Remey and I attended a one-day mobility and movement seminar this past weekend taught by Kelly Starrett of mobilitywod.com.  His belief is that 80% of gym injuries can be dealt with by the athlete directly by improved mobility, hydration and movement.

Some cool tidbits:

- the vast majority of us are chronically dehydrated.  Dehydrated tendons inflame faster.  Dehydrated muscles heal slower.  And so on.  Good rule of thumb: drink 1/2 your body weight in ounces of water per day plus that lost in exercise.  For a fun activity, use the gym scale to weigh yourself before and after a workout one day.

- chairs are killing us.  Research has shown that sitting increases a host of diseases and causes immobility in ways that affect our whole body.  We aren’t designed for chairs – especially those of us over 6′ tall.  At Kelly’s house, the only chair use is for meals and the car.

- midline stabilization is critical all the time.  In squats, for example, many of us are sacrificing it to attempt to stay more vertical when our hips are the problem.  Same goes for many of the gymnastics movements such as the push up.  It’s a path of injury and decreased performance.  The same goes for your shoulders: many of you complaining of shoulder pain are simply putting your shoulder in bad positions due to limited flexibility.

- proper movement in training should always be priority number one.  For example, at his gym, they often do sets with deadlifts.  If one member rounds their back, the entire wod is paused while everyone does a ten burpee penalty.  Voila, no more sore backs.

We left with a number of mobility tricks and techniques to help us all get that perfect squat/push-up/over head squat some day.  Look for us to roll those out in training going forward and on the website here.  Or, if you have a nagging injury/soreness/pain, hit up one of us for thoughts on how you might be able to address your problem knee, neck or Achilles through better mobility and movement.  While not a substitute for a physical therapist or physician, we might have some ideas.