muscle Archives - Claire Cutler Casey

Do you wish your body would just perform better? Whether you’re fed up with pain and discomfort or you want to improve your sports performance, this is for you.

Muscles are vital to good posture, they hold the spine and body upright and enable movement and flexibility.

When the integrity of muscle performance is compromised it can result in postural deviations which, if not addressed, can lead to discomfort and pain which can affect performance, sleep, concentration and overall quality of life.

Whilst such deviations may be imperceptible at first, as you continue to train or just go about your day, their impact increases, as other muscles try to compensate to counteract the effects of deviated posture, eventually leading to damage and, of course, pain.

When just one muscle under-performs the knock on effect impairs your performance and, eventually creates pain.

Your body is an incredible piece of kit, a superb structure of organic engineering.

Over 650 muscles work with 206 bones to

Everything you do uses muscles, from unconscious actions like breathing and blinking to the more conscious activities like cycling and cooking dinner.

Your body is focused on one crucial task, keeping you alive. Making sure that, if a hungry bear runs out of the woods, you won’t be their next meal.

When a muscle malfunctions others quickly take up the slack, pulling together to keep you going but, eventually, this creates danger and your brain sends a pain signal to alert you that something is wrong and you need to stop. Stop before you fall down and become bear lunch.

Initially working through the pain seems a viable short term way of continuing in the face of impaired muscle function. Your body pumps endorphins that bathe your brain and cut off the pain signals. This mechanism is designed to ensure that, when that bear is in hot pursuit, you can keep running. Keep running to a place of safety.

Until you stop.

Once you stop all those juicy endorphins settle down, the adrenaline tails off and the body quickly reveals the true state of affairs, with exhaustion and pain taking centre stage.

Are you ready to take your training to a new level of personal performance? Get the inside track.

In these extended sessions we:

Kinesiology addresses the factors that inhibit or impair muscular integrity.

It is not a test of strength, if it were I’m pretty certain you would win, it is an analysis of how the stress and existing damage you hold affects your ability to train and perform ongoing.

Having established the blocks that are holding you back from peak performance we resolve them using various subtle, profound techniques.

If you are curious to know more, please get in touch

I look forward to working with you.

Claire Cutler-Casey is a professional Kinesiology Practitioner and Touch For Health instructor as well as delivering a variety of business and well-being workshops designed to help you navigate the process of change.

If you would like to book a 1:1 Kinesiology session, please click here.

You can also join our online community here.

Hydration, why it’s never too late to re-hydrate. Your body is approximately 70% water, we are the most amazing pieces of organic engineering, creating power, strength, resilience and sustainability out of water.

Your brain and heart are approximately 73% water and your lungs are about 83% water.

If your car or your mobile phone ran on water you’d make sure they were fully recharged every day, to ensure you have all the power and functionality you need, yet we still find it difficult to drink enough water to stay hydrated and function well.

it's never too late to rehydrate

Water is fundamental to our survival, not liquid, just water.

As soon as you add anything to water it becomes a food, then it must pass thorough the whole of your digestive system before the water can be extracted.

Think of it like legos. A cup of coffee is constructed from some water bricks, some coffee bricks, some milk bricks and some sugar bricks all bonded together. The blocks can be broken apart again but that department is in your small intestine. So all the tissues that make up the oesophagus, stomach and duodenum don’t get any direct hydration from the liquid you drink, they have to wait a few hours and hope they get some from the water that is absorbed through the lining of the small intestine, and into the blood stream. They have to join the queue only, now, they are at the other end.

Your hydration is important to us, you are held in a queue and may be answered ... eventually

Meanwhile your body is performing at much less than optimum, because everything that your body does uses water. There is not one single bodily function that does not rely on hydration.

Think about that for a moment. Every thought, action and breath. Literally every thing your body does relies on water.

Signs of dehydration include

Fatigue, weight gain, reduced mobility, aches and pains, headaches, inability to concentrate, fuzzy head (like a hangover), irritability, dry skin, chapped lips, wrinkles, flaky skin, halitosis, poor urination, urinary tract infections, constipation, acid reflux, indigestion, changes in blood pressure, nausea, dizziness, increased resting heart rate, poor memory, slower response times, reduced dexterity, depression, anxiety, tension, mood swings, confusion…… and the list goes on.

Understanding the bodies need for water and the impact that can have on our system it’s time to get real.

How much clear, pure water do you drink, every day, and how much do you need?

Using a baseline of average adult (I know you’re not average, I know you’re amazing) but let’s use average as a starting point.
The average adult needs about 4 pints of water a day.
This adult is having a fairly decent time of things, no stress, no caffeine, no bugs to fight off, sleeping and eating well and taking moderate exercise.

So if you have stress, stimulants, illness or take more exercise you will need more water to keep you hydrated. How much is difficult to say but there are rules of thumb that we can use to help

For every cup of coffee drink twice as much water again – for 250 ml coffee drink 500 ml extra water
In times of stress drink more water, stress is very dehydrating. Drinking more water reduces the anxieties around stress and also helps the body recover more quickly from the effects.
Working out – drink more water. Yes, you’re sweating but did you know that water is responsible for the elasticity in muscles? If you’re really interested in building resilience into your workout – drink more water.
Feeling ill, recovering from a bug or laid up with something – drink more water. If the bug creates mucus, your body is using water to make that. If your body is fighting something off, your immune system uses water to make and distribute the anti-bodies to the internal battlefield, and to clear away the debris to keep your system clear.

As you run through the calculations you may begin to wonder how you’re going to have time to drink all that water, here’s the pay-off.

The better hydrated you are the better your system functions.

Stress reduces so extra water intake can too, drinking more water means you are naturally drinking less coffee because there are only so many hours in a day, right?
This reduces stress (again) so you will need less water.
Your sleep improves so, yes, you guessed it, you’re less stressed and so you need less water.
Your immune system functions better so you get less bugs so you need less water to be well hydrated.
You lose weight so your body requires less water to move you about.

In a fairly short period of time you reach that sweet spot of balanced hydration, where 4 pints of water a day is enough to keep you hydrated and you are more responsive to your bodies need for extra water as/when required.

It’d never too late to rehydrate and experience the benefits that decent hydration has on your physical, emotional and biochemical systems.

So, what are your waiting for?

Hydrate, sleep well, live better

If you would like to book a 1:1 Kinesiology session, please click here.

You can also join our online community here.