Effortless Movement
Effortless mOvement
By Shane Sauer
Did you see last week’s blog? In it I discussed how you can be like Tom Brady and achieve longevity in the things that matter most to you. One of the tools you have at your disposal to make that happen is to stay purposefully active. This week, let’s take a deeper dive into what that means.
Take a moment and think about these three questions:
What activity(ies) do you want to keep doing indefinitely?
What movements need to be trained?
What are the consequences of those movements?
By answering these questions, you’ll get some insight into the simple things you can do to keep your body in shape for the activities you enjoy most.
Let’s try an example:
Walking. I think it’s safe to say most of us would like to continue doing that well for as long as we’re alive.
Walking involves front to back movement in the hips, knees, and ankles.
Lots of walking can fatigue the joints and tighten up the muscles around them.
Now that you have this information, the next step is to identify what you can do about it. Because you know which joints are involved, you can do some exercises to make sure you keep a full range of motion about those joints. You can solve the fatigue issues by practicing squeezing the muscles around those joints. And one of the best ways to make sure the muscles don’t tighten up is to move them through a full range of motion. And you already have that covered!
OK, what does this look like in practice? To mobilize the joints, try Hip Circles, Knee Circles, and Ankle Circles. To strengthen the muscles try this lower body muscle squeeze sequence for the quads hamstrings, glutes, and calves. If you do 3-5 repetitions of each of these exercises you’re looking at a 5-minute or less warm-up to keep you strong and mobile!
Give it a shot. Remember, the first few times you try might take longer as you learn what to do. Once you’ve tested it, let me know how it goes!
If you found any of this confusing, don’t fret. That’s why there are health and fitness professionals! I’m here to answer questions, walk you through the exercise, or design it for you. Just reach out and ask :-)