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Every Body Needs a Trainer

We’ve talked about The Kettlebell Method and the importance of a trainer to make sure you’re training your body. Why do we care? WE don’t offer personal training–we massage.

 

Well, we also care a lot about your health! We know that a body in motion is much happier and even tends to have less pain for many reasons. While we are not Certified Personal Trainers, our focus is muscular health, and we notice how muscles respond differently based on their activity levels.

 

Typically, someone who works out regularly has more supple muscles. Their tissues are usually better hydrated. They often don’t have deep, deep, stubborn knots like someone who lives a more sedentary lifestyle. And a lot of that has to do with the 4 characteristics of muscular tissue: irritability, the ability to irritate the tissue to engage; extensibility, the ability to stretch; contractility, the ability to shorten and contract; and elasticity, the ability for the muscle tissue to return back to its normal status.

 

These 4 characteristics are necessary for muscular function, but if you’re not mindfully, intentionally contracting your muscles and working them the way they were made to be used,  it can cause a lot of dysfunction, pain, and unhappiness in the tissues. When you contract muscles and push them to their limits, it creates electricity in your body and mind to engage the muscles. It floods the muscles with blood, which help to keep your fluids moving and your muscles working better. You also push the muscles to extend for maximum contracting ability and you stretch your muscles to help them relax and return back to their normal status. Working out uses all of the characteristics of muscle tissue!

 

Our society has created a very sedentary lifestyle with all of the similar movements–sitting down with your head slightly forward, arms forward, rounded shoulders and back, and often even curling legs underneath. Frankly put, it’s the fetal position. Keeping our bodies in this chronic state overstretches our back muscles and glutes, and shortens our front neck muscles, pecs, and hamstrings. The overstretched muscles have to work 10 times harder just to return to a normal position, whereas the shortened muscles constantly are pulling on their attaching joints and have to work really hard just to stretch. That combination causes limited range of motion that can put a lot of pressure on joints and nerves, which causes pain and discomfort.

 

That’s just the muscular health of working out–that’s not mentioning the hormonal benefits, psychological benefits, or any other benefits that come from exercise. Taking care of your body is what we are about, and we want you to have all of the opportunities and tools that might help you take the best care of your body.