About 10 years ago, I started using foam rollers to help my Personal Training clients to improve their posture and at the time, nobody had heard of foam rolling, so I came across quite a lot of resistance.
Looking back on it now, I’m not really surprised. I mean, people were expecting me to turn up and give them a great workout, but the first thing they got was me asking them to lay on the floor for 10 minutes creating pain for themselves!
How I managed to convince them to do it I’ll never know!
Credibility is always something mobility has struggled with. Ten years ago, it was difficult to get anyone to do any at all, now it’s a struggle to get folks to change from foam rolling.
But why has it always been an issue?
Well, I can’t say for certain, but I’m pretty sure that two of the main reasons that folks don’t want to foam roll are because it’s really painful and it takes ages – but when it comes to my SMARTT® methods, which are really quick and simple, I think the main issue is that it seems almost TOO simple.
Many people struggle to get their heads around how something as easy as putting one foot in front of the other, for example, can be doing them any good at all, when everything else in the fitness industry seems so complex.
But my question is – if it doesn’t need to be complex, why make it so it is?
I saw a post on social media the other day that was recommending certain movements to promote strength and muscle activation. It was a simple graphic giving the number of repetitions and the order of the exercises but no explanation of why those particular movements had been chosen, or why that number of repetitions.
When I asked if there was a blog post or further explanation anywhere detailing these choices, I was told that there was no real reasoning behind it, just to activate the muscles.
Why is it people are easily persuaded to do a random set of exercises with no explanation at all, simply because they’re told these exercises will help (when in fact most of them will contribute to injury), yet people are unwilling to accept that something so simple as rotating your spine will help performance?
There’s one thing you can be sure of with my SMARTT® methods, and that’s everything I recommend has sound reasoning behind it.
If you pick one movement – any movement that I demonstrate, you hear me explain which joint we’re trying to target or why that’s helpful to you, or what’s happening when you move in certain ways.
A good example of this was yesterday’s mostmotion® show. In 5 minutes, I demonstrate the simple spinal rotation movement, explain why it’s helpful AND point out the details of what should be moving, or not.
I encourage everyone to ask “why”.
I’ve annoyed the living daylights out of my parents with that question while I was growing up, and I continue to use it to get to the bottom of someone’s movement issues now.
It’s one of the biggest things I teach my SMARTT® Coaches – if you don’t truly understand why you’re giving someone a movement to do, you can’t recognise if they’re struggling with it, and you can’t change it so that they’re not struggling anymore, you have absolutely no business teaching it.
Mobility has enough credibility issues without cowboy trainers who’ve just seen a few moves on YouTube getting involved – that’s a recipe for injury if ever I heard one!
So don’t be fooled by the simplicity of what we’re doing here.
I’ve done all the thinking for you, so all you have to do is get on with the movement – and have some fun along the way! And if you’re ever not sure of why you’re doing something, just ask, I’m always happy to share my reasons.
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