Band aid for your hips – Hip distraction mobilization

I hope all of you have found Kelly’s new mobility WOD blog by now. He’s throwing out some excellent drills that will melt down your fuzz and get your performance where it should be.

So go to mobilitywod.blogspot.com and start hitting those stretches. Everybody’s doing it, don’t be the guy who’s left out!

We will have a look at a recent piece by Kelly where he addressed the excessive pronation of the leg (lower extremity or LEx for  you professionals) caused by the reduced rotation range-of-movement (ROM) of the hips. You can also check out my video of the same setup.

Although hitting your hip capsule and deep rotators like a drunken Irish boxer, this stretch can highlight the ”hot” hip flexor/impingement on some of you, causing that nasty sensation in front of  the hip. Not to worry, you can bring out your newly bought resistance band out and get some relief Mulligan style. Adding a distraction to the hip joint while mobilising will also help you regain some of that all important accessory joint mobility you’ve lost.

The closer you get the band to your hip, the more effective the distraction will be. Piece of advice for the guys: Move the ”equipment” out of the way when you bring that band up to avoid any embarassing injuries.

So your mission now is to try the mobility WOD from Saturday 28th August again, this time with a band.

Go get some!

Jami

Mobility for Performance – workshop

Mobility for Performance is a one-day workshop for athletes and coaches, interested in enhancing their own and their client’s athletic potential by implementing effective movement preparation, mobility and stretching strategies. Participants will learn how to prepare better for their workouts, improve performance during exercise and recover faster from their training. Additionally, they will learn how common movement restrictions can influence their work capacity, how to assess for these, and practical remedies for their resolution. The emphasis of the workshop is on no-nonsense practical applications of learned materials, rather than theory.

Workshop Goals:

• Improve your understanding of :
  • How movement restrictions affect your performance
  • Common movement compensation strategies (why you move like you do)
  • Why do we develop movement restrictions
  • How to address common movement restrictions in order to improve performance
    • Effective stretching/mobility approaches
    • Self myofascial release
  • Importance of appropriate warm up / cool down
  • Effective midline stabilisation strategies
  • Inflammation, soft tissue injuries and how to deal with them
• Improve your performance!

This workshop is provided by Jami Tikkanen, the co-founder of Thames CrossFit in London, UK. He received his Master of Osteopathy degree from The British School of Osteopathy, graduating at the top of his year. His previous studies include both sports massage therapy and Chinese medicine. In 2009, he competed in CrossFit European Regionals and has an extensive background in competitive martial arts. Jami currently travels as part of the CrossFit Level 1 European certification team, while focusing his manual therapy work on improving performance of CrossFit athletes around the Europe. His current clients include the Men’s 2009 CrossFit Games champion, and other elite CrossFit Games competitors.

Please email us for more information or if you would like to organise this workshop at your affiliate

Shoulder warm-up ideas with bands

Here are some ideas on how to use resistance bands for shoulder warm-up. Feel free to freestyle and modify these techniques, the key idea is to go through all ranges of movement and then to mobilize your positions of restriction well before going overhead.

Shoulder warm-up with bands from Thames CrossFit on Vimeo.

Hip capsule and rotator muscle stretches

One thing that most CrossFitters I have met have in common (apart from the chalk marks in their hands) is tight hip capsules and rotator muscles. This unfortunate feature we share is eating away our performance every day at the gym, whether we’re squatting heavy, practising our olympic lifts or hitting Fran.

We all know to take our hips back as we descend to a squat or a deadlift but the problems arise when we run out of space at the hips. This is the point where most of us start to push our knees forward or lose our lumbar curve (but then again, we didn’t like our knees and intervertebral discs anyway, did we?).

Luckily we can start remedying this lack of hip space by shoving our femurs through the hip capsule, and yes, this is just as much fun as it sounds like. I recommend you to film yourself squatting or deadlifting before doing these stretches and then immediately after. Let me know if there was a change..

Hip capsule and rotator stretches from Thames CrossFit on Vimeo.

Finally, I’d like to thank Kelly Starrett for (as far as I know) coming up with his awesome hip capsular stretches that I have modifed here for the video.

What the fuzz?

Here’s a video by Gil Hedley, everyones favourite anatomist (and rock piler), on “fuzz”. The fuzz concept relates to a phenomenon of accumulation of various covalent and hydrogen bonds, associated with formation of collagen fibrils, in your muscular and connective tissues. Too much fuzz equals reduced sliding of different tissue interfaces in relation to one another.

What?

Well, reduced sliding of these tissue interfaces (e.g. between two layers of a muscle) will increase the resistance you have to overcome during movement and will therefore reduce your capacity in the workouts (and life for that matter). Don’t take my word for it, check out what K-Starr has to say about the video.

So what’s the take home message here? Stretch! Mobilise! Foam roll! Stay active! Or let the fuzz take you..

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