Happy Monday Everyone!
Hope your weekends were filled with laughter, relaxation, movement, nourishment and happiness.
Not long now until Christmas. I hope you are more organised than we are with our present shopping!
On Friday evening we had our Dinner Club with Ottolinghi being the chef of choice. The table was filled with absolute deliciousness exploding with yummy flavours. Once getting home and putting the kids to bed after 10pm, we decided a relaxed weekend at home was on the cards with very tired children 🙂
On to today’s movement;
SMART TRAINING
Twist
Over the last month we have been covering our fundamental movements patterns
So far we have looked at …
- Squat
- Hinge
- Push
- Pull
- Lunge
and this week, it’s the turn of twist – see what I did there 😉
Why twist?
Nearly all sports involve high levels of twisting activity. Think driving a golf ball, hitting a tennis ball, pitching a baseball, throwing a punch in boxing and passing a rugby ball. But it’s not just high level sport that involves twisting. Twisting aka rotating or rolling is used to roll out of bed in the morning, we rotate our bodies to look behind us, we use it to get up from the ground when we are in a lying position.
The twist (roll) is so important that we classify it as a babies first milestone. It’s the beginning of the human gait cycle and it’s what ties the body (the X) together by connecting the opposite shoulder to the opposite hip.
How to twist?
Contrary to popular belief the twist doesn’t come from the core or abs, it comes from the thoracic spine. In order to effectively twist you must brace your core and rotate from your thoracic spine.
The main problem I see is NOT that people don’t possess twisting power BUT that people lack both the MOBILITY and MOTOR CONTROL to perform twisting correctly.
The thoracic spine should have around 70-90 degrees of rotation and the right sequential sequencing.
Exercises
I am going to breakdown some of my favourite twisting exercises into two categories
1 – Mobility
2 – Motor control
- Segmental upper and lower quadrant rolling
- Half kneeling chops
- Arm bars
- Turkish get ups – roll from ground to elbow
Personally I cannot praise the Turkish Get Up enough. Our ability to effectively roll up from the ground and get back to our feet is game changing particularly to anyone that is at the risk of falling.
NOURISHED BY NATURE
As part of our health journey, Paul and I have been having a daily green smoothie comprising of parsley, kale and beet greens. Put all in a mixer with water and ice and blend. Drink in a nice glass and enjoy the benefits of the bitter taste excellent for the liver. The first couple of drinks you may turn your nose up at however we found after a few, we really enjoy that bitter taste.
A great way to get more vegetables into your diet and assist your liver especially at this time of year when the consumption of alcohol naturally increases 🙂
That’s it for today,
Have a wonderful day.
Paul “twist and shout” and Krystie “go green” Miller
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