Thoughts on Mindfulness and Mobility


So I'm really into this thing about practicing what I preach. I cannot stand it when some obviously unfit healthcare provider tells me to that I should eat right, exercise and take a multi-vitamin. This actually happened to me last week at a check up, but that's another post. Thus, I spent some time this morning working on my hip, knee, ankle and shoulder mobility. Not just stretching, but using breathing and mindfulness to facilitate positions and movement.

The breathing and mindfulness have become more important to me, as I am in my 3rd week of my intro to yoga class. And it is truly a beginners class, which is great for me. The instructor is very good with modifications and cues (verbal & manual).

Now I know some of my strength/power peeps scoff at the whole yoga dealio; but my older, more experienced weightlifting friends get it. My GAIN colleagues get it. I hope my younger weightlifting peeps (and those Crossfit peeps who look to me for instruction and advice) give yoga a try sometime. Improved mindfulness and mobility can only lead to improved performance with the barbell. Think of good yoga practice as an adjunct to foam rolling and your massage therapy/ART work.

Because in reality, weightlifting is a sport that requires being mindful and being in the moment. It is not just about overpowering the barbell. It is about being powerfully precise through a tremendous range of motion. It's gymnastics with the barbell.

As adults who spend many hours sitting, we all need to take the time to work on our mobility for our physical health. As athletes who want to become strong and powerful, we need to understand that the musculoskeletal system needs relaxation and time to recover from challenging training sessions. Time to regain suppleness about the joints and flush tension out. Time to let allow positive adaptations to occur.

Think of this time as an investment into your future--your future ability to compete or even just participate in and enjoy the iron game.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Form and Function

Image
Way back in 2002, I scanned these images by Howard Schatz from Sports Illustrated (October 14, 2002). A fascinating array of elite female athlete physiques, heights and weights, eh? These are some of the women featured in his book Athlete --a very cool pictorial essay that celebrates athletic form and function.
Read more

It's About Preparing People, not Preventing Injuries

ACL injuries do not happen in a void. People sustain injuries when their infrastructure is unable to manage a specific set of physical circumstances. To describe the mechanism of the injury without the context of the person and their level/type of sport, is to miss valuable insight. In sport, we prepare the person, to the best of our understanding, to meet the physical demands of that sport. We do not just work to prevent one particular injury; we prepare athletes to navigate the total sport physical environment. By "we" I mean the coaching and support staff -- specifically the athletic development staff.  Athletic development (AD) coaches prepare athletes through the development of physical literacy and movement competencies via movement progressions. It is more than strength, power, agility; it is the acquisition of knowledge, skills, abilities and behaviors to manage themselves within the entire sporting environment. At the higher levels of sport, AD coaches coordinate wit...
Read more

Strength: Overcoming Tradition & Assumptions

Image
The term "strength" comes with many images and stereotypes. The most common stereotype usually includes intimidating men who look like action figures, in spaces that look like iron jungles. Strength is associated with mass gain, limb girth increases, muscle hypertrophy and maximal force production against an external load. With regard to lower body strength, we speak in terms of multiples of bodyweight (BW), with the ratio of 2x BW historically viewed as necessary and desirable. We have historically trained in terms of 1 RM. There has been a trend recently to adopt a VBT (velocity based training) approach, as we know 1 RM changes on a daily basis and technology now allows us to more finely tune things with velocity as the target within each set. These things can be helpful as we initially learn to measure and document progress. But I think it is important to step back from this narrow outlook, because this view of strength does not serve all of us well, in either the rehab or...
Read more