BANISH THE BINGO ARMS! Right, so if you don’t know what ‘bingo arms’ are, you most certainly have seen the flab fly on the arms of someone else as they wave or make some other gesture. I, myself am currently recovering from the bingo wing…thanks grandma ruby, pffft. But here’s the deal, we really don’t have to be stuck with the curse of the bingo arm. What is actually causing the flap isn’t necessarily flab, but more representative of muscle that is off-line, in other words out of alignment. Let me explain….this will be a bit of an over simplification, but it all starts with trunk alignment; in particular, the alignment of our ribs and shoulder blades: Muscles and fascia determine the position of our bones and as a result, determine whether or not the bones are in alignment. Thus, ‘musculo-fascia’ works together to both move our bodies and to stabilize our bones so they hold us up within the force of gravity. This means that certain bones must stay in their place for other parts to move correctly. Without the stability, the mobility doesn’t really work that well… Here’s why. If the bones aren’t in alignment with the gravity line, (the vertical axis that runs through the center of our body and keeps us on our ‘center of gravity’) then the whole system goes off kilter. This means that when the mobile parts move, they can’t really move as they are designed to. The mobile parts are connected to the stable parts, so when the stable part is off-line, the mobile part is, by default, off line. Ok, back to the ribs, shoulder blades and wingy bits… One of the 3 tri-ceps are connected to both the humeral bone (arm bone above the elbow) and the shoulder blade. The shoulder blade needs to stay stable, meaning in the right place to properly function, on the ribs. If the ribs aren’t in the right place, the shoulder blade will have a heck of a time staying in the right place and….. those triceps that partially attach to that shoulder blade, guess what? Yep, they cannot properly engage, fire, and function, so yes, they flap. What to do, you ask. First and Most Importantly: Get back on your gravity line. this puts you back in your center of gravity. Then and only then, commence to doing planks. Planks, done correctly of course, build the transversus abdominus and serratus anterior. Those are the names of muscles that help stabilize the ribs and shoulder blades. Boom, no more flaps, wings and bingo flings. For instruction on my ‘evil plank’ version of the plank exercise see this link:
Posted on: Fri, 09 Jan 2015 02:05:52 +0000