Bear Down Personal Training

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Month #2 in the mountains 📅⛰️

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Reasons we give a 💩 about ISOs:

1. Proprioception -

You're not moving. You're forced to exclusively focus on maintaining tension in the targeted muscles. This increases mind-muscle connection and teaches you how to stabilize during heavier lifts.

2. Neural Recruitment

You are teaching your nervous system to maximally engage motor units, fire muscle fibers faster, and coordinate movement without joint motion. Also, your body starts to become more unified, and doesn't operate in a more "segmented" way (complicated, nuanced, too much to type out here).

Next time we can talk types of isometrics and how/when to apply them.

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Hip Internal Rotation

..or lack there of.

Something I really struggle with, particularly on the right size.

Restricted range of motion here can impact your squat patterning immensely. It increases the risk of:

1. Lateral hip shift ⬅️➡️
2. Butt wink 😉
3. Anterior hip pinch 🤏
4. Knee valgus (collapsing in)🦵

Compensations like these, over time, will lead to injury. The drills here are things you can incorporate prior to squatting to help get you loosey goose 🪿

More intricate post on 90 / 90 coming soon.

1. Banded Hip Distraction (Internal Rotation Focus)

Create more space in the joint capsule as you go in and out of IR.

2. Frog Stretch 🐸

Brutal. Coming into and holding an internally rotated position, relaxing into it, and teaching the body to feel safer in that position.

3. 90 / 90 Hip Switches

Actively pulling yourself out of internal and external rotation, mobilizing the joint more globally.

4. Hip Airplane ✈️

Always like to follow up range of motion work with stability work that targets the same pattern. The hip airplane is a great tool in this case.

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Two weeks ago, I officially gave up distance running. The combination of living 5,300 feet above sea level 🌊 and these Double D ass cheeks 🍑 did me in. From here on out, sprints 🏃‍♂️, biking 🚴‍♂️, and mountains ⛰️ will be the makeup of my conditioning.

Sprints Prep:

Mobility -

1. Scorpion 🦂
2. Iron Cross ✝️🙏

Activation / ISOs -

3. Hamstring Co-Contration
4. Bent Knee Calf Raise

Extensive Plyos -

5. POGOs
6. Skip Variation - .cycles you're not funny 😔
7. Single Leg Hops 🦵

Ramp Up / Working Sets -

8. 5 Ramp Up Sets @ 50%, 60%, 70%, 80%, 90%
9. 5 Working Sets - Max Effort

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A new thing i learned.

To teach someone the hinge pattern to someone who is new to it by backing them up to a bench, having them press the back of their lower leg against it, and encourage them to maintain contact.

Never really thought about doing it in a single leg position until now.

This helps to maintain proper alignment throughout the movement. Specifically ensuring that you're hips are doing most of the work, not your knees.

Scale down by resting/sliding the back foot on the bench for more stability.

Scale up with more load.

Bella ciao, Bella ciao, Bella ciao, ciao, ciao

- when are you joining me?

Mesi due.

Mesi due