summarize "Mr. Stay Puft
HYPERINFLATED. This person is an upper-chest breather who tends to pull up
into spinal extension for both respiration and stability. Their lumbar spine is
in hyperextension, while their pelvis lives in anterior (forward) tilt, meaning
their butt sticks out. They are always pulling up into themselves, trying to
look like they are in charge. They have a limited sense of grounding in the
feet, and limited ability to pronate to absorb shock (the feet turn outward, or
supinate). All of the above makes them quite susceptible to lower back pain,
as well as tightness in their calves and hips.
Sad Guy
COMPRESSED. Everything about them is sort of scrunched down and tight.
Their head juts forward, and so do their shoulders, which kind of roll to the
front because they are always pulling forward to try and take in more air.
Their midback rolls in an overly flexed or hyperkyphotic posture, and they
have limited neck and upper limb motion. Sometimes their lower legs
externally rotate, and the feet overpronate. Gravity is weighing them down.
Yogini
UNCONTROLLED. These folks have extreme passive range of motion (i.e.,
flexibility)—and extremely limited ability to control it. They can often do a
toe touch and put their palms flat on the floor, but because of their lack of
control, these people are quite prone to joint injuries. They are always trying
to find themselves in space, fidgeting and twitching; they compensate for their
excessive flexibility by trying to stabilize primarily with their neck and jaw. It
is very hard for them to put on lean mass (muscle). Sometimes they have very
high anxiety, and possibly also a breathing pattern disorder.
—
Not everyone fits exactly into one of these three types, but many of us will
recognize at least some of these traits in ourselves. There is some overlap as
well; it’s possible to be a Sad Guy or Mr. Stay Puft and a Yogini at the same
time, for example, because the Yogini type is really more about a lack of
muscular control.
I was a hyperinflated Mr. Stay Puft, according to Beth: When I inhaled,
my ribs would flare out and up, like a rooster thrusting out his chest. This got
air into my lungs, but it also pulled my center of mass forward. To balance,
my spine would curve into kyphosis, and my butt would stick out (Beth called
it “duck butt”). This hyperextended my hamstrings, effectively disconnecting
them from the rest of my body, so I was unable to access these muscles. For
all those years, before I realized this, I was deadlifting using only my back
and glutes, with virtually no help from my powerful hamstrings. In terms of
breath training, I needed to think about getting air out, the exhale—while
someone who tends more toward the Sad Guy type should work on getting air
in, inhaling via the nose rather than the mouth.
The idea behind breath training is that proper breathing affects so many
other physical parameters: rib position, neck extension, the shape of the
spine, even the position of our feet on the ground. The way in which we
breathe reflects how we interact with the world. “Making sure that your
breath can be wide and three-dimensional and easy is vital for creating good,
efficient, coordinated movement,” Beth says.
Beth likes to start with an exercise that builds awareness of the breath and
strengthens the diaphragm, which not only is important to breathing but is an
important stabilizer in the body. She has the patient lie on their back with legs
up on a bench or chair, and asks them to inhale as quietly as possible, with
the least amount of movement possible. An ideal inhalation expands the
entire rib cage—front, sides, and back—while the belly expands at the same
time, allowing the respiratory and pelvic diaphragm to descend. The telltale is
that it is quiet. A noisy inhale looks and feels more dramatic, as the neck,
chest, or belly will move first, and the diaphragm cannot descend freely,
making it more difficult to get air in.
Now, exhale fully through pursed lips for maximum compression and air
resistance, to strengthen the diaphragm. Blow all that air out, fully emptying
yourself before your shoulders round or your face or jaw gets tense. Very
soon, you will see how a full exhale prepares you for a good inhale, and vice
versa. Repeat the process for five breaths and do two to three sets. Be sure to
pause after each exhale for at least two counts to hold the isometric
contraction—this is key, in DNS.
In DNS, you learn to think of the abdomen as a cylinder, surrounded by a
wall of muscle, with the diaphragm on top and the pelvic floor below. When
the cylinder is inflated, what you’re feeling is called intra-abdominal pressure,
or IAP. It’s critical to true core activation and foundational to DNS training.
Learning to fully pressurize the cylinder, by creating IAP, is important to safe
movement because the cylinder effectively stabilizes the spine.
Here’s another quick exercise to help you understand how to create IAP:
breathe all the way in, so you feel as if you are inflating the cylinder on all
sides and pulling air all the way down into your pelvic floor, the bottom of the
cylinder. You’re not actually “breathing” there, in the sense that air is actually
entering your pelvis; you’re seeking maximal lung expansion, which in turn
sort of pushes your diaphragm down. With every inhale, focus on expanding
the cylinder around its whole diameter and not merely raising the belly. If you
do this correctly, you will feel the entire circumference of your shorts expand
evenly around your waist, even in the back, not just in the front. When you
exhale, the diaphragm comes back up, and the ribs should rotate inward again
as your waistband contracts.
This inhale develops tension, and as you exhale, pushing out air, you keep
that muscular tension all around your cylinder wall. This intra-abdominal
pressure is the basic foundation for everything that we do in stability training
—a deadlift, squats, anything. It’s as if you have a plastic bottle: with the cap
off, you can crush the bottle in one hand; with the cap on, there is too much
pressure (i.e., stability) and the bottle can’t be crushed. I practice this 360-
degree abdominal breathing every day, not only in the gym but also while I
am at my desk.
[*2]
Your “type” also indicates how you should work out, to some extent. The
Stay Puft people tend to need more grounding through the feet and more
work with weight in front of them so as to pull their shoulders and hips into a
more neutral position. Beth typically has someone like me hold a weight in
front of my body, a few inches in front of the sternum. This forces my center
of mass back, more over my hips. Try it with a light dumbbell or even a milk
carton, and you’ll see what I mean. It’s a subtle but noticeable change of
position.
With the Sad Guys and Gals, Beth tends to work more on cross-body
rotation, having them swing the arms across the body to open up the chest
and shoulders. She is cautious about loading the back and shoulders,
preferring to begin with body weight exercises and split-leg work, such as a
walking lunge with a reach, either across the body or to the ceiling, on each
step.
For the Yoginis, Beth recommends doing “closed-chain” exercises such as
push-ups, using the floor or wall for support, as well as using exercise
machines with a well-defined and limited range of motion, given their lack of
joint control. Machines are important for these folks, and also for people who
have not lifted much or at all, because machines keep their movements within
safe boundaries. For the Yoginis, as well as for newbies in general, it’s
important to become more aware of where they are in space, and where they
are relative to their range of motion.
The larger point is that someone’s breathing style gives us insight into
their broader stability strategy, the set of patterns that they have evolved over
the years to help them get by in the physical world. All of us have these
strategies, and 95 percent of the time, in the course of daily life, they work
fine. But once you add different stressors, such as speed, weight, and novelty
or unfamiliarity (e.g., stepping off a stair in the dark), then those strategies,
those instinctive physical reactions, can create problems. And if our
respiration is also taxed, those other problems will be magnified.
"