How often do you brush and floss your teeth?
Every day, right? You know it is important for the health of your teeth, and they go yellow and fuzzy if you don’t. Your partner will tell you when you need to brush your teeth, if you haven’t. But what about your joints? How often do you floss your joints for their health so you can move better and feel your best?
Having a daily mobility routine immediately improves and maintains your joint movement, reduces soft-tissue stiffness and allows for easier access to your active available range of motion (ROM). Everyday, just like brushing your teeth, you need to facilitate movement of every joint to keep it healthy until you are 100 years old. What if I told you that at the age of 70 we could get you back doing the splits again within a year? Yes, your body is malleable!
When you were born, your body was at its most malleable. You can take a baby’s ankles and move them to do the splits in every direction with minimal resistance. Then as we grew up to start walking, running, playing soccer and sitting – we created the range of motion that our body now uses today based on our individual movement patterns and postures. If you don’t use it, you loose it! Those sitting positions restrict and don’t allow you to use your hips and their surrounding muscles and soft tissues to their optimal potential. What does your current ROM look like for your neck, shoulder, hips, ankles?
Your mobility is indicative of your quality of life. Do you have control of the range of motion that you have access to?
I believe in coaching through assisted stretching of Fascial Stretch Therapy in combination with Functional Range Conditioning with the goal of decreasing back pain, injury prevention in athletes, reducing stiffness in older adults and improving the quality of life of every patient on my table. Strength + control + breathe are prioritized as the pillars in order to expand upon usable ranges of motion, articular resilience and overall joint health and facilitate alterations in blood flow parameters as well as relative tissue glide. These principles in your prehab, rehab and training can be a game changer!
If you don’t brush your teeth, you get cavities. If you don’t articulate your joints, you get pain, decrease ROM and even joint degradation. Don’t just move more, move better and feel better!
Author: Adriana Renton