Exercises and Movements

“All human beings should be able to perform basic maintenance on themselves.”

Kelly Starrett

Not all of your training focus needs to be on building up those muscles in the gym.  Your joints and tissues want a little love too.  It might sound silly, but we’re here to remind you how important taking the time to work on mobility and mechanics really is.

Suzy Babcock, our primary Mobility and Mechanics instructor reminds us, “From the moment we’re conceived to the moment we die our body is changing.”  Because of this, we are constantly reinventing ourselves on a physical and mental level, and this requires that we regularly re-work our bodies.  While most of us focus on losing weight and gaining muscle, it’s often easy to forget about what’s going on underneath the surface.

This is where the importance of healthy fascia comes in. Good body mechanics depends on mobility and mobility depends on supple fascia.  Fascia, in a very basic sense, is the connective tissue surrounding various groups of muscles, nerves and blood vessels or as Suzy says, “It is what holds us up.  It gives us our shape and it’s all a connected web, working not in isolation, but in many areas of our bodies.”  Similar to typical exercise results, fascia changes very slowly.  It takes a long time to change, loosening, then tightening, then loosening again, Suzy explains. It’s important to work the fascia – it is where a lot of our pain is housed and tightness forms, causing less flexibility and the greater risk of injury.  Working the fascia can be achieved through very small, basic movements.  In Suzy’s class, you’ll most likely find yourself falling in love with her small, pliable, colourful, miracle balls that appear to be lacrosse balls, but are much more gentle.  “The ball is like self-help bodywork,” she says.

If you’re not sure what is really happening with this type of bodywork, Suzy helps demonstrate the profound difference by doing a before-and-after check on a part of your body, such as an air squat or forward bend before the class and then again after the ball work.  We guarantee you’ll see and feel a difference.  Your body will show you and tell you.  But this isn’t simply a one-time thing.  Suzy emphasizes that it’s important to do it again and again and make it part of your regular workout routine; it’s about learning your own body’s patterns and being able to change on your own.

It does not matter if you are new to exercise or have a long history of athleticism – this class is effective and important for members at all levels.  So remember, it might be harder to hit those resolutions and PRs with constant pain, lack of flexibility and ineffective movement.  Listen to mechanics and mobility expert Suzy and learn to treat your body better.  “If you lack mobility, it is more difficult to achieve your potential in all other movement domains.” Get flexible, get fit, and keep fine-tuning your fine body.

Overall Benefits of Maintaining A Regular Mechanics & Mobility Routine (from mobility WOD)

• Prevent and rehabilitate common athletic injuries
• Overhaul your movement habits and efficiently your body’s most effective physiology
• Quickly identify, diagnose, and fix inefficient movement patterns
• Problem solve for pain and dysfunction
• Fix poor mechanics that rob power, bleed force, and dump torque
• Unlock reservoirs of athletic capacity you didn’t know you had
• Develop strategies that restore function to your joints and tissues

Congratulations to Matt, who competed in his first weightlifting meet last weekend. Matt did a great job, going 5 for 6 (that means that he made 5 out of all 6 attempts) and totaling 180 kilos. I’ll explain a little more: athletes at a weightlifting competition get three attempts to make the heaviest snatch s/he can, then three attempts at the Clean and Jerk. The weight of each athlete’s heaviest successful Snatch plus the heaviest successful Clean and Jerk is that athlete’s “total,” which is the final score.

Matt made all three of his Snatch attempts at 74, 77, and finally 80 kilos, meeting his gym PR and making it an official meet PR. For his Clean and Jerks, he opened with 95, then made 100k (his gym PR), going for a new PR of 102 on his third lift, which he cleaned but wasn’t able to jerk. Great work overall, Matt!

Here’s some video.