Born To Move

By Ooi Lay Yong

Regain your ability to move and live a life free of aches and pains.The digital lifestyle has changed the way we use, or underuse, our body and joints, giving rise to the prevalence of aches and pains in most of us. For so long, we have been training to build fitness, with our emphasis placed primarily on acquiring cardiovascular endurance and strength. But this is not enough – we need to redefine fitness and focus on building mobility fitness, which is essentially developing strength, flexibility, and quality of movement, so that our joints are capable of moving to its full range of motion and stay healthy.

Within the pages of this book, you will:

• Understand how the different parts of your body move

• Learn how the lack of mobility in your joints is the leading cause for aches and pains

• Master the 5 steps to achieve mobility fitness and live a pain-free life

• Discover how it is possible to regain your energy to stay at peak performance and live a life full of vitality

• Language: English
• Publisher: Candid Creation Publishing LLP
• Release date: Aug 3, 2015
• ISBN: 9789810960629

Book preview

PREFACE

What assets do you own? An apartment, a car, and money are some probable answers. However, rarely does a person identify his or her body to be an asset—unless that person is a model, actor, athlete, or an artist. These are people who value their body and would insure their body parts for millions of dollars. Then why are we not doing the same? Insurance apart, should we not cherish and nurture this asset, so that we can achieve and live the life we want?

When we fall sick, we feel awful and cannot wait for the medication to take effect. Now think of this scenario. For many years, you comb your hair in the mornings before going off to work. You have a nagging pain in your right shoulder, but it is not too bad—you can still comb your hair. One morning, you wake up to discover that you cannot lift your arm or comb your hair without experiencing a sharp pain. During breakfast, you can hardly pick up your cup of coffee, as your arm feels weak. Your little girl comes to you wanting to be carried and hugged, but the pain in your shoulder is too much for you to bear.

This is a scary scenario, but sadly, it is the reality for many people. This is the result of lifestyle changes brought about by modern technology—technology that has since altered the way we use our body.

Now more than before, we are spending a lot of time sitting in front of the computer, and moving less.

Coupled with the demands of today’s competitive society, many choose to sacrifice time that is meant to exercise or partake in any physical fitness training, for other activities. And even if they do spend time exercising, they are sticking to traditional methods of exercising that may not truly nurture their body. I will explain more.

Recently, I was chatting with a friend, a successful entrepreneur in his mid-forties. During the conversation, he talked about the numerous things he wanted to do in his life, apart from running his business. He mentioned that he wanted to learn to snowboard, but then quickly brushed off the thought saying that he was too old to take up such a sport.

When we are in our twenties, we have the energy to snowboard, but perhaps not the resources. In our thirties, we are busy building our career and family. By the time we reach our forties, and have become established, we wish we have the energy of a twenty-year-old to finally do the things that we had missed out on. Ideally, we should at last be able to unwind from work a little to enjoy the fruits of our labour, but this often does not happen.

Firstly, we get tired more easily. After meeting the demands of work and family, we simply do not have the energy to indulge in our activity of choice. Secondly, we feel older and there is a fear of taking up new things. Thirdly, we can hardly enjoy learning new activities like skiing or snowboarding—even with the resources—because we are plagued with physical aches and pains. At some point in our life, we might have found success in our careers, but we are no longer at our level best, in terms of our physical health.

Through the years of learning and unlearning, I have come to appreciate and understand what is missing in the traditional definition of physical fitness. Physical fitness refers to the ability to do manual activities. For a manual worker, it is about carrying out certain physical activities without experiencing undue fatigue. For others, physical fitness refers to the ability to perform effectively at work and leisure activities.

But it appears that the sole focus on physical fitness is not enough. In Singapore alone, many are developing work-related physical aches and pains. It is a case of overusing or underusing our body joints, which results in musculo-skeletal disorders. Although people might be partaking in other physical activities outside of work, these activities are not designed to help them address their work-related issues.

Today, we live in a world full of excitement, a society rich with information and human connections, and a life made so much easier with technologies and the Internet. Yet, we and many more will be suffering this growing health concern of physical aches and pain. There is no better time for us to reflect and begin to nurture our body.

Over the years, I have realised through episodes of pain and recovery, that physical fitness activities are inadequate in addressing what my body needs, and to overcome the faulty movement patterns that arise from today’s digital lifestyle.

For a long time, physical fitness = cardiovascular endurance + strength. But we failed to take into consideration the component mobility. We take our mobility for granted, as we are born with it, and have underestimated how much technology has adverse impact on our movements, compared to our ancestors’ days.

It is the lack of mobility in our joints, which is a leading cause of physical aches and pains. A person can complete a marathon, which means he has cardiovascular endurance and strength in his hips and legs. But he may not have the full range of motion or strength in his shoulders, and may suffer shoulder pains as a result. A gym buff who does regular weight training may have the strength to lift a 30-kilogramme weight, but if there is lack of mobility in his ankle, he may still acquire pain later in life.

It is the design of the programme that we have to re-think. I believe we have to focus on mobility fitness, i.e., developing the strength, flexibility, and quality of movement of joints of the body. It is this combination that allows our joints to move to its full range of motion and stay healthy.

Here, quality in movement means the ability to consistently reproduce without leading to excessive wear and tear—without leading to physical aches and pains. This quality of movement is an important element, as we do see people who have great flexibility, but are not moving well.

Poor movement quality is known as movement dysfunction. Such dysfunctions can lead to the development of unhealthy joints. For example, when our shoulder blade does not move properly, or if it moves dysfunctionally, we can acquire shoulder impingement over time. This would then show up as pain in the shoulder.

Essentially, healthy joints = healthy body. Mobility is ease and grace, not being stiff and awkward. But why is mobility fitness important, when we can walk, run, and are basically mobile? It is so that our joints are well when we walk and run. It would mean that we are not moving dysfunctionally, and are essentially pain-free.

Take myself as an example. I might have been mobile all my life, but I suffered from a chronic shoulder pain for many years. My shoulder joint developed pain because of the posture I assumed for many years using the computer. Those who run a lot, on the other hand, might develop pain in their knees. They might have worn out their kneecap cartilage, because of poor movement in their ankle and foot. This happens when their ankle and foot have not been trained to move well—they have not acquired the level of mobility fitness for them to perform a high-impact activity like running.

A number of us have the misconception that physical aches and pains are part of aging, and it is something that we have to live with. It is true aging does have an impact on our bodies—we cannot stop the grey hair from sprouting or our vision from becoming longsighted—but we can live a life full of energy and vitality, regardless of age.

I had this fear since I was young of growing old and losing my independence. I was not looking forward to a future where I become old and feeble, and walking with a stick. This is the image we often associate with growing old, and I find that too depressing.

Aging is inevitable, but feeling old and immobile is not. While many find that their movements have been impaired by aches and pains, just as many are leading a pain-free and mobile life. A search on Youtube, for example, would show up videos of men in their seventies still incredibly strong and doing gymnastics or women in their nineties still dancing effortlessly. These people live a life full of energy, even in their old age, because they have acquired mobility fitness.

As Pilates Master Teacher Ron Fletcher once said, Life is Movement. Movement is Life. When we are in our thirties, we are busy getting ahead in life, and we tend to neglect our body. This is the time when we are multi-tasking more than ever before, juggling between our career, superiors, colleagues, business partners, children and family. Needless to say, such responsibilities place tremendous pressures on our lives.

At work, executives put in long hours to prove themselves, and because others are doing it as well—by the way, working long hours does not always translate to productivity. All around us, we are bombarded with pictures and videos of great looking men and women, and there is this desire to look great. On a whole, the demands are growing as things are changing and happening at such rapid pace. I wish I still had my old television. Now I have one with a huge screen, Internet access, hand controls and many more features, but I am scared of changing anything, just in case I cannot return to just viewing cable TV.

The digital lifestyle has changed the way we use or underuse our body. We are amongst the most mobile beings on earth, but made immobile by modern technology and mobile devices. Our body is suffocating from a lack of movements, and we are losing our mobility skills. Yet, we still crave more technology to improve efficiency—to give us more time to be spent on using media devices that further stifle our body. This is the ailment of the 21st century, and it will only continue to worsen.

Through the years of practising and teaching, I have gained valuable insights to an effective approach to building mobility fitness to build our energy and confidence, and stay at peak performance in our career, even decades down the road. It is called the 5 Steps to Mobility Fitness.

Here, being mobile means staying confident and energetic, and confidence is not just a physical attribute, but the indescribable quality that when people have it, it draws others to them—we just know it when we see it.

I do not claim to be an expert in fitness or the human body and its movements—there is so much that I am still learning on a daily basis, but I am sharing based on my pain experiences and the lessons that I have learnt through them. I hope this book can convince you of the importance of building mobility fitness. I hope you could benefit from the 5 Steps to Mobility Fitness, and move like you are in your twenties again.

I remember how as a child I loved to sit on the swing in the park. I can remember the laughters and the urgings—higher, higher, higher. Then there was no fear of failure. I believe we should still have this fearless quality as we continue to live our adult lives. There is no reason not to have fun, laughter while we get ahead in life.

HOW TO GET THE MOST OUT OF THIS BOOK?

I am not the typical reader who reads the newspaper from cover to cover. I usually pick my favourite columns first, which is about new things, findings or positive stories about life. Then I might return to peruse the day’s events around the world.

In a way, I have written this book so that you do not have to read it from cover to cover. If you are experiencing physical aches and pains, you can learn more about them in Part 3. The chapters here will provide you with much insight into the four common areas of aches and pains, namely the neck and shoulder, back, wrist, and hips. If you have a particular symptom, you can find out