KID STATUS MOBILITY

Mobility- Formerly known as stretching.

"Mr. Jones, Why the Face are you doing right now?"
"Ahem, I am teaching you literature and writing. I am an English Teacher"
"No I mean with that large rubber band."
"FORGING ELITE FITNESS! GO BACK TO WORK!"

Unless you're a hot yoga super master or level 70 Elf Gymnast, I'm willing to conclude that you have in your body, some sort of movement deficiency from lack of flexibility, tacked down muscles, or shortened ligaments. Here are some of my biggest issues and their causes as if you care.

Ankles- Possibly genetics, I have really thick joints all over my body. I'm willing to bet that it might also come from years of wearing shoes with gigantic heels like those nike shox and reebok zig-techs shortening my Achilles. (another blog post in itself)

Groin- Years of not stretching my groin because stretching the groin hurts :/

Hamstrings- years of squatting heavy loads, but not to a proper depth. I have big ol' quads and itty bitty hamstrings. Also only ever power cleaned rather than squat cleaning. I never front squatted or overhead squatted until now (I'm 28).

You can't see from the picture, but I'm making a tremendous pain face in each frame

My mobility strengths are:

My shoulders- I can skin the cat all the way through to touch the ground with the rings pretty high! whoo fancy!

My face- I've never had issues with facial expressions, and it's just beautiful!

To work on all of my range of motion issues I reference the best website in the webworld www.mobilitywod.com. Kelly Starrett has about a million (just over 500) short videos on how to stretch, myofascial release, "open", and prep just about any muscle, or tendon---aka torture yourself into better mobility. mobilitywod.com is an every-day-read and super interesting! he can't do anything about your face though :/

Also dehydration and sugar directly effects our muscle elasticity. Drink up and lay off the candy bars and overly sugary fruits and veggies like carrots and sugar coated carrots. Ok eat carrots, but not enough to turn orange, and I'm serious about not eating sugar coated carrots.

Little Cooper's range of motion is my goal for mobility! As I was doing shrugs in front of a mirror in 2001, I never would have imagined that I would one day hope to be as flexible as a 5 year old girl.

Zumba Zumba fitness

zumba zumba fitness!

Crossfitters scoff at bodybuilders. Bodybuilders scoff at Crossfitters, endurance athletes, people who wear glasses, yogis, downhill skiers, etc.
All of the above scoff at Zumba.

Tonight I attended a friend - Jenna's - final Zumba class in Ellensburg instead of Crossfit. It was rad - I admittedly enjoyed it. I even didn't mind the muscle hamsters looking into the dance studio to snicker. I thought of a lot of witty comebacks just in case one of them were to comment on my way out, but nobody said anything.

The top of the fitness pyramid is Sport, according to Glassman or whoever came up with it. Zumbas not necessarily sport, but neither are thrusters a pull ups really. Zumba is a great experience of movement though. The dance moves are just complex enough to challenge, but simple enough to get the heart rate up a bit.

It is well documented that complex rhythm patterns are good food for brain development so I would argue that the process of learning foreign choreography to the complex rhythm patterns makes an enriching cocktail for holistic kinesthetic postures.

High impact-- great for bone density, good prescription for women.
Choreography-- terrific for developing proprioception and balance.
Rhythm and music driven-- stimulates the brain, also just fun.

I'm on the phone because I'm trying to convince any number of these women's husbands to come join us so that I'm not the only dude.

Another note: Blog posts from now on will be short, I assume you'd rather be moving.