You are diligently indulging in cardio and strength training routines, five days a week; but, can they help strengthen and ease everyday functional movements? You know, like bending down to lift a bag, carrying your child, etc. That’s what GYROTONIC exercise aims to do. This workout is also known as yoga for dancers, and is among the new and emerging fitness trends, much like the barre workout (for ballet dancers).

In fact, only recently Lady Gaga took to her Instagram account to post pictures of her in motion, which raised our curiosity, and here we are, exploring this fitness trend:
What Is GYROTONIC?
GYROTONC is a sequence of exercises that string together ‘spiraling, circular movements, which flow together seamlessly in rhythmic repetitions, with corresponding breathing patterns.’ Founder Juliu Horvath initially devised it as a means to treat chronic pain, based on his own suffering. Make note that Lady Gaga too, battles with pain, for which she indulges in hip exercises every week.

Benefits

• Lengthens and strengthens the muscles
• Improves blood circulation
• Improves joint mobility
• Improves sense of coordination and balance
• Improves flexibility and posture

The basic premise is to expand and contract the body to help it stabilize. Joyce Campell, author of Journal of Bodywork & Movement Therapies analyzed the GYROTONIC arch and curl to note, “…there is a continuous wave-like pulsation of reaching out, and reeling in from the center of the body. In this way, stability is attained by a counterbalance of opposing forces.”

Gyrotonic also decompresses the joints and creates awareness of movement in your body.
Courtesy of www.Zliving.com

 on June 17, 2015 - by Lisa Thorngren

The shoulder girdle is an incredibly complex structure. Not in terms of numbers – there are only 6 bones and 4 joints total – but in the coordination of movement of these bones and joints.

Ideally, the scapulae should be able to move independently of the arms, with the ability to elevate (lift), depress (lower), retract (pull together), and protract (move apart). However, they should also move without our conscious control when our arms move, particularly in large ranges of motion. As the arms lift and lower, we should have corresponding upward and downward rotation of the scapulae. In fact, one-third of our range of motion when lifting the arm front or side is due to scapular rotation. However, the coordination between the scapulae and the shoulders often becomes disrupted, for one main reason.

The disrupting of this coordination frequently occurs in response to excess tension in the muscles and soft tissue surrounding the shoulder joint. When the shoulder joint proper (the arm in the glenoid fossa, or shoulder socket) cannot move through its full range of motion, our body finds a way of adapting, as it does so well! Unfortunately, this adaptation is one of excess mobility in the scapula to make up for the lack of mobility in the shoulder joint. We see this when the scapula elevates to lift the arm overhead, or when it retracts as the arm opens way out to the side. We also see it when the scapulae excessively retract and protract during a push-up.

This lack of coordination obviously affects the shoulder girdle itself, but the effects migrate to other areas of the body as well. Tight shoulders can lead not just to excess scapular movement, but also excess thoracic movement (below left). Anyone a rib thruster? Try aligning your ribs correctly and then see how far you can lift your arm overhead (below right) – and if you still can, good for you! If you can’t lift as far, that might be a sign that your thoracic spine is doing some compensation for your shoulders.

Looking above the shoulders, excessive scapular elevation can lead to frequent compression of the cervical spine, causing more pressure and eventual degeneration of the cervical discs and vertebrae.

Clearly, the health of our shoulder girdle is vitally important to the health of our entire upper body – which also houses the brain, lungs and heart, so really, this is vitally important to our overall health! Finding ways to work on shoulder mobilization and scapular stabilization will help restore balance and coordination to this area of the body. This sidelying sequence is a quick way of working on refining and clarifying that coordination.