What is CrossFit?
CrossFit is trendy. Admit that, in recent months, you have heard the
MOBILITY AND HEALTH
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By: Sheila Arrogante Diaz
In today’s article we talk about mobility and health and how joint mobility has benefits for our health, but before starting to develop the topic we are going to see; What is joint mobility?
Joint mobility consists, as its name suggests, of the capacity for movement that our joints have.
Joint mobility is one of the characteristics of human beings that most characterize us. Thanks to the freedom of movement that our musculoskeletal system provides us, we can do everything from the simplest tasks such as hygiene and eating, to the most complex ones such as building furniture or climbing a mountain.
WHY SHOULD YOU TRAIN JOINT MOBILITY?
The mobility of our body is another part of our anatomy that we must take care of to avoid excessive wear and tear over time. As we get older, age is noticeable by the loss of muscle power and greater difficulty in movement, caused largely by the reduction in the elasticity of those tissues that serve to maintain the joint system with correct functionality, our ligaments. and tendons.
A tendon is a connective tissue that appears at the distal ends of the muscles to perform insertion (fixation) in the bone, while ligaments are also bands of connective tissue but with a slightly different composition that serve to connect bones with each other. other bones.
It is estimated that after the age of 30, the elasticity of this type of tissue that surrounds the joints between the vertebrae of our spine has lost 30% of the elasticity it had when we were children.
But we have a trick to prevent this from happening to us: exercise.
If we get used to exercising all these anatomical structures as soon as possible, we can achieve very good results, postponing the effects of age and gaining vitality and flexibility in our daily lives. Broadly speaking, our health will be better.
MOBILITY AND HEALTH. TRAINING FOR ALL AGES
Although we just talked about training our body’s mobility to avoid pain once we are older, it is also an important aspect that we must take into account when we exercise when we are young.
So that the body does not go from being in a state of rest to an active state suddenly. We must prepare him for the physical exercise that we are going to do. Joint mobility exercises can be classified as warm-up exercises for physical activity.
These warm-up exercises are mandatory if we want to avoid injuries, since after physical exercise our body releases lactic acid that crystallizes in the muscles, creating the well-known soreness. This warm-up is the best way to avoid them, while preventing other types of injuries related to exercise.
BENEFITS OF JOINT MOBILITY
In training you may think that the most important thing is to exercise your muscles to gain strength or resistance, but this is not the case. If we exercise our muscles with any exercise routine without taking into account the rest of the elements that make up our body, we can end up very sore.
Some of these elements that must be taken into account in our training are the tendons, ligaments and the joints themselves. They are very important because together with our muscles, they will influence all the movements we will make during training, and if we do not give them the importance they deserve, they can even end up torn. The body is a set of parts that must be coordinated for its correct functioning.
Exercising joint mobility is essential to avoid these tears we talked about, but we must not forget its other benefits. Some are the increase in heart rate and the dilation of the respiratory tract, which will help the blood to distribute better throughout the body and with more oxygen, the improvement of neuromuscular processes, etc.
In our CrossFit mobility classes we help you improve your joint mobility and flexibility and prevent injuries.
WHY IS MOBILITY SO IMPORTANT IN CROSSFIT?
As you already know, CrossFit works on several skills: cardio-respiratory endurance, muscular endurance, strength, flexibility, power, speed, coordination, agility, balance and precision.
One of the skills that is often forgotten is flexibility, even though all of us who do CrossFit have realized that for many exercises you feel limited if you have not worked on this area.
That’s why my goal today is to talk to you about the importance of mobility for our lives, but especially to improve our performance in our CrossFit classes.
Many of the exercises we do at CrossFit are limited by our range of motion because of this.
- Snatch: The shoulders not only have to be strong but they have to have a good range of motion.
- Overhead squat: Any exercise that forces you to break parallel in an overhead squat requires good shoulder mobility.
- Pistol or one-leg squat: for this exercise you need a lot of strength but also flexibility and balance. For many, poor mobility in the ankle joint is an inconvenience when performing this exercise.
- Pull ups – Again, a combination of several factors and one of them is shoulder mobility.
These are some of the exercises that may be affected, although there are a few more.
Many times our workouts are limited because of this, but it is interesting that our PR can also be affected due to a lack of mobility.
Many gymnastics and weightlifting movements for example; Sometimes we train these exercises hoping to gain weight, and they do it over and over again with the same inefficient range of motion. Even if they luckily manage to gain a kilo here or there, their potential for progression is almost zero, because they will never be able to perform these exercises with good technique. And that is why they will not be able to see how their maximum lifts improve. Impossible to improve personal bests without a clean technique.
We have already talked to you before in general terms about the benefits of working on joint mobility, but now I want to talk to you in more detail about the world of CrossFit.
- Improve your performance: How many people find that they can either increase the weight of their snatch or their overhead squat because their flexibility is limited and does not allow it. They have the strength but their range of motion is not optimal so they do not improve enough. This is just an example of how working on the range of motion can improve this aspect and have a direct positive impact on performance.
- Accelerate your recovery: through the natural release of hyaluronic acid while performing the stretching routine, recovery is promoted.
- Reduces the risk of injury: doing exercises with poor technique can only lead to injury sooner or later.
- Reset your central system: With how intense CrossFit sessions are, taking a break to move more slowly and give ourselves a break helps our usually accelerated nervous system rest.
As you know, I am always the heavy one when it comes to stretching and mobility work before and after training or even a day outside of our training session, dedicating time only to this, which is why I want to detail each of the situations and how it helps us. at that moment:
- Pre-workout: helps you prepare for the wod and improve your sensations in training. This pre-work helps you improve your range of motion before starting class and reduces your risk of injury. For example; If it’s a heavy squat day, it would be good for us to work on hip and ankle mobility beforehand.
- Post-workout: this protocol favors a quick recovery thanks to the massages to return to calm. It can be a gentle stretching session after finishing the day’s training.
- Daily: it is not linked to the day’s training and allows you to work in more detail on the areas of mobility and flexibility that you need most. It is a long-term job that requires constant work. You don’t need to use material if you don’t have it and it adapts to time and personal weaknesses. These exercises are generally postures that are held for longer periods of time and also some more dynamic exercises. At the same time, it helps you relax, making it a good option before going to sleep.
Personally, I recommend doing each of the ones we just saw, but if I have to choose one, maybe I’ll stick with the daily one and you don’t have to do it daily; Sometimes time doesn’t allow it, but if you can start doing it once a week, then twice, and do it more each time, your body will notice it a lot.
HOW DO I START WORKING ON MY MOBILITY?
In the program that we have created Online for you we want to promote health just as we do at the Box, for those who cannot come physically.
At BELIEVE we have CrossFit, On ramp Weightlifting classes and also mobility classes.
In our BELIEVE program we include mobility classes because we really think it is important, it is a good way to start.
When we want to start working on our mobility we are a little lost and we don’t really know how to do it, that’s why I invite you to try our program.
In our classes we guide you at all times and correct you so that the exercises we are doing to improve our mobility are effective.
I guarantee that if we constantly work on our mobility, you will notice the changes and improvements in your movements, your performance will be better and therefore your health will also be better.
We all want to be able to tie our shoes when we grow up, right? Think about it!
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