Mobility drills can be some of the most powerful exercises that you can do.
It is also one of the best things to include into a fitness routine warm up.
This will increase balance, proprioception, oxygen intake, spatial awareness
and improve your visual field. You may not think anything is so great about
all those benefits but the impact is profound, here’s why:
- Your brain isconstantly monitoring your environment for any threat to survival
- and yourbrain can perceive many things as a threat which you are totally unconscious of.
- Something as simple as not breathing properly will cause a huge threat to every function of your body.
- When threat is reduced, you body functions betterand feels safer.
Essentially this routine will reduce perceived fear and improve
over all performance in everything in life especially exercise results. When you
increase proprioception or your body’s awareness of itself in space, you will see
dramatic improvement in movement patterns, strength, balance, stability,
flexibility and mobility as well as reduced pain. This also translates into faster
fat loss and weight loss, reduced stress, better absorbtion of nutrients and better
brain function, meaning faster and clearer thoughts. The same holds true with
every other facet of how the brain perceives threats. The mobility drills are
designed to reduce all the possible threats that your brain might be perceiving.
Do this routine everyday and you definitely feel a major different in every aspect
of your life.
“Hey! What’s going on? It’s Ian Hart here from EarthFITtraining.com and today I am going to go through mobility exercises that will increase proprioception. So essentially what’s that gonna do is make you feel safer in your environment. And also, it will reduce pain. If you do something like this – even 5-10 minutes a day, it would literally change your entire life. You’ll have more awareness in space, you’ll increase your visual perception and you’ll also increase your breathing, which will reduce stress and threat to the body and allow your life to become better. So I’m gonna take you to every joint and we are going to do movements to every joint and it’s going to loosen the whole body. One thing I want you to do while you’re doing this is belly breathing. So breathing in and out through your belly. Here we go, we’re gonna get started and follow me through we are going to get about 3 to 5 repetitions of each exercise.
Alright, here we go!
1. The neck
-Forward and backwards (3-5 reps)
-Turn side to side (3-5 reps)
-Lateral (3-5 reps)
-Turn, look down and across, each time try to move into a good stretch
-Look across, up and over, when you look up and across try to push your head up to the top and feel a good stretch all down your neck.
2. Shoulder Rotations
-Rolling your shoulders forward and backwards
-Shoulders up, full rotation
-1 arm, look at your fingertips, 3 rotations backwards and forward
-Circle up in the air and then go bigger and bigger
-Figure 8s: forward figure 8, look all the way back behind you and across the body. Change directions, think about the joint
-Switch arms, same Shoulder Rotation exercises
-Both arms: Forward big circles all the way around (3-4), then the backward direction. Cross the body raising your arms up each time and a little bit more
-Arms crossing the body, open up with palms facing forward and then crossing the body and, bring up a little bit higher
3. Chest
-Suck the chest in and out, push in and out
-Circle around, chest in and out
-Circle the elbows
-Wrist, bring the hands in and then out the other way loosen up the wrist,
-Reach to the ceiling as high as you can (3 reps)
4. Hips
-Tilt pelvis back and forth
-Side to side
-Combine two movements, tilt the body back and forth then switch back the other side (like a gyration).
-Rock the body down to the side (looks like your entire torso is forming a circle). And rotate. If you’re dealing with back pain you may need to avoid this one.
4b. Hips
-Do small circle and each time getting bigger and bigger, forward circles and then move backwards (3 circles at least). The knee is slightly bent
-Figure 8, changing directions
-Switch legs, same exercise
-Lateral movement, same with other side
5. Knees
-Knee wag back and forth and then do circles on the knee, same thing on other leg
6. Ankles
-Step on 1 foot, press down (toes pointed down), turn the foot inward and turn the foot outward
-Switch legs, same exercise
-Circles with the toe (3 circles), then back with the other direction
-Figure 8 with the toes
-Switch, same exercise
So there you have it! That’s total mobility from head to toe. You just loosened up your whole body. So that’s perfect, the next thing you can do is a dynamic warm up before your workout, but if you just do this on a daily basis you will have better connection (mind body connection) with your body, you’ll reduce injury, you’ll increase performance and increase total body awareness, if you can tell, I’m slightly breathing a little bit heavier. You should focus on your breathing in the training. I was speaking so it’s hard for me to focus but while you are doing those movements, you should be going <INHALE> <EXHALE>… you’re gonna get more oxygen to the body and therefore increase performance, get more oxygen into the lungs – and going to feel better.
Alright, so this is Ian Hart with EarthFIT training. There you go, that’s mobility exercises from head to toe. Go ahead and do that 5-10 minutes a day and you’re gonna see how it changes your life and your performance.”
Committed to your success,
Ian
P.S. We are going to start including some of these routines in the warm ups before training sessions at EarthFIT. I think you are really going to love the restults.
P.P.S. THe feedback from the Parasympathetic workout and seminar has been incredible. If you missed that and would be interested in us doing it again, please let us know. If we have enough people interested, we may do it again.
Ian Hart is a Body-Mind Transformation expert, the creator of EarthFIT Training Systems, co-creator of BACK PAIN RELIEF4LIFE, and founder of BEAUFORTPERSONALTRAINING.COM and MYBACKPAINCOACH.COM. Ian and his team help people get into optimal shape in the safest, fastest and most effective way possible, using cutting edge science.