To keep your body healthy and strong, you need to correct the imbalances caused by sitting all day at a desk and performing repetitive movements.
To correct these imbalances and truly help prevent and alleviate injuries, you can’t just simply go and workout. You can’t just simply lift weight and expect to get stronger.
Because even if you have seemingly perfect form, you may not be activating and using the correct muscles to lift the weight – and this could lead to injury instead of you getting stronger and fitter.
In order to make sure you are using the correct muscles when you lift, you must implement all four training elements – foam rolling, stretching, activation and strength training – in your workout routine.
You can’t simply skip to strength training and expect your body to work correctly and remain injury-free.
Before you start your workout and your strength training routine, you must first start to work on restoring your flexibility and joint mobility by foam rolling tight areas. When you foam roll, you help release knots so that muscles can become loose and ready to work.
By starting your workout program with foam rolling, you can start restoring muscles to their proper length-tension relationships. When muscles are at their proper length tension relationship, they can contract properly allowing us to lift more weight and engage the correct muscles to do the work.
Also, by loosening up knots, you can help improve your joint mobility. When a muscle is tight and shortened, it can change how your joint operates. It can limit your range of motion around a joint, leading to improper movement patterns and compensations
But foam rolling alone won’t restore your flexibility and joint mobility.
Once you’ve foam rolled to start getting the tight, overactive muscles loose, you then need to stretch to help elongate shortened muscles.
Below are 35 Stretches that stretch everything from your feet to your neck and wrists. These moves will help you improve your flexibility and mobility so that you can move better and feel better.
And then once you’ve stretched out using a few of these moves, make sure to get those underactive muscles working with some activation exercises before you move onto your strength training!
Low back and hip pain are common problems especially for anyone with a desk job. However, some foam rolling (or a back massage) and stretching of your low back won’t be enough to really relieve your pain.
Because sometimes where you feel the pain, isn’t the place causing the problem, especially when it comes to low back pain.
Often to relieve your low back and hip pain, you need to focus on foam rolling, stretching, activating and strengthening your entire core.
Because overly tight muscles in your core (such as your hips and lats) and underactive muscles in your core (such as your glutes and deep intrinsic core stabilizers) can all be contributing to your hip and back pain.
Follow our 4 Step Program below to Relieve Your Low Back and Hip Pain.
A strong core means less risk for injury and pain. And if you suffer from low back pain, you need to strengthen your core!
That is why the Pelvic Tilt exercise is a must-do move. It activates your intrinsic core stabilizers so that your core is working and your low back doesn’t have to.
Because we sit all day, which create imbalances and tight muscles, our abs aren’t activated and working. Because our abs aren’t working, our low back sometimes take over and does work it shouldn’t, which leads to pain and injury.
Therefore anyone with low back pain or even simply a desk job, needs to do the Pelvic Tilt Exercise.
Plus if you’ve ever done Leg Lowers, or any other ab exercise, and felt the move in your low back, it means your abs aren’t yet strong enough to stay engaged during that move. Therefore, you need to do the pelvic tilt first to engage and strengthen your abs!
While we firmly believe that EVERYONE should do the Pelvic Tilt, it is often only recommended for women post pregnancy to help them regain their ab strength. However, no one can ignore this very important core stabilizing exercise if they suffer from low back pain!
Here’s how to do the Pelvic Tilt exercise and prevent and alleviate your low back pain!
Many of the AMAZING glute activation exercises that we should all be doing are those funny looking moves that Jane Fonda used to do in her leotard with ankle weights.
They are the moves that most people, especially guys, avoid.
However, everyone from the professional athlete to the guy or gal sitting behind the desk for 9 hours a day (especially actually that guy or gal with a desk job) should do those funny looking glute activation moves!
Glute activation can help you reduce your risk of injury and even alleviate your lower back pain by relaxing overactive hip flexors AND by getting your glutes to fire efficiently and effectively so that your lower back and hamstrings don’t compensate and become overworked.
Because so many of us spend so much time seated, our hips can become tight and our glutes can become underactive.
So getting them firing efficiently is key!
When your glutes are strong you’ll also find your running speed and endurance improves AND you can lift more!
Plus, strong glutes look pretty darn nice too!
And you can accomplish all of this by using those SILLY LOOKING ISOLATION MOVES!
Glute activation exercises should be included in your warm up to establish that mind-body connection so you can effectively recruit the muscles during your compound lifts or runs.
This will help you use proper recruitment patterns so your lower back doesn’t become overworked!
You can also include these more isolated moves in your supplemental circuits OR even as a nice quick finisher to your workout routine!
