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Not doing the Valsalva maneuver means that you break your spine. It works by using the compressed air inside your lungs as support so that your abdominal and ba

Not doing the Valsalva maneuver means that you break your spine. It works by using the compressed air inside your lungs as support so that your abdominal and back muscles can do their work. This is the reason that when you go to a physiotherapist and they crack your spine they ask you to exhale before, in order to be able to work without needing to fight your internal pressure. There is a reason we evolved with the instinct to do it. Edit: to also comment on your note about martial arts: the very short scream you do when throwing a punch or kick is precisely a way to induce a Valsalva maneuver. Notice that you don't scream until you're out of breath, but you exhale very fast and you stop precisely when you hit, forcing pressure inside you to give you the support to need during the transfer of forces of the blow.

Paul-ish 9y ago
> Not doing the Valsalva maneuver means that you break your spine. This is only anecdote, but if I fail to do the valsalva when exercising I just don't have as much power. I haven't broken my back yet. The valsalva is useful at max effort, but doesn't seem necessary for a sustained activity such as shoveling snow. If they find valsalva is a problem, the answer may be not to shovel so much snow in one push.
- svalorzen 9y ago
  You don't have as much power because your body automatically scales down to prevent you from injuring yourself. In addition, performing an exercise wrong doesn't mean that you automatically get injured, just that your chances of hurting yourself go up. If you're lucky, you're never going to break anything - this also depends on the kind of exercise you're doing and on its intensity. As for the max-effort thing, the Valsalva maneuver can be performed at different degrees of intensity. It's not like every time you do it you have veins popping in your eyeballs, and I don't expect those untrained men referenced in the article to do it very strongly. It is correlated with the effort you're doing and on how much you're consciously compressing the air. But yes, longer effort with less snow per shovel would definitely help.

Paul-ish 9y ago

> Not doing the Valsalva maneuver means that you break your spine. This is only anecdote, but if I fail to do the valsalva when exercising I just don't have as much power. I haven't broken my back yet. The valsalva is useful at max effort, but doesn't seem necessary for a sustained activity such as shoveling snow. If they find valsalva is a problem, the answer may be not to shovel so much snow in one push.

svalorzen 9y ago
You don't have as much power because your body automatically scales down to prevent you from injuring yourself. In addition, performing an exercise wrong doesn't mean that you automatically get injured, just that your chances of hurting yourself go up. If you're lucky, you're never going to break anything - this also depends on the kind of exercise you're doing and on its intensity. As for the max-effort thing, the Valsalva maneuver can be performed at different degrees of intensity. It's not like every time you do it you have veins popping in your eyeballs, and I don't expect those untrained men referenced in the article to do it very strongly. It is correlated with the effort you're doing and on how much you're consciously compressing the air. But yes, longer effort with less snow per shovel would definitely help.