This past weekend I had the privilege of attending a cadaver dissection lab, the first one ever offered to trainers in Ottawa.  This was a unique opportunity to see the things that I affect every day stripped right down and actually see inside the joints and muscles and other structures.  Incredible for learning even more about how we work from the inside out.

You have over 640 muscles in your body, some estimates go as high as 667 depending on what is classified as a muscle.  Every time you move you affect dozens of these.  When you can actually move a joint that has been stripped away and see how these muscles pull and stretch and work together, one of the most amazing things to me was how resilient your body is on an ongoing basis.

One example was that there were two different feet from the tibia down.  One had one heel basically underneath the tibia and another had the heel slightly offset to the outside.  Imagine every foot strike (taking thousands a day) hitting just slightly off center.  What would that do to things further up the line?  Multiply that by say ten years and you’re talking about 7.3 million steps.  Knee cartilage takes the same wear and tear over time, as does the hip and back.  And that’s without ever lifting anything or moving quickly.

We take this for granted.  Our body is obviously really, really tough but more often than not especially in athletics we think that it will heal and all will be fine.  This type of movement and trauma changes it permanently.  I saw several examples inside joints where wear and tear that you wouldn’t even know was there existed.

I got to see nerves actually coming out of the spinal cord and how thick they are.  There are areas of the body where these nerves are constantly compressed over and over again, even without any type of inflammation.  They still hold up for long periods of time without fraying, breaking or even compressing enough to cause an issue.  This told me that when you have a problem with a nerve – it’s a serious problem.  On the flip side, I got to see the nerves that actually run through the center of the spine and how protected they are, but also how delicate and could be easily destroyed.

There were certain muscles that until I saw how the fibers actually sat and saw the lines I thought functioned in slightly different ways.  When you moved them you could also see how the muscles might stretch and align themselves to allow a completely different type of mechanical ability.  It also illustrated how many muscles work together to achieve movement, whether it be something as simple as typing on this computer or as complex as lifting something quickly from the floor over your head.

I actually got to see fascia – connective tissue that provides tension for a lot of the body and also creates patterns of contraction that move throughout the body and connect different areas.  Many of you probably know Gil Hedley and “The Fuzz Speech”?  It’s there. Seriously.  I saw it, touched it and even broke it up.  Incredible to think that such a thing is really there, but there it was.  All over the place.  And it was very easily altered.

Now you may not really care about this stuff – but you should.  These muscles don’t just help you when you’re exercising.  They help you walk, get out of bed, brush your teeth, sit down, stand up and play with your kids.  They provide strength for lifting your grocery bags or performing household tasks like gardening and cleaning.   It is an incredible thing and very humbling that all of these things just work – on demand – for dozens of years without stopping or really breaking down until the buildup becomes so extreme.

The other big takeaway from a spiritual point of view was actually something I hadn’t considered when I first signed up.  All of these cadavers were once people.  They had lives and families and experiences that reflected in the way that their bodies presented.  A couple of them had joint replacements.  A couple of them obviously had trauma or arthritis or something happen to their bodies over a period of time.  You really never know when this body that you are walking around in could suddenly either break down or simply pass on.  We all are a sum of the experiences that we have, whether it be emotional, mental, or in this case, physical.  If there’s one takeaway I can give you, it’s this:

DON’T TAKE YOUR BODY FOR GRANTED

You have a finite amount of everything.  Steps, breaths, movements and experiences.  Treat your body well because it is truly the vessel that carries you every day from one of these experiences to the next.  It will fight off what you do to it, and obviously incredibly well, but eventually it will break down.  Stave that off as long as you possibly can and enjoy being able to move, breathe and experience amazing things for decades to come.

 If you enjoyed this please feel free to share and like it on social media.  My Facebook page is here and you can follow me on Twitter @strengthottawa.  You can also check out my web site at http://www.srottawa.com and feel free to contact me if you have any issues you need help with.  Treat your body well today!