The Importance of Mobility
By Jacob Wellock
Everyone loves to be strong and be able to move functionally everyday, or do they? In this blog, I am going to talk about what it means to truly be functional and how flexibility, not just mobility, but flexibility can help you be more comfortable in your day-to-day life. For people like me, it will help tremendously with strength gains, conditioning, efficiency, and longevity in this sport that we call Welded.
If you have access to a yoga studio, I would highly recommend going to it. I was never a believer in how well yoga would help my performance until this last year. I am fortunate enough to have a yoga studio inside of our gym that really helps with my performance and clarity of the mind. If you do not have access to a yoga studio, you still need to be doing your stretches everyday. Now this is different than the traditional smashing and lacrosse ball movements that most Welded athletes are used to. I am talking about holding one stretch for 3-5 minutes and moving on to the next one. You thought the workouts were hard!
These longer holds have such huge benefits for the body by opening up stiff joints, elongating soft tissue, and help clear the body of lactic acid (the stuff that makes you stiff and sore) and help the body to produce hyaluronic acid (stuff that does not make you stiff and sore). Hyaluronic acid (hard to say) is an acid that is located throughout your entire body and you can imagine it as a natural lubricant for your cartilage and joints. You need this acid for the longevity of your body, those that have more of this tend to live longer and more pain free as their lives go on. I want you to guess one of the best ways to keep this circulating through your body? That’s right, long and deep stretches (insert evil laugh here).
Some of the best ways to take advantage of these stretches is to do them in the morning before you get your day started, spend 10-15 minutes doing two to three stretches and focusing on getting deep and really into that stretch with a relaxed mind. If your mind is not relaxed and you are resisting these stretches, than you are not getting the benefits that you should. If you go to any Welded class of ours, you should know a handful of basic stretches that you can do on your own to not only help your performance in the gym, but also your daily life and just feeling more mobile.
There are many reasons why you should stretch on a daily basis, these are just a few of those reasons. You do not want to be that middle aged guy or woman that has a hard time moving because you were too lazy or stubborn to spend time on stretching. If you just didn’t know and weren’t educated on the matter, now you are. There truly are no excuses now. While you watch some T.V. spend some time doing that couch stretch. Hell, you are already sitting there, make it productive for about four or five minutes and your body will be thanking you. It is like when you start to workout for the first time. It’s hard to get in the gym and actually do it, but over time it is easy to go to the gym and for most of us, it is enjoyable. Same thing with stretching, it is hard at first but as time goes on you will start to enjoy it because you will enjoy how you are feeling and you will understand what it truly means to be functional. That is it for this one you guys, I hope you take this into consideration and work on that hyaluronic acid! (Laughs)
GROUP CLASS WORKOUT
Warm Up:
3 Rounds 40 DU(70 singles), 15 OHS PVC, 15 situps
Finish with 15 PVC GM, 20 scorpions
Strength:
7×3 TnG Power Snatch
Lean: 7×3 Deadlift 70-75%Every 1:20
Metcon:
Welded
10 Min AMRAP
3,6,9,12,15,18,21…
Thusters 95/65
Pullups
Rest 3 minutes
For Time: 50 Burpees
Advanced: C2B
Welded Lean
10 Min AMRAP
3,6,9,12,15,18,21…
Thrusters 95/65
Hand Release Pushups
Rest 3 minutes
For Time:
50 Burpees
Mobility of the Day: Anterior Compartment Smash w/KB (pg.264)
Improves: Overhead Position, Push Up, Shoulder Pain
OLYMPIC LIFTING CLASS
8 to 9am with Coach Kyle
MASTERS CLASS
8:30 to 9:45 with Coach Arthur
COMPETITORS CLASS WORKOUT
6:30 to 8pm with Coach Jacob