Best Movement Flow Tools to Enhance Mobility
To watch the full video, click here: https://youtu.be/1TKX9sGY1jg
Welcome back athletes, coaches. Michael use here CEO of Gymnazo Edu. If you’ve been taught to use a kettlebell primarily to just do this, a rope for just doing this a stick for just doing this and look at a steel mace like this. Because you really don’t know what to think. Then you’re at the right place at the right time to expand your mind because the fitness industry is moving forward quickly. And there will be athletes, trainers, brands, franchises, that will get left behind if these new movement technologies, and these tools are not well understood and applied by all of them in the near future. Simply stated, the fitness industry has been mostly known for lifting weights via barbells, dumbbells and various machines. However, in recent decade plus or so, there had been a strong push from the boutique fitness culture to train and condition with athletic movements for real life or functional biomechanics. At the core of the workouts. What this really means is that we as an industry are starting to understand that we should do workouts that train us to move better, versus just have us look better. Because whether like it or not, the fact is that our bodies have parts like modern machines, whose such parts will get worn out prematurely by single plane, repetitive ad nauseam training and conditioning. So while there are many growing methods, some are much better than others, on how to train the body for sustainable real world athletic movements, or what we’re calling functional mobility. There have been a few choice tools that practitioners including ourselves at Gymnazo have been using to accomplish these very realistic goals for our clients and our athletes. In this video, we’re going to cover tools, some of which you have may already recognized that we use to enhance functional mobility. But like any tool that any professional across any industry has access to. It’s how you use that tool that ultimately matters the most. Please remember that it’s not how the tool fits you or your client. It’s how you fit the tool to yourself, or your client that ultimately matters. So let’s kick this off with the most popular of them all the kettlebell. So here’s an interesting fact. kettlebells date back like 1704. In ancient Russia, or the reuse has counterweights to measure goods and local markets of farming villages, no joke. Russian farmers actually discovered that the kettlebell can be used to swing to press in order to demonstrate strength. So contests were actually held as pastimes in villages and towns during festivals, fairs, and even like carnivals. And from there, well, let’s just say the rest is history. Why do we love this tool? What’s versatility to be honest with you, you know, this thing is amazing for 3d strength, mobility, endurance, and it’s the applications are incredible. Since our bodies functional strength is mostly driven from a hands holding on to something unilaterally, we’re having our feet have the capacity to move in open space or locomote. The kettlebell allows us to replicate that 3d space. The only thing that hinders functionality honestly, is our limit of our imagination of movement as it applies to the human needs and human wants. It’s an amazing, amazing tool. How we use the kettlebell is far from just doing a double hand grip with a sagittal plane hip hinge swing. I know that is what many conventional strength coaches think that the kettlebell is best suited for, but that’d be like saying the iPhone is best suited for making phone calls. And we all know that the iPhone can do way more than that. So check out this demo reel of how you can scale the use of a kettlebell for your functional mobility needs. And on a side note, before we move on, if you’re watching this video around the time that was posted, October 2022, Jim also was hosting Steve Cotter for a virtual and in person kettlebell workshop again on October 8, 2022. If you want to learn from the Godfather himself of kettlebells check out the link in the description to train and learn from Steve directly.
Let’s move on to our next tool, a steel mace. A bit of history on this sucker, the mace could well be one of the oldest weapons in history. Honestly, the ancient stone mace dates back to the last donate about some 50,000 years ago. Now not as far back in time, Hindu warriors would train with a heavier mace made of thick bamboo, and a stone that was last on top to increase their strength and hone their fighting skills. Now, the mace is still used by wrestlers in Northern India and southern Pakistan, and as you likely know, is widely used in the movement training world and of course by us and also, why do we love this tool for mobility, the mace is unique tool because of its imbalance. There are few tools in the industry that represent this quality of weight on one side, but not on the other side. However, again, life as an athlete is vastly imbalanced. And that’s what makes this mace so special, the realness of this of the mass and the potential momentum is just like the sports we play, just like the chores you do around the house or in the garden. And actually how we’ve been doing manual labor since the dawn of time. Here are a few examples of how you can scale the use of this mace for functional mobility.
Now let’s talk about the RMT rope or the rotational movement training rope. This simple, yet effective tool was adopted or relatively speaking, invented by David Weck back in the early 2000s. He was at a fitness seminar and saw a legendary jump rope Buddy Lee showcase some mind blowing jump roping skills. Have you ever seen this guy? He’s incredible. What he noticed was how much body Lee was using the rope to actually throw himself to either side of his body causing that rotational motion in his trunk, and then how much his lower body was free to move in open space at the same time. So when wet got back to San Diego, he set himself a 30 day goal to apply this unique tool and its rotational capacity application to dialed in how we could do it but he the key was he was never going to actually jump the rope. He just wanted to see how it can be incorporated through just the arms only not the feet. It’s actually a really cool, cool story. If you want to learn more about it. You can find that video right up here pinned. We love this tool for mobility because it’s forces your body to train with fluidity, continuity, balance and timing. It trains the dominant and non dominant side of the body with super high volume, minimal impact on joints and in very little time, because there’s so many reps that just happen and happen and happen. The still coordinates with the course fundamental patterns through both the hands and the feet as you move through it. And what makes it the most powerful is that how can we apply to gait or running biomechanics? And just in case you weren’t aware, if we can improve that skill set alone in any athlete, then they’re going to be very well set up for success for the functional mobility, check out a few examples of how you can scale this use of the arm T rope for functional mobility.
The last tool is a stick by stick mobility, there’s no hiding it. There’s nothing new about integrating sticks into a stretch workout. Flexibility focus methods have been working with wooden dowels for a very long time. And it was actually a stick yoga course into us and 15 then inspired the creation of stick mobility by three trainers, Dennis Dumfries, Neal Valera and Mitch Taylor. They started with wooden sticks and found that actually they were too rigid, then they tried pvc piping, which they found was prone to shattering not a good thing. And then before ultimately designing an ultra, ultra flexible stick with grips at the end that you have, right there. We love this tool for mobility for one major reason and several smaller reasons. The major reason does that is it provides stability, when we have more access to stability, the body allows us to reach for more mobility. Here’s how I want you to think about it from a functional spectrum standpoint. If someone has very little walking mobility, right? Well, then a walker or a cane provides them with greater mobility, because they can rely on the stability of that tool, right? Well, on the other end of the spectrum, if the human body body has high quality, intentional muscle control, or internal stability, that an athlete can shape and move their body to amazing athletic movements. Both sides of the spectrum are because of stability. One internal one external. So if we want to train for more mobility with ourselves and our clients than having a tool that gives us that advantage to do so, would be essentially worth investing in right. So let me show you what I’m talking about. Here are a few examples of how you can scale the use of a stick mobility for functional Mobility.
Thanks for joining me for this dive into training for more mobility and some of the tools we use to guide our clients to greater pain free and high performance skills and results. If you found some of these tools especially interesting, check out the video description area we have a few of our friends and their links to their Instagram accounts. If you want to dive deeper into how we intentionally program for any of these tools, please let us know in the comments below. Till next time, cheers.
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