Balance and dreams
I'm in at work early this morning, as I need to get out early in order to fetch Chris for the show tonight. I am hoping the local precipitation does not add too much to the driving this evening, although the average Washington DC area commuter's driving skills are notoriously water soluble.
Getting in early doesn't actually add to my productivity, as my brain doesn't start any earlier than usual. I've already made a few dumb errors, though all have been correctable (so far).
In anticipation of an early morning, I went to bed early last night. My sleep was rather poor though, as I had overly-vivid dreams and a few (mild) nightmares. Nothing terribly disturbing or surprising (considering what sleep research has to say about the percentage of dreams that are nightmares), but I was once again um, impressed with my sleeping brain's ability to diffuse the nightmare by taking a hard, rational approach to it
Like this: look, okay, I get it, we're in a post-apocalyptic city, in a now run-down former luxury palace, and there's a menacing figure in the room. Scary. Can I see his face? If this were real I'd be able to see his face. I'm not going to be really scared until I can see his face because otherwise this is probably just a dream with a generic menacing figure. Menacing figure guy, look this way! Hey, that banner hanging from the ceiling that is conveniently obscuring his face wasn't there a moment ago. This is a dream. A poorly directed dream. I'm walking off the set, I refuse to put up with this level of unprofessionalism. Scary menacing figure dude, get out of my way, I am not scared of you and your cheap, theatrical disguise. I'm going to go complain to the management.
*sigh* Is it a bad thing that I woke up feeling only mild residual anxiety and a lot of annoyance? I could use a good narrative dream to fuel stories, but no, I got shoddy construction and an actor's strike.
Anyway.
On an utterly unrelated topic, I've been trying to remember to take the stairs rather than the elevators at work, as every little bit of exercise counts. Yesterday, while I was waiting in line in the cafeteria, I had a conversation with a chatty coworker about this. He said he was trying to add one healthy habit to his life a week, and he'd just started using the stairs, too.
But only up, he said. You don't do any work going down the stairs.
I resisted the urge to point out that you don't do any work falling down the stairs. It takes no significant expenditure of energy to plummet five stories (although you'll do some interesting energy conversions in the process, especially at the end). I didn't think that was the most health conscious way to reach the ground though.
I did tell him that you will actually use energy walking down the stairs, mostly in stabilizing and controlling your movements. That's why you have more than one muscle to control each joint; it moves in more than one direction and you need strength and control both ways. Walking up stairs gives you strength. Walking down stairs gives you control.
It reminded me of the time the physical therapist came to talk to my SCD class. He said the big thing to keep in mind with regard to joint and muscle health is that your body wants to exist in balance, so that the muscles and tendons and ligaments that control a particular area or type of movement exist in equal strength and tension. Injuries tend to occur where you've let one set of muscles carry too much of the load, either through poor form (bad posture, bad positioning) or unequal exercise. Areas like the ankles and lower back tend to get injured a lot because it's easy to let one set of muscles become overworked and tight (calf, lower back) and the other to be underworked and weak (abdominals, anterior leg muscles).
He said he'd seen plenty of cases of people who did a lot of bike riding who could go up the stairs without trouble, but whose knees went wobbly and weak if you asked them to go down backwards. They'd only strengthened the muscles that drove the forward motion, and so had allowed the other muscles, the ones that controlled other movements and added stability, to become weak in proportion.
So there's your thought for the day: Health is usually less a matter of overall strength as it is of overall balance.
Getting in early doesn't actually add to my productivity, as my brain doesn't start any earlier than usual. I've already made a few dumb errors, though all have been correctable (so far).
In anticipation of an early morning, I went to bed early last night. My sleep was rather poor though, as I had overly-vivid dreams and a few (mild) nightmares. Nothing terribly disturbing or surprising (considering what sleep research has to say about the percentage of dreams that are nightmares), but I was once again um, impressed with my sleeping brain's ability to diffuse the nightmare by taking a hard, rational approach to it
Like this: look, okay, I get it, we're in a post-apocalyptic city, in a now run-down former luxury palace, and there's a menacing figure in the room. Scary. Can I see his face? If this were real I'd be able to see his face. I'm not going to be really scared until I can see his face because otherwise this is probably just a dream with a generic menacing figure. Menacing figure guy, look this way! Hey, that banner hanging from the ceiling that is conveniently obscuring his face wasn't there a moment ago. This is a dream. A poorly directed dream. I'm walking off the set, I refuse to put up with this level of unprofessionalism. Scary menacing figure dude, get out of my way, I am not scared of you and your cheap, theatrical disguise. I'm going to go complain to the management.
*sigh* Is it a bad thing that I woke up feeling only mild residual anxiety and a lot of annoyance? I could use a good narrative dream to fuel stories, but no, I got shoddy construction and an actor's strike.
Anyway.
On an utterly unrelated topic, I've been trying to remember to take the stairs rather than the elevators at work, as every little bit of exercise counts. Yesterday, while I was waiting in line in the cafeteria, I had a conversation with a chatty coworker about this. He said he was trying to add one healthy habit to his life a week, and he'd just started using the stairs, too.
But only up, he said. You don't do any work going down the stairs.
I resisted the urge to point out that you don't do any work falling down the stairs. It takes no significant expenditure of energy to plummet five stories (although you'll do some interesting energy conversions in the process, especially at the end). I didn't think that was the most health conscious way to reach the ground though.
I did tell him that you will actually use energy walking down the stairs, mostly in stabilizing and controlling your movements. That's why you have more than one muscle to control each joint; it moves in more than one direction and you need strength and control both ways. Walking up stairs gives you strength. Walking down stairs gives you control.
It reminded me of the time the physical therapist came to talk to my SCD class. He said the big thing to keep in mind with regard to joint and muscle health is that your body wants to exist in balance, so that the muscles and tendons and ligaments that control a particular area or type of movement exist in equal strength and tension. Injuries tend to occur where you've let one set of muscles carry too much of the load, either through poor form (bad posture, bad positioning) or unequal exercise. Areas like the ankles and lower back tend to get injured a lot because it's easy to let one set of muscles become overworked and tight (calf, lower back) and the other to be underworked and weak (abdominals, anterior leg muscles).
He said he'd seen plenty of cases of people who did a lot of bike riding who could go up the stairs without trouble, but whose knees went wobbly and weak if you asked them to go down backwards. They'd only strengthened the muscles that drove the forward motion, and so had allowed the other muscles, the ones that controlled other movements and added stability, to become weak in proportion.
So there's your thought for the day: Health is usually less a matter of overall strength as it is of overall balance.