Helping yourself

I read a great Gray Cook quote courtesy of Bret Contreras and ties in well with the link I put up on Facebook the other week from Eric Cressey regarding some drills to help work on improving mobility.

“When someone’s back hurts they don’t want to blame their lifestyle, fitness level, or daily patterns. Instead, they want to blame their back pain on starting the lawn mower last week, which, in reality, is probably just the straw that broke the camel’s back. Human beings live under the philosophy of, “I have a snowball and I have to throw it at someone.” No one wants to take responsibility.” Continue reading “Helping yourself”

Flexibility and injury

Todd Hargrove had a great post on his better movement blog; I definitely recommend checking out his site, where he talks about the relationship between flexibility, sports performance and injury prevention. In it he makes some great points on the lack of correlation between flexibility and injury rates. It got me thinking about the issue of improving the range of movement of any joint and how this relates to stretching, of any form, soft tissue work, in the form of hands on and foam roller type work, and strength. Continue reading “Flexibility and injury”

Abdominal/lumbar musculature and pelvic stabilisation

It may be a bit redundant to say it but the abdominals are quite important to how we move but there you go they are. They allow for transference of force from the lower to upper body and vice versa so weak abdominal and lumbar muscles can reduce athletic performance and pain from simply carrying out normal daily activities. They keep the torso stable, try squatting with a heavy weight if you have weak abdominals or lumbar musculature and you will fold over as you try to rise out of the bottom position. Continue reading “Abdominal/lumbar musculature and pelvic stabilisation”

The Performance Matrix

Over the weekend of 11thFebruary I was in London to do Kinetic Control’s “The Performance Matrix” movement screening course. I had been meaning to write this last week when I got home on Wednesday but the rest of the week was a bit hectic and I didn’t get the chance. First off it was a great course, well run by Mark Comerford and his team, and we all left, well I certainly did, feeling very enthusiastic about what I had learned, a good sign form with regards to the quality of any course I’ve been on. Continue reading “The Performance Matrix”