I've heard some doozies from clients when I ask them about whether or not they did they're warm up.

One of my all-time favorites was a client who said, and I quote, "No, but I just had to chase my dog through the neighborhood, does that count?"

And...this one...

"Um...I mean I had my seat warmer on driving over here..."

The bulk of the clients I'm working with have busy lives and often very, very busy heads.

Let's start with the busy life, and then we'll get to the busy head...

When it's taking everything you have in you to get a workout in, taking the time to warm up can feel pointless. Especially if you hate the experience of warming up.

1. It's okay to skip warm up exercises sometimes.

This isn't going to be a popular opinion (with trainers, I'm sure clients won't mind), but if you hate using the foam roller, then take foam rolling out of your workout. Yes it's good for you, but if you dread it so much that you won't do anything then there's no point in having it in your workout.

If the thought of doing a warm up prevents you from doing your work out, then skip it.

Something is ALWAYS better than nothing.

But.....

2. There is a cost to always skipping your stretches and warm ups.

While you might have heard about osteopenia (the precursor to osteoporosis) and sarcopenia (the loss of muscle mass), something that isn't talked about as much is losing our range of motion in our joints as we age.

I'm not just talking about losing our flexibility - my Dad often talks about how much further his feet have gotten from him as he ages. I'm also talking about losing the ability to raise your arms over your head.

Go ahead and raise your arms over your head right now. I'll wait.

What do you notice when you try? Do you feel tight? Is your arm straight above your head (next to your ear) or in front of you? If you try to reach directly overhead do you arch your back?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, here is an exercise for you:

Ankle mobility is another area that's very important. If you've ever seen an elderly person shuffling along behind a walker, look at their feet - they very likely don't have much ankle mobility (often losing the ability to press off of the balls of their feet). This is one of the reasons that it's easier to trip as we age.

Here's an exercise for ankle mobility:

3. You don't have to do these exercises all at one time.

Ideally you do all of these in a warm up (or in a regular yoga routine. Check out Yoga with Adrienne on Youtube if you're looking to get started). AND, it's also good to mix these types of stretches into your day, especially if you do a lot of sitting.

4. Last point here - can you get up and down off of the floor?

This is key - getting up and down off of the floor is super important, especially as we age. I had one trainer at a conference suggest that this is a great warm up - get up and down off of the floor three times. If possible, do so without using your hands.

You incorporate all of your joints as well as upper body, lower body, and core strength into just getting up and down off of the floor.

Happy Tuesday,

Kim

P.S. If you have a busy head, I'm a fan of grabbing a sheet of paper and doing a five minute brain dump. There's no wrong way to do this. You just grab a piece of paper and write everything that comes to mind.

Then throw it away. Or, sometimes I use mine to make a list.

A few years back, I was at a fitness conference where a new company was introducing a new product called an Acumobility Ball. It was basically a ball with a flat side and it was designed for soft tissue work.

Now, before I go too much further, just a quick refresher on soft tissue and why it’s good to do soft tissue work.

Soft tissue is any tissue in your body that is soft - I know, mind blowing, right? This includes muscles, fascia, ligaments, tendons, bursa sacs and joint capsules.

While there are different types of soft tissue work, I’ve become a big proponent of what is known as self-myofascial release (SMR). While there is different research out there that poo-poos (scientific term) the long-term benefits of SMR, I use it for both myself and my clients for a number of reasons.

When you do any sort of challenging movement—whether it’s resistance training, intense cardio or wrestling the ropey toy from your dog, the exercise usually creates small tears in the muscle called “microtrauma.”

That microtrauma results in the tissue healing, growing and ultimately getting stronger, but can also lead to adhesions.

This essentially occurs when tears don’t heal completely or properly, and muscle tissue begins to “stick” to other tissue creating tension from those tissues pulling on each other.

In other words, sh*t sticks together. And turns into those gnarly knots that none of us like. And where foam “rolling” and using a ball to “roll” out your muscles will get the blood flowing, it’s not going to necessarily have a therapeutic effect. In other words, traditional foam rolling isn’t going to get rid of those knots.

And that’s where trigger point work comes in. Homing in on a specific area of the body and doing intentional work will help get the knots out and restore blood flow.

Once I decided to try this weird ball with a flat bottom, I was hooked. Probably because I was finally feeling some actual change in working out the knots.

I the video below, I use two Acumobility balls in demonstrating a technique to help reduce and possibly eliminate some of those trigger points in your forearms, which can be especially helpful if you struggle with tennis or golfer’s elbow.