Attainable Growth Fitness Blog
Fix for Tight Hips (Part II)
We’re continuing on with our “Fix for Tight Hips” series. Take a peak at the previous post to get yourself caught up if you haven’t already: PART I For today, I wanted to go over a tweak we can do out of the kneeling position. What Does it Do? Just as in the half-kneeling variety, we’re working on opening up the hips using overhead drivers in all three planes. The big difference here will come from the rear foot being elevated, which will place a much higher stretch on the quadriceps group (due to increase stretch from extended hip position AND flexed…
Read MoreFix for Tight Hips (part 1)
I just wanted to post a quick one for today for you to check out. It’ll be the beginning of a series I wanted to share with you over the next few posts about environments and positions you can put your body into that will help mobilize and strengthen your Tight Hips. These will be some “Front Butt” Stretching Variations that you can throw into your warm up, in between squat/lunge sets, or even as a segment of your metabolic conditioning cycle at the end of your work out. The “Front Butt” is a term coined by Gary Gray that…
Read MoreA few “Downward Dog” Tweaks
We’re all pretty familiar with the traditional “downward dog” position in Yoga; It’s a great stretch that works to lengthen the tissues of the posterior chain, or the musculature on the backside of the body from your plantar fascia to your shoulders. Here’s an example of a few tweaks we can employ… Variation 1: – Single Leg Crossbehind – this allows for us to focus on one leg at a time… an important concept, as most people tend to have one leg relatively tighter than the other, and if we stay in the dual leg stance like in the traditional…
Read MoreImprove your Mobility with “The World’s Greatest Stretch”!
If you take a quick poll of your average jane or joe that gets their sweat on at your local gym, and you were to ask them if they’ve heard of the World’s Greatest Stretch as a warm up before they got their main workout in, chances are you’ll hear crickets. Their warm up would most likely go a little something like this: – Bend over, touch toes. – arm circles – arm crossover/unders – jumping jacks If long-term, pain free joint/muscle health is your goal, then it is ESSENTIAL to pick a warm up that prepare your nervous system…
Read MoreStiff Spine? Try These on For Size! (Part IV)
Hey all, I wanted to you today starting where we left off with our series on loosening up your stiff spine. If you missed out, here are the last 3 parts: PART I PART II PART III In Part I and Part II, we talked about Type I and Type II arm driver progressions, respectively, and how we could progress/regress those exercises. In Part III, we add in an external load, in our case, a 10 lb body bar. For today, in Part IV, I wanted to cover how we can progress the movement even more by adding in a lower…
Read MoreFunctional Cardio Commentary
I wanted to discuss one of my favorite fitness videos on Youtube. In it, Paul Chek crushes a functional cardio circuit. I’ve spoken about Paul before, as he has been a big name in the strength, rehabilitation and conditioning industry for the past 30 years, working with many high level athletes, individuals riddled with disease and nutritional deficiencies, as well as pain and injury clients . He has largely been attributed to popularizing the Swiss ball back in the mid 90s as an exercise tool to train and condition the core. In this video, Paul takes us through his idea of…
Read MoreStiff Spine? Try These on for Size! (part III)
I hope the week is going well for you. We’re continuing on with our series on how we can loosen things up in your stiff spine to relieve tightness. If you missed out on the first 2 parts, you can read about them HERE for Part 1, and HERE for Part 2. For today, I wanted to talk about how we can progress these movements (assuming that pain and any drastic imbalance is not present) through the use of an external load… in our case, a body bar. I use a 10 lb. body bar in the video, but something…
Read MoreStiff Spine? Try these on for size! (Part II)
Welcome back for Part II of our series on some steps you can take to loosen up your stiff spine. So, last time we covered Type I motion for your stiff spine, and if you missed out on it, you can check it out here. So you saw Type I motion yesterday. This is characterized by rotation in one direction, followed by lateral bending in the opposite direction. Now, lets take a look at Type II: Does it look the same to you? It may look that way to some, but they are indeed different movements. We still have transverse and frontal…
Read MoreStiff Spine? Try these on for size!
Happy Monday everyone! I hope you all had a great weekend and a good day today. I wanted to start a new series on ways you can loosen up your stiff spine, which will get your body primed for a solid workout. These are some of the movement progressions I learned during my time working through the Certified Applied Functional Science (CAFS) and Fellow of Applied Functional Science (FAFS) Mentorship program. Dr. Gary Gray and Dr. Dave Tiberio are the brains behind the Gray Institute, and are both world-renowned physical therapists who derive unique solutions for individuals functional and biomechanical performance…
Read More4.5.2012 – Calf/Ankles/Feet? Here’s your Troubleshoot! (part VII…the Wrap Up!)
Hey all, final post coming your way today wrapping up our series on the Calf/ankle/foot. Lets get right to it. Here are the previous 6 postings in our series for you to catch up with: Part I – Introduction Part II – Anatomy, origins/insertions Part III – Anatomy, muscle actions Part IV – Sot Tissue Work Part V – Mobility Drills, Part I Part VI – Mobility Drills, Part II So, as you can recall from reading the previous posts, first, we worked through breaking up restrictions in the form of adhesions and stubborn, necrotic, sticky muscle tissue, and secondly,…
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