My Rehab Class. What we learnt this week:
When you are learning to get flexible, you need to learn first how to be strong. Huh? That doesn’t make sense?
If you are planning to open your shoulders, create open posture and stretch the chest, first learn to protect the joints.
Hanging. We are hanging this month to create a safer, more spacious and healthy shoulder joint. If we hang ‘without thought’ we hang in the ligaments – they don’t recoil!!! So, we need to learn which muscles to use to make it safe. Then, the muscles we need to ‘stretch’ will just do it. It’s that simple.
Analogy: If someone else is always doing the dishes, why would you bother offering to help?
Answer: The body is the same. It becomes efficient at CHEATING!!! Give you body a chance to relax by learning to strengthen the lazy muscles first.
Homework this week: Hang with a lift of the head.
On my first session at Rehab classes Jacquelyn gave us a tip about lengthening through the outside of the pinky finger to help focus on the upper back instead of the neck tensing up, I put this into practice in my aerobic class the last two sessions, and guess what….IT WORKED! I get a lot of tension in my neck when doing sit ups but focusing on leading with the pinky and not the index finger really helped. Great tip, thank you.