Lots of one kind of movement, not a lot of other kinds of movement. And my body was feeling it.
I had racked up several days in a row of hiking difficult terrain followed by being seated with my spine rounded and my legs tucked up under me. And when I was finally back home in a place where I had space and time to move my body freely, I was super ready to get to work restoring myself.
I know a lot of folks who restore themselves after a big effort by just waiting out the sore muscles. This is definitely not the fastest or most productive way to restore yourself after your body is feeling worked over, so in this blog, I want to share with you a few tips that I used to help my body feel like it was back at 100% again (and quickly).
Helping Tissue Soreness
Despite having muscles that felt sore, I didn’t do much foam rolling or self massage. Read this article: Four Myths About Mobility Training to learn the full story on foam rollers, but here’s a snippet:
The inputs applied to your body to make a change to your range of motion have to change the structure of the tissues themselves and change the neural control of that joint and those tissues. Foam rolling just won’t do this.
Instead, what I did was wear VitalSox for long stretches of the day/night.
Compression socks, which VitalSox are, help your circulatory system as well as your lymphatic system to move blood and lymph more efficiently through the area being compressed. This means that more oxygen-rich blood moves into the area, and more waste-filled lymph moves out of the area.
You can find them on my Products & Gear I Love page because they are a product I’ve loved for nearly a decade.
Restoring From
Repetitive Movements & Positions
I didn’t try to ‘do the opposite’ of whatever positions I’d been in most. People do this frequently – think “well if I’m sitting with my hips tucked and shoulders rounded, then I’ll do lots of stuff where my hips are tipped the opposite way and my shoulders go the opposite way (ie, squeezing the shoulder blades together).”
You’re not an equation to be balanced out. Your body isn’t keeping track of how many times you flexed your spine and is waiting for you to extend your spine an equal number of times before it lets you feel good.
Instead of wasting time trying to ‘balance out’, what I did was bring as much movement variety and as much movement specificity as I could to my body. These sound like opposites, I know. They are.
Varied movement is any movement that is based in moving freely, randomly, in whatever way comes to mind. This kind of moving is a sensory-rich experience for you and your brain, and is a bit like a reminder to your brain, “hey, remember we can move this way”.
(I gave an in-depth talk about this for my Unbreakable Body students…if you’re a UB Complete member, you can watch the playback of that talk in the UB Forum).
Movement specificity is doing things like the Controlled Articular Rotations (CARs) that myself and fellow Functional Range Conditioning mobility specialists teach. It’s controlled, intentional, and serves as a delivery system for important information to my brain about the status of my joints.
Here’s a few examples of each style of movement from my video archive:
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After a healthy dose of all of the above – plus some good sleep and food – I’m feeling restored, back to status quo, and ready for the next adventure.
Want to help your feet be ready for your next adventure?
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And when your feet feel and function better, you can have more adventures!
