Fast Fitness - Fifth Group Functional Training: Ankle and Knee Safety With Lateral Movement

Here is Friday Fast Fitness - fifth in the series of Functional Fitness Training (FFT) to teach your group, teams, classes, students, kids, battalions…

In this FFT, learn to be ready for changing direction, cutting, lateral movement, landing to the side from jumps, slips and missteps, and more. It builds on the Third Functional Training exercise where you learned to jump with good lower body mechanics.

Assemble your group in neat rows. Stand in front in view of all. Tell them this is a basic, functional physical skill to learn how to reduce lower body injuries during sideways jumps. Remind them they use the previously learned principles from the Third FFT of vertical jumps.

1. Have everyone crouch using good bending (knees do not sway inward or slide forward, taught in the first FFT skill), then rise to toes with stable neutral ankle (not bowing outward at the side, taught in the second skill). Remind them that when they land from a jump they use the same neutral ankle.
2. Next, have everyone to leap sideways at once, off one leg onto the other foot, landing softly with good knee bending and neutral ankle. On landing, the knee is already above the foot, not bent inward. Foot is neutral, not flattened inward (pronated) or turning outward like a sprain (inversion and supination).
3. Leap back to starting place onto the other foot. On landing, the knee is already above the foot. Repeat leaping sideways from foot to foot. With each landing, watch the knee of the landing leg. Make sure the knee doesn't sway inward of foot.

Improve by jumping increasingly fast, and far, for longer periods of time.

Each new Functional Training exercise shows how to teach your groups (or self) how to prevent common musculoskeletal problems during the team season or operational theater. Learn this one to be ready for the fourth one coming next, needed for cutting, changing direction, lateral movement, more.

Trainers, Drill Instructors, readers, send in your stories of how you use these in your program.

Related Fitness Fixer:

• First Group Functional Training Exercise, Good Bending for Back and Knees
• Second Group Functional Training Exercise: Ankle Stability and Ability
• Third Group Functional Training Exercise: Ankles and Knees in Jumps and Landings
• Fourth Group Functional Training Exercise, Functional Upper Back Stretch
• Stuart W is teaching these to his community - Reader Gains Academy Appointment for Making Community Projects Healthy. More on this next week.

Random Fun Fitness Fixer:

• Medical Dictation Software Fun

Labels: ankle, balance, gait, International Academy of Functional Sports Medicine, jumping, knee, pronation, sprain, supination

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Fast Fitness - BIPOD Reader Prescription for Healthier Feet

Here is Friday Fast Fitness - BIPOD is a way to happier feet that you can do yourself at home. Reader Paul J sent in this gem in July. Other great work from him and other readers are still in the piles of mail.

For background: A shoe insert is any pad of any size, shape or quality that you put in your shoe for various reasons. Hard shoes are a common course of joint pain. Many shoes benefit from better cushioning and even a cheap soft insert for cushioning purpose can help that. Orthotics are different. Orthotics are hard shapes, specially fitted by a trained orthotist or sometimes a physical therapist with orthotic training. Orthotics usually cost a few hundreds of dollars. Orthotics are rigid forms to hold your feet in a specific position. There are also hard inserts with molded arch or other area advertised to change your foot posture. Sometimes orthotics and hard inserts make more pain or don't change the source of the problem. Most of the time, for non-paralyzed people, if the orthotic can make your foot change to a healthy position, you can do the same using your own muscles and sense of positioning. Using your own feet and ankle muscles is often healthier, more comfortable, and more likely to yield long term results.

Now Paul J's intelligent prescription:

"Bookspan Invisible Pain-free Orthotic Drops - BIPOD. Now you can walk, run, or stand without the pain of traditional hard orthotic inserts. BIPOD will revolutionize the way you stand. Read and follow product instructions, failure to do so will render this product ineffective. Attempts to walk, run, or stand without BIPOD is not recommended by our accountants.

"Inactive ingredients: Dihydrogen monoxide
"Active ingredients: Cognitive synchronicity

"In order to reduce the burden on landfills, please follow the directions below to make BIPOD at home. You must use your brain and following all directions in order to get DHMO and CS (see above).

1. Ingredients:
   one tablespoon of cold tap water
   one tablespoon of tap water from hot tap, before it gets hot.


2. Mix for 4 seconds in a container that can hold 2 _ tablespoons of liquid.


3. "Put 1 to 2 drops on each arch daily and proceed with the directions (Arch Support Is Not From Shoes)

"The left over mixture maybe placed in the refrigerator for later use or discarded in most plants."

Remember - get the point of healthy practices. Don't get bogged down on purchasing exercise machines and expensive devices that reduce your own body's involvement in your life, or trivial details of exercise "form." Get the big picture of easy healthier ways and enjoy improving your life.

Many readers' great stories are in the piles. Remember to read the instructions and concepts in articles on fixing pain first before asking what to do. Gain the benefits and better health and send in that story. Then we can all enjoy more instead of taking time plodding through and answering reader comments of, "I read your work on how to fix neck pain, will your stretches work?" and similar instances of missing the point. Would anyone help Hannah (or Cheryl?). She left the 36th comment asking if the stretches work on Fixing Upper Back and Neck Pain, which had already explained, along with the 35 questions and replies already there. Thanks!


Related Fitness Fixer:

• Fast Fitness - Somebody Please Do My Personal Responsibility For Me!
• Paul J gave us his prescription for PR & A in: Fast Fitness - Save Money, Fix Pain, Do More Exercise, Get Fit Faster - Strengthen Personal Responsibility

Random Unrelated Fixer:

• Train Exercise is Exercise Training

Book of specific techniques for healthier life in and out of a gym:

• Health & Fitness In Plain English THIRD edition - How To Be Healthy Happy and Fit For The Rest of Your Life.

Labels: fast fitness, feet, fix pain, gait, orthotics, pronation, readers inspiring story, shoes, supination

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Fast Fitness - Develop Ankle Stability Sense While Stretching

Here is Fast Friday Fitness - prevent a common source of overstretched lateral ankle ligament, which is one contributor to repeated sprains - turning the ankle when stretching:

1. When you stretch your hip and legs, or sit cross legged or in yoga poses, notice if you allow the foot to turn, increasing stretch on the outside ligaments of the ankle - too much supination. Reader Liz demonstrates in photo 1 below.
2. Straighten your ankle, Liz photo 2, below.
3. You may notice you get more good stretch from your hip to make up for the motion you were getting by turning your ankle. Holding straight gives better stretch in the hip, and better ankle stability training.

Then remember to use the sense and knowledge of ankle straightening when you stand, run, take stairs. Lying down to stretch will not train stable ankles. The idea of this post is not to make ankles worse with your stretches. Not all things are good to stretch. Avoid the unhealthful practice of lengthening the side ankle ligaments, shown again in the photo below:



Liz sent in several success stories. Here is her first:
How a Reader Stopped Recurring Pain, Got Stronger, and Said Aha!

Related:
Unhealthy Yoga Ankles
Better Hip Stretch - Check Your Ankles
How To Treat Ankle Sprains and Prevent Them
No More Ankle Sprains Part II

Labels: ankle, fast fitness, hip stretch, leg strength, sprain, stretch, supination, yoga

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