I truly believe a certain amount of time should be taken out of everyone’s day to not only assess how your body feels but also experiment. When I started learning more about increasing active range of motion, the only real results come with daily progressive practice, especially for someone like me! I have had tremendous issues for years with practically every joint apart from my wrists (thank you martial arts!!)

I am at home, having a lazy day. There is no set rep scheme in this video or goal, I am purely experimenting with contracting muscles while moving joints. At a first glance it may look like I am doing some kind of myofascial release techniques but I am actually using the lacrosse ball to create tension and in some places as a object to manoeuvre around. External feedback is a great way to teach your body how to create stability in certain positions, it is hard to explain to people how this can enhance their other practices but if you can increase your awareness with the little guys, something as complex as Olympic lifting can become a lot easier. I know I can move my extremities well while maintaining a braced position and that’s all a lot of cool stuff is.

The 90/90 position is by far my favourite place to experiment, after my back injury I felt like my left glute died, literally no feeling with it when squatting or deadlifting. In some parts of the video I am pressing my foot into the wall behind me while contracting my hamstring and personally for me things really start “waking up” and it’s THAT awareness that carries over to my lifting. The benefits of a glute exercise with exaggerated internal rotation at the hip with the obliques engaged have ridiculous carryovers to strength and performance. Moving your hips how hips are made to move is so important.

The funny thing is, I am not doing anything different to what my one year old daughter is doing at the moment. Every time she wakes up she moves her toes, ankles, stares at her hands while moving her fingers then starts moving her hips and grabbing her feet. It’s how she developed the strength to start walking. What I always wonder now is, why do we stop doing this over time?