Today I talk about the importance of keeping our bodies strong and in a particular way that is most beneficial!

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Show Notes:

1. Introduction: Welcome back to Better Than a Pill with your host, Cari Vann. The topic of discussion for today's episode is the importance of maintaining our strength in the form of 'center-based strength'.

2. What is Center-Based Strength?: This concept focuses on the body's center as the main source of power, using stabilization, breath control, and whole-body awareness. This approach sets the mind and body up for success in all strength work.

3. Strength Training/Resistance Training: Center-based strength incorporates resistance training where muscles contract against an outside resistance, thus gaining strength. This resistance can come in various forms such as resistance tubes, hand weights, ankle weights, or Thera bands.

4. Cari Vann's Experience & Research: Cari has extensive experience and academic knowledge in exercise physiology. She has conducted research on resistance training, particularly in older men and postmenopausal women.

5. Benefits of Strength Work: Strength work not only aids in pain management and injury prevention but also boosts bone density - critical for bone health and preventing osteoporosis. Furthermore, strength work helps increase resting metabolic rate, aiding in weight loss and weight management.

6. Personal Insight: Cari shares her personal discovery of osteopenia (low bone density) through her research, emphasizing the importance of proactive strength work in maintaining bone health.

7. Cautions: It's important to remember individual differences and not overtax our systems. For those with conditions like arthritis or autoimmune diseases, overdoing strength work might have negative effects. The key is to strengthen our bodies safely and effectively.

8. Recap: Center-based strength is a form of resistance training with multiple benefits including injury prevention, pain management, metabolism boost, improved bone health, and aid in weight loss and weight management.

9. Closing: Tune in for new episodes every Wednesday.

Key Takeaways:

• Center-based strength, emphasizing the body's center as the main power source, is a crucial element of pain-free movement and overall strength work.

• Strength training, specifically resistance training, is an effective way to build muscle strength and can be achieved with various tools like resistance tubes, hand weights, and Thera bands.

• Beyond pain management and injury prevention, strength work also promotes bone density, important in preventing osteoporosis, and boosts metabolism, aiding in weight loss and weight management.

• Strength work should be approached mindfully, considering individual differences, and not overtaxing the system, particularly in individuals with conditions like arthritis or autoimmune diseases.

Transcript:

Hello everyone and welcome back to Better Than a Pill. I'm Cari Vann and I'm so grateful and excited to be here again to share with you today. In today's episode, we're going to be talking about the importance of maintaining our strength in the form of what I call center-based strength. Keeping our body strong with center-based strength, as we talked briefly about in the past, is an important pillar of pain-free movement.

What it basically means is taking your foundation of stabilization and applying it to working on your whole body, all of its muscles with an emphasis on the center, utilizing your breath and your scoop, which is how we activate the center properly. So your center and your whole body awareness are involved in every aspect of your strength work. This sets the mind and body up to succeed and allows for the center to be the main source of power, which it really should be. This helps tremendously while we're strengthening the rest of our body.

If we talk about the center-based strength and what is actually what we're doing is strength work, let's talk a little bit about that. Strength work can be called strength training or resistance training. And what we're doing here is contracting our muscles against an outside resistance which helps our muscles get stronger. That form of resistance could be, but not limited to resistance tubes or hand weights or ankle weights or thera bands, which are a lot of the things that I generally like to use.

Now, yes, I have studied this stuff, I have done my homework, I have the degrees in exercise physiology, hands-on work many years, and I've actually even done research on the topic of resistance training in older men and postmenopausal women. So I was going to just take a second and talk about some of the benefits from doing this work.

As I've mentioned a couple of times already, yes, doing the center-based strength work, strength work can help with pain management and prevention of injury, but also doing the strength work is good for our bone density, which is important for our bone health and the prevention of osteoporosis. And that's actually what I studied when I was studying the effects of resistance training on older men and postmenopausal women, is the bone density. And yes, we can increase it and maintain it with strength work.

On a side note, as I was doing this research study, I actually was doing DEXA scans, which is how we detect for bone loss and bone density. And I found out that I had what's called osteopenia, which is low bone density. And I was only in my so knowing that I'm definitely very proactive about doing the strength work because it's very important. And I know a lot of us that may be walking around and not even know that we have low bone density that could eventually, if we're not proactive turn into osteoporosis. So, yes, it is important.

Now, strength work, in addition to bone health, is also important for our metabolism. And it can increase our metabolism by increasing what's known as our resting metabolic rate. This is essentially how our body uses fuel and burns calories at rest. So it helps with weight loss and weight management and primarily because of its profound effects on our metabolism.

What I found is what's really important when working with strength work and center-based strength is that it's important that we are aware that each individual is different and that we don't necessarily want to always overtax our system. The way I teach it, we're not overtaxing our systems. But what I mean by that is that if somebody has some form of inflammation, let's say it's arthritis or maybe it's an autoimmune disease, which I personally can relate to.

And I know a lot of people that I work with can too, as well, is that if we go past a certain threshold in our strength work, that can have a negative effect on our body and defeat what we're actually trying to achieve. So I just wanted to share that, that, yes, we can still strengthen our bodies, but we can do it in a safe and effective manner and primarily using all the tools that I mentioned before.

So just to recap, we talked about center-based strength today, how it's a form of resistance training for our bodies as well as its many benefits. These include injury prevention, pain management, a better metabolism, the importance for improving our bone health, as well as weight loss and weight management.

I hope you all enjoyed this episode and that you found it helpful. Remember, we do new episodes every Wednesday and I look forward to having you join me back then.