Almost every client that walks in our doors would like to have more strength. Many office workers, homemakers, warehouse workers, and athletes feel they do not have adequate strength to perform their daily activities. I often hear complaints about the difficulty of picking things up off the ground, carrying groceries from the car to the house, lifting objects overhead, and many other problems associated with sports activities. Other common complaints people have are about muscles becoming tired quickly, joints that ache, and the inability to move the body as quickly as they used to.
Many have tried different forms of exercise to eliminate these challenges, but what they do not realize is that if they would just follow a set of six basic principles to develop the strength and power they need, they would eliminate their physical challenges and achieve their physical objectives. In this article I will briefly discuss these six laws of developing strength and power that I practice with my clients every day, helping them to improve their strength, power, and in the process reduce the risk of injury.
LAW NUMBER ONE: Flexibility and Posture
Our entire body must be flexible. We need to have a full range of motion in order to achieve and maintain optimal strength and power potential. When the muscles in a joint are tight, flexibility is limited, so the joints above or below the tight joint are made to move in ways they are not designed to. This oftentimes causes pain in the joints that are doing more work, and over time this kind of problem can lead to injury and degeneration of the joint. As an example, some of our clients have come to us complaining about knee pain. Working with them we discovered that the muscles in their ankle or the hip were tight, which had forced their knee to move more than it was designed to. Therefore it is important that we work to loosen tight muscles in order to develop the flexibility we need for to be able to perform the physical activities we want to. There are a number of simple mobilization exercises can be performed to improve joint function, such as stretching, massage, and myofascial release with a foam roller. These exercises are designed to lengthen the short muscles that are restricting the movements of our joints.
Directly linked to flexibility, our bodies work most efficiently when we can also maintain an ideal posture. A proper posture provides an ideal joint range of motion in all directions, ensuring an optimal axis of rotation of the joints that are moving. This will further reduce the chance of joint injury and degeneration.
Improving flexibility and posture will increase your strength. However, the time needed to create adequate flexibility and ideal posture will vary, as it depends upon your condition when you start these exercises.
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