Ever wonder why you lose range of motion and pull muscles? Well, you probably don’t constantly contemplate it like I do, but it’s actually because of a relatively simple reason.
Scar Tissue
Check it homie. Your body is ultra adaptable. It adapts in virtually no time to motions that you constantly subject it to. So if you’re running a lot, your body has to adapt. If you’re doing a lot of lifting, it does the same thing, but different. No matter what you do, your body adapts to help you do what you do more efficiently.
I really am not sure I should use the word efficient. You know in all actuality the body adapts to more or less preserve energy and maintain homeostasis or sameness.
What I’m getting at here is that extremes like long amounts of sitting or activity are both damaging to the body.
But there’s a catch…
Because your body is so amazing, if you do things like prevention and responsible recovery, you ultimately can become a beast.
How To Get The Prevent Train Rolling…
For every yin, there’s a yang and you have to rest when you’ve been active. Foam rolling is a great tool to use to break up that scar tissue I was talking about before.
If you don’t have a foam roller, a tennis ball, basketball, lacrosse ball, really any ball that has some density will do.
What you do is you pick a spot to start.
I normally prefer the lower back or hips. But you pick a starting point and you just start rolling along.
Now you don’t wanna do it too fast or else you don’t get the benefits of breaking up tissue. You wanna take it slow and controlled. You should feel something like knots in your muscles.
Those knots are scar tissue and that’s what’s preventing your movement. Get ’em OUT!!!
Stretching
Yeah, it’s pretty simple, but a lot of people forget about it completely. I’d say it’s about as important as your workout, but it doesn’t need to be super complex.
If you’ve been active, stretch the muscles you’ve been using.
Running? Stretch your calves, hamstrings, hip flexors and lower back
If you’ve been inactive, stretch the muscles you haven’t been using…
Which is some would say is all of them, but you should actually focus on:
Your shoulders, hips, pecs, and neck.
So that’s obviously a very abbreviated (but still effective) way to keep your body strong and limber. If you want to more then check out my inner circle where you’ll find health, fitness, and good life tips.
Jerry “rolling hard” Washington
P.S. It’s all about the yin and yang. That’s the good life. It’s something that I talk about a lot with my clients. Our purpose on this earth is simply to keep growing and resting. I think people are resting more than they think. NE hoo. Talk soon…
