Category — Flexibility and Mobility

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CrossFit Kids
at 4:00 pm with Majid Zeinal
This class is open to kids of members and non-members, ages 5-10. Bring in those kiddos!

Mobility and Mechanics
6:30 pm with Suzy Babcock
This Thursday’s class will focus on the hips. See you there!

Please note that the purpose of the mobility work is for you to have a toolbox of exercises and stretches that you know work for you and especially for your problems areas. Try the exercises as they’re posted, and then return on a regular basis to the ones that seem to benefit you most. With frequent practice, you should be able to feel the difference – increased mobility, and more ease when performing movements in WODs and life.

Ok, onward: Lots of us have a “shoulder thing”. Let’s try these quick and simple stretches over the next several days for our shoulder health:

We tell you to maintain your lumbar curve when moving weight, but don’t overextend your back. The picture on the left shows this overextension – no bueno! My sister-in-law calls it “duck butt” and you can see why. Might look sexy but it’s no good for your back.

When moving and holding weight overhead, pull your belly in tight and squeeze your butt. “Midline stabilization” they call it. Safe, proper, bueno.

Let’s return to prioritizing mobility work and tissue care. In honor of Leah. And with the understanding that if we don’t, we will be limiting potential gains in the strength and conditioning work for which we work so hard.

First, I would like you to commit to giving yourself a good, thorough rolling one day this a week. Use the foam rollers, a barbell, the parallettes, and the various balls in the implements-of-torture box. Get the big pieces, and then get into the nooks and crannies. Do this at home, or do this at the box. Come early, or stay late. Once this week, ok?

For a more specific focus, let’s work on scapular mobility during our stretching period after classes this week. Here are three pieces presented by K-Starr. Some of what you see should look familiar. Let’s get back in the rhythm of this work that we all know we need.

Hey y’all, this week we’re working on stuff below the knee. Two different elements, using a lacrosse ball and a foam roller (or paralette bar). Take a look at what we’re dealing with:

1. Get on the floor with foam roller (or paralette bar), rest your leg up on the roller. Rock your calf side to side across the roller, starting at the bottom of your calf and inch-by-inch working your way all the way up the calf to the back of the knee. The calf muscles run vertically along the leg, and here you are working “against the grain”. If you find a painful, twangy spot (I’m gonna bet there’ll be many), then stay there and give it some extra love. Prop your other leg on top to get downward pressure into the foam roller (he shows this version toward the end of the video). Be thorough! This should be roughly 1-2 minutes on each calf.

Here’s the video, the piece we want is from 0:25 – 1:20 and 4:10 – 4:30.

2. Second element involves the lacrosse ball. Take your shoes off, even the 5-fingers. I know, they’re hardly there, but you really don’t want anything between the sole of your foot and that ball. Humor me! You’re going to be giving the bottom of your foot a deep tissue massage. Standing up, put the ball under your foot and roll it into your heel (surprising how tender it can get in there), and the arch of your foot. Really mash around. This is where some of your calf muscles run down and attach in – the heel and arch of your foot. Get about a minute of rolling on each foot.

Following my last MWod post, Tom D. asked a good question in the comments section, which I’d like to address here. Tom asked if too much shoulder flexibility might be a bad thing while lifting heavy weights.

Yes, you need appropriate ROM (range of motion) to lift heavy weights. Yes, you can overstretch without firing the muscles up before a lifting session. We’ve always advocated active stretching at the beginning of class to warm the muscles up, increase ROM, and decrease chance of injury. Dynamic (active) stretching uses active muscular effort to bring about a stretch. MWod’s tend to be more static-type mobility (holding in the end range) and are most appropriate after class. You’ll notice that we’ve ended up placing the MWod at the end of class.

NOW….here’s where I tell you to pony up. You know your body better than anyone else (or should…). Effectively using your body as your vehicle for an exuberant life means knowing where you historically have issues. And then addressing ‘em. If you already have good flexibility in your shoulders, but tend to get tight in the hamstrings….well, you need to focus on your hams, not ‘yer shoulders! You don’t need to overstretch an area if it’s already okay.

Also, for whatever it’s worth (I think everyone tends to struggle with the committment that a daily practice takes…physical, musical, meditative, etc), trying to embed stretching into a daily routine is going to be most effective. A surprising amount can be accomplished while sitting at a desk. Or while standing in your kitchen waiting for food to cook. Or while sitting in your car at a stoplight. So, coming into the box and addressing your tissue issues (like that one?) for only 5-10 minutes out of your 24 hour day is less than ideal. I’m no saint myself….I’m just saying, lets all strive toward more frequent maintenance.

The MWod’s have been incorporated recently to give folks some tools for addressing their ROM issues. I won’t be posting new ones indefinitely, and so remember the ones that have helped you most and use them as you need. Do dynamic stretching before your splendid feats of athleticism, and static stretching throughout your day and/or at the end of class.

Alrighty, grab ‘yer giant rubber bands and let’s get some flexibility in three different shoulder positions. Here’s the video, just watch the whole darn thing, try the first partner stretch on your own time, and lets do the three with the band. Remember, you can do this stuff even when it’s not the week’s MWod….

Rundown:

1. Pretest is some movement that you normally feel limited in the shoulders (rack position, ring dip, kipping swing, etc)
2. Get the band affixed about shoulder height.
3. Figure out the way to grab the band like in the video (loop around back of wrist, reach forward, grab both strands).
4. You will collect one minute each side in each of the three stretches=6 minutes!
5. FIRST: arm straight, turn away opening up the front of shoulder. Keep shoulder down and back in socket as you stretch the front of the shoulder. Turn head away for additional neck muscle stretch. Palm is facing the ceiling.
6. SECOND: face away from the band, bend at the elbow and bring the arm up and over the shoulder. Palm is again facing ceiling. Don’t let your ribcage lift, keep it nice and inline by tightening core. Keep bicep near ear, don’t let the elbow fly out and get distracted sideways.
7. THIRD: again, palm up, arm across body, pull so that the shoulder blade gets stretched away from the spine. You want to loosen the shoulder blade off the ribs.
8. Don’t forget to retest after mobilizing. We want to see improvement! If you want to trip yourself out, do all three on one side, retest with stretched/unstretched shoulders and see the difference between your two shoulders! Then make sure you finish the other side.
9. Cheers!

This week we’ll be focusing on the shoulders.  I’m not posting a video, so I’ll try to be excellent in my descriptions. There are two pieces to this mobility wod.

The range-of-motion (ROM) test/retest is the front rack position. With or without a bar, see how well you can get into the front rack, elbows up, without swaying your back (thoracic spine extension) to achieve it. You want the ROM to come from your supple shoulders, not a loss of good neutral spine.

First piece:
1. Get in a “chin-up” position on a pull-up bar that’s low enough for your feet to touch the ground (use a box or several stacked bumper plates under if the bar’s too high). A chin-up position is like a pull-up except your palms are facing you when they’re gripping the bar. Hands gripping shoulder-width apart on the bar.
2. “Load” your shoulders by hanging from the bar.
3. Use your feet to push you forward, getting more of a stretch. Your arms stay locked out and you are pushing your chest forward to really open the shoulder capsule. 2 minutes in this position.

Second piece:
Grab a lacrosse ball and get on the floor. Work the ball (by lying on it) around the front pectoral/front shoulder area. Find the areas that feel tight and painful and hang out there, rolling on the ball. You’re doing this to restore nice sliding surfaces between all the tissues in there. Here’s a picture of the pectoral area, to help you visualize what you’re working with. Stay in the area between clavicle (collarbone), nipple, sternum (breastbone) and the front of the shoulder. Do each side for 1 minute.

Now, don’t forget to do your re-test at the end. Try the front rack position again. Feel more awesome? Sweet!

“Your job is to hunt down your tightness…only you know where you’re tight, so that’s where you need to hang out” -Kelly Starrett

This week we’re focusing on hip flexibility. Although the video is focused on a deadlifting application, hip capsule mobility is terribly important to any sort of down-and-up movement. When your hips aren’t flexible enough, you may find that you compensate with other parts of the system – by rounding the back, letting the knees come in, or leaning forward – which you’ll notice are things we cue you folks about all the time. (On a side note, hip flexibility isin’t the ONLY culprit for those faults.)

You want your hips to be able to open wide and create powerful torque (rotational force) in the system as you drive upward with the load. This will increase your PR’s, protect your back from injury (by keeping a solid, upright torso), and increase overall stability.

The “How To”:
1. Do an air squat for the pre-test.
2. Get one leg up on something (chair, bench, box) and get the calf and shin perpendicular to your body (see video), sink down into it, and start hunting for the painful little squirrels in there. Explore your hip’s external rotators for three minutes.
3. Do another air squat with your now uneven hips…whooa! Feel the difference.
4. Now even yourself out and do the other hip. Three minutes.
5. Finish with the third air squat. Measurable results.

Here’s the video. The whole thing’s full of great info, but the stretching we’re doing is from 2:55 to 3:50.

Your tissues are like obedient dogs, they will always come around. Always. You just have to be consistent! - Kelly Starrett

This week’s MWod focuses on loosening the hamstrings and getting better range-of-motion (ROM) in the whole posterior chain. To clarify, we’re referring to the calves, hamstrings, butt, and low back – all important to movements like squats and deadlifts that we perform daily.

Many of us sit much of the working day, making “ass laminate” (Starrett’s phrase), and gluing the muscle tissues together. So not only do we want to develop functional strength in the posterior chain, but we also aim to create and maintain excellent range of motion by keeping those tissues and joints supple, the layers of tissue sliding smoothly over each other. Just say ‘no’ to ass laminate!

There are some really good tidbits in the video. Starrett brings up the PNF approach (proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation), also known as “contract/relax” stretching, and explains why we do it. He also shows us how we sometimes incorrectly compensate for tight muscles in the back of our legs by losing integrity of the back (ie: losing our ‘lumbar curve’ and rounding the back).

For the “before” test, start with a squat or a goodmorning stretch, and see how far down you can go without losing the integrity of the lumbar curve. Then lay down, and use a band or jump rope looped over the foot to help pull your knee to your chest. The leg is bent, that’s fine. Throughout the stretch we want to keep the knee to the chest. Your foot will be at a 90 degree angle because the band is looped around it. Keep that foot flexed like that. The contract/relax protocol is 5 seconds of contracting your hamstrings and then 10 seconds of stretching the hamstrings even further to the end range. So you will have your knee to your chest, then isometrically (your leg doesn’t actually move) contract your hamstrings and push into the rope for 5 seconds, then relax and pull the rope and leg further into your chest, further than previous cycle. You’ll repeat, and each time try to get further into end range in the relax phase. Do this for two minutes each leg.

Next do some bonus work on the high hamstring attachments. We start sitting on a chair/box/bench. Place a lacrosse ball under your leg where the hamstring attaches to the pelvis (the ischial tuberosity), at the top of the back of the leg. Find a spot that feels tender when you work the ball into it. Now straighten the leg out in front of you and then bring it back to the floor. Do leg pumps like this for a total of 20 each side. Move the ball into new painful spots in the high hammy area as you work through the 20 leg pumps.

Re-test after: do your squat or goodmorning….it should be better!