What do you mean by “laying on each quad”? How are you doing that?
I have a problem with my feet cramping. Anyone have a recommendation for that? Not on the bike, but whenever I extend the foot straight back from my leg, for example during Cobra or Child’s Pose, or stretching. Anything that does this with the rear foot causes almost immediate cramping. It’s been happening for a few months, so just doing those poses more isn’t helping.
Putting full weight of a roller on one of the quads and slowly working through the entire quad until each spot releases.
So start just above the knee, find a tight spot, lay there a while and relax until the tight spot loosens, move up and find another spot, repeat.
Doing this has done so much more than just rolling up and down, which does seem to have merit to warm up the fascia/muscle pre exercise. But as @killroy123 notes, that can be done with a massage gun as well which is actually preferable.
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I’m not sure I can give an unbiased opinion because I have Becoming a Supple Leopard, and Ready to Run, both of which Kelly Starrett wrote, and I also listen weekly to his podcast. I guess that makes me a “fan” if there is such a thing.
The positives of the app is the level of detail he puts into each activity and each movement and far as sport specific his list of pre and post workout movements is second to none.
If there is a negative though, it’s that there isn’t one “pre ride” routine that gets you 100% of the way there where you can just shut your mind off and do it. Instead, there is a little bit of knowledge the user needs to have regarding their own limitations and select the appropriate movements.
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Does the book Becoming a Supple Leopard lay out a daily routine? Or is it more along the lines of do all of these stretches? I’ve been considering purchasing the book, but i don’t want to get a book that shows me 50 stretches and the benefits. I am looking more for a program, start here with an end goal.
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Its more of an encyclopedia of movements rather than laying out a direct plan. The idea is you pick your movements on the basis of what you need.
There’s the book “Deskbound” which kinda gives a plan to address sitting specifically but, that too recommends movements on what you feel you need.
Tbh, this is why I never did mobility work in the first place; it was too much time trying to figure out what to do rather than someone telling me “do this”. Thats why I opted for GOWOD. But if you really need to know why you’re doing what you’re doing, The Ready State or a more specific app like that might be better.
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Correct. Prior to all of the apps and YouTubers the encyclopedia is what we had. The positive is you learn a ton, the negative is you have to read a ton
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And I think thats both good and bad. Getting into MobilityWOD makes you realize how things are connected and why stretching and mobility are important.
…but for me it was always “now I have to read 3 articles and 5 youtube videos to figure out why my calves hurt and what to do” and that just got to be way too mentally exhausting to deal with.
One set of mobility plans I did love but it never caught fire like Kelly Starret was “Assess and Correct” by Eric Cressey. They basically outlined basic mobility benchmarks and, if you couldn’t do them, you’d do exercises to specifically target them. That was in like…2010 if I remember.
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Wow, that was a long time ago - haha. I never had Assess and Correct, but I am staring at a copy of Cresseys Maximum Strength book that I’ve not opened in a very long time.
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Yup.
Tbh, I’ve always wanted to know the science of mobility work but…curiously…its never really been brought up beyond “it feels good”. I think that feeling plus the “i just need to read more from this person” just turned me off mentally.
That said, these new tools are great and I feel like I should have been doing much more mobility work earlier.
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I think it’s due to the manner in which things were presented to us as consumers/non medical professionals. In the late 90s and early 2000s stability/core strength/general strength really hit the mainstream. Lots of people got going with that but what wasn’t really discussed was that If you have imbalances, etc, just doing strength and stability further engrains poor movement patterns. With mobility you essentially have to undo the bad before you can do anything remotely good.
I think this is where CrossFit comes in and is actually helpful to the rest of us. These folks were exacerbating issues in a short time that typically take years for an endurance athlete to develop. I think that’s why a lot of the mobility stuff comes from CrossFit origins.
This response was all over the place. It made sense in my mind and then I reread and I have no idea if it comes across as coherent.
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I view Crossfit as a huge positive despite some very clear and glaring shortcomings.
The entire movement basically saved weightlifting and strength sports which was on the way out when I was young. Doing any powerlifts or, god forbid, Olympic lifts in a gym either got you thrown out or you’d be lectured at about how you’re going to destroy your knees.
In a weird way, getting people excited about strength training was great for getting mobility work off the ground too. I mean, now you had to deal with all these injuries. Things are leaps and bounds better now but, like all safety regulations, they were developed over many errors and injuries.
Super weird to me that strength training now is as widespread as it is. I do kinda miss the days of getting looked at funny by people when you do a snatch.
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I have the same thing happen to me every now and then. When it hits, I just have to back out of the movement, try to slowly get back in, rinse repeat. I don’t have a magic bullet, but what has seemed to work is doing the following:
- Foam roll my feet
- Foam roll front and back of calves
- Work on calf mobility - barefoot
- Calf raises - barefoot
Seemed because I’ve been doing the above, and I haven’t gotten a foot cramp in a long time (> 6 months). But this is all corralation
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Agreed, the whole things are connected revelation from me was both mobility work but also just putting together a bunch of life changes. Sorry this will be long but I have a good personal example of ignoring it screwing me for years.
I was dealing with knee problems since I started driving. Working on my feet all day by the end of the day I couldn’t stand, would actually have nightmares about my knees locking up. Sitting just made it it hurt faster. If I drove more than 2-3 hours I could barely get out of the car. Drs couldn’t find anything and just blamed all the scars on my knees… but then couldn’t say why
2008 ish I got some fixed back high bolster carbon fiber seats in one of my cars. This forced me to move my driving position back from what I did for 10+ years prior. I could drive that car from GA to NJ 10ish hours without a problem. People thought I was insane doing those trip in a race car but it was more comfortable. They are also less fatiguing to drive in since they have so much support. Every other car I still had some issues.
2015 after IM puerto rico where we rented a car and drove around for 2 weeks, after we got home I couldn’t walk without pain for months. If I sat at work I couldn’t walk after, built a standing desk which helped but not perfect. I blamed it on not enough rest after the race causing a serious problem but then I remembered back to 2008 and the seating position, cranked the seat back on all my cars, started to get a little better but still usually had problem on long drives.
We had IM maine coming up (2017) and after we were driving around Canada camping with my Dads Boxster, parents did similar trip for their honeymoon in an X1/9 about 40 years before. I’m dreading what a lot of driving after a race is going to do to my knee. Laying in bed one day moving my foot back and forth after a long drive and my knee hurting notice that it feels a little better depending on how my foot is positioned. I remember Starrett or someone else saying something like find the source by going up from the pain. So I was a little confused by the foot movement, being down not up, was changing the pain. With my hand on my hip area I feel a muscle up there lengthening and shortening. Put my foot in the position it would be how I drive and its shortened. Put it straight or toed in… lengthens. Following it with my fingers (and try to figure out which one it is on google) and bam… connects right to the spot of my knee pain.
2 decades of knee pain all from a muscle starting near my hip that shortens when I turn my toes outward while driving. I still have to consciously remember to turn my toes in when I drive in from time to time. If my knee starts to bother me 100% chance I adapted back to toe being out. Sleeping with my legs straight also helps a lot at keeping the pain away.
TLDR my biggest take away from mobility work is if you have a problem with a joint or muscle don’t focus on that one part, check all the connections. Also don’t rule out other aspects of your life which could be the cause.
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Anybody using the app and having trouble with the videos loading? iOS…
Found the vids to be super laggy/ slow loading on android. One of the reasons I gave up on the whole thing!