These videos contain demonstration of how to do the exercises right -- the ones that I have written about headlined Get back to fitness—one day at a time published on Founding Fuel.
Move & Bee exercises, earlier called NukeLeeUs exercises, may appear simple. And they are. But this has been work in progress for two decades. It is the outcome of knowledge and experience gained over 37 years of running, 21+ years of consulting patients with neck, back, shoulder and knee pains among other ailments, a deep understanding of the human anatomy, how it functions, and a sincere appreciation of the human condition.
This is a whole body program is intended to address any dysfunctional movements that may occur and get you back to functioning well again by making you stronger and improving mobility.
This program is part of a soon to be published book titled Move & Bee: Couch to 5 kms in 55 days.
Guidelines for Exercises
No jerky movements. Keep the movements smooth, slow and easy.
Don’t hold your breath while doing the exercise. Breathe in and out at a relaxed pace.
Think about which body part you are trying to work in a particular exercise. If the strain is anywhere else, you are making an error somewhere. Possibly your form is wrong or you are trying to do too much too soon or you are too fatigued.
The last few repetitions are where injuries often happen. Keep a check on your form. If the form of exercise is not correct, you are not helping yourself. This doesn’t contradict the statement that form follows function. There the intent is to get you moving. But once you start getting better, then you need to focus on form a lot more.
Start with 11 repetitions of each of these exercises. Three sets in total of each exercise.
You can do these exercises throughout the day rather than only at an allotted time.
Videos of exercises
The very first exercise will get you to lose an inch of waist and gain an inch in height in under 2 minutes. It actually works.
To make that a habit, we need to get the muscles to be active. For that we need to do a some basic exercises to start with.
1. Breathing: Breathing keeps us alive and yet we take it for granted. Sit tall and focus on long deep slow breathing. Take a long deep breath in over 4 seconds, hold it in the lungs for 2 seconds and over next 4-7 seconds, slowly breathe out. While you do that, focus on reverse counting from 99 to zero. This will help you calm down and do mindful breathing.
2. Heel Raises: Take off your shoes and socks. Stand tall, facing a wall a foot away. Take the support of the wall using your hands. Now slowly raise your heels off the ground. Hold for a second, and slowly come down. Go as much up and down as is comfortable. Over time you’ll notice you’ll be able to go further up and down.
3. Toe Curl Walk: Take off your shoes and socks and stand on grass. One foot at a time, starting with the right foot, curl all your toes downwards and move forward. Now repeat the same with the left foot.
4. Skipping (With or Without a Rope): Skip in the same spot, barely lifting your feet off the ground, the way you would have done as a child. Focus on landing softly. This works as a warm-up before your walk or run as it engages the three joints involved in these activities—your ankles, knees and hips.
5. Pelvic Tilt Sitting: Sit tall like a puppet. Relax your shoulders. Now slump down fully, adopting a C-shape posture for the spine. From there, form an exaggerated S-shape spine, increasing the arch in the lower back and pushing your chest out. Now go back to your slump C-shape posture again.
6. Chair Squats: All of us sit down on a chair and then get up. That’s exactly what a chair-squat is. Stand tall six inches in front of your chair. Now slowly sit down, and as soon as your butt touches the chair, slowly get up again. As mentioned earlier, if you struggle going all the way, that’s okay too.
7. Orange Back Squeeze: Sit tall with relaxed shoulders. Now raise both your arms with a 90-degree angle at the elbows and shoulders. Imagine there is an orange between your shoulder blades. Now slowly bring your elbows back, feeling the muscles between your shoulder blades. Squeeze that imaginary orange for a second or two, taking juice out from it and then raise your arms again.
8. Anne’s Alphabets: This exercise helps in increasing the mobility of the upper and middle back which gets compromised because we sit in a slouched position for long hours and spend too much time on smartphones and laptops. Sit tall. Interlock your fingers and place them behind your neck, holding your neck firmly. Bring your elbows together. Imagine there is a large, thick pencil between your elbows that you can’t let fall. Now start writing lowercase letters of the English alphabet with the imaginary pencil with enhanced movement of the elbows. This has nothing to do with English or any other language, just that lowercase English letters are rounded figures and will get your upper and middle back moving well, which otherwise is difficult to do.
9. Push-Ups (With Wall Support): Most people do push-ups incorrectly. This results in the muscle imbalance getting worse with a gorilla-like posture becoming even more pronounced. Doing the Orange Squeeze and Anne’s Alphabets before this exercise will prime your body to act more naturally. Stand tall facing a wall, a foot away from it. Relax your shoulders. Put your palms on the wall at shoulder level and shoulder width apart or slightly more. Imagine there is a plank-board on your back, touching your upper back, lower back, knees and ankles. While doing the push-up, all need to move together so that they continue to touch the plank board. Also remember that orange from the previous exercises, orange back squeeze. Push-ups work the muscles where that imaginary orange would be.
Slowly bend your elbows and lean forward, towards the wall. Then slowly straighten your elbows and come back to your starting position.
And finally here is the respirometer exercise mentioned by Charles in the column.