Have you been as engrossed in the Olympics as me this week?
I love watching them; it’s a great chance to see so many sports that aren’t normally in the spotlight. My favourites so far have been the BMX, Skateboarding and of course Tom Daley Diving. I can’t believe Beth Shriever had to crowdfund her own journey to the Olympics and all that hard work and determination paid off when she won Gold.
Your feet are the start of the movement chain in your body. Any issues you are likely to have in your feet, especially your arches collapsing in (over pronating), will in turn lead to other problems elsewhere. For example knees dropping in (valgus position), or hip drops and rotations. If you link this to exercise it will give you problems when you squat.
Are you a hugger?
If there has been one thing about COVID that has been a blessing in disguise is the need to have personal space.
I have spoken in the past about aiming to run three times a week and then you other sessions can then be based on resistnace work, stretching and active recovery.
What is it?
The Turkish Get Up is an amazing whole body exercise. It challenges every muscle in your body and gets you thinking about how your body moves during the exercise.
You’ll only ever make improvements in your training if you strategically progress it at points during your programming.
We can all be guilty of only doing exercises we like doing, especially when planning our own training or finding generic exercises on YouTube which anybody can do.
Understanding how you respond to injury is a huge step when it comes to planning training programmes.
I’ve spoken in the past about being injured not only affects you physically but also psychologically as well.
The most frustrating and devastating day I had almost 15 years ago was being told I’d never play football again by a consultant.
I’d gone through the process of having an MRI done after having months of physio from my reoccurring back injury.
I thought I’d beaten the agonising pain in my back and legs, but as soon as I started playing and working again the same feelings cropped up again.
Being injured can often be a huge blow mentally and physically. Injuries can range immensely from strains to fractures and can have a huge range of affects from bruising, swelling, cuts and surgery.
This is why it is important to monitor your training appropriately to prevent long term injuries happening.
Stretching is so important when it comes to keeping up with a good training routine and ensuring you don't get injured.
I always recommend clients so dynamic based stretches as part of their warm up to increase blood flow, mentally prepare themselves for the training they're about to do, and some movement patterns that are likely going to be part of the exercise they're about to do.