16 Feb 3 things to do every day to make your life easier
“If you don’t use it, you lose it”. It’s true for a number of things and mobility is definitely one of them.
I’ve heard too many people tell me what they used to be able to do i.e touch their toes, squat to depth, decent lunges and all the rest of it. My question to them is normally, “so what happened?” and 99.9% of the time they reply with something along the lines of “Life got in the way and I stopped doing it”.
When I encounter people with movement problems it normally stems from having a prolonged period of time living within a restricted range of motion. By that I mean, they sit (another topic), stand, walk and sleep for years on end, without taking their joints through a full range of motion.
Then the problems arise, things like; poor ankle dorsiflexion, knee flexion, hip flexion/extension, thoracic extension, scapula retraction, arm flexion. It can turn into a vicious cycle where people aren’t moving because it hurts and it hurts because they aren’t moving. Without rewriting Supple Leopard, here are 3 things you can do every day to make your life easier.
1. Drop it low
Possessing the ability to squat simply makes life better; getting in and out of a seated position, getting off the floor and obviously strengthening your lower body is all dependent on possessing a significant amount of what I like to call “Squatability”. Simply start with sitting to a box height you can manage and slowly over time decrease the height of the box until you no longer need it and can chill out in a deep squat position.
2. Put your hands up in the air
This is sometimes a questionable one, with a lot of people citing pain or previous injuries as the limiting factor in their ability to reach overhead, if that’s the case seek professional help to get it sorted. If that isn’t the case but your overhead range is still limited start with something as simple as wall crawls with the ultimate goal being a bodyweight hang.
3. Thrust it out
Sitting is the new smoking right?
A big problem with all the sitting we do is that it shortens our hip flexors and shuts our glutes off, ultimately limiting our ability to perform hip extension. Even if you’re not sitting a lot, lengthened hip flexors and powerful glutes will do wonders for your athletic ability. Firing out some hip thrusts will help activate those glutes and lengthen tight and inhibiting hip flexors muscles.
Exercise Right Take Home Daily Routine
- 3 x 60s of box squats or squat holds
- 3 x 10 each side of wall crawls or 3 x 30s of bodyweight hang
- 3 x 30 seconds of hip thrusts
