Three Steps to Protect Employees From Musculoskeletal Health Conditions & Improve Employee Health
Transcript
Hi, it's Mike here from Better Happy, and in today's short, 10 minute video, I'm going to show you how you can protect yourself and your employees from one of the leading causes of sickness in the UK, musculoskeletal pain, without having to buy gym memberships or ergonomic chairs.
I owned and ran a functional fitness training facility for over five years. I've been running Better Happy for two years, running in movement workshops and health workshops, so I've helped hundreds, if not thousands of people improve their posture and get rid of pain by applying these basic three principles I'm going to show you today.
So what do we mean by musculoskeletal pain? Well, this is where the muscles in the body change shape to an unnatural length because we spend excessive amounts of time in an unnatural position, such as sitting at a desk or doing repetitive movements, such as screwing a light bulb, whatever it might be. When we do those movements for a long time and repetitively, muscles change length, posture changes, and that leads to pain.
As I mentioned, this is one of the leading causes of sickness in the UK. Over one in four adults suffer with this, and it costs our economy billions of pounds through sick days and lost productivity. Why is it such a problem? Well, because our lifestyles have changed so dramatically over the last 50 to 100 years, and we now spend more time than ever before, sat down sedentary or doing the same movements over and over again. It's also a major problem because of our mentality around the subject and because of our approach towards solving it. It's really common that we believe that when we get pain in a joint that we think it's the end, that it's debilitating, that there's nothing we can do about it. Nine times out of 10 that couldn't be any further from the truth.
The pain is actually a warning system. It's the body telling us that something needs to change. It's not the body telling us that something is broken. Obviously if we believe we can't fix it, that leads to poor mental health, and it leads to us believing that we can't do anything, so we ended up becoming more and more unhealthy and big, and that pain gets worse and worse and worse. Secondly, very common to Western mentality, we try to medicate the pain and the symptoms as opposed to actually addressing the root problem of the cause.
So what are the three simple steps that we can use to protect ourselves from this issue and our colleagues in our workforce? We're going to go through that now. Okay, so simple step number one, we need to be able to move and assess ourselves across three basic functional movements. This is the squat, the hinge and the press. Okay. These aren't gym movements. These are the basic movements that are humans should be able to do. If we're unable to do these, it shows us that we've got muscular tightness that's developing and that we need to address that, otherwise, it will become an issue either now or later on in life.
The first one is the squat. We need to be able to squat. If we're unable to do that, it shows me that we've got tightness in the hips and the knees and/or the ankles. Later on in life, this will lead to back and knee pain, and it will also take away your independence in life. Your ability to get up off the floor properly, your ability to move around properly, okay? So we need to be able to do the basic movement assessment there.
Movement number two, we need to be able to do a hip hinge. Now we don't need to be personal trainers or physiotherapists to be able to do this, and to be able to understand this. We just need to follow these basic instructions that we've got listed here on this resource that you can download after this video. So can I hinge, can I pick stuff up properly? If I can't, I'm probably putting everything from my spine and I'm at risk of injuring my back.
Movement number three. Can I press my arms over my head? If I can't, it shows me that I've got muscular tightness in the shoulder and I'm probably already suffering with, or at a high risk of suffering with neck pain and shoulder pain. Again, it also shows me how I can get rid of that neck and that shoulder pain by addressing these muscular tightnesses.
So, that's step one. We should movement assess ourselves and we should movement assess for these basic movements, everybody within our organization to be proactive with this and to stop issues before they become severe.
Step two, if we can't do those movements, we need to build up to them. If I can't do a squat, for example, I need to build up to that movement, because it shows me that I've got tightness in my hips, ankle and/or knees. I'm going to get back pain and I'm going to lose my independence in life, my ability to get up off the floor.
So we do that with some basic scale movements like squatting to a target or squat and holding onto something, to build that movement pattern backup in the body. And then step three, we work into our daily routine and into the culture of our organization, this is important that we do a daily 10 minute mobility routine. I can't stress enough how important this is.
If you have a sedentary job or you require your people that work for you to be sedentary or to do repetitive movements, and you don't implement this, its only a matter of time until you're in pain, and that becomes a chronic issue. So it's stupid not to do this. You should be implementing a mobility routine, okay? It takes 10 minutes out of your day. It teaches the body to move again. It wakes up all of the muscles within the body. It takes stress off the joints and it increases blood flow to the brain. So from a short-term perspective, it gives you instant more efficiency and effectiveness in your daily activity. And then in the long-term, it stops issues becoming chronic issues, so it's a no-brainer. This is one that we teach, that we love, that's perfect, that addresses all of the muscles that tend to get ignored in daily life and wakes the body up properly.
You can download these resources below , but if you'd rather have some help with it, please don't hesitate to get in touch using the call button below this video. It's really important to understand that looking at our full roadmap that we've got here, that movement in the middle line, is just one component of being physically healthy, okay? We also need to make sure that we're addressing nutrition and sleep. If I can move really well, but I'm eating rubbish and I'm not sleeping enough. I'm still going to be physically unhealthy. That's going to affect me at home and at work. And then in the bigger picture, if we really want to thrive as an organization and as a team, we need to make sure that we're addressing the whole system. At the bottom here, if we don't know who we are and what we're good at and what our strengths are, it doesn't matter how healthy we are, we're not going to feel good about ourselves.
At the top, if we don't put all this into systems, we're not going to stick at it long-term. Okay, so as I mentioned, you can download these resources from this video below using the link, and you can start playing around with that test in it, trying to see if you can work it into your organization. If you'd like some help with this, if you'd like to do a really highly engaging workshop, or you'd like to address the whole system with some help from professionals, please don't hesitate to contact us using the link below, book a call with us, let's have a chat about you and your organization and see how we can start engaging your people, motivating your people, and boosting the health and performance of your team. Thanks for tuning in.
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