It just didn’t feel like it was running right. I’d put my foot on the accelerator, but the car just seemed to be straining…
When I was fourteen, someone suggested that I’d make a really good PE teacher – and I LOVED sport, so I dedicated every lunchtime, loads of time after school and every single school holiday to helping the PE staff at my high school with the activities for the kids younger than me.
By the time I’d reached seventeen, I knew the staff on the holiday sports camps quite well, so when I offered to go to the local shop for one of them, and cheekily asked if I could borrow his car (having recently passed my test), he agreed.
So I set off.
I drove out of the school grounds and onto the main road, but something wasn’t right.
I must have only have passed my driving test a few months before, so I didn’t know much about cars or how they should feel when driving them, but it seemed really slow.
I didn’t think much of it.
I just pushed harder on the accelerator until I got to the shop at the top of the road and then did the same coming back.
I don’t remember why I didn’t notice when I got to the shop, but It wasn’t until I got back to into the school grounds to park the car that I realised that I’d been driving the car the whole time with the handbrake on!
I know now that I could have caused some serious damage to his car, but since I didn’t know what the problem was until I’d stopped driving, my decision was to just push harder on the accelerator.
It seems like a stupid thing to do, looking back on it now, but you’d be amazed at how many people do this exact same thing with their bodies.
Their training feels increasingly like a strain on the body, but then, we’re taught that “if it’s not hurting, it’s not working”, so that must be a good thing – right?
So we just push harder.
But really, what’s happening is that the blood flow isn’t getting to our muscles to bring oxygen for energy and to remove toxins like lactic acid.
The muscle tightness that’s causing this problem is squashing your blood vessels, preventing the blood getting through, just like the handbrake was slowing the car down (on Monday, I did a Facebook LIVE video explaining how this works – you can watch the replay here).
And the result is that we have to work harder and harder for what seems like little, or no gain.
But the worst thing is that the harder we try to train through it, the worse the restriction on the blood vessels gets!
Fortunately, I didn’t drive the car far with the handbrake on.
But can you say the same about your training?
If you want to make your training feel really easy, for the same speeds, and you want to recover super fast, then we need to remove the muscle tightness that’s causing the restriction to your blood flow.
And the BEST way to do that is through Applied Variety of Movement – the founding principle of the SMARTT® Methods.
It’s not enough to just add multi-directional movement to your stretches, although of course, that’s likely to help.
But knowing exactly where and when to apply that movement – now THAT’S the key.
SMARTT® Club members can follow the Blueprint for Getting Started to be guided, step-by-step, movement-by-movement through EXACTLY what to do to build a regular routine, with hardly any effort, so they can train easier, recover faster and stay involved in their sport for as long as they choose to.
If you’re not a member yet, you can find out how to get instant access here
How will you perform if we take your handbrake off?