[Fitness Advice] - ACTIVATION SEQUENCE - (Video Instruction)

sebastianjago (66)in #fitness • 7 years ago

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Greater mobility will result in a better standard of life in the short and long term and I hope this article helps you achieve a better understanding of why I focus on its so much.

How does "Activation and Mobility" enhance your results?

If you are seeking increased speed, athletic peformance, strength, hypertrophy, and/or fat loss, mobility is an essential and crucial part of your training regime to ensure an increase in range and recruitment of major muscle lines.

This focus and behaviour will present a greater return for your hard work and effort. Remember we are just an animal made of flesh and bone and we need to treat it as such.

If your mobility and activation program is limited or non existent you will restrict your overall capacity, movement, efficiency and results.

The journey to true fitness and health includes the discipline and self awareness of appropriate preparation for every workout.

It is an integral part of my warmup protocol and I hope to see you apply it your future workouts.

Every athlete is unique, each with their own emotional, intellectual and physiological strengths, goals and weaknesses. It is important to identify and ensure we have a clear picture of your personal capacity and where you need to improve.

See below for our "Activation and Mobility" sequence #1 video

Mobility and Flexibility

I would hope to see more people prioritise movement quality above all else.

Remove the ego and seek progression rather than perfection.

The foundation of movement quality is mobility and flexibility. Most people lose mobility and flexibility through a combination of growing too fast, lack of focus, ageing, overload, sitting in chairs and being idle for prolonged periods and of course injuries. It is important to focus on the restoration of awareness, mobility and flexibility through self myofascial (SMR) release on foam rollers, balls with specific targeted static stretching.

Activation

After mobility and flexibility have been restored as a daily behaviour and is clearly improving, muscle activation becomes the next priority. For most athletes this means doing a lot of control based skills and exercises to target the appropriate activation and timing of their glutes, their midline and scapular muscles. We must create a neural connection between the movement and the muscles and ensure a level of consistency.

This kind of training is not so much training the individual muscles themselves, however rather training the brain to switch on the chosen and appropriate muscles at the right time. All with an understanding of the lines of the prescribed movement.

Activation training enables athletes to avoid one of the most common pitfalls in strength training which is the increase of dysfunctional compensatory patterns.

This is not often addressed by coaches and is a major set back in the industry of health. I hope to do my bit to change that.

This means compensating for inefficiencies in strength and mobility which in the long run will cause more problems in other parts of the body.

Are you compensating somewhere through your daily movement?

If so what are you going to do to address it?

Integration

Once an athlete has learnt these new activation and mobility skills it is important to then integrate them into functional movement patterns that can be repeated.

Once the athlete has a clear understanding of these integrated movements (such as squats, lunges, twists, hinges, planks, bridges and all the key lifts) we can then start to progressively load these specific movements to reinforce the good practice of range, quality and movement patterns.

This will stimulate, teach and trigger an adaptive and sustainable response from both the targeted muscle groups and the central nervous system.

This is a very important part of the process in regard to progression and the reality is that it is an ongoing focus.

Everyday is preferred.

Movement Proficiency

Achieving basic competency and awareness in movement skills can have a profound effect on your long-term athletic development.

I suggest focus on mastering basic key movements and ensure you maintain awareness of the movements when under stress, pressure, load and fatigue. This is where the results will follow in time.

This pride in technique, form and what you are actually doing is the key to success.

Success meaning a better standard of life.

Power & Strength

Once we have created an understood foundation of flexibility, mobility, awareness and activation and we have applied them to integrated functional patterns with actual awareness of the skill and technique at all times, it is then time to maximise strength and power.

This next step will vary for each individual based on skill and training age.

For some this will involve hypertrophy (muscle development and growth) and for others the goal would be to maximise power and efficiency without any additional loading.

What is universal through my coaching ideology is that with every athlete we seek to continue to train the central nervous system just as much as the muscular system.

Motor mechanics, self awareness and proficiency of movement is integral.

Consistent Effort & Focus

Cardiovascular and metabolic fitness is one of the most important qualities of overall true fitness, however the development of strength, muscle structure, mobility and movement efficiency should always comes first.

That is what holds us literally together and especially in our ageing years.

What we do now will set a platform to our standard of life in the future. Plan ahead now.

Balance of training in the sense of intelligence will always present a better program for a general population human. This means working on strength, muscle development, cardiovascular performance and mobility as a set of key elements. This should be our overall longterm focus. We must prioritise all of these important factors into our training week.

Make it a part of who we are and what we do.

HIIT training, strength development, mobility and recovery sessions and clear time outs away from the work and stress is all part of teh game. A key mistake is that many athletes focus on more dynamic, heavy stress fitness elements of training rather than mobility and recovery and this is very counter-productive and will cause a mountain of issues when they age.

For many, mobility, activation and recovery should be at the top of the list and as a coach I make it a priority in my gym.

We can all improve on these areas and it needs to be discussed more often at a family level.

Education is the first step.

We can all look after ourselves a lot better than we currently do. Be consistent on all facets of health as listed here and focus on doing them well.

Self discipline & self respect are admirable attributes!

~Sebastian
THIS POST IS 100% POWERED UP | SUPPORT THE PLATFORM'S SUCCESS
SOURCES: All words and videos are my own including rights to all images and music (sjerecords)