Finding the Right Exercises for YOU
As a part of my summer plan to keep moving and stay in shape, I have to hold myself accountable, and I do much better at that if I have someone else who is counting on me to show up. Even trainers need their own trainers! So, I had my first training session with Isabelle of Stronger Human last week, and it was awesome! Isabelle has a broad background that ranges from dance and yoga to kettlebells, and she approached our session with a neurological perspective (courtesy her studies with Z-Health Performance), which was exactly what I was looking for. I’ve learned, since starting my own Z-Health studies, that not every exercise is good for everyone, and understanding neurology is critical to knowing how to prescribe the right exercises.
Case in point: one of my goals was to build upper body strength, and we were limited to the resistance bands I had at home. The normal strategy when using resistance bands is to anchor the band to an object and then use your body to pull the band away from the anchor, against the resistance (image on the left). However, using the band in this manner actually distracts (pulls apart) the shoulder joint slightly. For someone like myself who has hypermobile shoulders (and therefore less proprioception — a post for another time), this distraction is actually very threatening. It means I have a harder time sensing where my shoulders are, and my brain responds by making my overall movement weaker and tighter — not what you want when your goal is to build strength! So we had to get creative to figure out a line of pull of the resistance that would actually create more joint compression, increasing the proprioception. We did (image on the right), and I felt great!
Food for thought for your own training. Are you choosing exercises that are actually moving you towards you goals? Or do you find yourself plateauing, your brain too threatened to allow you to progress? Let me know if you would like help evaluating your current movement/exercise plan, or creating a new one!