Try our balance challenge and see where you stand (pun intended). Try each move (1 added each week). If you can do it, move to the next. If not, keep working at it daily until you have it, then progress to the next challenge.
Exercises for Better Balance
How’s your balance? When it comes to our balance, we need to use it or lose it. Sometimes, it slips away without us even noticing. Keep your balance in check with the videos below.
Weekend Recovery
After a weekend of playing, our bodies can wake up Monday morning a little stiff and tired. That doesn’t mean we don’t move. It means we give our bodies a little motion to help them recover stronger and feel better. Try these 4 mobility exercises to help keep you moving well.
Kneed Relief?
Our activities can put some strain on our knees. At the end of a long hike, or maybe it was a bike ride, or maybe after working in the garden our knees can feel achy and sore. Grab a foam roller and try these 3 exercises to help bring some relief to your knees.
Do your knees need more love? There are 3 routines on the Koa Fit Online Platform for knee health and strength. Check them out here.
Grab a Tennis Ball and Go!
Hiking, biking, and playing through the summer is the best. But, between the miles on the trails and the miles in a car or plane, our lower legs can start to feel stiff. For your next adventure, pack a tennis ball and give these 3 moves a try.
Elbows Can Be a Pain
Who has a tweaky elbow? One of those twinges or aches that seem to almost go away, and then with one wrong pick-up or swing, the pain is back. For a lot of people, the position of their shoulders is the root cause of their elbow discomfort. Below is a set of 5 exercises, to be done in order and together, to help relieve minor aches or tweaks in the shoulders, elbows, and wrists. Done daily, noticeable changes will happen within 1-2 weeks. Try these out and share with your friends!
Also, check out my Online Platform for the Shoulder Strength Series that can help you incrementally build stronger shoulders fo injury mitigation.
Does Your Low Back Move?
To protect our low backs, it is important that we can generate a lot of power in our neutral spine position. But, unfortunately for us, life doesn’t always allow for us to move perfectly. That is why we need to train the low back’s capacity to move and to move while loaded.
When training this way, you are always walking the line. If you put too much load without building your body’s capacity up first, it will lead to injury. But, if we can train smart, and train our capacity and load together, then we become resilient. 🤩
Check out the 3 videos below to start moving your low back. They are in order of easiest (or lowest load) first and move to harder. Remember that when building capacity, the exercise may feel hard to do, but not due to weight like some other training you may have done. Stick with the exercise that feels challenging to do, before moving on to more load to keep your body safe.
If you are looking for full routines to help you get strong, check out the Koa Fit Online platform which includes 2 full-length routines for the low back + over 20 other videos to try. Click below to learn more.
How are your hips?
For the last few months, we have been playing with our hip mobility. A lot of our focus has been on rotation. Why? Because no other movement can be accessed or gained without it.
The hips move in 6 ways – extension (leg moves behind you), flexion (leg drives in from of you), adduction (legs squeeze together), abduction (legs move away from each other), internal rotation (thigh spirals inward), and external rotation (thigh spirals outward).
Below are a few videos that work with hip internal and external rotation. This is a great starting point for anyone looking for more freedom in their hips. Want more? Check out my full hip mobility program featured this week on the Koa Fit Online platform.
May Mobility – Week Four
This week, we are using a box (you can also use a chair) to assist us in some full-body stretches. Adding the box can help you focus on a deeper stretch in the body while giving you a more comfortable position to hold the stretch. Try these 2 out!
May Mobility – Week Three
Try this introduction to hip internal and external rotation PAILs/RAILs. The goal of these exercises is to create more space in the hip capsule. More space = greater capacity of movement.
Brenna Backe 