Title: Nutritious Movement for a Healthy Pelvis (Katy Bowman)
Format: 70-minute widescreen educational DVD with a printable exercise routine.
What's the goal? Improve hip alignment and mobility so walking gait is fluid and daily life is easier.
Intended audience: people who sit for a living
What's it like? Alone in neutral-color rooms, Katy Bowman explains and demonstrates five "foundational" motions or poses to be done several times a day, six "advanced" exercises and a 14 1/2-minute "flow" in which standing lunges alternate with kneeling hip shifts, over and over.
What sort of exercises? Static stretches or small rotations with careful attention to body position, for the most part, although she does include chair squats and standing lunges.
The most important pose, she says, is her single-leg calf stretch, which she does a little differently from the usual lean-forward-and-plant-your-heel stretch. Instead, she has you prop up the toes and ball of one foot (on a foam arch or rolled towel) and step past it with the other foot, keeping both knees straight.
Is this DVD appropriate for someone who has had a hip replaced? She says one of the exercises isn't, and she suggests modifying another.
Any bonus chapters? A lifestyle tips bonus has advice on limiting the damage done by sitting as well as a rationale for hanging from a bar, wearing less puffy shoes and trying to move each of the toes of the feet individually. She suggests walking three to four miles a day and sitting on the floor often.
Finally, two animated shorts make a witty case for thinking of movement as a form of nutrition. One of
her key observations is that modern life is so basically sedentary that even "active people" are mostly sedentary.
"If you exercise an hour a day, seven days a week," she says, "your total movement time equals a whopping 420 minutes out a possible 10,080 [a week], or about 4 percent of all time spent. The rest of the time, the 96 percent of your weekly minutes, exercisers and nonexercisers alike sit in the same office chair, use the same home furniture, stare at the computer screen with arms and necks frozen and strap on the same geometry-altering footwear."
People should focus on moving more all the time rather than being satisfied with "exercise," she says.
Gear needed: a mat, a half-dome foam cylinder or towel, a foam block or a fat book, a chair, four blankets or two bolsters, a wall
Can I do it barefoot? Yes
Who is the presenter? Bowman is the author of the books Move Your DNA, Diastasis Recti, Don't Just Sit There, Whole Body Barefoot, Alignment Matters and Every Woman's Guide to Foot Pain. She created the Aligned and Well DVD series. She has a master's of science degree in biomechanics/kinesiology from California State University-Northridge. Her business is the Nutritious Movement Center Northwest in Sequim, Wash., where she offers a teacher certification program. She is married with two children.
Cost: $19.95
ActiveStyle on 07/04/2016