Tag Archive for: Mobility

What we can learn from dogs about pain

I am a self-professed believer in “quality-over-quantity” in all things. This runs contrary to the American ethic, and the ethic in most cultures around the world. We are culturally hard-wired to ask quantitative questions: How much? How fast? How far? How soon? As Reinhold Niebuhr noted: “Americans seek a solution to practically every problem in life in quantitative terms.” Just look at teh Walmart sales pitch: save money, live better. It’s effective; getting more and paying less has to be better . . . right? I don’t think so. We need to consider a valuation system based on the innate quality of things.

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The power of Indian clubs

Indian clubs are hardly a new form of training. Their history goes back to ancient times and it was even an Olympic event in 1904 and 1932. They fell out of fashion for a time, but, as with the kettlebell, they’ve seen a renaissance over the last decade. Now they’re used primarily as training tools for overhead athletes and throwers. As a swim coach I’ve seen a big crossover for the tool. Below I explain why I feel Indian clubs are so essential to our training, as well as ideas on how to use them.

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Developing mobility for tackling and grappling sports

Tackling sports are dynamic and chaotic. Athletes end up bent and folded in seemingly unpredictable ways. Fortunately, the situations occur in recognizable patterns, and these repeating patterns can give us clues on how to best warm-up and prepare. The collisions and grappling requires a wide range of flexibility and mobility. If an athlete can not move into and out of these tight and jumbled postures, they will avoid them, they will not have the necessary awareness to see them, or they will be injured when they are forced into them. A well designed training program can prepare athletes for these collision positions. 

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January 2021 in review: mobility

The site theme in January was mobility. You’ll find all the links below to our top new and archived resources on the topic. As always, become a HMMR Plus Members to get complete access to the resources below, and much more content on a variety of topics available in the HMMR Classroom.

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Own your range: getting the most from your ankle mobility

Look around social media and you’ll find that the ankle has become the joint of the moment. Can’t squat well? Must be poor ankle mobility. Set a sprint personal best? Gotta be the ankle stiffness. There is no doubt that good ankle joint function is critical as it is one of the first joints to absorb impact in any ground-based sport. But it is also one of the most complex joints we have and, like any joint, it works in coordination with the whole body. When we look to improve ankle mobility and function we have to keep these points in focus.

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HMMR Podcast Episode 240: The mobility man (with Kelly Starrett)

When it comes to mobility, Kelly Starrett is the man. The topic was almost taboo when he starting teaching the CrossFit community about it. Now he’s working with elite athletes and teams in nearly every sport around the world. On this week’s podcast he joins us to talk about how we need to reframe the conversation around mobility and rethink youth development.

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What I think about when I think about mobility

The site theme this month is mobility. Mobility is a term that’s been a bit bastardized. Kelly Starrett, who will join the HMMR Podcast next week, helped popularize the term and even he told us the term has now come to mean everything and nothing just like the word “core” or “functional.” I’ve done a lot of research on mobility this month, and it has helped me shape my own thoughts on the topic. I wanted to share a few ideas about how I understand mobility and its role in the performance equation.

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What’s in a word: why we need to think beyond flexibility and mobility

“Strength and conditioning”—the collective sobriquet most often assigned to the profession of training athletes to soar toward the upper limits of their potential—is an amalgam of two tremendously elastic and ill-defined words. They are among many terms in the coaching lexicon that are, most often, used without much concern for their precise meaning.

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Improving mobility for weightlifting

The sport of weightlifting requires speed, strength, coordination, and mobility all packed together with skill. Anyone can pick something off the floor, but picking something heavy up and lifting it above the head is much more difficult. Even the strongest individuals can only lift heavy weights so far off the floor. Therefore, in order to lift, you have to get under the bar. And do it quickly under time constraints. This is the essence of weightlifting and distinguishes it from the other ‘strength’ sports such as powerlifting and strongman.

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HMMR Podcast Episode 220: The shark tank (with Mike Potenza)

On our last episode we looked at how some youth and amateur coaches are dealing with the current pandemic. This week we get some feedback from the pro level with Mike Potenza. He shares how the San Jose Sharks are managing their athletes through this situation and how that compares to a typical offseason approach. We also discuss training flexibility, his in-season training philosophy, player monitoring, and more. Read more