Blog 10 – Warm Down 2.0
Circling back to our warm-up and cool down blog from a week or two ago. This one is a bit more technical in nature; a little less creative writing. Stop here if that’s not what you’re into or continue scanning for my brief pointed asides and parentheticals. Honestly, not sure if there will be any in this blog, but I never do when I start writing. Very little planning (weird, right?) Woop! There’s 1! Anyway, to continue to what I thought would be a point of all this when I started.
Members have asked the coaches recently for warm-ups for nagging or chronic tidbits. These include – wrists, shoulders, hips, and ankles. This makes anatomical sense if we think about it. As bipedal mammals, our hips bear the load of our upper body and our ankles support our entire body as we move through space. If we flipped ourselves upside down, our hips would be replaced by our shoulders and our ankles by our wrist (If it’s easier, we can think of our shoulders as upper hips and our shoulders as our arm ankles – every medical professional at the gym just cringed). In reality, these joints move in multiple directions, which leave them more vulnerable to tweaks and oopsies. They’re fickle.
In a weightlifting setting, we increase this stress and vulnerability intentionally. That increase in stress can lead to an increase in pain; all of this is safe, IF we increase our care. For example, warming up and cooling down (AAANNNNDDD finally to the point).
In the last blog, we said that we want to warm-up globally and then work a little bit more acutely (burpee -> push up -> wrist series) and then work in reverse in our cool down phase. Our level of irritation can be used to guide us in our warm-ups and cool downs. We need to check-in with ourselves and ask if the level of irritation warrants a light warm-up or, if the irritation continues to increase over time, more of an acute mobilization warm-up, like we would get from Dr. Paul, OR if we actually need rest. No, not just resting our wrist because it’s nagging us, like actually resting our entire body. Our bodies communicate to us constantly (… getting side tracked again).
Options for a bit more of acute warm-ups would be things like:
- Location specific stretching
- The Wrist Series
- YTW Shoulder Work
- The Squat-y Pa’ty
- A Day at the Zoo – some may call this the Quadrupedal Movements or “that parkour shit.”
- Bands – this may be one of the better “apocalypse home gym” pieces we can have at our disposal. If you don’t have weighted equipment, bands are a great tool that are relatively in expensive, can be used to replace almost every movement, don’t take up much space, and are Tony Horton approved.
More acute or aggressive work might take a bit more intentional research on your part. We like resources like:
- Mobility WOD
- The Prehab Guys
- Squat University
As always your team coaches are here to help your learning process. Please let us know if you have recurring or nagging issues that you may not feel that you have the tools to manage.