As we all practice good hygiene and social distancing to help stop the spread of COVID-19, many of us have had to adapt how we exercise. If you regularly hit the gym for a workout or weights, you can swap this for a park HIIT session or home training. Self-limiting exercises are fantastic to do by yourself. They require minimal coaching and promote good posture, strength, control … and are blatantly obvious when you do it wrong. Your body tells you immediately through fatigue or discomfort. Training in this way allows for a quicker acquisition of skill. For example, when you first learned to crawl you did so through a process of trial and error. There were no “training wheels”. You might have fallen flat on your face a few times, but this immediate feedback enabled you to adjust your balance and posture quickly. This is the essence of self-limiting exercise. It demands mindfulness, awareness, balance, control of posture and above all, engagement with the body and environment. Through self-limiting movement, your anatomy will model itself around natural stresses, rather than unnecessary stresses. Here are five of Dr Andrew McHardy's favourite self-limiting exercises that you can do at home today:

1. Bottoms Up Carries

• Best done with a Kettle Bell weight, if you have one.

• Get a weight that can be controlled but challenging. If you choose too light of a weight, your grip strength may hide certain defaults going on in the body. However, if you choose a weight that is challenging, your alignment must be dialled in, or the weight simply falls.

• Keep the weight up and work on developing symmetry within the body. Make sure shoulder issues are addressed prior. The bottom up weight requires a greater sensory feedback than when down.

• The exercise is complete when posture is lost, breathing is stopped or when the shoulder starts to shrug.

2. Farmers Carries

• Again, weight is a big deal with this.  If you’re using a weight that doesn’t demand your focus and attention, you’ll be able to fight the weight and perform with compensation.  However, load this carry up and you’ll quickly notice that stacking the joints and fixing alignment makes it much easier.

• Carry a weight in each hand and walk for a specified distance, or time.

• If you start to fail on this one, usually, you simply just drop the weights. This provides a traction on the upper body that helps activation.

• The exercise is done when posture is lost, breathing is stopped or when the shoulder starts to shrug.

3. Single Leg Deadlift

• Grab a pair of dumbbells, stand on one leg and perform a deadlift.

• Very quickly, you will become aware of the entire extensor chain muscles - from sole of foot to calves to hamstrings to glutes to spinal erectors. All of these will need to work together and with control to complete the movement in balance.

• Make sure you have proper hip hinging prior to doing this exercise and maintain a neutral spine during the movement.

4. Jump Rope Skipping

• Doing this exercise in bare feet will give you a quick (and uncomfortable) reminder when it goes wrong.

• It might be a loss of posture, issues with timing or excessive arm movements that cause you to stop and self-correct.

5. Balance Beam Walking

• Walking on a beam whilst arms down to allow your feet to provide you correction (not arms out).

• To make it harder: a lunge and pivot at the end of the beam to turn around can be performed.

• The wider the beam, the easier the task. Keep narrowing until you reach the point of small corrections without big compensatory movement to enable maximal learning.

           At Sydney Spine and Sports Clinic, we put you first. We believe in offering chiropractic care that enables you to make informed and educated choices about your health. If you are suffering pain and would like to talk to us about how we can help you get mobile and active again – get in touch right here.