A Thinking Man's Guide To The Warm Up Part II

Earlier this year (snickering behind my hand) I blogged about what the real purpose of warming up is.  Very literally warming up the muscles so they are soft enough to move with force yet activated enough to respond to it FASTER than the speed of thought.

My questions for you at this point is, when we move, when we exercise, are the muscles the only things that move? What do the muscles move? And WHERE does the movement actually take place.

Think on that.  Yes I am going to give you the answer and yes if you don’t already know it then you are gonna go duh, but I do want you do really think about it.  Make your brain itch just a bit and when we scratch it, it will be all that much better.

Okay enough of the filler.

Bones are moved by the muscles, and movement actually takes place at the joints.

Okay if any of you actually said Duh or Doipe I am sorry and I hope you did not smack your forehead to hard.

Now, what has that to do with warming up?

Remember what I said about getting the muscles more loose and fluid.  The key word here is fluid.  In the case of the joints we are literally talking about fluid (as opposed to fluid like).


Synovial fluid is produced at the joint capsule as a result of movement; it has a lubricating effect, helping the bones slide around more easily where they meet at the joint.  Going back to my car/oil metaphor, do you want to be driving around with low oil?  What’s good for the pistons is good for the joints (bet you never heard that variation before).

There is a LITTLE BIT more to the story, but I will save that for part III of warm up, later this same year but I will leave you with this.

                                                     MOVE YOUR JOINTS.

And also a question…

How many angles and degrees do your joints move in?

I look forward to your questions and comments.

www.fitnessnexus@yahoo.com

Tools, Toys and Biofeedback

I am not a gadget person.  My cell phone is actually just a phone. My watch has an alarm and a stop watch; it can cover two times zones.  I have them both for Pacific. 

However, I like “stuff” for training.  I may have more stuff than any trainer I know.  TRX, Bodyblade, kettlebells, clubbells, bands, fitballs, medicine balls, tennis balls, airdiscs, etc.

Why?

As people start down the fitness path and learn by doing what their definitions and needs are they need new goals and challenges.

For example as a strength trainer works on heavier weights they realize that a weak link in the chain of a given movement, say a squat, is holding them back.  Activating a sleeping assistor muscle will take them farther, more quickly and with less injury than just digging in.  Perhaps side squats with band resistance will help with hip involvement, or a twisting motion with either the TRX or Bodyblade will help them engage their core more.

We are constantly discovering and rediscovering our movements.  We clean up, refine and explore. The various tools we have available to us dictate how efficiency we can explore these other roads.

Tools give us options, options give us the opportunity to explore, and what is exploration with movement but play?

A Thinking Man's Guide to "The Warm Up"

What is a warm up?

Many people understand a warm up to be stretching to loosen the muscles.  In reality warming up really is just that, this misunderstanding has led to injuries with average exercisers and high level athletes.

A muscle can be seen as a rubber band, which can stretch several times beyond its resting  length and then pull back to its original size.  If that rubber band were put in a freezer (inactivity) then taken out, when you tried to stretch it, it would most likely snap.

The purpose of an effective warm up is to warm up that rubber band that that it has the elasticity to move.

Another way to think about this is starting your car.  If it has been a few days since you have driven or you live in a colder climate you will let it set and idle for a bit.  The oil, usually described as a car’s life blood, is thick and viscous when the engine is cold.  As the car warms ups the oil gets thinner, more fluid, and moves through the system more easily.

Not letting the engine idle can mean it clogging out just when you are about to accelerate into traffic. Bad thing.  Warming up your muscles, tendons and joints before regular exercise is the idling time your body needs to get it’s fluids…well fluid, so that it does not clog out when you begin your routine.

An additional value of a smart generalized warm up routine is that it does not have to be done JUST before a workout.  Ideally it could be done several times a day for the same purpose, keep that rubber band lose and functional, keep the fluids circulating.

We train to be better at life. The more you marry the two, using one to assist the learning of the other, the stronger you will be for it body and mind.

If you need help with program design you can contact me at

Fitnessnexus@yahoo.com

All the best,

Steve

A Few Words About Accoutrements

 

As I have talked about in previous entries knowing where you want to go with your training is pivotal. If you want to lose weight Powerlifting would not be helpful, lots of jogging would but then you have to ask WHY you want to lose weight. Is it to help your health or to look better, or both.  The answers to these questions may also change your choices.  If you have high blood pressure or other health issues the long slow steady of a walk or walk jog might be better, if you don’t have those issues and are really more concerned about how you look, shorter threshold training will help muscle tone, utilize more fat stores in the long run and leave more training time for other Bodyshaping pursuits.

That awareness of why, which is also your prime motivation, factors in to what type of accoutrements you will have.

If you are going to be focusing on heavy full body lifting then soft soled shoes like wresting shoes are best. They give you maximum awareness of the ground.  If you are running then investing in the appropriate running shoe will save you down time from injury.

The inspiration for writing this blog entry came from a section of one of my old textbooks that talked about the fluid ball, inter-abdominal pressure, and lifting belts.

The fluid ball is the abdominal area, soft tissues organ etc.  Not a heck of a lot of bony structural support, yet when doing full body lifts like the squat, deadlift, clean and jerk, snatch, or even simply overhead moves like the overhead lunge, a great deal of force is transferred though this area from ground to over head.

With this force comes the chance of injury to the lower back, the only hard structure in the area.  By bracing the deep abdominal muscles and the diaphragm the fluid, which cannot be compressed, becomes part of the bracing mechanism to support the back.  It’s an essential technique and one many people use to varying degrees without any formal training.

You will often see people at gym making use of weight belts; their purpose is to constrict even further the abdominal / subinguinal area so that there is even greater bracing and thus greater protection for the spine.

This is an important piece of equipment for those exercisers who are dedicated to training for maximum amounts of strength (and usually very short duration).  They are appropriate for their goals.

Useful as they are in context are they something YOU need for YOUR training goals?

For most general fitness they are not relevant. Further, over dependence on them can lead to weakening of the supporting muscle structure.  If you have seen someone doing bench press, bicep curls, upright rows etc wearing a lifting belt they are not only helping their lifting power, they are potentially damaging their bodies.

To tie this up, the explanation of the lifting belt is just an example of how we need to think through what our goals are carefully and construct our training and our equipment,  accordingly.  You also now have a brief glimpse of the working of the core in training.

If you have questions or need clarification I can be reached via email at:

                                                          Fitnessnexus@yahoo