Part of getting stronger, leaner, and fitter is moving well. The better we move, the more we can handle strength training, conditioning, and just handling the unexpected movements that life throws at us. So, we have to train ourselves to move well. A big part of that is picking strength and conditioning exercises that fit our bodies and allow us to get into good positions. But, it also takes concerted effort in working on the weak points that are found during movement assessments.
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Training Joints to Move Well
There’s technical trainer-talk thing called the “joint by joint theory.” It essentially says that joints need to move well to work well together. So, joints like the ankles, hips, spine, shoulders, and wrists should have as much range of motion possible. But there’s a caveat to that “as possible”—the caveat is that we have to be able to control that range of motion. When these joints have big ranges of motion, that we can control, it promotes the health and longevity of our bodies. And our bodies are better able to handle the stress of training.
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.That’s why we have to listen to what our assessment tells us. If we find out that our shoulders aren’t moving well, but our hips are, we know that we need to spend extra time working on getting our shoulders moving—and vice versa if the opposite is true. During your warm-up, before you start lifting, and in between sets of lifting are prefect times to give your joints the movement work they need.
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Warming Up
Your warm-up should have a few goals: train your body to move well, improve the areas in which you’re not moving well, prepare your body to work hard, and actually warm you up! Structuring your warm-up so that it accomplishes all of these goals is a solid step in the right direction toward moving well.
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Once we’re on our feet we can do some more to get blood pumping, our temperature up, and prepare for strength training. We do that with “gym classy” types of movements.
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Here’s an example of a warm-up directly from the BSP NOVA gym floor.
Part 11. Rib Grab T-spine Rotation: x 5 per side2. Bird Dog x 6 per side3. Plank x :304. 1/2 Kneeling Active Hip Flexor Stretch x 5 per side5. Inchworms x 56. Prying Goblet Squat x :307. Lateral Band Walk x 10 steps each way8. Band Pull-apart x 10
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Part 21. High Knee Run x 10 yards2. Butt Kicks x 10 yards3. Linear Skip x 10 yards4. Lateral Skip x 10 yards each way5. Back Pedal x 10 yards6. Side Shuffle x 10 yards each way7. Carioca x 10 yards each way
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Pre-Strength Training
There’s a space between the warm-up and the start of strength training that is another great place to work on movement training. This is where we really focus in on improving on the weak spots that were illuminated by the assessment. Let’s talk about some examples—one for the shoulders and one for the hips.
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We’ll start with the shoulders. Let’s say your shoulder assessment pointed out that you could use better movement there. We want to make sure we give your body enough opportunities to improve the way it moves in your upper-back, and shoulders, so that movement improves there, and so you’re in the best possible position to do your strength work.
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So, just before we start strength training, we’ll do some specific drills for the upper-back and shoulders, along with some core work, to really tell the body that it’s important to improve range of motion, and control at the shoulders. A great example is one from the warm-up above—the rib grab t-spine rotation. Doing sets of that exercise every day before strength training, and on top of already doing it in the warm-up, trains the upper-back and shoulders to move better.
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For the hips, we follow the same process. We’d do a drill designed to improve hip range of motion and control every day between the warm-up and before strength training. The 1/2 kneeling active hip flexor stretch is an example from the warm-up.
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Consistently working drills like these for multiple sets, and with some core work like plank variations, helps us to move better over the long haul while also prepping us for strength training.
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During Strength Training
We continue to work on movement training during our strength training. Here’s the deal, good strength training is movement training because it puts the body in good positions and makes it strong in them. Accompanying it with a few extra general movement drills helps improve the good movement effect of the strength training.
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During strength training, incorporating simple joint circles, we call them CARs (short for controlled articular rotations), helps joints maintain healthy ranges of motion. After doing sets of strength work, doing a few reps of CARs for the hips, ankles, shoulders, or spine, feels really good while helping us improve, and maintain, joint health.
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Gandalf Shoulder CARs Video .
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Bear Crawl Hip CARs Video
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Move Well First
Long-term fitness is built on training our bodies to move well. Performing a well structured warm-up, followed by specific movement training that brings up our deficits is a great way to promote a well-moving body. Finish that off with some well-performed strength training that’s accompanied by some CARs and you have a great system for moving well throughout your life time so that you can train to get strong, lean, conditioned, and likely pretty damn sexy.