Aerobic/Zone 2 Block:
2 minutes of airbike
2 minutes of jogging
2 minutes of rowing
2 minutes of ski erg
1 minute rest
Repeat x 5
Zone 1 Block:
Stretch hamstrings, glutes, lower back.
Stretch quads, hip flexors, and abdomen.
Strengthen core rotation and external rotation on shoulders.
One of the reasons there’s more low-back pain in our culture now is hip-flexor shortening.
We’re part of a seated society. We sit all day, curving our posture toward a screen.
When we sit on the couch at night, we slouch, and curve our upper body toward another screen. This is called “kyphosis”. Your abs and hip flexors become chronically tight from resting in a shortened position most of the time.
Your hip flexors are the muscles in the front of your thigh that lifts your knee up. They connect through your pelvis into your lower back, where they’re anchored. When they get tight, they pull your pelvis forward and you feel tightness in your lower back. Long-term, they adjust your spine to tilt forward from the base, making the kyphotic posture worse.
Posterior-chain exercises can help (glutes, hamstrings, lower back, lats and traps by pulling the spine out of kyphosis and giving the body some strength to resist a forward-leaning posture. But people who sit all day generally have very weak glutes, hamstrings and lower back; and they have tight hip flexors and weak core musculature; and their shoulders are rounded forward, predisposing them to shoulder impingements. Add heavy snow into that mix, and you have a perfect setup for lower back pain.
Want to get our book, The Catalyst Method, for free? Click here to download.