The KORE Mobility Challenge
Before we get started remember these two things:
Tissue repair and remodeling is constantly happening within your muscles.
You have immense capacity to heal yourself
If you were to eat at regular intervals and never floss or brush your teeth, what do you think would happen to your gums and teeth? Well the same principle could be applied to your muscles. You use your muscles with every movement and when you work out or spend the day in poor posture, you are putting higher levels of stress on your muscles. We understand the fundamentals of brushing and flossing for keeping our teeth and gums healthy but most of us do not apply the same level of attention to our muscles.
The human body is adaptable and capable of handling an immense amount of abuse before something will require surgery. If you are kind to the one vessel you have in this life, most of the dysfunction and pain you experience is really just another preventable disease like diabetes or hypertension.
That being said, pretty much all of us are living with dysfunction due to our movement, lifestyle choices, and lack of time spend addressing muscle tissue health.
What causes dysfunction? Typically dysfunction occurs for three reasons: poor range of motion, poor posture, or catastrophic injury. that being said, two of the three of reasons for dysfunction create 98% of the issues we see at the gym:
Poor or missing range of motion
Poor posture or moving in poor posture.
Poor or missing range of motion.- When we do functional movement screens on our clients, the first thing we are looking to address is range of motion. Without a fully functional range of motion in your individual joints, you will inevitably compensate for that lack of movement by too much movement in another joint along the chain, usually either above or below the joint in question.
For example: stiff ankles lead to painful knees or bunions because lack of ankle mobility is asking the knee or toe joint to do something different than what it is supposed to be doing.
Poor posture or moving in poor posture - Modern day poor posture usually looks something like this: Head forward and tilted up or down, shoulders rolled forward, rounded upper back, too much curve in the lower back, pelvis rolled forward, feet turned out. Your body moves best when your body is in an ideal position, head over the shoulders, shoulders back and down, stable trunk, neutral pelvis, hips, knees, and ankles in line. Can you move when your body is not in the ideal position? Of course you can, your brain is like the magic genie, it will do almost anything you ask of it, but at a cost. Your body will default to secondary stabilizers to get the job done. For example, if your hips are chronically tight from too much sitting, you will find that everytime you look down at your feet while standing, your toes will be turned out. The problem is that all of these shifts away from ideal posture, limit our functionality and quickly become a liability when things like weight, faster movement, and larger ranges of motion are applied.
But don’t fret. Remember what this article started with; that your body has an amazing capacity for healing, and can self-correct with just a little bit of self maintenance, similar to brushing your teeth. And THAT is what this month’s challenge is all about. More on what you will be doing next week but in the meantime...
What you will need: A foam roller, a small but firm ball (basketball, soccer ball), or you can even use a kettlebell. If you need to buy something, I highly recommend buying a size 3 rubber basketball (it is now my favorite tool for this kind of mobility).
