A good primer on some quick and easy mobility drills that can enhance intra-day recovery.
As athletes, we condition our bodies to make them stronger. We know that by exercising we can increase the size, density and efficiency of our muscles, the toughness of our connective tissue and the density and even thickness of our bones. Perhaps more importantly, we teach our brain how to use our muscles, tendons and bones more efficiently. What most of us forget is that --with the exception of some mental gains-- this progress does not occur during the actual exercise. In order for the body to grow stronger it has to rest and rebuild itself; it needs to recover. Progress as an athlete is a two-sided equation; conditioning and recovery. Most athletes do not concentrate enough on the latter part of that equation until they break themselves down to the point of actual injury. As traceurs and trickers, we need to be especially wary of the stress we put on our joints. If you believe that recovery is important, the next step is obviously to ask how do we encourage our bodies to recover, how do we rehabilitate ourselves from the stresses of our training? How do we prehabilitate our joints to prevent injuries? The answer is paradoxically more training, but of a different kind; what’s known in the fitness world as active recovery. Simple passive recovery is not very efficient for ridding the body of the metabolic toxins accumulated during intense exercise, nor does it efficiently encourage the rehabilitation of small stress injuries. You need both active and passive recovery days for optimum performance. Active recovery is accomplished by doing soft exercises, aimed not at breaking down the body but simply at helping it respond more efficiently; both neurologically and hormonally, to the stress you have put it through. Your goal in active recovery is to stimulate the body to heal faster, to get blood flowing to sore muscles and joints, to flush metabolic toxins, and replace needed nutrients. Light aerobic exercise, like walking, slow bike riding, or gentle swimming, is an excellent way to assist the body’s healing. Light static stretching and light dynamic stretching and joint mobility exercises are also important exercises for recovery. These exercises also help the body release synovial fluid to nourish and lubricate the joints, resurface the cartilage, keeping it smooth, and finally strengthen all the stabilizing muscles of the joint, preventing injury. Much of yoga is oriented towards this sort of rehabilitative exercise. Many dance body isolations are excellent joint isolations exercises as well. While I can't claim to be an expert on this topic, I can give you the exercises I use and teach to my gymnastics students. The most basic aim is to be able to do an isolated rotation of each of major joint areas in the body. Wrists, elbows, shoulders, neck, upper spine, lower spine, hips, knees and ankles, and even fingers and toes can be exercised this way. In order to accomplish the circle one first needs to be able to extend or flex the joint in four different directions. Try this with your shoulders: up, down, side to side. Now try with your chest. If you’re like most people extending and hollowing the chest should not be a problem, however moving it side to side in isolation will likely be difficult. That’s okay, keep working on it and it will come. Some joints will need more then one kind of rotation, like the shoulder. The shoulder is the most flexible joint in the body and also one of the most easily injured. Maintaining strong mobile shoulders will be important for any athlete. You can start by doing shrugs of the shoulder in circular fashion; remember that circles should always be performed in both directions. Then you can swing the whole arm in a full circle. Lastly you can grab a towel (dowel, theraband, or shirt) hold it between your hands at a comfortable distance in front of you and then with straight arms pull the towel over your head until your feel a gentle stretch. If you can’t get the towel over your head make your hands wider. Don’t force the stretch, but rather work up slowly as your flexibility increases. For your elbows I call what I teach my kids the “wax on wax off.” If you have seen karate kid, you know what I mean. Try to rotate your forearm around your elbow in a circle with our elbow moving as little as possible. For your neck and pelvis it’s the same as the chest. Try to flex and extend the joint, then side to side isolation, then try to put the movements together in a circle. For the hips I use martial arts crescent kicks. It is basically a big circle of the leg with a straight leg. You an also move the joint through a full circle with a bent leg. For the knee I use a drill I learned in jujitsu. Lie on your back with your legs up in the air and try to create a circle with your lower leg without moving your upper leg. One can start with circles of the ankle. In gymnastics we also attempt to write the ABC’s with the foot as a more advanced mobility exercise. This is by no means an exhaustive or complete system of mobility exercises. More extensive complete systems are available here. http://www.rmax.tv/warrior.html http://www.dragondoor.com/b16.html
On top of practicing this type of rehabilitative exercise regularly (once a day is good), you should begin and end every intense exercise session with a period spent doing light aerobic exercise, stretching (dynamic stretching at the beginning and static at the end) and joint mobility. If one has weaknesses in their joints they can use this type of exercise as a conditioning exercise for the joints as well by using therabands for resistance. This is an important training tool when recovering from joint injuries. Specific conditioning excercises for the joints may also be helpful. In order to ensure optimal recover one also needs to sleep properly. Athletes need lots of sleep. Also drink plenty of water, since water helps flush metabolic toxins, aids fat breakdown for metabolism, and is generally the most important supplement an athlete can take. Finally, one should eat a varied and nutritious diet. Fruits and vegetables should provide the bulk of your carbohydrates, mono unsaturated and natural saturated fats the majority of your fats, and athletes need lots of high quality protein (20-30 percent of your calorie intake). A multivitamin is a good thing to invest in as well. Glucosamine supplementation for the joints is also worth considering for athletes who put the excessive stress on their joints that we do. In order to get an idea of what your calorie break down and vitamin needs are try www.fitday.com
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