Luckily for me, I don’t find physical activity to be a chore. I genuinely enjoy biking, running and playing soccer, and do all of those things on the regular. But when it comes to stretching—well, I just hate it! My mantra is basically, “I’ll stretch when I’m dead.” The appealing part of playing sports and working out is the movement, and so, when I’m presented with the concept of getting down on a mat and holding my body in a stagnant position, I just... don’t do it.

In the same way that I only drink kombucha or take vitamins when I’m already sick, I will only deign to do my physical therapy exercises when my low-key chronic injuries begin to flare up and interfere with my ability to move my body with ease. Otherwise, I treat my aches and pains as minor irritants that I can ignore. (I’m not alone in this—anyone who’s ever been to a group exercise class can probably attest to the mass exodus that tends to happen during the last few minutes, when all the “real” work is done and it’s time to stretch.)

I recognize that this is not sustainable, and I want to take better care of myself, so I talked to physical therapists, personal trainers and yogis for tips on how to trick myself into embracing this less exciting, but still very necessary, component of physical fitness.

Sneak in stretches while you’re doing something else

Jenn Menzer, a Boston-based personal trainer and functional strength coach, says she opts to stretch when she’s waiting on line at the grocery store. She’ll do “a heel-to-bum stretch for the quads, or a calf stretch and a hamstring stretch using the shopping cart as leverage.” The next time the train or the bus is delayed, try directing some of your idle frustration into your muscles. Menzer recommends squeezing your glutes for a 30-second count, or, for a core strengthening balancing challenge, try standing on one leg with your opposite leg pressed into your thigh for 30 seconds, also known as tree pose, then switching sides.

You also might want to try stretching first thing in the morning, while you’re still in bed and not fully awake, suggests Solange Wong, a physical therapist in Manhattan. Try a piriformis stretch, also known as a “figure 4" stretch”—while lying down, bend one leg and cross your other ankle at the knee, and then grab underneath your bent leg and push your elbow into the thigh of the opposite leg until you feel a stretch in your butt. You could also bring your knees into your chest, or do a supine bridge by tightening your abs and lifting your hips up into a bridge position, while keeping your back straight, your knees bent, and your feet flat on the mattress.

Entertain yourself as you stretch

Putting on a podcast or a TV show to accompany your foam rolling or stretching session can certainly help distract you from the monotony of it. If you need to hold a position for a specific amount of time, instead of setting a timer or counting to yourself, you can use music to help you keep count, Wong recommends. You could achieve this by literally watching the timing of the song as you stretch, or, stretch one side of your body for half a song, and then switch. Lauren McCabe, a power yoga teacher in New Orleans, suggests making a playlist of cool-down tunes to help you wind down as you cycle through your post-workout stretching routine.

Stop thinking of stretching as a stagnant activity

If you, like me, think of stretching as the boring part of exercise, you might be going about it the wrong way. McCabe suggests viewing it as “an extension of your workout so it integrates seamlessly into your exercise routine,” as opposed to an isolated activity.

Jael McCants, a DPT grad student at NYU Steinhardt (and full disclosure, a member of my pickup soccer team), advocates for dynamic stretching that keeps you moving, as opposed to stagnant stretches that you do sitting down. Think of warming up as literally “elevating your body temperature” by “working through the whole range of motion of a joint,” for example, doing leg or arm swings, shoulder rolls, or a minute of jumping jacks, or jump rope, she says. McCants recommends downloading the Nike Training App, which leads users through examples of dynamic stretches.

Post-workout, it can be tempting to skip the cool down in favor of hopping in the shower and getting on with your life. But there are ways to give your tired muscles a little TLC without making it a whole separate to-do. McCants suggests a standing dynamic quad stretch: grab your heel and pull your leg behind you, and then keep switching from one leg to the other in a fluid motion. She also suggests slow lunges, squeezing your glutes on the back leg for 30 seconds so you’ll feel the stretch in your hip flexors. Upper body-wise, an overhead tricep stretch can be done while standing, and a pec stretch on the wall will help open up tight chest and shoulder muscles.

Make it social

If it’s hard for you to make yourself get on the mat at home, stretching with other people might be what you need to motivate yourself. If you can, sign up for yoga or pilates classes—look for “restorative yoga” classes, which emphasize long-held poses for a slower, deeper stretch, or “yoga for runners,” classes, which focus on poses that improve flexibility and target common areas of muscle tightness, such as the piriformis, hamstrings and hip flexors —or keep an eye out for events that incorporate socializing and fitness. McCabe hosts “healthy happy hours” at the Starlight Bar in New Orleans: an hour of yoga followed by live music and food. If you play group sports, encourage your team to warmup and cool down together. McCants leads our soccer team through the FIFA 11+ warm-up, a combination of strength, plyometrics and balancing exercises, including lunges, one-leg squats, lateral jumps, and more in-motion activities, that help prevent common on-the-field injuries.

Here’s to staying limber without dying of boredom!

(Souce)

Need help setting your routines? Book your stretching visit today!

Many people suffer from headaches and don’t know what causing the pain or what to do about it.

Did you know that chronic headaches are one of the most common complaints made to healthcare practitioners every year? Although over-the-counter medications are highly effective, they can be merely a temporary solution for a chronic problem.

Massage Therapy has shown to be effective in treating Migraine and Tension Headaches, it is safe and effective – not just a cover up, as pills.

Tension Headaches
These types of headaches can be caused by muscle spasms, trigger points, TMJ dysfunction, neck alignment, stress, hormonal/chemical changes, dehydration, and stress/anxiety. Tension headaches can show up as a tightness or constricting feeling in the head, as pain in the head or referred pain in the neck, shoulders, and arms, as muscle spasms/pain, as pain in the jaw, or as pain around the temple and behind the eyes. Tension headaches usually do not come with other sensitivities, such as sensitivity to light and sound or nausea.

Migraines
These types of headaches are still somewhat mysterious. They are believed to be caused by neck alignment, chemical/hormonal changes, neurological problems, vascular problems, environmental irritants, food sensitivities, and/or blood sugar regulation. Migraines can be very severe and can last up to several days. These headaches do usually come with some sensitivities, such as sensitivity to light, sound, and nausea/vomiting.

Both Tension Headaches and Migraines have been effectively treated by massage therapy. Not only can massage help relieve headache pain, but it can also help to prevent headaches from occurring.

If you do suffer from chronic headaches, you want to check with your doctor first and provide as much information about your headaches as you can to your massage therapist, so that they can develop a protocol that is right for you.

Give Massage Therapy a try today!

Success is the result of intelligent effort.

“I swear everyone is looking for a weird technique correction that adds 50lbs to their squat or a food they can eat that just zaps bodyfat, and they are going to spend lots of time in an almost completely futile effort. Train hard and smart, eat well, and try to get a bit better every month. After a while you are a completely different person, but it takes time. It doesn’t happen overnight and there are no quick tricks.” Dr Mike Israetel.

SCIENTIFIC PRINCIPLES OF STRENGTH TRAINING

Dr. Mike Israetel of RP Strength has determined 7 fundamentals for strength training. These consist of the following:

1. Specificity

2. Overload

3. Fatigue Management

4. SRA

5. Variation

6. Phase Potentiation

7. Individual Differences

These principles are taken from his book “Scientific Principles of Strength Training.” For a full and comprehensive understanding, please refer to that. The summaries below outline his principles. They are ordered into a hierarchy that places the most important principle at the top and descends in order of importance when applying the principles to your own training.

1.  SPECIFICITY

“ALL body systems adapt in the direction of the training stimulus, often countering one-another’s adaptations.” Dr Mike Israetel.

What this means is that you must train for the sport that you want to get better at. Specificity often cause imbalances, as getting better at one thing may make you worse at another. For example, a triathlete would not spend the majority of their training deadlifting, whilst an elite powerlifter does not spend half their training hours on a bike.

Specificity in Practice

With powerlifting and improving strength in general, the following are important:

• Add size to powerlifting muscles

• Make powerlifting muscles stronger

• Practice the technique of powerlifting lifts

These are all specific to achieving a particular goal. When it comes to CrossFit®, this concept becomes much trickier, because the idea is to be good at everything. The specificity principle is important when targeting specific programming cycles (such as strength phases) within the context of the wider arsenal of your skills.

2. OVERLOAD

Overload contains two parts:

1. Training within maximal threshold

2. Training must be harder, on average, with time

Training within your maximal threshold means that you are doing things that are challenging to your relative fitness and strength. If you have a back squat PR of 200kg, yet your strength cycle has you squatting 100kg week 1, 105 week 2 etc, then you probably are not going to get stronger. It is too easy for you.

Training must be harder, on average, with time. This involves load, reps, volume, distance, time and intensity. This means that you gradually overload your body and central nervous system with progressively harder stimulus in your training. This can be anything from max calories on the airbike in 10 mins to adding weight onto your bench press each week.

“Humans respond to training in almost identical ways qualitatively, but differ only in quantity of response. For example, ALL humans need an overload to progress and ALL humans take on muscle damage with training. HOW MUCH training is an overload and how much muscle damage occurs from any given training is different for different people, but no one on this earth can claim to experience zero muscle damage from training at any given volume.” Dr Mike Israetel.

3. FATIGUE MANAGEMENT

Failure to properly manage the fatigue created from training can lead to decreased performance. If you don’t rest and allow your body to recover then you will never maximise your gains. Nutrition is absolutely vital here.

4. SRA (STIMULUS RECOVERY ADAPTION)

• Hard training stimulates adaptive processes

• Adaptation occurs DURING recovery, not training

With these two important points in mind, you must train in an intelligent way that allows you to train, adapt and recover, then train again.

Every athlete’s ability to recover is different and dependent on their previous athletic history, genetics and other factors, but if you constantly train without allowing the stimulus from training to actually take effect (in the recovery phase) then you will not progress as well as you otherwise could.

On the flipside, many athletes make the mistake (or excuse) of giving muscles too much time to recover and not training them frequently enough. The important thing to remember is that your training should be hard. If you are a committed strength athlete or Crossfitter then you probably don’t need to be reminded about this.

5. VARIATION

Variation refers to the exercise that you choose to utilise in your training. When it comes to strength training, you can’t go wrong with deadlifts, squats, bench and overhead press, but additional variations can and will strengthen your movement patterns and body in slightly different ways. For example, Romanian deadlifts or snatch grip deadlifts are great accessory exercises to improve your primary compound lift – the deadlift.

Variation keeps things exciting, and can be a great way to focus on technical or physical weak points that you may have in other movements.

6. PHASE POTENTIAL

This refers to how you structure the different blocks of training. For example, with powerlifting an athlete may work through the following:

• Hypertrophy phase (grow more muscle)

• Strength Phase (teach that new muscle to move heavy loads)

• Peaking phase for competition (hit new PRs)

These phases occur in different ways in different sports, for Crossfitters this may be peaking your conditioning for The Open for example. But the general concept is that you maximse the potential from each phase in order to best achieve the specific goal of that phase.

7.  INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES

This is the least important of all the above points, but should still be mentioned.

It is vital that when it comes to your training, you should work down the hierarchical list and sort out the most important, and influential, factors first. Individual factors are often linked to genetics, training history and the like, and will account for different ways that particular training may affect you in relation to another individual. These of course do play a role, but are fairly insignificant outside the realm of elite and professional athletes.

“The basics work for everyone. The individual differences are just a tweak” Dr Mike Israetel.

NUTRITION AND STRENGTH TRAINING

Nutrition is inextricably involved with these principles. If you do not fuel your body appropriately then you will be unable to perform to the best of your abilities. If you do not feed your body what it needs to recover then you cannot recover, adapt and grow stronger.

TIP: The first 2 points, calorie balance and Macronutrients alone will account for around 75 – 80% of your success.

There are 5 different aspects of nutrition to pay attention to when it comes to maximising your performance and recovery, and achieving the goals that you are aiming for.

The magnitudes above are, in the same way as the principles of strength training, ordered in accordance with importance. If you are to achieve the results that you want, then you must first make sure that you are eating the correct calorie balance, macro-nutrients, nutrient timing and food composition before you start worrying about supplements for example.

ELEMENTS OF NUTRITION

1. Calorie Balance

Calorie balance is the ratio between calories taken in and calories expended in any one individual at any given time.

You can only ever be in ONE of the following states.

• A negative calorie balance will always result in weight loss. “Even though body water alterations may occasionally mask this loss of tissue, it is always going to occur, with ZERO exceptions so far discovered.”

• A eucalorie balance means that the athlete will not gain or lose weight because they expend as many calories as they consume.

• A positive calorie balance means that the individual is consuming more calories than they are using.

In order to maximize your chances for muscle gain or fat loss, you must know when and how to enter a hypo, hyper, or eucaloric state.

2. Macronutrients

The second most important factor for transforming yourself is to consume the correct macronutrients to support your body and the goals that you are working towards. These consist of proteins, carbohydrates and fats. Having the right ratio between these three parts of your nutrition will differ depending on your exact goal, weight, sex, age, height and the way that you train.

3. Nutrient Timing

Nutrient timing means determining when during a day it is best for your body to consume the nutrients it needs (in accordance with your goals). This is best understood when it is split into meal frequency and timing in relation to activity.

4. Food Composition

This refers to the quality of the food, and the way that you combine foods to create meals.

For proteins this relates to the bioavailability of the nutrients, for carbohydrates it refers to the fibre quality and the Glycemic Index. With fats a good rule of thumb is to try and stay away from Tran Saturated fats (fast food etc) and consume Monosaturated (Avocado, nuts and their butters, olive oil) and Healthy Saturated fats (Coconut/macadamia nut oils, grass fed animal fats) wherever possible.

5. Supplements

Supplements are the final point to consider. Many athletes will prioritise this aspect of nutrition over others, however using supplements incorrectly will not help you to achieve your goals. For example, if an individual consumes 50g of protein powder daily, yet does still not achieve the overall caloric intake that will help them to achieve their goals, then their efforts are wasted and the results will not be achieved.

It is important to understand supplements as they really are, products to supplement a nutrition plan, and something to help achieve the desired outcomes from the more important steps above.

RENAISSANCE PERIODIZATION

“Only science could be the surest path to the truth”

Renaissance Periodization work with many of the best athletes in the Game such as Rich Froning, BK Gudmundsson and Annie Thorisdottir. They provide nutrition templates that are specific to the exact requirements of the individuals involved, including your own. They help elite athletes to win The CrossFit Games® right through to everyday people reach the weight, size and aesthetic they desire.

 If you want to build muscle, lose fat, improve your health, optimise your performance and recovery, then RP Strength will help you to achieve that goal based on your own personal metrics. Stop making excuses and become the person that you are meant to be.

Achieve your goals now!