Stretching With Bands and the Fountain of Youth
In honor of my birthday today, I decided to go back into the video achieves and share with you a fountain of youth secret I discovered at age 37.
As I moved into my 30’s and continued to be (in my own mind) a great athlete LOL, I suddenly realized I had lost my ability to move freely. I also noticed that attempting things like sprinting, jumping and aggressive throwing caused my joints and muscles to hurt for several days after.
Not a good time and definite a reality checkmove
How could this be considering I “lifted weights” 6 days a week and was pretty darn strong??
As a physical therapist, fitness enthusiast and athlete want-a-be, I should have realized early on joints that are stiff and muscles that are tight are not going to allow the body to move freely or comfortably and definitely not athletically.
That meant as a 30+ year old guy I had two options….
- I was done enjoying my weekend basketball or softball competitive games with the guys
- I better start working on getting back my mobility and flexibility…
I had been training in bands for while when I began to realize my flexibility issues. I was well aware of how to use them for stretching out the hips, shoulders and ankles. However like most 30+ guys I spent very little time on it because it was more about building muscle.
However what good is muscle if it doesn’t work for you??
As a result I started committing to the band stretching program. I started using bands to bend, stretch, elongate, and actively move my hips, shoulders and ankles (the key joints that must move but typically get tight first with age) in directions that were not part of my normal daily movements and were definitely not patterns I did in my weight lifting. Weights really only allowed me to move in single straight planes while bands pliability allowed me to take my joints through any pattern I wanted to. Plus the elastic nature of the band gradually lengthened out my muscles and joints even more as I worked up to stronger tension bands.
My Fountain of Youth Discovery
Within 2 months of stretching with bands daily, I had eliminated nagging low back pain, was back on the track doing high intensity sprint workouts and could easily train with my high school and college athletes that were 15 to 20 years younger than me.
To say this was a huge band training discovery would be a complete understatement when I now look back at what I can do in my 50’s that most guys stopped doing in their late 20’s and early 30’s.
Besides feeling a lot more confident there were some other benefits of stretching with bands that I did not realize until after I had been doing it for several months.
- I had 10 times more energy to do daily tasks which made sense because I wasn’t fighting through all that stiffness to do daily activities
- I no longer experienced joint cracking and popping getting out of bed in the morning because obviously my joints were more lubricated from additional movement .
- My ability to do real athletic-based workouts was back and the high those workouts produce was awesome.
- The respect from clients and athletes that I trained like I taught was a powerful motivator for them to give band and band stretching a try.
- I had discovered a functional fountain of youth that to fitness guy was the best and meant while my lifting buddies were done being active, I was still going strong
- The ability to run with my 3 amazing children everyday was priceless and something a father should never overlook.
- It made me realize the power of moving and feeling great was far more important than how much weight I could lift. I had really lost a ton of mobility and flexibility by only lifting weights for all those years.
- It inspired a cool nickname… “The Band Man”… OK I am reaching on that one
The fact is keeping your flexibility and mobility is huge and will ultimately be what allows you to keep enjoying life to the fullest.
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Summary
As we age, we are going to lose mobility and flexibility due to chemical changes, anatomical changes and the fact that with work we simply are not moving as much or in as many different directions as we did when we were younger.
We all have physical activities in life that get us excited every time we get the chance to do them. Mine is being able to repeatedly run 50 or 100 meter sprints even though I am over 50. For others, it could be still being able to play the game or being able to hang out with your grandchildren at the beach. Regardless what it is that gets you excited, I know it probably requires being able to move, stretch and bend well.
However you have to work to keep it or you will lose out quickly to mother nature.
Trust me if flexibility and mobility is your issue, stretching with bands will provide you with exactly what you need to get back to doing what you enjoy. Stretching with bands does not follow the tradition long hold approach and it definitely is going to allow you move your joints where they need to move. You just have to commit to doing it.
Once you get the band stretching routine going, you are going love how bands strengthen your body while simultaneously keeping you free and mobile to move however you want.
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