mobility exercises

Mobility training helps develop a full range of motion in your legs. It also plays a crucial role in injury prevention and generally improves joint and muscle health.

Starting with Mobility Exercises

When starting, I suggest a Build from the Base approach. The exercises below are in that order.  Start with Foot Doming and progress up the body to the hips. Start with 10 minutes a day, every day, until you have done all the exercises a few days later.

When you have mastered all the exercises, you may start increasing your sets and load.

Cultivating a daily mobility practice will enable you to resolve recurring issues before an injury occurs.

When building up to long-distance, we need to avoid layering strength on top of movement dysfunction.

Start with this basic approach if you have no existing problem areas.

Focus on Problem Areas

If you suffer from recurring running injuries, start by focusing on the problem area. Not only there, but also the parts above and below the problem. When you have sufficiently recovered, you can start with the basic approach.

ExerciseProblem Area/s
Foot DomingFoot, Ankle
Toe ResistanceBunion, Foot, Ankle
Heel DropFoot, Heel, Achilles
Ankle TurnAnkle, Calf, Shin
Hip HikeKnee, ITB, Hip, Glutes, Core
Step DownAnkle, Knee, Quads, Hip
Step UpQuads, Glutes
Hip RotationHip, Core
Hip ExtensionGlutes
Back ExtensionHip, Glutes, Core, Back, Spine, Shoulders
Mobility Exercises (Click on the exercise for the detail.)
foto: Daniel Reche

New research from La Trobe University suggests there is no evidence that changing a runner’s strike pattern will help prevent injuries or give them a speed boost.

In a bid to avoid shin splints, sore knees and other injuries, many runners have adopted a toe-to-heel trend, running on the balls of their feet. This is often encouraged by coaches and health professionals.

However, in research out this week in Sports Medicine, La Trobe injury researcher and physiotherapist Dr Christian Barton found there is no evidence to suggest running on the front of your feet reduces injury risk or improves performance.

The comprehensive review suggests that telling someone to run on the ball of their foot instead of their heel may make them less efficient, at least in the short term. Additionally, there is no evidence either way on whether running on the balls of your feet reduces injury.

Dr Barton said switching your running style shifts the body’s loads but doesn’t make them disappear.

Running toe-heel might help injuries at the knee, where loads are reduced. However, it may cause injuries to the feet and ankle, where loads are increased.

Put simply, when it comes to running style: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Poor cardiorespiratory fitness could increase your risk of a future heart attack, even if you have no symptoms of a lifestyle illness today, a new study has found.

A strong link was found between higher fitness levels and a lower risk of heart attack and angina pectoris over the nine years following the measurements that were taken in a study by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology’s (NTNU) Cardiac Exercise Research Group (CERG).

The study results have been published in the European Heart Journal.

Even among people who seem to be healthy, the top 25 per cent of the fittest individuals actually have only half as high a risk as the least fit 25 per cent.

Between 2006 and 2008, CERG researchers measured the cardiorespiratory fitness of 4527 men and women who participated in the HUNT3 population-based health survey in Nord-Trøndelag. None of the subjects had cardiovascular disease, cancer or high blood pressure, and most were considered to be at low risk of cardiovascular disease for the next ten years.

Nevertheless, 147 of the participants experienced heart attacks or were diagnosed with angina pectoris by 2017. These diseases signal that the coronary arteries in the heart are narrowed or completely blocked.

The researchers analysed the participants in groups based on their level of fitness in relation to others of the same age and gender. The risk proved to decline steadily as patient fitness increased. The correlation between fitness and cardiovascular risk also held after adjusting for other factors that differed between the most and least fit participants.

One of the greatest strengths of the study is that the test used maximum oxygen uptake to measure participant fitness. Earlier studies that have linked fitness level to disease risk in healthy populations have largely been based on less precise calculations of fitness, or on self-reported physical activity information.

Our body uses oxygen to drive metabolic processes that create energy for the muscles. Maximum oxygen absorption is simply the maximum amount of oxygen the body is able to absorb during physical activity. Heart, blood vessel and muscle functioning are all important for oxygen uptake.

The study suggests that even a small increase in fitness can significantly improve health. For each increase of 3.5 fitness points, the risk of heart attack or angina decreases by 15 per cent.

Even if you never get in such good shape that you can say you have optimal protection, the study shows that participants’ risk was lower the more fit they were.

To measure maximum oxygen uptake accurately, you have to breathe into a mask while running on a treadmill, where the speed increases or the incline gets steeper every minute. As you work at higher and higher intensity, your body needs more and more oxygen. The test ends when you can’t run anymore, or when measurements show that the oxygen uptake is no longer increasing even though the treadmill speed is.

But why does the fitness number mean so much for your future health?

Researchers use a treadmill and a special mask to measure a person’s maximum oxygen uptake, which is considered an important measure of fitness.

Cupping therapy has re-emerged as a potential approach to boost post-exercise metabolic recovery, reduce pain, and improve range of motion by increasing local microcirculation. But what does science tell us about the effectiveness or safety of cupping? A new systematic review that examines the results of eleven clinical trials encompassing nearly 500 participants is published in The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine.

Despite some reports of benefits, including some related to reduced pain and disability, the authors found the reports uneven and found a high risk of bias in the trial designs. They therefore determined that no conclusive recommendations for or against the value of cupping in sports performance can be made until further trials are carried out.

Women can process oxygen more quickly than men when they start to exercise, according to a new study from the University of Waterloo.

Quick oxygen uptake places less strain on the body’s cells and is an important measure of aerobic fitness.

The findings are contrary to the popular assumption that men’s bodies are more naturally athletic.

The study found that women’s muscles extract oxygen from the blood faster, which, scientifically speaking, indicates a superior aerobic system. By processing oxygen faster, women are less likely to accumulate molecules linked with muscle fatigue, effort perception and poor athletic performance.

They don’t know why women have faster oxygen uptake (yet), but this could change the way we approach assessment and athletic training down the road.

The study was published in Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism.

(Women naturally more fit than men first appeared on QVRP.net)

Endurance training can actually be helpful in dealing with muscle inflammation, according to a new paper co-written by faculty at Binghamton University, State University of New York, and Karolinska Institutet and Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm, Sweden, and published in the journal PLOS ONE.

Muscle inflammation, or myositis, can be caused by infection, injury and chronic disease. However, specific forms of myositis like dermatomyositis and polymyositis occur when the body’s immune system turns against its own muscles, damaging the muscle tissue in the process.

While there are plenty of prescribed medications to cope with muscular diseases, the medication utilized only does half the job.

The drugs are targeting one immune cell or a group of immune cells, but there are no new drugs that target muscles that are dying. Exercise can take care of the immune cells that are killing the muscles, and repair the cell death of the muscle.”

The study found that endurance exercise altered microRNAs that target and downregulate immune processes, as well as decreasing different microRNAs that target and upregulate mitochondrial content at the protein level. That is, exercise creates microRNA that decreases the number of immune cells that attack the muscle and heals the muscle by increasing aerobic metabolism through mitochondrial biogenesis.

The reason why exercise wasn’t considered before is that if people have muscles that are already inflamed or weak, they believed exercise would make the muscles worse. However, what is surprising is the question of why exercise is so effective. It’s because exercise takes care of the immune cells that are damaging the muscle while simultaneously targeting specific parts of dead or affected muscles.

While there are no drugs today that target all the issues of muscle inflammation, the researchers believe a combination of medication and endurance-based exercise can help patients live a happier and healthier life.

(Endurance training helpful in recovery from muscle inflammation first appeared on QVRP.net)