metternich and his partners was increasingly fragile and dwindling in its effectiveness to drown out the cries of revolution.  These cries across Germany and Europe more broadly resulting from a kaleidoscope of shifting and colliding ideologies, influences and peoples of varying backgrounds was coming to a tipping point on the horizon...1848...

[mysticsparklewings]

Koh-i-Noor Polycolor Pencil Review

Well here's a supply I actually had no plans on acquiring or testing. I have acquired plenty of colored pencils in the past, and honestly, the Koh-i-Noor Polycolors weren't really on my radar for the simple fact that it just doesn't seem like a lot of people talk about them. They didn't seem to stand out as terribly special.  Most of the pencils I'm interested in acquiring usually have something special about them or they otherwise stand out for one reason or another. These, likewise, ended up catching my attention solely because I found the 24 set on clearance at my local Michaels for $20. Although, I was also vaguely interested because in my colored pencil research I had previously come across a theory that, since Chartpak is a sort of parent company behind the scenes (and the new model of Spectra AD markers are virtually identical to the Blick Studio Brush markers) that these pencils are either the same or are manufactured almost identically to the Blick Studio colored pencils. I don't have the Blick pencils, but I have considered getting them before since they've been reported as pretty good and they're supposed to be an artist quality pencil but the prices are more reasonable than some truly high-end artist pencil options out there. So I figured if I tried these and the speculation is on the right track, perhaps these would be a good way to get an idea of what the Blick pencils are like beforehand, even if they're not actually the same pencils with different branding. Now, a clearance price of $20 still sounds pretty steep for 24 pencils. And to a certain extent, it is. But we have to keep in mind that brick-and-mortar stores like Michaels love to markup the product prices right out of the gate. Upon further research, this same set averages around $30 online, whereas the original price listed on these from Michaels is $50. For further comparison, at the same time that I found these, the store also had a couple of Faber Castell Polychromos 24 sets for about $30 apiece as a clearance price, and online the same 24 set goes for around $40 or more. So the prices are still technically good deals, they're just not like "ohmygosh that's so cheap I can't believe it!" kind of deals. I had one other previous experience with Koh-i-Noor pencils in the form of their set of 12 tri-tone pencils, but those are more of a specialty item and thus I don't use them as normal colored pencils and I don't feel comfortable putting them through my normal colored pencil testing, same as the tri-tone colored pencils made by Crayola that I acquired around the same time. So I went into testing these without much pre-conception for what they'd be like. Even after poking around for some extra information on my Colored Pencil Testing Workshop and seeing how other people would describe and compare them, I still felt like I was going in largely blind since the comparisons were usually a little vague and base-level. And also, just, in general, there aren't a ton of in-depth reviews to be found for the Polycolors.   Of the information I found, I learned a couple of interesting things: 1. There's some debate as to whether or not these pencils are oil-based or wax-based. Most online listings say they're either oil-based or say they've been "made with oils." But there's a rumor that there was a translation error (since these are made in the Czech Republic/Koh-i-Noor is presented as a foreign brand) and they're actually wax-based. The most compelling idea I ran across is that they're wax-based but given some kind of oil bath as part of the manufacturing process. But the reason this matters is that it does affect how the pencils behave to a certain extent, and it also matters because it's not fair to compare an oil-based pencil to a wax-based pencil and expect them to perform the same. For example, oil pencils traditionally have better layering capabilities, but they're not good for getting a lot of intense color down quickly, meanwhile, wax-based pencils don't usually layer as well but you can usually get more intense color more quickly. 2. These seem to share a very particular trait with the Blick Studio pencils I mentioned earlier. The biggest sets you can buy for each have 72 pencils total. However, both lines have a Portrait set and a Gray set, and these sets contain some additional colors that aren't available in the 72 set. The Blick pencils, including these other colors, are a total of 91 colors. I couldn't find an official word on how many total Koh-i-Noor colors there actually are, but given the above speculation, it wouldn't surprise me in slightest if the number is also 91, which likewise add to the credibility that there's a link between the two pencils. I can't comment much more on point 2, since I don't have any Blick pencils to compare them too, but I'll talk about point 1 more in a moment. Before that, though, let's talk about the pencils' appearance and packaging. Aka, most likely the first thing you'll notice about them out in the wild. The pencils themselves have hexagonal (hexagon-shaped/six-sided barrels) instead of smooth round ones, which I thought was an interesting choice since the longer I look, the more it seems that most companies make their regular colored pencils with round barrels and save the hexagonal barrels for their watercolor pencils. They also have dullish gold-dipped ends with a white line separating it from the main color of the barrel. The gold dipping is nice, but I'm not crazy about the white line. It looks kind of tacky to me, but that doesn't really have much bearing on how good the pencils are. They also have gold printing on one side with the brand name, a number identifying the Polycolor line specifically: 3800 (at least I assume that's what it is), and the number tied to that specific color. The opposite side of the pencil, curiously, has black printing with the color name, some other 3-digit number I can't figure out because some pencils have the same one, another much longer string of numbers, a barcode, and "Czech," as in they were made in the Czech Republic. I mention this because, as someone that likes to chart and organize my pencils pretty meticulously and make sure I have the right color at all times, I found it kind of annoying in practice that the color name and number were on opposite sides of the pencil. The packaging is a little more interesting. Koh-i-Noor seems to like this system of having their pencil sets both in a pretty nice storage tin with a completely detachable lid (although for some reason I find the tins seem a lot nicer in person than they do in pictures online for some reason) and then they'll have the tin with the lid off encased in a cardboard-backed, plastic-front hang card. I like this because I case us the plastic front as a disposable paint palette before chucking it in the trash, but otherwise, there's not really a lot of obvious rhyme or reason as to why they package them this way.   Beyond that, this set also came with a little "quality guaranteed" square piece of paper, just like my tri-tone set did, a piece of tissue paper that I guess is for putting in the tin on top of the pencils? And much to my surprise, a little fold-out pamphlet showing off all the products that Koh-i-Noor makes. Expect, for reasons I can't figure out, the tri-tone pencils don't appear to be anywhere on said pamphlet.   And yet the pamphlet shows all of these other supplies I previously had no idea that Koh-i-Noor made, including watercolor and acrylic paints, paintbrushes, papers, and even fixatives. Overall though, this gives otherwise unremarkable-looking pencils a pretty nice presentation. And I personally really appreciate that the tin lid comes all the way off and isn't hinged to one side, but that's really a personal preference thing. As for how the pencils actually work, for the most part, they're pretty average. They blend more nicely than something super cheap like Crayola or dollar store pencil finds, though I wouldn't say they blend quite as nicely as Prismacolor. I had some very minor issues with getting good, even consistency, and they're not nearly as soft and nice to work with as Prismacolor, or I would argue even as some of the other brands like the Polychromos or Schpirerr Farben. But you can see on the drawing here that I was still about to get plenty of layers going back and forth, and the blending still came out pretty nice and smoothly so long as I was patient with it. It didn't come as easily as something like Prismacolor, but it came well enough, I think. What I did find interesting about how they perform is that, for one thing, they have a very sandy feeling against the paper that's uncannily similar to the June Gold Mechanical pencils. And the June Gold pencils are confirmed as being oil-based. Similarly, while I don't think these had the "limitless" layer-ability that most oil-based pencils like the June Gold, or Schpirerr Farben, or Faber Castell Polychromos do, they did layer for longer and better than I was expecting. This is what makes me think that the whole "wax-based but given an oil bath" idea is true, or that they are in some other capacity an oil/wax hybrid, instead of just being solely wax-based. And they do feel more rigid and less soft like most oil-based pencils do. Which makes them seem like they have a weaker pigmentation whether they actually do or not. Speaking of which... As far as color selection for the 24 set goes, the only thing that I really feel like I'm missing here is a pastel purple. You get a white, a warm and a cool yellow, an orange, a warm and more neutral/cool red, a burgundy type color, a pink, a magenta type color, a purple, a warm blue and a cool blue, a dark neutral blue, a yellow-green, a seafoam/blue-green, a warmer dark green and cooler dark green, an ochre and a red, neutral, and dark browns, a grey, and a black. Personally, I think I would've swapped the magenta color for said pastel purple. Other than that, I think this is probably the most well-rounded selection I've seen of the 24 color sets that I have. And the colors come across as pretty rich and vibrant too, which I also can't say I was expecting. (And is also why I went the route that I did with the visuals and colors on this one.) My other two main complaints are with the white and black. The white actually did better than I was expecting, but on it's out it is still pretty lackluster compared to the Holy Grail Prismacolor white. It takes a lot to get it to layer on top of other colors, but it is technically possible. But it does do pretty okay as a blender like most lackluster white pencils do. And the black, unfortunately, isn't a true black and is instead a very dark gray that thinks it's a black. It's dark enough you wouldn't really notice without putting it next to a proper black, but it's still a little disappointing to me because it just doesn't have quite the right punch to it because of that. I will say that these handle gel pens extremely well. In a ranking out of 5, they get a 3.5, which is really good since I haven't seen anything beyond a 4 and most pencils struggle to get as high as a 3. I was genuinely surprised about that during testing. Ultimately, they perform pretty well for $20. However, I don't think they're worth the $50 price tag Michaels original put on them. If you're going to spend that kind of money, I suggest getting the 72 set of Prismacolors that usually fall just shy of that number over on Amazon. But if you're curious or a colored pencil connoisseur, then they might be work picking up if you can find them for the $20 price point as I did.   The Koh-i-Noor Polycolors work just fine, good even, but they just don't stand out very much. I can see why not a lot of people talk about them; the more talked about brands like Prismacolor and Faber Castell really stand out and shine on their own (especially Prismacolor as the price has come down to the low end for true artist quality pencils over the years) and you end up getting more bang for your buck. And personally, again, they came out pretty good in testing, but I personally don't really care for them. I'm not sure why, but I think it has something to do with that sandy feeling and the few performance issues I do have with them. Still, I did my best to not let my personal dislike affect the overall verdict on whether or not they're any good or worth the price. A little about the drawing itself before I bow out: I was going for a kind of black hole effect, in some kind of rainbow-galaxy, after not wanting to do just another typical galaxy but still wanting to do something that would really push the blending and layering abilities of the pencils. It's not perfect even in concept, but I still think it turned out pretty nicely. I also tried my best with my white gel pens to get a more natural and consistent star effect, since that can be kind of a challenge with colored pencil pieces using only gel pens to get said effect. And I think I managed pretty okay in that department. And after all, was said and done, I went around the edge with my black Gold Shadow gelly roll pen, as it felt like the best/most neutral choice out of the different options I'd considered. You can't really tell on the scan, but it has a kind of neat almost not-there effect in person until you move it in the light, since the gold in the ink is really close to the tan paper color. I may not be crazy about the pencils themselves, but I am pretty happy with how the drawing turned out, and it was actually really nice to take a break from Inktober stuff and work on a good ol' pencil test/review piece.  It really hasn't been that long since I've done one, but I've done so much since then that it feels like it has, and I do really enjoy testing/trying out new supplies, whatever they may be, even if I don't like them that much or don't end up using them very often. That said, I don't know when the next supply test like this will be, and it may not be for quite some time, but whenever it happens I'll be looking forward to it, that's for sure. Now if you'll excuse me, Inktober has come and gone and that means it's back to making more complex art on the regular for me. ____ Artwork © me, MysticSparkleWings ____ Where to find me & my artwork: My Website | Commission Info + Prices | Ko-Fi | dA Print Shop | RedBubble |   Twitter | Tumblr | Instagram

[andrewuttaro]

New Look Sabres: GM 41 - FLA - Nope!

I had a wicked narrative setup for this one. Linus Ullmark gets the start, he shuts down the Florida Panthers after a weak stretch for the team and Carter Hutton and begins his coup to take over the starting role ahead of schedule! It’s not that Ullmark didn’t have a great game, it’s an open question which goalie gets the nod for Boston on Saturday (more on that later), but this game was much more a matter of the losers of three straight Buffalo Sabres squeezing out a W by the skin on their teeth. The last two or three minutes of this game could be described from a Sabres perspective as nope nope nope nope! I got to see this one in the flesh and as refreshing as it is to hear the building really into every zone clearance and icing these days it is quite something to hear it pissed as well. This game had some refereeing turns that could’ve decided the game but luckily Jeff Skinner had a night and yea, secondary scoring did kind of show up and what do you know, there’s your first win in eight games against the Panthers.  The road there was hard with the monster-sized pothole in the middle of that road being Roberto Luongo.

The Sabres remembered the sting of the two losses against this Florida team and the game began with some aggression. The home team would only just outshoot the Panthers in the first period but for the first time I can think of since maybe the Thanksgiving Eve game against Philadelphia, Buffalo’s best period was the first one. It was one of those net-crashing plays Buffalo has come to really profit from when Jeff Skinner got the puck and skated further into the crowd of red striped jerseys and got the shot away just as he lost his footing. It was a goal and Rick Jeanneret predicted it would be on the highlight reels across North America so keep an eye on that one. Tage Thompson’s line got a turnover in the neutral zone a few minutes later and streamed right back into the O-Zone. Thompson took the puck through the right circle and shot it around the defender Yandle and the screened goalie. The Sabres were up 2-0 before even the halfway point of this first period.  The Panthers response opportunities came but Ullmark stood tall and Luongo looked very human as that was the way the first frame ended.

Jack Eichel was out in this game. He’ll be out again Saturday to be re-evaluated next week according to Phil Housley. It’s unfair to Evan Rodrigues but the media including the team media itself kind of made E-Rod out to be the replacement centering Skinner and Reinhart on that first line. E-Rod did fine with his chance but the second period altogether showed just what Jack Eichel means to this team. The Sabres got pretty sloppy in the middle period, just holding off the Panthers for most of the period. Then Rasmus Dahlin got knocked down way back in the Panthers D-zone before Frank Vatrano and Jayce Hawryluk got in on Ullmark with only Marco Scandella in the way. You can imagine how that two-on-one turned out and the visitors got on the board. The indignation in the building was loud because of that Dahlin knock down. The period just did not go Buffalo’s way as Thompson got penalized for a very soft call for tripping and Okposo goal got called back because he was pushed into Luongo as he was already falling. I don’t care to litigate all the crowd-upsetting calls because calls or not this second period was not Buffalo’s period. But hey, the Sabres are normally fantastic in the third, right? Oh… uh about that… well it wasn’t a disaster, as the third period got under way and quickly the Sabres got something out of it.

A Lawrence Pilut shot from way out at the blue line was redirected in front my Sam Reinhart into the net: 3-1 and the two goal lead is back. This period, not unlike the first, was remarkably even in opportunities. The Panthers took a page from the Sabres book here and crashed the net with the man advantage and Mike Hoffman got the goal over a sprawling Ullmark at 12:15 into the final frame. I think this was the goal that really ended my Ullmark Coup narrative because at this point that lack of a save set Florida up for a comeback in the last eight minutes. Florida poured it on for a hot minute before Jeff Skinner went in unassisted and shot a goal that bounced through Luongo and embarrassed him so hard he laid back on the ice like we Sabres are his torturers! I’ll admit that was a little satisfying knowing what he’s done to this team over the years. I’ll tell you that was supposed to be the insurance goal to bag this game but nope nope nope nope, the Sabres had to fight off a Florida team that was not ready to go out into the cold January air just yet in a frantic final few minutes. Luongo got pulled; empty net and Buffalo missed every potential shot on that empty net. Meanwhile Aleksander Barkov reminded us how he is a rising star in this league and quickly becoming a Sabre-Killer of Luongo proportions as he cleaned up a Yandle rebound reaching all the way around the glove of Ullmark to put the visitors within one. Nope, nope, nope! I grabbed my head in agony in the last minute and a half of this game but luckily for my wife I would not go home grumpy about this one. It ended 4-3 Buffalo. It was barely a win but a win the Sabres really needed at the moment and against a team like Florida who’s really shown you what for in the prior meetings.

As sweet as a Sabres win against the Panthers feels right now, it only stops the bleeding right now, and only just. Both the Bruins and the Islanders played last night as well and got their two points each as well, even Montreal got a win to keep the wildcard race in the east same as it was the night before. The Sabres enter Boston Saturday night without their Boston-born and performing Captain needing a W there as well to make headway against the tightening middle pack of the East standings. It’s the last matchup between the Atlantic Division teams and it would be pretty fun for the season series to end 2-2 considering how both teams have fared this season; also its Boston so come on, kick their asses! After that there are six games before the bye-week including a three-game trip through Western Canada. Then it’s the stretch run for the last two months of the season.

I talked a fair amount about what this season has been and what it means in my Midseason Thoughts post. That’s the last one before this blog post and if you just can’t get enough of New Look Sabres I recommend that as well. If you just can’t get enough of New Look Sabres I would also appreciate it if you dropped a like, comment and shared this around where you can. The Buffalo Sabres are undefeated in 2019, what a year!

Thanks for reading.

P.S. The World Juniors Tournament is proving fun for Buffalo rooting interests as the Finnish team offed eternal-favorites Canada with the help of Sabres goalie prospect Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen (UPL for short) and Oskari Laaskonen.  Matej Pekar and Mattias Samuelsson aren’t doing too bad either for the Czechs and Americans respectively.

[courtneytincher]

Putin Is Afraid to Boost Government Spending

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Russia, which has the biggest budget surplus among major economies, will loosen its purse strings – but only very slightly. The government’s proposals to cautiously increase spending over the next three years are unlikely to solve President Vladimir Putin’s political problems.Tight fiscal policies are falling out of fashion around the world. In Russia’s immediate neighborhood, budget surpluses are increasingly frowned upon. The European Central Bank is exhorting euro area governments to spend more to counteract a slowdown in growth. The Netherlands is clearly listening: It’s about to pass a stimulus budget for next year. The German government is under heavy pressure to spend more to ward off a recession. In eastern European countries that are not euro members, the ones with more expansionary fiscal policies appear to be enjoying stronger economic growth.  The Czech Republic recently approved a draft 2020 budget that promises significant spending increases. On Russia’s eastern border, Japan is going for more stimulus next year. Financial resources are cheap and trade wars are creating risks for growth. Trying to boost domestic demand through increased  government spending makes sense.Based on economic data alone, Russia is even more overdue for a major spending boost than any of its neighbors. In January through August, its budget surplus reached 3.7% of gross domestic product; the government plans to bring it down to 1.7% GDP by the end of the year. Russia’s National Wellbeing Fund, which absorbs the additional revenues the government receives when the oil price is higher than $41.6 per barrel, now stands at almost $123 billion. Meanwhile, economic growth is slower than previously projected at a mere 0.9% in the second quarter. Russians’ real incomes keep dropping: In the first half of 2019, they went down 1.3% year on year. If this isn’t a case for unleashing more spending, it’s hard to say what would be.Besides, there’s mounting political pressure for a fiscal stimulus. Putin’s popularity has sunk back to levels that preceded the annexation of Crimea, which sent his approval ratings soaring. Russians’ propensity to take part in protests stands at roughly twice the 2017 level. Moscow, the country’s capital and biggest city, is especially restive after a summer of protests that were put down with an unusual show of force. Putin is worried; in a meeting with economic officials in late August, he complained about declining incomes. Yet the Russian government’s budget proposal for 2020 through 2022 doesn’t eliminate the budget surplus, it just lowers it to 0.8% GDP (rather than 1.2% as planned in June) and then to 0.2% in 2022. The government also has decided against tweaking the fiscal rule that diverts revenues to the National Wellbeing Fund and only allows spending from it after its size exceeds 7% GDP. That will likely happen next year, but the Russian Central Bank recommends that the government invest the excess in the global financial markets rather than inside Russia, warning that any other scenario would increase inflation risks and not necessarily lead to faster growth.The government doesn’t appear to have much faith in its ability to spend effectively. One reason for the high budget surplus so far this year is that the funding of Putin’s 12 so-called “national projects,” aimed at delivering visible improvements to public services and infrastructure, is behind schedule. Russia’s economic managers, both in the cabinet and at the Central Bank, feel more secure  supporting proven austerity policies than expansion. They’re understandably worried that any fiscal stimulus might be squandered and plundered given widespread corruption, the appetite for graft among state companies headed by Putin’s friends and the predatory behavior of Russia’s vast law enforcement apparatus.In a recent speech, Elvira Nabiullina, governor of the Central Bank, stressed that government spending, including on “national projects,” cannot lead to faster growth unless Russia’s economic climate becomes more conducive to private enterprise. “Business and not government create economic growth,” she said. Yet Russia’s level of economic freedom, as measured by the Heritage Foundation, remains below the global average.Without oil revenues, the picture looks very different. Russia still runs a significant non-oil deficit – about 5.8% GDP this year; it’s down from 9.1% in 2016, but the government would like to reduce it to 5.5% in 2022. Russia’s oil and gas dependence continues to cast a shadow on any long-term development plans.The caution of Russia’s economic and monetary authorities is in line with recommendations from the International Monetary Fund which said in a report published last month that “the neutral fiscal stance is appropriate, and the focus in the coming years should be on engineering a further growth-friendly shift in the composition of taxes and spending while boosting the credibility of the fiscal rule.”Russia is just not a country where a spending boost could help the economy grow faster and make its citizens better off, despite its overflowing budget and low indebtedness (Russia’s government debt stands at about 14% of GDP, according to the IMF). Putin’s economic team continues to hold off action because it doesn’t believe in any of the available alternatives. Putin, despite his political worries, largely appears to agree: His demands for growth- and income-boosting solutions aren’t aggressive and he’s not making changes to the government lineup to signal his dissatisfaction. This creates a window of opportunity for the anti-Putin opposition. Continued stagnation should lead to more protests; the Kremlin’s ability to suppress them will be tested more and more often in the near future.To contact the author of this story: Leonid Bershidsky at lbershidsky@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Stephanie Baker at stebaker@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Leonid Bershidsky is Bloomberg Opinion's Europe columnist. He was the founding editor of the Russian business daily Vedomosti and founded the opinion website Slon.ru.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Russia, which has the biggest budget surplus among major economies, will loosen its purse strings – but only very slightly. The government’s proposals to cautiously increase spending over the next three years are unlikely to solve President Vladimir Putin’s political problems.Tight fiscal policies are falling out of fashion around the world. In Russia’s immediate neighborhood, budget surpluses are increasingly frowned upon. The European Central Bank is exhorting euro area governments to spend more to counteract a slowdown in growth. The Netherlands is clearly listening: It’s about to pass a stimulus budget for next year. The German government is under heavy pressure to spend more to ward off a recession. In eastern European countries that are not euro members, the ones with more expansionary fiscal policies appear to be enjoying stronger economic growth.  The Czech Republic recently approved a draft 2020 budget that promises significant spending increases. On Russia’s eastern border, Japan is going for more stimulus next year. Financial resources are cheap and trade wars are creating risks for growth. Trying to boost domestic demand through increased  government spending makes sense.Based on economic data alone, Russia is even more overdue for a major spending boost than any of its neighbors. In January through August, its budget surplus reached 3.7% of gross domestic product; the government plans to bring it down to 1.7% GDP by the end of the year. Russia’s National Wellbeing Fund, which absorbs the additional revenues the government receives when the oil price is higher than $41.6 per barrel, now stands at almost $123 billion. Meanwhile, economic growth is slower than previously projected at a mere 0.9% in the second quarter. Russians’ real incomes keep dropping: In the first half of 2019, they went down 1.3% year on year. If this isn’t a case for unleashing more spending, it’s hard to say what would be.Besides, there’s mounting political pressure for a fiscal stimulus. Putin’s popularity has sunk back to levels that preceded the annexation of Crimea, which sent his approval ratings soaring. Russians’ propensity to take part in protests stands at roughly twice the 2017 level. Moscow, the country’s capital and biggest city, is especially restive after a summer of protests that were put down with an unusual show of force. Putin is worried; in a meeting with economic officials in late August, he complained about declining incomes. Yet the Russian government’s budget proposal for 2020 through 2022 doesn’t eliminate the budget surplus, it just lowers it to 0.8% GDP (rather than 1.2% as planned in June) and then to 0.2% in 2022. The government also has decided against tweaking the fiscal rule that diverts revenues to the National Wellbeing Fund and only allows spending from it after its size exceeds 7% GDP. That will likely happen next year, but the Russian Central Bank recommends that the government invest the excess in the global financial markets rather than inside Russia, warning that any other scenario would increase inflation risks and not necessarily lead to faster growth.The government doesn’t appear to have much faith in its ability to spend effectively. One reason for the high budget surplus so far this year is that the funding of Putin’s 12 so-called “national projects,” aimed at delivering visible improvements to public services and infrastructure, is behind schedule. Russia’s economic managers, both in the cabinet and at the Central Bank, feel more secure  supporting proven austerity policies than expansion. They’re understandably worried that any fiscal stimulus might be squandered and plundered given widespread corruption, the appetite for graft among state companies headed by Putin’s friends and the predatory behavior of Russia’s vast law enforcement apparatus.In a recent speech, Elvira Nabiullina, governor of the Central Bank, stressed that government spending, including on “national projects,” cannot lead to faster growth unless Russia’s economic climate becomes more conducive to private enterprise. “Business and not government create economic growth,” she said. Yet Russia’s level of economic freedom, as measured by the Heritage Foundation, remains below the global average.Without oil revenues, the picture looks very different. Russia still runs a significant non-oil deficit – about 5.8% GDP this year; it’s down from 9.1% in 2016, but the government would like to reduce it to 5.5% in 2022. Russia’s oil and gas dependence continues to cast a shadow on any long-term development plans.The caution of Russia’s economic and monetary authorities is in line with recommendations from the International Monetary Fund which said in a report published last month that “the neutral fiscal stance is appropriate, and the focus in the coming years should be on engineering a further growth-friendly shift in the composition of taxes and spending while boosting the credibility of the fiscal rule.”Russia is just not a country where a spending boost could help the economy grow faster and make its citizens better off, despite its overflowing budget and low indebtedness (Russia’s government debt stands at about 14% of GDP, according to the IMF). Putin’s economic team continues to hold off action because it doesn’t believe in any of the available alternatives. Putin, despite his political worries, largely appears to agree: His demands for growth- and income-boosting solutions aren’t aggressive and he’s not making changes to the government lineup to signal his dissatisfaction. This creates a window of opportunity for the anti-Putin opposition. Continued stagnation should lead to more protests; the Kremlin’s ability to suppress them will be tested more and more often in the near future.To contact the author of this story: Leonid Bershidsky at lbershidsky@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Stephanie Baker at stebaker@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Leonid Bershidsky is Bloomberg Opinion's Europe columnist. He was the founding editor of the Russian business daily Vedomosti and founded the opinion website Slon.ru.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

September 19, 2019 at 02:15PM via IFTTT

[gabriellakirtonblog]

Upper Crossed Syndrome: The Personal Trainer’s Guide

Do your clients have excellent posture?

If they sit in front of a computer all day, commute long distances, or spend lots of time texting or watching TV, they probably don’t.

Many of them will display upper crossed syndrome, a postural compensation first identified and described by Vladimir Janda, the Czech physician who revolutionized rehabilitation therapy. It’s caused by sitting in a slumped position with your head tilted forward.

The result is short, tight muscles on the front of your body and long, weak muscles on your upper back. It’s often accompanied by headaches or chronic back pain, shoulder pain, or neck pain.

Even if a client with upper crossed syndrome doesn’t experience pain, their poor posture can cause muscle imbalances, and the resulting compensations can compromise exercise technique. If uncorrected, it can also lead to painful trigger points or even injuries. Chronic depression of the sternum might even make it more difficult to breathe.

All that’s on top of the aesthetic cost of UCS. It makes the chest look smaller and the shoulders narrower. Your upper back develops a hunch, and the entire body appears less athletic.

Let’s talk about UCS—what it is, how to test for it, and how to correct it.

What is upper crossed syndrome?

What causes upper crossed syndrome?

How to test for upper crossed syndrome

How to fix upper crossed syndrome

Upper crossed syndrome exercises

What is upper crossed syndrome?

We’ll start with a simple fact: The human head is huge. It weighs 10 pounds, on average.

No, it doesn’t sound like much—even your least conditioned clients can probably do something with a 10-pound dumbbell—until you consider its support system. The neck isn’t a dumbbell rack. It’s designed to rotate 40 degrees in each direction while also bending far enough backward and forward for you to scan the skies or search the ground.

What it’s not designed to do is support a 10-pound mass of brain and bone that’s leaning forward for much of the day. For your neck to work, your head needs to stay directly over the midline of your body most of the time.

What muscles are affected by upper crossed syndrome?

As the head bends forward, these muscles become stretched and/or tight:

Suboccipitals

Upper trapezius

Levator scapulae

The pectorals become correspondingly short and tight.

Meanwhile, the deep cervical flexors—small, stabilizing muscles on the front and sides of the neck—become weak. Their role is to pull your head forward, but if your head is leaning forward anyway, there’s not much for them to do.

Completing the cross are the rhomboids, serratus anterior, and lower trapezius, all of which become stretched and/or weak.

Muscles affected by upper crossed syndrome

 READ ALSO: Anterior Pelvic Tilt: What It Is, and How to Fix It

What causes upper crossed syndrome?

Upper crossed syndrome can result from any or all of these three factors.

Sedentary lifestyle with forward head posture

Personal trainers spend most of our time on our feet, but the people we train spend most of their time sitting. It’s not entirely their fault. The work that allows them to pay us usually involves long hours in meetings or in front of a computer, often combined with long commutes and frequent travel.

Before, during, and after those sedentary events, they’re probably texting or reading something on their phones.

And they do all of it with their heads leaning forward and upper back hunched, creating or reinforcing upper crossed syndrome.

Unbalanced training

Picture a 20-year-old guy who trains his pecs and delts three times a week with bench presses, flies, and lateral raises; does push-ups almost every day; and rarely trains his upper back.

Or a 40-year-old cyclist who spends hours a week on a bike, all of it with her upper back rounded.

Or a 50-year-old former athlete who spends half of each workout on his core, doing hundreds of crunches with his hands pulling his head forward.

Poor exercise technique

All the examples of unbalanced training are exacerbated by doing those exercises with suboptimal technique.

The crunch is the most obvious example, but if you look around the gym, you see it everywhere. Whether it’s a plank or a TRX row, the neck is rarely aligned with the torso and lower body.

The vicious cycle

These three problems—forward head position, unbalanced training, and/or poor exercise technique—both promote and worsen upper crossed syndrome, which makes it harder to sit with good posture or exercise with good form.

How to test for upper crossed syndrome

Physical therapist Chad Waterbury, DPT, recommends a simple visual assessment for UCS. Ask your client if you can take a photo of him standing sideways. But don’t tell him why. As soon as he hears the word “posture,” he’ll stand up straighter.

Have him stand sideways to a bare wall in socks or bare feet, with his heels together. Ideally, he’ll let you take the picture of him without a shirt. For a female client, ask if you can take the picture in a sports bra. (Obviously, you’ll need to do this out of public view.)

After you take the photo, use an app to draw a straight, vertical from the bottom of the fibula on the outside of the foot to the top of the head. (Waterbury uses Hudl, a free app for Apple devices. Other options include the $40 Posture Analysis app, which is used by a lot of clinicians.)

Ideally, that straight line should intersect with the knee, hip, deltoid, and ear. If the ear and the middle of the deltoid are forward of the line, it’s a telltale sign of UCS.

How to fix upper crossed syndrome

1. Set the shoulders and tuck the chin

A person with UCS looks like his body has reshaped itself to accommodate walking around with his hands in his front pockets, usually with his head down, as if he’s trying to avoid eye contact.

But what happens if you ask him to put his hands in his back pockets? His posture changes: His shoulder blades retract and his head comes up, like he’s suddenly gained confidence.

Setting the shoulders and tucking the chin is an exaggerated version of that. Tell your client to pull his shoulders back, and imagine he’s sticking his shoulder blades into his back pockets.

The chin tuck usually takes a little more coaching. As you can see in the photo on the right, you want him to make a double chin while keeping his neck in a neutral position.

Upper crossed syndrome uncorrected vs. set shoulders and tucked chin

If the client struggles to activate his deep neck flexor muscles, place a tennis ball under his chin. He’ll have to pull his shoulders back farther to hold it in place.

Some clients will need to work on this for a while before they get it. But get it they must, because it’s the first step to correcting UCS.

2. Upper crossed syndrome exercises

The next step is to perform corrective exercises. The goal is to get the client to retract the shoulder blades with added resistance. Seated rows and face pulls are especially effective.

Don’t go heavy in the beginning. Start with a band or light weights on a cable machine, and do multiple sets of 10 to 15 reps. Pause in the fully contracted position for one or two seconds. The pause not only helps her feel her muscles working, it slows down the movement to limit momentum.

Once the client masters the technique, you can have her train almost to failure, increasing the load each time she reaches the rep target. Just make sure she pulls her shoulders down and back on every repetition.

Face pull

 Seated row

 3. Stretch the tight chest muscles

Strengthening the back muscles is more important than stretching them. But since tight chest muscles are a component of UCS, I like to use some basic pectoral stretches. Encourage your clients to do this one at home on non-training days.

Pectoral stretch

4. Set the shoulders correctly when lifting

People with UCS generally struggle with technique in a wide range of exercises. It’s easy to understand why: With the shoulders rounded and pulled forward, it’s hard to get into position to lift correctly. Then, while they’re lifting, their range of motion limitations and muscle imbalances lead to compensation patterns.

Thus, it’s not enough to strengthen specific muscles with targeted exercises. You also need to help your clients transfer that improved muscle function to the other exercises in your program.

Some quick tips for the big three:

Bench press

Set the shoulders down and back. Keep the rear delts locked in throughout the lift.

Squat

The barbell back squat probably wouldn’t be your first choice for most of your clients. Goblet squats are easier for them to learn, and allow them to perform the movement pattern with decent technique and sufficient depth.

But for clients with upper crossed syndrome, a barbell on the back can help them get and keep their shoulder blades back and down. It also helps them get the chest high.

Barbell squat with full scapular retraction

Deadlift

The deadlift is a tough one for clients with upper crossed syndrome because they need to follow two cues that will feel unnatural at first:

Shoulder blades back and down

Chest up

The best variation depends on the client. This kettlebell deadlift from Dean Somerset allows your client to keep his shoulder blades locked in place throughout the movement.

READ ALSO: Troubleshooting the Deadlift

Sets and reps

The more technically or cognitively complex an exercise is for your client, the less volume you want.

The squats and deadlifts, in particular, will work best with two or three sets and single-digit reps. When you’re asking your client to focus so much on such crucial details, more reps mean diminishing returns.

Conversely, as mentioned earlier, you can use higher volume on rows and face pulls. You’re only asking your client to concentrate on one important detail—retracting the shoulder blades—which is relatively simple to learn and maintain.

The bench press is somewhere in the middle. You can program as many reps as your client can do with his shoulder blades locked down. But keep in mind that it’s far from the most important movement pattern for someone whose chest muscles are already tight.

5. Pay attention to posture and regularly perform mobility drills

No matter how thoroughly and effectively you address upper crossed syndrome in your workouts, never forget that your clients spend most of their time outside the gym. And when they aren’t training with you, they’re doing all the things that produced UCS in the first place.

But just because you can’t supervise them during those hours doesn’t mean they can’t follow your instructions. Help them find a way to pay more attention to their sitting and standing posture, and to remind themselves to do simple exercises like the chest stretch I showed earlier.

You can also give them a band or rope to keep nearby, and use it for exercises like this shoulder mobility drill.

Mobility drill for shoulders

 Final thoughts about upper crossed syndrome

You can’t expect a client who’s spent many years developing UCS to change her posture and behaviors overnight. It’s a long process.

Focus on the small wins: stronger upper-back muscles, improved form on key exercises, better mobility and movement quality, and less pain or discomfort, if that was an issue for your client when she first hired you.

READ ALSO: The One Thing You Haven’t Considered About Healthy Shoulders

READ ALSO: Why You Must Not Stretch Hypermobile Clients

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 The post Upper Crossed Syndrome: The Personal Trainer’s Guide appeared first on The PTDC.

Upper Crossed Syndrome: The Personal Trainer’s Guide published first on https://onezeroonesarms.tumblr.com/

[dwestfieldblog]

LIE BACK AND THINK OF...ENGLAND

Hello...Back once more from a jolly jaunt to the motherland, various weeks of mental and physical bad health interspersed with bursts of good humour and rabid hypo-mania. So nice to be trapped in my mind when alcohol free. So of course started smoking because I need some kind of pacifier. Back to Prague for blood tests again. Another temporary reprieve today, collapsing into coherence as all good systems should. Augmented chords are mysterious, the diminished are tension...unlike some sequences I could mention. Shame the owners of this site have used an algorithm to delete various pictures on my blog which involve nipples, regardless of whether they are actually from classical paintings. Art is being censored...Anyway...enjoying my middle aged adolescence, planning ahead for obsolescence...greetings to the readers from Canes Ventaci, why so Sirius? Smiling is healthy...

Who is the one who is living me now?   Da Free John

Religious news/olds...The pope says the church must never again hush up any abuse from its priests (in 2019, that's about (count them) one thousand, nine hundred and something days since the Church was founded with the help of a corrupt Emperor Constantine. Seems like a long time for a Christian group to get to show actual kindness, openness and morality huh? )Well Spotlight fans, it's a start eh? Compassion for your enemies and redemption for all. Or not.  

Only found out last month that the word Guru literally means heavy. As in serious. Hmm...or OM AH HUM if you prefer. Well Buddha looks quite hefty eh?

Asshat in Syria appears to have won and sees no shame in having started a war in which hundreds of thousands of his own people have been murdered and/or 'vanished', all for the sake of putting shopkeepers and students who protested for more freedom in their place. Chemical weapons, mass genocide and now a puppet state of Iran and Russia. Well, otherwise it would have been beholden to the USA and that is never a good thing either, ask Britain. Perhaps we can leave America after Europe and become the proud third world prison island to which we have been heading for the last few decades. Oh I am in a good mood this evening.

WOOL..a nice little village in England...received a letter from PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) politely suggesting/demanding that they change their name, as the way in which wool is sheared from sheep is aggressive and cruel. Etc. As if being under attack from the Far Left and Right is not enough, the vegans and snowflakes are rising fast to destroy the last vestigial tails of sanity. 1984 meets the Matrix and Kafka and Huxley have a love/hate-child. For the record, I despise tally ho 'good sport' fox hunting as much as I do animal liberation maniacs. (Yes, I do like animals,...wolves, hawks, black panthers, butterflies, intelligent dogs and dolphins. And Krtek.) Wool will keep their name. So far. Amen. Oh Man...

Gender neutral EU parliament...most words with 'man' in them have all been replaced with less 'specific' terms. When I was a boy and I heard the term Mankind, I never thought of men, I thought of people all over the world. Shame so many adults cannot do this too...but wait, the EU...they have substituted mankind with Humanity. (Doesn't that have man in it too?) I would LOVE  to be present at one of these meetings where such semantically diseased people meet to waste life with such pointless new guidelines and turn a psychic death ray on them.  

At some point, one hopes that folk will swing back away from these extremes and find the middle path of balance. But I don't think it is likely. People will always have ideas because they have brains of varying types and according to nature or nurture and their egos, can make the most mind screwingly dumb thoughts into reality...but for this to happen in a widespread way, requires someone at the end of the process, who, when presented with such, has to approve of, validate, wave it on as a new legally accepted norm. These are some of the people with whom I would most like to have 'a word'. Know what I mean?

Meanwhile new buzz phrases abound...'I self identify as a'...fill in the blank. Choose your gender, you don't even have to have an operation or hormone replacement, just announce it to the universe and be free. However, an opinion is not a truth. (of course I include my own writings in this) If you KNOW you are in the wrong body, CHANGE your body. Hands up (in the air) all those who can remember a time when 'Gender fluid' just meant... fill in the blank again.  

Reminds me that Israel is still trying to push the fallacy (into a new globally accepted law) that criticising its government or latest in a line of corrupt leaders equates with racist anti Semitism. It isn't. No more than saying something critical of Angela Merkel for her immigration policy would mean the speaker is a sexist/misogynist. Or a hater of Germans. Same way that mentioning a self identifying sportswoman with a penis who has not yet had the op or hormone therapy is still a man until they commit fully to the sex they feel and know they are and is perhaps not ok to compete with other women while testosterone is in their blood...is not 'transphobic', just stating the obvious. And...

Lesbians who refuse to sleep with a self identifying woman with a penis are also not transphobic, they are making a choice about who and what they will sleep with. If one is not turned on by another human being, then they are not turned on by them. Of course, this is just an opinion and therefore quite possibly not a truth. But it seems reasonable and inoffensive eh? Unless you are a radical transpansexual. In which case my truthful opinion is that all radicals are mentally unstable dangerous lunatics to be avoided. Or try beetroot and carrot juice to eliminate the free radicals....

(That all said, I recall reading some years ago that one of the ultimate forms of humanity/was to be both sexes as one. So who knows? Not me, I never lost control, ha ha. Face to face with the womb man who sold the world. Would bring a whole new meaning to 'go f yourself'. Hermaphrodites come together in the end, alpha/ omega...)

'Nine months to get out, he said, and the rest of our fool lives trying to get back in'.

Perhaps this could be wonderful, with all identities blending into one understanding of life on this planet, were it not for the surplus of those types who will use every opportunity to mislead and manipulate for profit and power. At a school in Brighton (of course) in England, plans have been approved to teach children that all genders can menstruate. Yes, really. Why should 'girls' have all the fun eh? This is where we seem to be heading at greater and greater speed. Absolute bollocks/ovaries being taught as factual lessons. (Hmmm...a brief look with a third eye at history and stories accepted as fact and it can be seen that this is not all that new.)  

Putin's evil genius plan to continue being president after his term runs out (under current constitutional rules) is to absorb Belorusssia. Russia thus becoming a new federation which will need a new constitution and to hold an election which he will win. When that runs out, no doubt he will take over/invade/absorb Ukraine etc totally and go on until he is dead. Or everyone else is. Alpha males, huh?  

Speaking of which...More hours of CNN and their seemingly accurate reportage of all the utter, dreadful bullcrap from the useful idiot (for Moscow) Trump. Gleefully dissecting every nonsense statement from the blonde succubus's poison mouth. January 23rd, America remains in shutdown as he plays chicken with his entire country. Who will blink first? Reptiles can go for a long time without this. 'Waves of inquiries' look set to begin against the madman. 'Impeach the mother......' indeed. But after such a concentrated amount of watching and reading the news and the colossal amount of  negative light, ah do believe I have had enuff again.  

'I am He that was and is and shall be'. Apparently, Beethoven had this written down by his own hand on his desk from Egyptian Book of the Dead. 'Serenity is a problem when you've been this close to Heaven.'

('....thus, while the tangible has advantages, it is the intangible that makes it useful' Tao te Ching. Perhaps I will (or should) leave more blanks in this. Does every void need to be filled? China is now on the dark side of the moon, that just asks for a song to be written. Feel safe? Huawei, ha ha ha to everyone who bought their stuff.)

The Czech Republic (while still Czechoslovakia) had a Velvet Revolution, Russia has Pussy Riot and Britain has...? The old cliché true for the greater part was that in the First World War, the common soldiery were 'lions led by donkeys'. These days the majority of the 'common' folk seem like donkeys being led by the greedy into a knackers yard to be slaughtered for meat and glue. Here comes Brexit on a wave of misplaced expectation of regaining control over our destiny. Seems unlikely when the group mind of my country has sunk so deep into entropy, but that is just an opinion. Arf. 'Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way'.Roger Waters.

The young are still in favour of Corbybn and his highly dubious vision, regardless of the radical Momentum behind him who are very likely being supported financially by the Kremlin. Goddess bless our proud snowflake youth! Not going to be many 'safe spaces' available kids if he wins...Socialism with an inhuman face. Students in the West have yet to learn how evil this stuff is. For decades they have demonstrated against fascists real and imaginary, Conservative Thatcher policy, Republican reactionary hogwash etc. Perhaps they need to experience at first hand just what their student brethren in the East did from the end of the second world war to 1989. And beyond. The far Left sucks as hard as the far Right. Not all revolutionaries are as cool as Che Guevara. Kids, study China, Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea and other Socialist paradises, (if only for one hot hour) their governments kill a considerable amount more of their own people than do the democratic Western governments. There is a reason for this. All governments seek to control the narrative of what is taught in schools but not all of them kill you for questioning the story.  

Perhaps we deserve it, Britain has been coasting along, running on empty for a very long time now. The two faced 'civilised' Christian moral vacuum is being filled with many other equally unpleasant qualities. Optimism becomes a serious challenge when you are aware that some times various fires must run their course in order to burn out. Like Man. Just hope that the scorched earth policy of most of the global mode of thinking allows a spring to appear in the future. Or get the world leaders to an Alice in Wonderland party for mushroom tea. That might very well speed up the process of illumination before the Rubicon is crossed. Perhaps it has been.  

'Intelligence is the capacity to receive, decode and transmit information efficiently.' So how well are we all doing as a race? Call Pleaides 666 023 093...

True communication only possible between equals....all on different circuits...

Meow she said. Woof, he replied.  

Love from the dog star.  

[gabriellakirtonblog]

Upper Crossed Syndrome: The Personal Trainer’s Guide

Do your clients have excellent posture?

If they sit in front of a computer all day, commute long distances, or spend lots of time texting or watching TV, they probably don’t.

Many of them will display upper crossed syndrome, a postural compensation first identified and described by Vladimir Janda, the Czech physician who revolutionized rehabilitation therapy. It’s caused by sitting in a slumped position with your head tilted forward.

The result is short, tight muscles on the front of your body and long, weak muscles on your upper back. It’s often accompanied by headaches or chronic back pain, shoulder pain, or neck pain.

Even if a client with upper crossed syndrome doesn’t experience pain, their poor posture can cause muscle imbalances, and the resulting compensations can compromise exercise technique. If uncorrected, it can also lead to painful trigger points or even injuries. Chronic depression of the sternum might even make it more difficult to breathe.

All that’s on top of the aesthetic cost of UCS. It makes the chest look smaller and the shoulders narrower. Your upper back develops a hunch, and the entire body appears less athletic.

Let’s talk about UCS—what it is, how to test for it, and how to correct it.

What is upper crossed syndrome?

What causes upper crossed syndrome?

How to test for upper crossed syndrome

How to fix upper crossed syndrome

Upper crossed syndrome exercises

What is upper crossed syndrome?

We’ll start with a simple fact: The human head is huge. It weighs 10 pounds, on average.

No, it doesn’t sound like much—even your least conditioned clients can probably do something with a 10-pound dumbbell—until you consider its support system. The neck isn’t a dumbbell rack. It’s designed to rotate 40 degrees in each direction while also bending far enough backward and forward for you to scan the skies or search the ground.

What it’s not designed to do is support a 10-pound mass of brain and bone that’s leaning forward for much of the day. For your neck to work, your head needs to stay directly over the midline of your body most of the time.

What muscles are affected by upper crossed syndrome?

As the head bends forward, these muscles become stretched and/or tight:

Suboccipitals

Upper trapezius

Levator scapulae

The pectorals become correspondingly short and tight.

Meanwhile, the deep cervical flexors—small, stabilizing muscles on the front and sides of the neck—become weak. Their role is to pull your head forward, but if your head is leaning forward anyway, there’s not much for them to do.

Completing the cross are the rhomboids, serratus anterior, and lower trapezius, all of which become stretched and/or weak.

Muscles affected by upper crossed syndrome

 READ ALSO: Anterior Pelvic Tilt: What It Is, and How to Fix It

What causes upper crossed syndrome?

Upper crossed syndrome can result from any or all of these three factors.

Sedentary lifestyle with forward head posture

Personal trainers spend most of our time on our feet, but the people we train spend most of their time sitting. It’s not entirely their fault. The work that allows them to pay us usually involves long hours in meetings or in front of a computer, often combined with long commutes and frequent travel.

Before, during, and after those sedentary events, they’re probably texting or reading something on their phones.

And they do all of it with their heads leaning forward and upper back hunched, creating or reinforcing upper crossed syndrome.

Unbalanced training

Picture a 20-year-old guy who trains his pecs and delts three times a week with bench presses, flies, and lateral raises; does push-ups almost every day; and rarely trains his upper back.

Or a 40-year-old cyclist who spends hours a week on a bike, all of it with her upper back rounded.

Or a 50-year-old former athlete who spends half of each workout on his core, doing hundreds of crunches with his hands pulling his head forward.

Poor exercise technique

All the examples of unbalanced training are exacerbated by doing those exercises with suboptimal technique.

The crunch is the most obvious example, but if you look around the gym, you see it everywhere. Whether it’s a plank or a TRX row, the neck is rarely aligned with the torso and lower body.

The vicious cycle

These three problems—forward head position, unbalanced training, and/or poor exercise technique—both promote and worsen upper crossed syndrome, which makes it harder to sit with good posture or exercise with good form.

How to test for upper crossed syndrome

Physical therapist Chad Waterbury, DPT, recommends a simple visual assessment for UCS. Ask your client if you can take a photo of him standing sideways. But don’t tell him why. As soon as he hears the word “posture,” he’ll stand up straighter.

Have him stand sideways to a bare wall in socks or bare feet, with his heels together. Ideally, he’ll let you take the picture of him without a shirt. For a female client, ask if you can take the picture in a sports bra. (Obviously, you’ll need to do this out of public view.)

After you take the photo, use an app to draw a straight, vertical from the bottom of the fibula on the outside of the foot to the top of the head. (Waterbury uses Hudl, a free app for Apple devices. Other options include the $40 Posture Analysis app, which is used by a lot of clinicians.)

Ideally, that straight line should intersect with the knee, hip, deltoid, and ear. If the ear and the middle of the deltoid are forward of the line, it’s a telltale sign of UCS.

How to fix upper crossed syndrome

1. Set the shoulders and tuck the chin

A person with UCS looks like his body has reshaped itself to accommodate walking around with his hands in his front pockets, usually with his head down, as if he’s trying to avoid eye contact.

But what happens if you ask him to put his hands in his back pockets? His posture changes: His shoulder blades retract and his head comes up, like he’s suddenly gained confidence.

Setting the shoulders and tucking the chin is an exaggerated version of that. Tell your client to pull his shoulders back, and imagine he’s sticking his shoulder blades into his back pockets.

The chin tuck usually takes a little more coaching. As you can see in the photo on the right, you want him to make a double chin while keeping his neck in a neutral position.

Upper crossed syndrome uncorrected vs. set shoulders and tucked chin

If the client struggles to activate his deep neck flexor muscles, place a tennis ball under his chin. He’ll have to pull his shoulders back farther to hold it in place.

Some clients will need to work on this for a while before they get it. But get it they must, because it’s the first step to correcting UCS.

2. Upper crossed syndrome exercises

The next step is to perform corrective exercises. The goal is to get the client to retract the shoulder blades with added resistance. Seated rows and face pulls are especially effective.

Don’t go heavy in the beginning. Start with a band or light weights on a cable machine, and do multiple sets of 10 to 15 reps. Pause in the fully contracted position for one or two seconds. The pause not only helps her feel her muscles working, it slows down the movement to limit momentum.

Once the client masters the technique, you can have her train almost to failure, increasing the load each time she reaches the rep target. Just make sure she pulls her shoulders down and back on every repetition.

Face pull

 Seated row

 3. Stretch the tight chest muscles

Strengthening the back muscles is more important than stretching them. But since tight chest muscles are a component of UCS, I like to use some basic pectoral stretches. Encourage your clients to do this one at home on non-training days.

Pectoral stretch

4. Set the shoulders correctly when lifting

People with UCS generally struggle with technique in a wide range of exercises. It’s easy to understand why: With the shoulders rounded and pulled forward, it’s hard to get into position to lift correctly. Then, while they’re lifting, their range of motion limitations and muscle imbalances lead to compensation patterns.

Thus, it’s not enough to strengthen specific muscles with targeted exercises. You also need to help your clients transfer that improved muscle function to the other exercises in your program.

Some quick tips for the big three:

Bench press

Set the shoulders down and back. Keep the rear delts locked in throughout the lift.

Squat

The barbell back squat probably wouldn’t be your first choice for most of your clients. Goblet squats are easier for them to learn, and allow them to perform the movement pattern with decent technique and sufficient depth.

But for clients with upper crossed syndrome, a barbell on the back can help them get and keep their shoulder blades back and down. It also helps them get the chest high.

Barbell squat with full scapular retraction

Deadlift

The deadlift is a tough one for clients with upper crossed syndrome because they need to follow two cues that will feel unnatural at first:

Shoulder blades back and down

Chest up

The best variation depends on the client. This kettlebell deadlift from Dean Somerset allows your client to keep his shoulder blades locked in place throughout the movement.

READ ALSO: Troubleshooting the Deadlift

Sets and reps

The more technically or cognitively complex an exercise is for your client, the less volume you want.

The squats and deadlifts, in particular, will work best with two or three sets and single-digit reps. When you’re asking your client to focus so much on such crucial details, more reps mean diminishing returns.

Conversely, as mentioned earlier, you can use higher volume on rows and face pulls. You’re only asking your client to concentrate on one important detail—retracting the shoulder blades—which is relatively simple to learn and maintain.

The bench press is somewhere in the middle. You can program as many reps as your client can do with his shoulder blades locked down. But keep in mind that it’s far from the most important movement pattern for someone whose chest muscles are already tight.

5. Pay attention to posture and regularly perform mobility drills

No matter how thoroughly and effectively you address upper crossed syndrome in your workouts, never forget that your clients spend most of their time outside the gym. And when they aren’t training with you, they’re doing all the things that produced UCS in the first place.

But just because you can’t supervise them during those hours doesn’t mean they can’t follow your instructions. Help them find a way to pay more attention to their sitting and standing posture, and to remind themselves to do simple exercises like the chest stretch I showed earlier.

You can also give them a band or rope to keep nearby, and use it for exercises like this shoulder mobility drill.

Mobility drill for shoulders

 Final thoughts about upper crossed syndrome

You can’t expect a client who’s spent many years developing UCS to change her posture and behaviors overnight. It’s a long process.

Focus on the small wins: stronger upper-back muscles, improved form on key exercises, better mobility and movement quality, and less pain or discomfort, if that was an issue for your client when she first hired you.

READ ALSO: The One Thing You Haven’t Considered About Healthy Shoulders

READ ALSO: Why You Must Not Stretch Hypermobile Clients

    Want a Fitness Business that Works Better for You?

Since 2011, Jonathan Goodman has been helping hundreds of thousands of personal trainers do better jobs, run better businesses, and have better lives. In his free minicourse, available below, he’ll teach you how to:

Rest easy with the 3 (super obvious) time-management strategies that burned-out fitness pros wish they knew

Maximize your profit with the perfect pricing model

Avoid crippling (and embarrassing) mistakes when asking for referrals

Enter your email below to get this free minicourse today:

 The post Upper Crossed Syndrome: The Personal Trainer’s Guide appeared first on The PTDC.

Upper Crossed Syndrome: The Personal Trainer’s Guide published first on https://onezeroonesarms.tumblr.com/

[gabriellakirtonblog]

Upper Crossed Syndrome: The Personal Trainer’s Guide

Do your clients have excellent posture?

If they sit in front of a computer all day, commute long distances, or spend lots of time texting or watching TV, they probably don’t.

Many of them will display upper crossed syndrome, a postural compensation first identified and described by Vladimir Janda, the Czech physician who revolutionized rehabilitation therapy. It’s caused by sitting in a slumped position with your head tilted forward.

The result is short, tight muscles on the front of your body and long, weak muscles on your upper back. It’s often accompanied by headaches or chronic back pain, shoulder pain, or neck pain.

Even if a client with upper crossed syndrome doesn’t experience pain, their poor posture can cause muscle imbalances, and the resulting compensations can compromise exercise technique. If uncorrected, it can also lead to painful trigger points or even injuries. Chronic depression of the sternum might even make it more difficult to breathe.

All that’s on top of the aesthetic cost of UCS. It makes the chest look smaller and the shoulders narrower. Your upper back develops a hunch, and the entire body appears less athletic.

Let’s talk about UCS—what it is, how to test for it, and how to correct it.

What is upper crossed syndrome?

What causes upper crossed syndrome?

How to test for upper crossed syndrome

How to fix upper crossed syndrome

Upper crossed syndrome exercises

What is upper crossed syndrome?

We’ll start with a simple fact: The human head is huge. It weighs 10 pounds, on average.

No, it doesn’t sound like much—even your least conditioned clients can probably do something with a 10-pound dumbbell—until you consider its support system. The neck isn’t a dumbbell rack. It’s designed to rotate 40 degrees in each direction while also bending far enough backward and forward for you to scan the skies or search the ground.

What it’s not designed to do is support a 10-pound mass of brain and bone that’s leaning forward for much of the day. For your neck to work, your head needs to stay directly over the midline of your body most of the time.

What muscles are affected by upper crossed syndrome?

As the head bends forward, these muscles become stretched and/or tight:

Suboccipitals

Upper trapezius

Levator scapulae

The pectorals become correspondingly short and tight.

Meanwhile, the deep cervical flexors—small, stabilizing muscles on the front and sides of the neck—become weak. Their role is to pull your head forward, but if your head is leaning forward anyway, there’s not much for them to do.

Completing the cross are the rhomboids, serratus anterior, and lower trapezius, all of which become stretched and/or weak.

Muscles affected by upper crossed syndrome

 READ ALSO: Anterior Pelvic Tilt: What It Is, and How to Fix It

What causes upper crossed syndrome?

Upper crossed syndrome can result from any or all of these three factors.

Sedentary lifestyle with forward head posture

Personal trainers spend most of our time on our feet, but the people we train spend most of their time sitting. It’s not entirely their fault. The work that allows them to pay us usually involves long hours in meetings or in front of a computer, often combined with long commutes and frequent travel.

Before, during, and after those sedentary events, they’re probably texting or reading something on their phones.

And they do all of it with their heads leaning forward and upper back hunched, creating or reinforcing upper crossed syndrome.

Unbalanced training

Picture a 20-year-old guy who trains his pecs and delts three times a week with bench presses, flies, and lateral raises; does push-ups almost every day; and rarely trains his upper back.

Or a 40-year-old cyclist who spends hours a week on a bike, all of it with her upper back rounded.

Or a 50-year-old former athlete who spends half of each workout on his core, doing hundreds of crunches with his hands pulling his head forward.

Poor exercise technique

All the examples of unbalanced training are exacerbated by doing those exercises with suboptimal technique.

The crunch is the most obvious example, but if you look around the gym, you see it everywhere. Whether it’s a plank or a TRX row, the neck is rarely aligned with the torso and lower body.

The vicious cycle

These three problems—forward head position, unbalanced training, and/or poor exercise technique—both promote and worsen upper crossed syndrome, which makes it harder to sit with good posture or exercise with good form.

How to test for upper crossed syndrome

Physical therapist Chad Waterbury, DPT, recommends a simple visual assessment for UCS. Ask your client if you can take a photo of him standing sideways. But don’t tell him why. As soon as he hears the word “posture,” he’ll stand up straighter.

Have him stand sideways to a bare wall in socks or bare feet, with his heels together. Ideally, he’ll let you take the picture of him without a shirt. For a female client, ask if you can take the picture in a sports bra. (Obviously, you’ll need to do this out of public view.)

After you take the photo, use an app to draw a straight, vertical from the bottom of the fibula on the outside of the foot to the top of the head. (Waterbury uses Hudl, a free app for Apple devices. Other options include the $40 Posture Analysis app, which is used by a lot of clinicians.)

Ideally, that straight line should intersect with the knee, hip, deltoid, and ear. If the ear and the middle of the deltoid are forward of the line, it’s a telltale sign of UCS.

How to fix upper crossed syndrome

1. Set the shoulders and tuck the chin

A person with UCS looks like his body has reshaped itself to accommodate walking around with his hands in his front pockets, usually with his head down, as if he’s trying to avoid eye contact.

But what happens if you ask him to put his hands in his back pockets? His posture changes: His shoulder blades retract and his head comes up, like he’s suddenly gained confidence.

Setting the shoulders and tucking the chin is an exaggerated version of that. Tell your client to pull his shoulders back, and imagine he’s sticking his shoulder blades into his back pockets.

The chin tuck usually takes a little more coaching. As you can see in the photo on the right, you want him to make a double chin while keeping his neck in a neutral position.

Upper crossed syndrome uncorrected vs. set shoulders and tucked chin

If the client struggles to activate his deep neck flexor muscles, place a tennis ball under his chin. He’ll have to pull his shoulders back farther to hold it in place.

Some clients will need to work on this for a while before they get it. But get it they must, because it’s the first step to correcting UCS.

2. Upper crossed syndrome exercises

The next step is to perform corrective exercises. The goal is to get the client to retract the shoulder blades with added resistance. Seated rows and face pulls are especially effective.

Don’t go heavy in the beginning. Start with a band or light weights on a cable machine, and do multiple sets of 10 to 15 reps. Pause in the fully contracted position for one or two seconds. The pause not only helps her feel her muscles working, it slows down the movement to limit momentum.

Once the client masters the technique, you can have her train almost to failure, increasing the load each time she reaches the rep target. Just make sure she pulls her shoulders down and back on every repetition.

Face pull

 Seated row

 3. Stretch the tight chest muscles

Strengthening the back muscles is more important than stretching them. But since tight chest muscles are a component of UCS, I like to use some basic pectoral stretches. Encourage your clients to do this one at home on non-training days.

Pectoral stretch

4. Set the shoulders correctly when lifting

People with UCS generally struggle with technique in a wide range of exercises. It’s easy to understand why: With the shoulders rounded and pulled forward, it’s hard to get into position to lift correctly. Then, while they’re lifting, their range of motion limitations and muscle imbalances lead to compensation patterns.

Thus, it’s not enough to strengthen specific muscles with targeted exercises. You also need to help your clients transfer that improved muscle function to the other exercises in your program.

Some quick tips for the big three:

Bench press

Set the shoulders down and back. Keep the rear delts locked in throughout the lift.

Squat

The barbell back squat probably wouldn’t be your first choice for most of your clients. Goblet squats are easier for them to learn, and allow them to perform the movement pattern with decent technique and sufficient depth.

But for clients with upper crossed syndrome, a barbell on the back can help them get and keep their shoulder blades back and down. It also helps them get the chest high.

Barbell squat with full scapular retraction

Deadlift

The deadlift is a tough one for clients with upper crossed syndrome because they need to follow two cues that will feel unnatural at first:

Shoulder blades back and down

Chest up

The best variation depends on the client. This kettlebell deadlift from Dean Somerset allows your client to keep his shoulder blades locked in place throughout the movement.

READ ALSO: Troubleshooting the Deadlift

Sets and reps

The more technically or cognitively complex an exercise is for your client, the less volume you want.

The squats and deadlifts, in particular, will work best with two or three sets and single-digit reps. When you’re asking your client to focus so much on such crucial details, more reps mean diminishing returns.

Conversely, as mentioned earlier, you can use higher volume on rows and face pulls. You’re only asking your client to concentrate on one important detail—retracting the shoulder blades—which is relatively simple to learn and maintain.

The bench press is somewhere in the middle. You can program as many reps as your client can do with his shoulder blades locked down. But keep in mind that it’s far from the most important movement pattern for someone whose chest muscles are already tight.

5. Pay attention to posture and regularly perform mobility drills

No matter how thoroughly and effectively you address upper crossed syndrome in your workouts, never forget that your clients spend most of their time outside the gym. And when they aren’t training with you, they’re doing all the things that produced UCS in the first place.

But just because you can’t supervise them during those hours doesn’t mean they can’t follow your instructions. Help them find a way to pay more attention to their sitting and standing posture, and to remind themselves to do simple exercises like the chest stretch I showed earlier.

You can also give them a band or rope to keep nearby, and use it for exercises like this shoulder mobility drill.

Mobility drill for shoulders

 Final thoughts about upper crossed syndrome

You can’t expect a client who’s spent many years developing UCS to change her posture and behaviors overnight. It’s a long process.

Focus on the small wins: stronger upper-back muscles, improved form on key exercises, better mobility and movement quality, and less pain or discomfort, if that was an issue for your client when she first hired you.

READ ALSO: The One Thing You Haven’t Considered About Healthy Shoulders

READ ALSO: Why You Must Not Stretch Hypermobile Clients

    Want a Fitness Business that Works Better for You?

Since 2011, Jonathan Goodman has been helping hundreds of thousands of personal trainers do better jobs, run better businesses, and have better lives. In his free minicourse, available below, he’ll teach you how to:

Rest easy with the 3 (super obvious) time-management strategies that burned-out fitness pros wish they knew

Maximize your profit with the perfect pricing model

Avoid crippling (and embarrassing) mistakes when asking for referrals

Enter your email below to get this free minicourse today:

 The post Upper Crossed Syndrome: The Personal Trainer’s Guide appeared first on The PTDC.

Upper Crossed Syndrome: The Personal Trainer’s Guide published first on https://onezeroonesarms.tumblr.com/

[gabriellakirtonblog]

Upper Crossed Syndrome: The Personal Trainer’s Guide

Do your clients have excellent posture?

If they sit in front of a computer all day, commute long distances, or spend lots of time texting or watching TV, they probably don’t.

Many of them will display upper crossed syndrome, a postural compensation first identified and described by Vladimir Janda, the Czech physician who revolutionized rehabilitation therapy. It’s caused by sitting in a slumped position with your head tilted forward.

The result is short, tight muscles on the front of your body and long, weak muscles on your upper back. It’s often accompanied by headaches or chronic back pain, shoulder pain, or neck pain.

Even if a client with upper crossed syndrome doesn’t experience pain, their poor posture can cause muscle imbalances, and the resulting compensations can compromise exercise technique. If uncorrected, it can also lead to painful trigger points or even injuries. Chronic depression of the sternum might even make it more difficult to breathe.

All that’s on top of the aesthetic cost of UCS. It makes the chest look smaller and the shoulders narrower. Your upper back develops a hunch, and the entire body appears less athletic.

Let’s talk about UCS—what it is, how to test for it, and how to correct it.

What is upper crossed syndrome?

What causes upper crossed syndrome?

How to test for upper crossed syndrome

How to fix upper crossed syndrome

Upper crossed syndrome exercises

What is upper crossed syndrome?

We’ll start with a simple fact: The human head is huge. It weighs 10 pounds, on average.

No, it doesn’t sound like much—even your least conditioned clients can probably do something with a 10-pound dumbbell—until you consider its support system. The neck isn’t a dumbbell rack. It’s designed to rotate 40 degrees in each direction while also bending far enough backward and forward for you to scan the skies or search the ground.

What it’s not designed to do is support a 10-pound mass of brain and bone that’s leaning forward for much of the day. For your neck to work, your head needs to stay directly over the midline of your body most of the time.

What muscles are affected by upper crossed syndrome?

As the head bends forward, these muscles become stretched and/or tight:

Suboccipitals

Upper trapezius

Levator scapulae

The pectorals become correspondingly short and tight.

Meanwhile, the deep cervical flexors—small, stabilizing muscles on the front and sides of the neck—become weak. Their role is to pull your head forward, but if your head is leaning forward anyway, there’s not much for them to do.

Completing the cross are the rhomboids, serratus anterior, and lower trapezius, all of which become stretched and/or weak.

Muscles affected by upper crossed syndrome

 READ ALSO: Anterior Pelvic Tilt: What It Is, and How to Fix It

What causes upper crossed syndrome?

Upper crossed syndrome can result from any or all of these three factors.

Sedentary lifestyle with forward head posture

Personal trainers spend most of our time on our feet, but the people we train spend most of their time sitting. It’s not entirely their fault. The work that allows them to pay us usually involves long hours in meetings or in front of a computer, often combined with long commutes and frequent travel.

Before, during, and after those sedentary events, they’re probably texting or reading something on their phones.

And they do all of it with their heads leaning forward and upper back hunched, creating or reinforcing upper crossed syndrome.

Unbalanced training

Picture a 20-year-old guy who trains his pecs and delts three times a week with bench presses, flies, and lateral raises; does push-ups almost every day; and rarely trains his upper back.

Or a 40-year-old cyclist who spends hours a week on a bike, all of it with her upper back rounded.

Or a 50-year-old former athlete who spends half of each workout on his core, doing hundreds of crunches with his hands pulling his head forward.

Poor exercise technique

All the examples of unbalanced training are exacerbated by doing those exercises with suboptimal technique.

The crunch is the most obvious example, but if you look around the gym, you see it everywhere. Whether it’s a plank or a TRX row, the neck is rarely aligned with the torso and lower body.

The vicious cycle

These three problems—forward head position, unbalanced training, and/or poor exercise technique—both promote and worsen upper crossed syndrome, which makes it harder to sit with good posture or exercise with good form.

How to test for upper crossed syndrome

Physical therapist Chad Waterbury, DPT, recommends a simple visual assessment for UCS. Ask your client if you can take a photo of him standing sideways. But don’t tell him why. As soon as he hears the word “posture,” he’ll stand up straighter.

Have him stand sideways to a bare wall in socks or bare feet, with his heels together. Ideally, he’ll let you take the picture of him without a shirt. For a female client, ask if you can take the picture in a sports bra. (Obviously, you’ll need to do this out of public view.)

After you take the photo, use an app to draw a straight, vertical from the bottom of the fibula on the outside of the foot to the top of the head. (Waterbury uses Hudl, a free app for Apple devices. Other options include the $40 Posture Analysis app, which is used by a lot of clinicians.)

Ideally, that straight line should intersect with the knee, hip, deltoid, and ear. If the ear and the middle of the deltoid are forward of the line, it’s a telltale sign of UCS.

How to fix upper crossed syndrome

1. Set the shoulders and tuck the chin

A person with UCS looks like his body has reshaped itself to accommodate walking around with his hands in his front pockets, usually with his head down, as if he’s trying to avoid eye contact.

But what happens if you ask him to put his hands in his back pockets? His posture changes: His shoulder blades retract and his head comes up, like he’s suddenly gained confidence.

Setting the shoulders and tucking the chin is an exaggerated version of that. Tell your client to pull his shoulders back, and imagine he’s sticking his shoulder blades into his back pockets.

The chin tuck usually takes a little more coaching. As you can see in the photo on the right, you want him to make a double chin while keeping his neck in a neutral position.

Upper crossed syndrome uncorrected vs. set shoulders and tucked chin

If the client struggles to activate his deep neck flexor muscles, place a tennis ball under his chin. He’ll have to pull his shoulders back farther to hold it in place.

Some clients will need to work on this for a while before they get it. But get it they must, because it’s the first step to correcting UCS.

2. Upper crossed syndrome exercises

The next step is to perform corrective exercises. The goal is to get the client to retract the shoulder blades with added resistance. Seated rows and face pulls are especially effective.

Don’t go heavy in the beginning. Start with a band or light weights on a cable machine, and do multiple sets of 10 to 15 reps. Pause in the fully contracted position for one or two seconds. The pause not only helps her feel her muscles working, it slows down the movement to limit momentum.

Once the client masters the technique, you can have her train almost to failure, increasing the load each time she reaches the rep target. Just make sure she pulls her shoulders down and back on every repetition.

Face pull

 Seated row

 3. Stretch the tight chest muscles

Strengthening the back muscles is more important than stretching them. But since tight chest muscles are a component of UCS, I like to use some basic pectoral stretches. Encourage your clients to do this one at home on non-training days.

Pectoral stretch

4. Set the shoulders correctly when lifting

People with UCS generally struggle with technique in a wide range of exercises. It’s easy to understand why: With the shoulders rounded and pulled forward, it’s hard to get into position to lift correctly. Then, while they’re lifting, their range of motion limitations and muscle imbalances lead to compensation patterns.

Thus, it’s not enough to strengthen specific muscles with targeted exercises. You also need to help your clients transfer that improved muscle function to the other exercises in your program.

Some quick tips for the big three:

Bench press

Set the shoulders down and back. Keep the rear delts locked in throughout the lift.

Squat

The barbell back squat probably wouldn’t be your first choice for most of your clients. Goblet squats are easier for them to learn, and allow them to perform the movement pattern with decent technique and sufficient depth.

But for clients with upper crossed syndrome, a barbell on the back can help them get and keep their shoulder blades back and down. It also helps them get the chest high.

Barbell squat with full scapular retraction

Deadlift

The deadlift is a tough one for clients with upper crossed syndrome because they need to follow two cues that will feel unnatural at first:

Shoulder blades back and down

Chest up

The best variation depends on the client. This kettlebell deadlift from Dean Somerset allows your client to keep his shoulder blades locked in place throughout the movement.

READ ALSO: Troubleshooting the Deadlift

Sets and reps

The more technically or cognitively complex an exercise is for your client, the less volume you want.

The squats and deadlifts, in particular, will work best with two or three sets and single-digit reps. When you’re asking your client to focus so much on such crucial details, more reps mean diminishing returns.

Conversely, as mentioned earlier, you can use higher volume on rows and face pulls. You’re only asking your client to concentrate on one important detail—retracting the shoulder blades—which is relatively simple to learn and maintain.

The bench press is somewhere in the middle. You can program as many reps as your client can do with his shoulder blades locked down. But keep in mind that it’s far from the most important movement pattern for someone whose chest muscles are already tight.

5. Pay attention to posture and regularly perform mobility drills

No matter how thoroughly and effectively you address upper crossed syndrome in your workouts, never forget that your clients spend most of their time outside the gym. And when they aren’t training with you, they’re doing all the things that produced UCS in the first place.

But just because you can’t supervise them during those hours doesn’t mean they can’t follow your instructions. Help them find a way to pay more attention to their sitting and standing posture, and to remind themselves to do simple exercises like the chest stretch I showed earlier.

You can also give them a band or rope to keep nearby, and use it for exercises like this shoulder mobility drill.

Mobility drill for shoulders

 Final thoughts about upper crossed syndrome

You can’t expect a client who’s spent many years developing UCS to change her posture and behaviors overnight. It’s a long process.

Focus on the small wins: stronger upper-back muscles, improved form on key exercises, better mobility and movement quality, and less pain or discomfort, if that was an issue for your client when she first hired you.

READ ALSO: The One Thing You Haven’t Considered About Healthy Shoulders

READ ALSO: Why You Must Not Stretch Hypermobile Clients

    Want a Fitness Business that Works Better for You?

Since 2011, Jonathan Goodman has been helping hundreds of thousands of personal trainers do better jobs, run better businesses, and have better lives. In his free minicourse, available below, he’ll teach you how to:

Rest easy with the 3 (super obvious) time-management strategies that burned-out fitness pros wish they knew

Maximize your profit with the perfect pricing model

Avoid crippling (and embarrassing) mistakes when asking for referrals

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 The post Upper Crossed Syndrome: The Personal Trainer’s Guide appeared first on The PTDC.

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Upper Crossed Syndrome: The Personal Trainer’s Guide

Do your clients have excellent posture?

If they sit in front of a computer all day, commute long distances, or spend lots of time texting or watching TV, they probably don’t.

Many of them will display upper crossed syndrome, a postural compensation first identified and described by Vladimir Janda, the Czech physician who revolutionized rehabilitation therapy. It’s caused by sitting in a slumped position with your head tilted forward.

The result is short, tight muscles on the front of your body and long, weak muscles on your upper back. It’s often accompanied by headaches or chronic back pain, shoulder pain, or neck pain.

Even if a client with upper crossed syndrome doesn’t experience pain, their poor posture can cause muscle imbalances, and the resulting compensations can compromise exercise technique. If uncorrected, it can also lead to painful trigger points or even injuries. Chronic depression of the sternum might even make it more difficult to breathe.

All that’s on top of the aesthetic cost of UCS. It makes the chest look smaller and the shoulders narrower. Your upper back develops a hunch, and the entire body appears less athletic.

Let’s talk about UCS—what it is, how to test for it, and how to correct it.

What is upper crossed syndrome?

What causes upper crossed syndrome?

How to test for upper crossed syndrome

How to fix upper crossed syndrome

Upper crossed syndrome exercises

What is upper crossed syndrome?

We’ll start with a simple fact: The human head is huge. It weighs 10 pounds, on average.

No, it doesn’t sound like much—even your least conditioned clients can probably do something with a 10-pound dumbbell—until you consider its support system. The neck isn’t a dumbbell rack. It’s designed to rotate 40 degrees in each direction while also bending far enough backward and forward for you to scan the skies or search the ground.

What it’s not designed to do is support a 10-pound mass of brain and bone that’s leaning forward for much of the day. For your neck to work, your head needs to stay directly over the midline of your body most of the time.

What muscles are affected by upper crossed syndrome?

As the head bends forward, these muscles become stretched and/or tight:

Suboccipitals

Upper trapezius

Levator scapulae

The pectorals become correspondingly short and tight.

Meanwhile, the deep cervical flexors—small, stabilizing muscles on the front and sides of the neck—become weak. Their role is to pull your head forward, but if your head is leaning forward anyway, there’s not much for them to do.

Completing the cross are the rhomboids, serratus anterior, and lower trapezius, all of which become stretched and/or weak.

Muscles affected by upper crossed syndrome

 READ ALSO: Anterior Pelvic Tilt: What It Is, and How to Fix It

What causes upper crossed syndrome?

Upper crossed syndrome can result from any or all of these three factors.

Sedentary lifestyle with forward head posture

Personal trainers spend most of our time on our feet, but the people we train spend most of their time sitting. It’s not entirely their fault. The work that allows them to pay us usually involves long hours in meetings or in front of a computer, often combined with long commutes and frequent travel.

Before, during, and after those sedentary events, they’re probably texting or reading something on their phones.

And they do all of it with their heads leaning forward and upper back hunched, creating or reinforcing upper crossed syndrome.

Unbalanced training

Picture a 20-year-old guy who trains his pecs and delts three times a week with bench presses, flies, and lateral raises; does push-ups almost every day; and rarely trains his upper back.

Or a 40-year-old cyclist who spends hours a week on a bike, all of it with her upper back rounded.

Or a 50-year-old former athlete who spends half of each workout on his core, doing hundreds of crunches with his hands pulling his head forward.

Poor exercise technique

All the examples of unbalanced training are exacerbated by doing those exercises with suboptimal technique.

The crunch is the most obvious example, but if you look around the gym, you see it everywhere. Whether it’s a plank or a TRX row, the neck is rarely aligned with the torso and lower body.

The vicious cycle

These three problems—forward head position, unbalanced training, and/or poor exercise technique—both promote and worsen upper crossed syndrome, which makes it harder to sit with good posture or exercise with good form.

How to test for upper crossed syndrome

Physical therapist Chad Waterbury, DPT, recommends a simple visual assessment for UCS. Ask your client if you can take a photo of him standing sideways. But don’t tell him why. As soon as he hears the word “posture,” he’ll stand up straighter.

Have him stand sideways to a bare wall in socks or bare feet, with his heels together. Ideally, he’ll let you take the picture of him without a shirt. For a female client, ask if you can take the picture in a sports bra. (Obviously, you’ll need to do this out of public view.)

After you take the photo, use an app to draw a straight, vertical from the bottom of the fibula on the outside of the foot to the top of the head. (Waterbury uses Hudl, a free app for Apple devices. Other options include the $40 Posture Analysis app, which is used by a lot of clinicians.)

Ideally, that straight line should intersect with the knee, hip, deltoid, and ear. If the ear and the middle of the deltoid are forward of the line, it’s a telltale sign of UCS.

How to fix upper crossed syndrome

1. Set the shoulders and tuck the chin

A person with UCS looks like his body has reshaped itself to accommodate walking around with his hands in his front pockets, usually with his head down, as if he’s trying to avoid eye contact.

But what happens if you ask him to put his hands in his back pockets? His posture changes: His shoulder blades retract and his head comes up, like he’s suddenly gained confidence.

Setting the shoulders and tucking the chin is an exaggerated version of that. Tell your client to pull his shoulders back, and imagine he’s sticking his shoulder blades into his back pockets.

The chin tuck usually takes a little more coaching. As you can see in the photo on the right, you want him to make a double chin while keeping his neck in a neutral position.

Upper crossed syndrome uncorrected vs. set shoulders and tucked chin

If the client struggles to activate his deep neck flexor muscles, place a tennis ball under his chin. He’ll have to pull his shoulders back farther to hold it in place.

Some clients will need to work on this for a while before they get it. But get it they must, because it’s the first step to correcting UCS.

2. Upper crossed syndrome exercises

The next step is to perform corrective exercises. The goal is to get the client to retract the shoulder blades with added resistance. Seated rows and face pulls are especially effective.

Don’t go heavy in the beginning. Start with a band or light weights on a cable machine, and do multiple sets of 10 to 15 reps. Pause in the fully contracted position for one or two seconds. The pause not only helps her feel her muscles working, it slows down the movement to limit momentum.

Once the client masters the technique, you can have her train almost to failure, increasing the load each time she reaches the rep target. Just make sure she pulls her shoulders down and back on every repetition.

Face pull

 Seated row

 3. Stretch the tight chest muscles

Strengthening the back muscles is more important than stretching them. But since tight chest muscles are a component of UCS, I like to use some basic pectoral stretches. Encourage your clients to do this one at home on non-training days.

Pectoral stretch

4. Set the shoulders correctly when lifting

People with UCS generally struggle with technique in a wide range of exercises. It’s easy to understand why: With the shoulders rounded and pulled forward, it’s hard to get into position to lift correctly. Then, while they’re lifting, their range of motion limitations and muscle imbalances lead to compensation patterns.

Thus, it’s not enough to strengthen specific muscles with targeted exercises. You also need to help your clients transfer that improved muscle function to the other exercises in your program.

Some quick tips for the big three:

Bench press

Set the shoulders down and back. Keep the rear delts locked in throughout the lift.

Squat

The barbell back squat probably wouldn’t be your first choice for most of your clients. Goblet squats are easier for them to learn, and allow them to perform the movement pattern with decent technique and sufficient depth.

But for clients with upper crossed syndrome, a barbell on the back can help them get and keep their shoulder blades back and down. It also helps them get the chest high.

Barbell squat with full scapular retraction

Deadlift

The deadlift is a tough one for clients with upper crossed syndrome because they need to follow two cues that will feel unnatural at first:

Shoulder blades back and down

Chest up

The best variation depends on the client. This kettlebell deadlift from Dean Somerset allows your client to keep his shoulder blades locked in place throughout the movement.

READ ALSO: Troubleshooting the Deadlift

Sets and reps

The more technically or cognitively complex an exercise is for your client, the less volume you want.

The squats and deadlifts, in particular, will work best with two or three sets and single-digit reps. When you’re asking your client to focus so much on such crucial details, more reps mean diminishing returns.

Conversely, as mentioned earlier, you can use higher volume on rows and face pulls. You’re only asking your client to concentrate on one important detail—retracting the shoulder blades—which is relatively simple to learn and maintain.

The bench press is somewhere in the middle. You can program as many reps as your client can do with his shoulder blades locked down. But keep in mind that it’s far from the most important movement pattern for someone whose chest muscles are already tight.

5. Pay attention to posture and regularly perform mobility drills

No matter how thoroughly and effectively you address upper crossed syndrome in your workouts, never forget that your clients spend most of their time outside the gym. And when they aren’t training with you, they’re doing all the things that produced UCS in the first place.

But just because you can’t supervise them during those hours doesn’t mean they can’t follow your instructions. Help them find a way to pay more attention to their sitting and standing posture, and to remind themselves to do simple exercises like the chest stretch I showed earlier.

You can also give them a band or rope to keep nearby, and use it for exercises like this shoulder mobility drill.

Mobility drill for shoulders

 Final thoughts about upper crossed syndrome

You can’t expect a client who’s spent many years developing UCS to change her posture and behaviors overnight. It’s a long process.

Focus on the small wins: stronger upper-back muscles, improved form on key exercises, better mobility and movement quality, and less pain or discomfort, if that was an issue for your client when she first hired you.

READ ALSO: The One Thing You Haven’t Considered About Healthy Shoulders

READ ALSO: Why You Must Not Stretch Hypermobile Clients

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 The post Upper Crossed Syndrome: The Personal Trainer’s Guide appeared first on The PTDC.

Upper Crossed Syndrome: The Personal Trainer’s Guide published first on https://onezeroonesarms.tumblr.com/