Training to Fulfill Emotional Needs

Have you ever asked yourself why you train?  Have you ever written out your goals for today?  Your goals for the week, your goals for the month, for the year, for the next 3 years, for the next 5?  If the answer is no, I don't have a list of goals anywhere.  Then I ask again why do you train? Why do you train the way you do?

Every training program will produce a result of some kind.  There will also be negatives from every training program.  If you fail to plan for success than you plan for failure and you fail to account for the negatives until one day it seems like out of the blue your shoulder hurts or your knee hurts or everything hurts.  That's because you have had vision for today but nothing beyond.

Do you train to experience an emotional feeling you do not get from your personal life?  Or from your professional life?  This is common for everyone because life can be hard and we don't always get things the way we want them.  Training is about improvement each day.  It's about doing what's optimal for the body so that it can function at its best in the scenarios we face each day.  Its the same as nutrition the more you plan for what you want the more likely you will get a result.

Train to get the result you want and if you are not getting that result than change your training program.  Look at where you have opportunities in your program to improve.  That can mean to do less training!!! that can mean to do MORE stretching or that can mean to get more sleep and eat better.  That can mean that if you just adjusted the amount of times you looked at your phone your neck would feel better or if you had a zero tolerance for pain instead of i'm ok with this little bit of pain.

What are the reasons you train?  What are your short term goals?  What are your long term goals?  If you don't know the answers to these questions than you are on your way or already have harmed yourself physically and probably emotionally. 

The importance of flexibility

Back Pain...Knee Pain...Two of the most common physical pain ailments that people suffer from.  What are the major causes?  What can I do about it? 

First, the major causes.

1) Your training program - not just the one you are doing now but all of the programs you have done in your lifetime.  Everything you do and have done to your body has a cause and effect relationship.  Having an unbalanced training program will cause injuries over time...slowly.  when you finally experience pain it may seem like it just happened out of nowhere, but that is not the case.

2) Quad Dominance - this is a term used to describe someone's lower body muscle patterns.  If you are quad dominant you have learned to use your quad muscles in a way that is out of balance with the rest of the lower body. This is caused by unbalanced and/or inappropriate training programs, sitting for prolonged periods of time, and if you play or played a sport running is quad dominant! It is easy to fall into this category. 

What Can I do about it?

STRETCH

1) Stretch your quads and hip flexor muscles using the stretch in the image above.  The height of the rear foot at the start of the stretch will be determined by your tolerance to discomfort and how tight you are in the beginning.

Some of you may have to start with your foot on the ground rather than a bench or chair.  That is ok it is just a starting point.  After you are set up make sure your body is lined up (you can do this by using a mirror to check or using your fingers to determine that your legs are in a straight line with your body). 

Then, Tuck your butt...Your aim is to have NO arch in the lower back and to be sitting up straight.  If you lean back you will arch your back so avoid that position.  I really want you to feel the stretch right in the front of the hip the most.  You will also feel it in the front of the leg that you are kneeling on.  Take some deep breaths and learn how to calm yourself so that you relax.  When the stretch sensation has gone down or even gone away you can increase the stretch.  This is done by moving the knee backwards closer to the bench or if you started with your foot on the ground, elevating the foot.  Go through the same process of tucking the butt and relaxing.  You can repeat this process as many times as you feel necessary. 

Your goal is to achieve relaxation so that can be a different timeframe form one person to the next.  Stretch for the FEEL of relaxation and time how long that takes.  You can use this to measure your progress and ability to calm your body.  Feel free to ask questions.