So, instead of trying to sort your way through all of that I have a starting location for all of you. A friend of mine known as Dr. K has put together some base videos that give two fast, 5 minute workouts that involve no equipment. Additionally, he has included some educational videos/audio about how to start with exercise through proven and scientifically backed results. Additionally, there is a flexibility circuit to help improve your mobility.

When you click on the link below it will take you to video page. Ignore the first video (it uses dumbbells), and instead look at the videos on the left. The two workouts are under the “5 Day Fat Loss Accelerator Mini Circuit” and the “Heart Rate Spiker Mini Set”. Now before you see the videos, know that these exercises are completely adaptable to any level of fitness, so don’t assume that just because you can’t do the exercises on the video that you should just stop. Just Comment below and I will give you the modifications you need.

http://drkareem.com/fat-loss-rehab-videos/

Cheers to your health,

Lynk

I thought I would put up this video on “Protecting Your Hands During Massage” in hopes of helping some people last longer and work smarter during massage. I hope you like it. Now that I have set up a youtube account I hope to be putting more of these videos up for everyone to see.

Check it out and let me know what you think.

Cheers to your health,

Lynk

Also, check out the “Human Repair” and “Injury Management” tabs for more information on managing your injuries and improving joint health.

The treatment methods I have listed below are to be taken only as a guide. Many knee injuries have a variety of commonalities, but every injury is a little different, so keep that in mind when trying these. Before starting any of these exercises, you should consult your primary medical practitioner. If anything results in an increase in pain or exacerbation of symptoms, stop the exercise and consult a medical professional.

The first thing that I have my knee patients do is ice. Ice is exceptionally important because it helps to modify pain, swelling, and inflammation. Check out this previous post for the best way to ice (http://doctorlynk.wordpress.com/2010/02/07/ice-for-injuries/)The most important of those three is swelling. The reason reducing swelling is so important is becuase it “turns off” muscles and decreases proprioceptive awareness (balance). This particularly applies to the vastus medialis oblique (VMO), which is part of the quadriceps muscle group on the front of the thigh.When the VMO loses strength, the entire knee becomes compromised in stability. The reason is because the VMO is the only muscle that has direct control over the patella, and without it the patella can track laterally and create impingement. Quadriceps strength is one of the most critical components of maintaining knee health.

Ankle Pumps – This is the easiest exercise to do to assist with swelling. It’s exactly what it sounds like: just pump your ankles up and down. It works best if you can elevate your legs above your heart to allow gravity to help remove some of the swelling from around the knee. I recommend a minimum of 500 per day. It sounds like a lot, but really it should only take 5-10 minutes out of your day.

Quad Sets – This is probably the most important initial knee exercises in physical therapy.

If you feel like you are doing it with your back, that means your abs aren’t drawn in. If you feel like you are doing it with your hamstrings, then pick up your toes and only place the weight in the heel.

Face the Wall Squat – Most people with knee pain cringe at the idea of squats, but, most likely, they are doing them wrong. Here is a quick video of a wall squat demonstration http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1Zo2U42d1o. If you are still having trouble with this, get a chair in front of you against a wall, walk forward until your knees are against the edge of the chair and try your squats from there. This will prevent your knees from going forward over your toes, which is typically where the pain comes from with squats. Keep your weight in your heels, knees behind toes, use your gluteals to stand up, and keep your abs drawn in for safety of your spine.

Quick Kicks – This is the last exercise I’m going to recommend. It helps with joint stabilization and proprioception (body awareness). Stand next to something stable in case you need it for balance. Since this one is complicated, I will let my good friend Dr. Kareem Samhouri tell you about it in a video (sorry he talks a lot). Check it out here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZnr07WIiiM. Try to spend 30 second in each direction on each leg, 3 times.

There are a lot of things that can transpire when dealing with knee injuries, so please use caution when trying these exercises and see a medical professional if you can.

Other resources: Robertson Training Systems (http://budurl.com/RobertsonTraining) – scroll down the page to “Bulletproof Knees”. The other products here are also phenomenal, created by possibly one of the best trainers in the nation, Eric Cressey.
I hope you found this information helpful and feel free to leave comments or ask questions below if you are dealing with knee pain.

Lets start first with a little bit about your lungs. Basically, the lungs work with like a black smith bellows. As you breathe in, the diaphragm contracts and it generates a vacuum inside your lungs by opening space and lowers the pressure (like pulling apart the handles of the bellows). As a result, air travels into the lung to equal out the pressure by comparison with the higher pressure outside. As you breathe out, the diaphragm relaxes and air flows out of the body without much muscle contraction. This is called quite breathing and generally requires very little effort, but leaves a certain amount of “dead air” in your lungs that does not supply oxygen to the body.

However, once someone starts to exert themselves and the body requires more oxygen, the need for effective breathing is critical for the continuation of activity. This involves the ability of your body to forcefully exhale or breathe out. By increasing your ability to exhale you can get rid of more of the de-oxygenated air (dead air) and have more space for oxygenated air. So, here are two quick things to help with improving your breathing.

1. Diaphragmatic Breathing - http://doctorlynk.wordpress.com/2010/07/24/diaphragmatic-breathing/
2. Balloons – Yes, go out and buy a bag of balloons and blow up at least 10 per day (you can just keep blowing up the same one until it gets easy and then start another one). By blowing up balloons you will work on exercising the muscles used the exhale (transversus abdominis, intercostals), which allows you to create more space for oxygenated air when you breath in. As you continue to work on this the muscles will become more effective and allow for increased tolerance of higher activity and better lung function. It can also help you clear out fluid that is in the lungs if you are sick (just be prepared to cough a lot).

In more detail, the class or classes will cover how to assess the body for limitations and weakness both with postural assessment as well as movement assessment. With that information, corrective mobility and strengthening/stabilizing exercises will be taught in order to correct for weaknesses and limitations. Through correction of limited mobility as well as increasing spinal and joint stability you can improve tolerance for being in bondage or suspension because the joints are better supported and muscles can handle the stress as opposed to the stress being placed through the joints, nerves, and arteries. There is also the added bonus of reducing injuries, pain, improving metabolism, and correcting posture, but the main goal is improving your experience with rope bondage and suspension. Additionally, I am going to try to cover a variety of techniques that the top can do by adjusting the bottom through cuing and basic physical therapy techniques as opposed to adjusting the ropes.

Below I have listed topics that I would love getting your (bottoms and tops) input on.

• What are the most common reasons that people have to come down from suspension or out of bondage?
• From the perspective of the bottom, what do you find most problematic while in bondage or suspension to be able to maintain the tie?
• Aside from adjusting the rope or the tie, what do you do to allow the person to maintain bondage or the suspension?
• What do you feel are the critical elements for being able to maintain bondage and suspension?
• Sort of a similar question, what do you find are the factors that most limit someone’s ability to stay bound or in suspension?

Here is where you all come in. Being that I am not even a rope novice, I want your input on these topics. Feel free to post here or on FetLife. I am hoping to gain more information on other factors beyond changing the tie or adjusting the rope. The focus of the class is not for the actual rope, but more so on other factors that can be utilized beyond rope that can affect suspension and bondage. Thank you in advance for everyone’s input and I look forward to continuing with this project to make into something useful and effective for the community.

I would also like to extend special thanks to MataLeao, WickedBlueGlow, LqqkOut, Lochai, Ten, Roughmercies, Bendy, Poison Beatrice, David Lawrence, Midori, and The Hammer for your input already! And a special thanks to my life-partner, Ever, for spurring me into action for this class.

Cheers to your health,

Lynk

I recently came across this article written by my good friend Dr. Kareem Samhouri and thought I would share it with everyone to help you reduce stress and improve your quality of life.

Cheers to your health,

Lynk

3 Step Stress Relief Plan
by Dr. Kareem Samhouri

Let’s face it – stress sucks.

Our bodies manifest stress as pain, headaches, nervous energy, and even fat storage. Chronic increases in stress level often result in higher cortisol levels, lower DHEA (a calming hormone in your body), and increased storage of belly fat.

From an evolutionary standpoint, this makes a lot of sense. Our bodies were stressed in the winter time since food was scarce and our environments were harsh. The natural reaction:

Produce a hormone (cortisol) to signal to the body that it’s time to store fat near the lower intestines and colon. This way, when we were starving, we could easily metabolize the fat and survive.

Alternatively, when we were being hunted or in extremely dangerous environments for prolonged periods of time, our bodies learned to stop producing a ‘relaxation’ hormone, DHEA. Thank goodness, as the hyper-alertness is likely what kept us alive.

Now, let’s fast forward to today… fluorescent lights, office duties, family obligations, loud environments, increasing responsibilities, and long hours… it’s no wonder that our bodies aren’t keeping up. It’s complete sensory overload.

Over the last 3.5 years, I’ve been slowly but surely developing and refining a technique to reduce stress in my patients and clients. In physical therapy school, you learn a lot about stress reduction techniques in order to reduce pain and ease a patient’s tension. I’ve taken these exact techniques, tried and tested them in various sequences, and mastered the fastest and easiest way to reduce stress quickly.

I recommend you treat the following as a 3 Step Stress Reduction Exercise Plan:

Step 1: Progressive Muscle Relaxation

You are going to be working every muscle in your body, nice and easily, in a very specific order. The goal is to alternate between agonists and antagonists from toe to head, allowing the concept of reciprocal inhibition to take place. This phenomenon allows you to actually turn off every one of your muscles, one by one, and decrease overall sympathetic nervous system stimulation.

Your sympathetic nervous system is your ‘Fight or Flight’ nervous system, and it controls your bodies release of adrenaline. By calming this system, you are controlling the prolonged state of being ‘hyper-alert.’

In order to do perform this exercise, alternate isometric contractions, as follows, for 10 seconds each:

1. Toe curling muscles / toe extending muscles
2. Ankle pointing muscles / ankle raising muscles
3. Knee bending muscles / knee extending muscles
4. Hip flexing muscles / hip extending muscles (glutes)
5. Abs / back extensors
6. Finger curling muscles (make a fist) / finger extending muscles
7. Wrist curling muscles / wrist extending muscles
8. Elbow flexing muscles / elbow extending muscles
9. Shoulder flexing muscles / shoulder extending muscles
10. Neck flexing (chin tuck) muscles / neck extending muscles

Step 2: Diaphragmatic Breathing

In this step, we are going to focus on activating our parasympathetic nervous system, or our ‘rest and digest’ nervous system. By engaging our diaphragm with each and every breath, we are automatically doing so.

Diaphragmatic breathing is ‘belly breathing,’ so it’s easy to know if you are doing this right by making sure your shoulders are not rising up and your stomach is expanding with each breath as much as possible.

When you take a sniff breath, you’ll automatically use your diaphragm, so a strong sniff breath is a great way to guarantee you’re recruiting the right muscles. Just be sure you’re not raising up your shoulders.

The goal is to breathe in for 2 seconds, hold for 1 second, and purse your lips (like blowing into a thin coffee straw) as you exhale for 4 seconds. This will bias you towards activating your parasympathetic nervous system to a greater extent that your sympathetic, and your body will naturally relax.

Make sure to take 15 breaths and count this as one rep.

Step 3: Describe Your Environment

In step 3, we are focused on making better use of our subconscious minds through conscious to subconscious influence. The idea here is that your subconscious mind is much more powerful than your conscious mind, so filling your subconscious with thoughts of relaxation and peace is like a shortcut to happiness and lower stress levels.

Here’s how I recommend you do this:

First, think of a time when you were completely relaxed and loving life. This may be your childhood at some point, out by the swing set, or on your honeymoon walking by the beach. Once you have this idea in mind, it’s time to find something in your immediate environment that reminds you of this specific experience.

For example, I like to use my honeymoon as the example, when I was in Thailand with Karen, sitting by the pool and enjoying the sun. We were sipping on a cocktail and dipping our feet in the water as we gazed over the ocean and enjoyed the warm breeze pass over our skin.

In order to replicate this feeling of complete peace and happiness in my mind, all I have to do is think about all 5 senses and find one thing that is around me to describe in full detail. This one thing only needs to share one common characteristic with my honeymoon.

In this example, I might walk outside and sit on a bench while I dangle my feet, feel the breeze, and describe out loud the feeling of the wind on my skin. I’ll notice the lightness in my legs, the smile on my face, and the horizon in the distance. Verbally, I’ll explain those common characteristics in as vivid of detail as possible, creating a link between this and my honeymoon subconsciously at the same time.

Because the vision and experience of my honeymoon is so clear in my mind, I will be able to associate ‘physical’ things with a feeling. This feeling will trigger subconscious thought process and, theoretically, allow my brain to take over and do the rest.

The goal here is to just ‘hint at your subconscious’ about your fondest memory, as it goes to work making you happy and fulfilled. Your body will feel an immediate sense of relaxation and your worries will somehow seem less important.

Repeat this process for 15 reps, 3x per day. This is an endurance exercise, so it’s best to train for long-term stress relief. The most important piece is repetition.

Mastering your nutrition and balancing your hormones are very important pieces of mediating stress. There’s one supplement that trumps all the rest when it comes to improving digestion and balancing out your body so you can get more from your food. You’re going to love it.

The cause of these types of headaches can be multifactorial, but usually it is caused by compression of the suboccipital space between your second cervical vertebrae (C2) and the base of the skull. On either side of there are 4 muscles (see figure below) that help control the movement of the skull, C1, and C2. Also in this area is a nerve called the suboccipital nerve the travels up the back of the head and refers in the “Ram Horn” pattern. The nerve can be trapped by these muscles as well as by the upper trapezius. Furthermore, restrictions through this area can create blood flow impingement for the brain and contribute to headaches.

The good news is that there can be simple muscle energy techniques to help reduce and possibly even eliminate your headaches. One such exercise called a neck retraction can be found through a previous post that I wrote. Now, onto the good stuff.

First, you have to do a quick assessment. Easiest way to determine how to treat the headache is by feeling which side the pain is on. Many times these types of headaches will pick a side to affect. If you have only one sided pain or pain is worse on one side, jump right to Step 1. Otherwise continue reading here.

If you cannot determine which side is the primary source of pain or the feeling is like a metal band or vice on the base of your skull, you can assess with movement. Start with your head in a neutral position. Turn your head to one side and then look down as if you are trying to smell your own arm pit (breathing optional). While keeping your head in this position turn your head and look up toward the ceiling without letting your head move away from the shoulder. Feel for how far you are able to turn your head away from your shoulder. Now, repeat this to the opposite side. Most likely you are going to find that there is one side more limited. Great! That means you have the information on which side to start treating.

The side that you want to treat is the direction (left or right) that had more difficulty looking up toward the ceiling. So, if you had more difficulty when turning to the right toward the ceiling, that is the side to start treating.

Step 1: Lay on your back with a thin pillow under you head and your shoulders.
Step 2: Place two fingers on your temple of the side that you are treating.
Step 3: Place the other hand on the side of the head above the ear.
Step 4: Without moving your head, look with your eyes only as hard as you can as if you are trying to see your fingers on your temple. Hold for 3 seconds.
Step 5: Without moving your head, tip to the left against your other hand. Hold for 3 seconds

Repeat Step 4 and 5 for 3 repetitions each and then retest your motion and see how your headaches feels. Hopefully, your motion will be better and your headache will be reduced. If there is no change, repeat this to the other side by looking and tipping in the opposite directions as before. Repeat up to 10x to the affected side to alleviate headaches and follow up with neck retractions from this post. This is effecting the suboccipital muscles (top left of the picture) to decrease pressure over the nerves causing the headache.

In case the above exercise didn’t work, try laying on a hard floor and place a golf ball under one side of the base of the skull. This may be a little tender to start with, but allow the weight of your head to sink into the golf ball. The goal of this is to slowly gap the space between the top vertebrae and the skull. Allow at least 3 minutes in this position, and its probably good to do this on both sides. You can also try this with two golf balls, but this gets a little uncomfortable.

Now, here is the last quick trick to try to alleviate those painful tension headaches. Feel on the back of your neck just below the base of the skull. You should feel a bump right in the center, that is C2. Trace down the center of your neck with your finger until your get to a second bigger bump. This will likely be C6 or C7. While laying down gently stroke downward from C2 to C7 with two fingers. Repeat this process for 2-3 minutes. This is working to decrease tension through a structure called the ligamentum nuchae that attaches to the base of the skull.

Hopefully one or all of the tricks above can help you to alleviate your headaches. If you have any questions feel free to contact me anytime.

Cheers to your health,

Lynk

For more information on classes and scheduling, check out the website at http://www.thewintersolstice.net!

Specifically I would check out the classes that are being taught by some great presenters including Pyro Sadist (who will be featured in of my classes *evil grin*), David Lawrence, Dov, MChristian, Master Don and slave orja, Master Steve and slave tami, MargoEve, Elkor, and Ms. Khiki just to name a few. There will be multiple tracks for education on different days including Rope, Dominant, Submissive Master/slave, SM, Polyamoury, Singles, and more.

The special events are also going to be great!

There is a New Year’s Eve party in the hotel featuring food, drinks, and some of the best company you can ask for!

The Bootblack Brigade will be at Winter Solstice this year for your leather care needs and half of their tips they are generously donating to the Carter-Johnson Leather Library. The
Other special events include morning bootcamps on Saturday and Sunday morning for those of you who are fitness freaks like me or who are looking to get started early with your exercise resolutions for 2011. Who is the instructor for these mornings of torture…I mean…these energy boosting, fat burning workouts? Why its me! Your local Doctor of Physical Therapy and Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist.

There is also a “special event” that is occurring during one of the classes. Brian aka Pyro Sadist has graciously volunteered himself to be on my table as the Demo Bottom for my bodywork class. Now for those you who do not know, Brian is a Sadist (hence the name). The entertaining component of this situation is, so am I, and for those who have been on the receiving end of my handiwork know full well the “therapeutic” pain that Brian will be in for as the demo bottom.

Oh, and I nearly forgot to mention the presence of the phenomenal DJ that will be working this event, DJPet who has been the man behind the music at events like The Floating World and Dark Odyssey.

So check out the FetLife event page http://fetlife.com/events/23218 and the website http://www.thewintersolstice.net to help you start 2011 with the best crowd for some kinky fun!

I recently had the pleasure of getting to know Chris Ashenden who is the owner of a supplement company that produces a super food supplement known as Athletic Greens. Now, generally I am rather skeptical about super foods and many other supplements, but this one blew me away. I got a free sample of Athletic Greens from Chris and the first time I took its, I knew that it was everything he said it was. Within 15 minutes of taking Athletic Greens I noticed a difference in my energy. I didn’t need my morning caffeine and I physically felt better.

After this type of experience I just had to ask Chris what was in this stuff!! His basic answer was that it covered all of your supplements/nutritional except fish oil and any specific nutrient deficiency that someone may have (Vitamin D being a classic one). What is even better is how its made. Athletic Greens is manufactured in Australia using a TGA-registered facility with standards far in excess of CGMP and FDA guidelines. It is made clean and green by research doctorates and nutritionists with a 60 year combined experimental and clinical experience.

Chris actually went through thousands to determine what was missing nutritionally from his body. By the time he was done, he was carrying around a small duffel bag of pills just to get all of his nutrients each day. Needless to say, this became quite annoying (particularly at airports and country borders). So to solve this, he worked with several people to put together a supplement that can cover all of your nutritional needs without taking tons of supplements. He actually spent over 1.5 million in research and development to create this product.

By making Athletic Greens from the highest quality materials it dramatically increases absorption rate of nutrients so that you don’t waste any of the nutrients you are consuming. This stuff pretty much covers all of your nutritional needs including anti-oxidants, probiotics, and prebiotics, and you only need to purchase one supplement rather than taking a multitude of different supplements. Just check out the ingredients list on here.

Replace almost all of your supplements<———————Check it out!

Or go to http://budurl.com/SuperGreens for your trial of one of the best supplements I have ever seen. If you are still not sure, just check out some more reasons below.

Cheers to your health,

Lynk

9 Reasons

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Are you used to gaining 10-15 lbs over the holidays?

Well, my good friend and diet expert Joel Marion is putting an END to that by giving away not one, but TWO free reports specifically designed to help you LOSE (instead of gain) 10-15 lbs of blubber this holiday season:

TWO totally FREE holiday fat loss reports <——- Download here

The first is called the Holiday Fat Loss Black Book and is chock full of more than 15 practical strategies to have you *easily* dropping fat this holiday season.

The second–and this is where it gets really cool–shows you how you can naturally manipulate your body’s #1 fat loss hormone to lose fat rapidly this season without EVER missing a holiday meal, party, or dessert! In fact, you’ll use those holiday treats to help you shed fat faster!

Secrets to manipulating the most important fat loss hormone EVER discovered:

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Joel Marion is a personal friend and I would recommend his products to anyone. I myself have already purchased this program from when it first launched and it is of very good quality. Even if you don’t want to purchase the program I would not miss out on these two great reports that can help you not only keep off the weight, but even lose weight over the holidays.

Holiday Fat Loss Black Book and Leptin Chronicles <———-Click here and download while the offer lasts

Have an awesome day and enjoy the free stuff!

Lynk

PS: If you are having trouble with the links above just copy and paste http://budurl.com/CheatYourWayThin into your web browser.